In the 2022 political drama How to Blow Up a Pipeline, one character in cahoots with an otherwise left-leaning group of radical environmentalists is a mild-mannered Texas family man named Dwayne (Jake Weary). His motivation to participate in terrorism is born of the targets’ machinations directly affecting him via eminent domain law.
That deprived him of a home for his budding family. In keeping with conservatives’ more practical concerns and disinclination to abstract too much, Dwayne was wooed only by an environmentalist agenda that would help preserve his private property. And while the object of Dwayne’s ire in the film was an oil company, the new oil, data, is beginning to well up and make its demands known.
Data centers, not unlike similarly sized Walmarts, as well as fracking operations in prior decades, are becoming something of a political hot potato, despite these facilities being famously frigid, in localities across the country. The infrastructure requirement for America’s artificial intelligence overhaul is fostering the breaking of bread across partisan lines in the hinterlands, as the common concern over the rising cost of utilities bridges Make America Great Again sympathizers with Resistance liberals. In regions such as northern Virginia, the American Southwest, and as far afield as North Dakota, data centers have been on a tear, with the market doubling in size between 2020 and 2024 and expected to continue growing handsomely.
Though the news isn’t entirely pretty.
An October poll by Wisconsin’s Marquette University Law School found that, despite the numerous issues of partisan disagreement, when it comes to data centers, Republican and Democratic voters are all but indistinguishable. Majorities of both and independents believe the costs of an AI buildout outweigh the benefits, which remain murkily defined for many, unlike, say, the provision of hydroelectric power.
“This is a new issue,” the school’s Charles Franklin said. “It’s not like we’ve had a huge debate for years about data centers, the way we have about the Affordable Care Act, so the partisan lines are not clearly drawn at this point.”
Arguably, partisan divergences are emerging at the top of the party structures, if not among their bases. In the recent Super Tuesday election, Virginia, a major hub of data centers, mostly clustered in the Washington, D.C., area, voted in Democrat Abigail Spanberger for governor, who, unlike her GOP rival, discounts greater energy capacity in favor of making data centers pay their “fair share” for near-term infrastructure strains.
“All in all, I would cast Spanberger’s victory as having been a stinging defeat for the Abundance movement,” X user @_mengde_ wrote, referencing a push by liberal writers Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson to promote economic growth and what Trump would refer to as “build, baby, build”. In light of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s left-populist win in New York and his youthful bellwether status, it’s a movement likely to stay the course for some time.
A pattern has emerged: Republicans proactively soliciting data centers in territories they control, and Democrats somewhat punting on their fundamental desirability while leaping on efforts to regulate them. This is in keeping with signals from the top of the GOP pyramid, President Donald Trump’s administration, that positively scream “We Heart AI.”
Or better yet, “We Art AI.” Though art that subverts intellectual property and relishes in “remix culture” has been historically aligned with the progressive counterculture, from hip-hop to the 2000s mashups, this time is different. AI being joined at the hip with business-minded “bros” while threatening a by-now mature ecosystem of left-leaning creatives has opened a space for Republicans to embrace it with gusto.
In the space where demography and politics intersect, there’s suggestive evidence of a partisan split on AI, for whom the new emphasis on data centers serves, in attitudes toward the tech seen from men and women. The latter register less excitement than their brethren. And while women may welcome novel developments in transportation if it means selecting a female Uber driver, when it comes to autonomous vehicles, they’re relatively skeptical. Indeed, on the very question of technology’s influence in general, women express more doubt than men that it’s been a story of success for humanity.
Given the increasing gender divergence in fealty to Team Blue or Team Red, with single college-educated white women trending more Democratic than they’ve ever been and their single male counterparts cutting the other way, a commonsense notion of AI as plainly, obviously in the Republican wheelhouse a decade from now can’t be rejected.
And putting aside concerns about what AI ought to do or not, the very interest in the subject reveals a gender divide. “Men are more likely than women to say they have heard or read at least a little about [AI] technologies,” a 2022 Pew survey reported.
Man or woman, however, concerns about data centers driving up electricity prices are something no one can ignore. While the jury is still out on just what kind of effect AI data centers’ effect on retail electricity bills will generate — in data center-heavy northern Virginia, electricity prices actually declined between 2019 and 2024 — the prospect of scarily high new monthly expenditures will keep both parties’ politicos on their toes, whatever their personal preferences.
CHINA MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO WIN THE AI ARMS RACE
The ability of an issue with no inherent left or right valence to soon find one knows no limits. The first inklings of COVID-19 in the United States in this decade weren’t taken particularly seriously by Democratic politicians. But by 2021, “everyone knew” Republicans weren’t the Chicken Littles and that Democrats thought public health trumped all, except Black Lives Matter.
“Trust the Science” hits differently when it’s healthcare-related than when it’s extractive and manufacturing-oriented. How the partisan alignment of AI and its infrastructure needs will look by the 2028 election is unknown, but if the current path continues, I’d reach for the red (AI) chips and put it all on the table.
Dain Fitzgerald is a writer and “podtuber” in Diamond Springs, California, in the beautiful Gold Country of El Dorado County. His Substack is @mupetblast.
