There’s been a wave of anti-data-center sentiment sweeping progressive circles, and on today’s edition of The Editors, Charlie is “a little bit baffled by it.”
“We already have a lot of data centers in the United States. It’s not 1992. This is how most of the internet works.
“I think those who are opposed to the construction of data centers would do much better to focus their energies on good zoning regulations,” says Charlie. “That is to say, to make the sort of demands of the construction process that they would make of an airport or a factory or a railway station or what you will. . . .
“What worries me about this,” says Charlie, “is that these sorts of moral panics, when they capture the imagination, are quite difficult to dispel. And we need to maintain our advantage here. This is what we are good at. This is what we have been good at for a very long time. The United States leads the world technologically and has since the end of World War II. . . . We do not want China to overtake us in AI or in anything else.”
Charlie points out that most of the companies (many of them American) working to build these data centers are doing so through privately raised money, and “this is one reason the stock market is so high. And we should be thrilled by that. We already have these companies. We already have these people. So to break this now on the back of environmentalists and Luddite sentiment to me would be crazy and suicidal.”
The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.