WATCH: Are Americans’ fears surrounding data centers overblown?

Are data centers actually beneficial to Americans? 

Patrick Hedger, director of policy at NetChoice, joins The Dialogue to take on the hot topic of how data centers are impacting Americans. Host Billy Hallowell presents several viral video clips and news segments that speak to the fears spreading around the country about data centers. Patrick responds to each video and explains why many of these fears are overblown or misleading. The conversation touches on everything from water usage to noise to transparency.

The claims discussed are those made in the debate and do not represent the views of The Washington Times.

[HALLOWELL] Welcome to The Dialogue from The Washington Times. In this episode, we are covering the ever-controversial topic of data centers, what they are, why they matter, and why some Americans have opposition to them. We’re going to get into all that and more. I’m joined today by Patrick Hedger, Director of Policy at NetChoice. That’s an organization that describes its work as making the internet safe for free enterprise and free expression. 

This is a big topic, and there are a lot of different opinions on both sides of this. And we typically start the show with something we call The Pitch. Now, on today’s show, we have one guest who’s going to be responding to some viral video clips. And so in our pitch, we give guests about 30 seconds to tell us where they stand on one central statement. So I’m going to throw a very brief, simple statement out, and you’ll have about 30 seconds. And then we’re going to dig into the topic. 

Now, the statement is: Data centers are benefiting Americans. What do you say?

[HEDGER] So America won the internet revolution. The global internet is built by and run by Americans. And because of that, we’ve seen really extraordinary economic growth here in the United States compared to the rest of the world. Places like Europe regulated themselves out of the internet age, don’t have the digital infrastructure that we’re building here today, and are not positioned to compete in the AI race. So Americans are benefiting every day from everything that they are able to do on their devices, from ordering a package to ordering a car to being able to connect with loved ones or their doctor instantly. All of that happens in the data center. And data centers and that technology is positioned America to lead the world in the next major technological revolution, which is the AI revolution. And we expect to see even greater economic results for Americans because of that.

[HALLOWELL] We want to move into our Focus section, and our focus section of the show, that’s where we’re going to explore some of these viral video clips. Now, this is interesting. The first clip is from Saturday Night Live. And, you know, obviously data centers have become such a big topic that they’ve even been covered on SNL and other comedy shows. But let’s just watch this brief clip here and then we’ll talk about it.

According to a new poll, 75% of Americans would oppose an AI data center being built near them, making it one of the country’s most unifying issues.

[HALLOWELL] Now, this is interesting. He called it one of the most unifying issues, and there aren’t a lot of things unifying us these days. But what do you make of that? Why do you think that percentage is so high?

[HEDGER] Yeah, you know, I think I see a similar phenomenon to what we see in Congress. People you poll and say, I mean, Congress has a very low approval rating, but people tend to love their individual congressmen. And if you look at the types of services and companies that are utilizing data centers, people really like Amazon, people really like Google. So I think there’s a big disconnect in terms of what a data center is and the technologies and services that they enable. And the fact that data centers are not a new type of infrastructure that we’re building. It’s a new topic. And I think people are reacting to some of the misinformation that they’re hearing of late. But we’ve been building data centers in the United States for the better part of the last 30 years. It’s really only become a topic of discussion recently.

[HALLOWELL] I want to pull back a little bit because I would bet there are people who don’t really understand what a data center is. They have no concept, no framework. Especially an AI data center, right? It’s sort of like, what is this? Why are they using water? And we’re going to get into that too. But can you give us a definition of what goes on at a data center and why we need it? At the top, you gave a really interesting explanation. Help us understand from your perspective.

[HEDGER] You know, for all the concerns about resource use, water, electricity, data centers are the way we do what we do in our day-to-day lives in the cloud and online the most efficiently. You know, there was a time in this country where every large office building, school, university had a server room. A data center is essentially we were doing all of that at scale and achieving economies of scale, doing what we demand of our devices and of these services in a way that’s centralized and the most efficient way possible. So that’s all it is. 

It’s basically deploying technology at scale in a way that makes it more affordable, more accessible and more efficient. They’re big buildings full of computers. Now, they’re not all the same. Some use water, some don’t, depending on where they’re located. Some are mostly about storing the things that are all on your phone that you never delete, all the videos of 4th of July fireworks that you never delete off your phone, to enabling services like this right now. This interview is happening because of a data center. And then you have some data centers that, yes, do have AI chips in them that are training AI systems, but data centers are not monolithic. Some are big, some are small. And it’s funny that we talked about that previous poll that people wouldn’t want to live near a data center. I bet most people actually already do live near a data center and don’t even know it.

Watch the video for the full conversation.