OPINION:
Mike Rogers, the Republican running against Abdul El-Sayed for the U.S. Senate seat from Michigan, lived down to all my expectations last week by announcing that he was in favor of a one-year “pause” in the building of data centers in the Wolverine State.
Such a “pause” — already in effect in the state of New York and other jurisdictions — is not really a pause. It is a steppingstone to an outright ban. If you do not believe me, believe Mark McLaurin, the state director for an outfit called Climate Power in Georgia.
When Georgia Power delayed the start of its 25-year service agreement with OpenAI (the creator of ChatGPT), under pressure from Democrats on the state’s public service commission, Mr. McLaurin said simply, “Any delay is a victory for us.”
It is essential to realize that such delays will not stop or even slow down data centers or the deployment of artificial intelligence. If the U.S. steps aside, the regime in Beijing will be happy to take the lead and command the economic and national security high ground on this planet for the next 50 years or so.
How do you figure that will turn out for the world?
I mention all this because the build-nothing-ever-anywhere crowd appears to have finally found its way to the cradle of the nation and the birthplace of presidents: the commonwealth of Virginia.
For the past few years, data centers in Virginia have been located mostly in Northern Virginia, especially in Prince William and Loudoun counties. Loudoun County hosts about 250 data centers, or about 25% of the nationwide total.
Those centers provide about 15,000 jobs to local residents and about $1 billion in tax revenue every year. They are essential to the U.S. maintaining its economic, national security and technological advantage in a world full of dangerous people.
More important than that, though: Those centers are a path to a brighter, more prosperous future for your children and grandchildren.
Like everything else in the world, the data centers are starting to move south from those counties and closer to the Virginia part of Virginia. A company (Penzance) has proposed building a data center (1500 Gateway) in Fredericksburg. It would be the first such center within the city limits.
As might be expected, the local building unions rightly see the potential for economic progress and are foursquare behind the project.
Penzance has signed a memorandum of understanding for a project labor agreement with the Baltimore-D.C. Metro Building Trades Council, which represents 28 locals and about 40,000 workers. Such an agreement makes it clear that workers will be treated fairly with respect to wages and working conditions, and the company is assured that its facility will be built by the best-trained and most skilled workers America has to offer.
The project is expected to create almost 3,000 construction jobs for tradespeople who, for the most part, now must commute significant distances to job sites in Northern Virginia and beyond.
The remainder of the offer is also solid: $1 million each year for the next 20 years to Fredericksburg schools, a new fire station and roughly $25 million a year in tax revenue. The company is committed to air-cooled systems, so the center will draw no water for cooling.
Finally, Fredericksburg recently rewrote its planning standards to address this kind of project. The 1500 Gateway project is the first application under the new standards, and it exceeds all of them: setbacks, height and noise.
The Fredericksburg City Council is having a hearing and is scheduled to vote on the project Tuesday. The council can vote for a delay or pause, or it can do the right thing, step confidently into the next American century and approve the 1500 Gateway project.
It is not an overstatement to say that Virginia invented this country. Today, Virginians are called to do something no less important. Artificial intelligence — and who masters it — will affect the future of everyone on this planet. We need to make sure that this century will be another American century.
Part of that effort will happen in Fredericksburg on Tuesday.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor to The Washington Times. He lives in Midlothian, Virginia.
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