Across my career, I have been a technology optimist. I’ve engaged with the tech sector while serving at USAID and the State Department, and while working in the private sector. I understand the strategic argument for artificial intelligence. The United States should lead the world in AI, especially as competition with China intensifies.
When I ran for Congress in New Jersey’s 2nd District, I saw just how sharp the disconnect had become between Washington and Main Street over one critical piece of the AI boom: data centers.
Across a year on the campaign trail, I expected voters to ask about inflation, health care, housing and immigration. What I didn’t expect was that the most passionate grassroots movement I encountered was focused on AI data centers.
At town halls, diners and community meetings, residents were fired up to talk about megawatts, water consumption and tax incentives. Most weren’t anti-technology. They were asking a simple question: Who decided this?
The experience left me with a conclusion that would have surprised me a year ago. The federal government should enact a temporary moratorium on AI data centers.
The China risk
I know that word — moratorium — sounds scary.
In Washington, the dominant conversation around AI infrastructure is about speed. We need more computing power. More energy. More investment. More construction. Any delay, we are told, risks surrendering advantage to China.
Credit: (Winder for Congress)But running for office taught me that there is another political reality emerging outside the Beltway, one to which policymakers and technology executives aren’t sufficiently responsive.
What changed my thinking was not so much the technology itself, It was the process: who receives the benefits, who gets special treatment and who is left carrying the costs.
In South Jersey, I saw local officials and corporate reps struggle to explain projects whose scale exceeded anything most communities had encountered. Residents felt blindsided. Public meetings often generated more questions than answers. Information arrived piecemeal. People struggled to obtain basic facts about energy demand, water usage and long-term impacts.
Community engagement felt like an afterthought. Just as concerning was the tone.
Free food baskets
Rather than treating residents as a key part of the equation, some leaders seemed to view them as obstacles. Questions were dismissed. Concerns were trivialized.
At one point, after raising a question about a possible conflict of interest at a Vineland City Council meeting, I was threatened with a slander lawsuit. “I won’t win the case, but you’ll pay,” the City Council president said. At a town hall with data center developer DataOne, the CEO spoke of community benefits like free food baskets, a tone-deaf attempt to assuage a largely angry audience.
What I saw in South Jersey is far from unique.
Similar debates are emerging in communities across the country as local governments grapple with projects that can reshape their economy, infrastructure and quality of life. After my campaign began speaking out on data centers, a Council member from a Texas town of around 5,000 people emailed me: “Some of us are battling out with a data center developer. Probably the biggest decision this little town will ever make.”
All kinds of opponents
We are building faster than we are governing and communities aren’t a little upset — they’re pissed off. That should worry even the strongest advocates of AI.
The industry appears to assume that opposition to data centers comes primarily from activists and fringe groups. My experience suggests something different. The resistance I encountered came from Democrats, Republicans, independents, retirees, union members, business owners and parents.
Many supported technological innovation. Many welcomed economic development. What they opposed was a process that left them feeling excluded from decisions that could reshape their communities for decades.
History suggests this matters.
Major technologies rarely lose public support because of the technology itself. They lose support when institutions fail to earn public trust. Americans generally embrace innovation when they believe the rules are fair, the benefits are shared and decision-makers are acting transparently. When those conditions disappear, backlash follows.
National standards
That is why a moratorium deserves such serious consideration.
A pause would give policymakers time to establish clear national standards around community engagement, energy demand, water consumption, independent environmental reviews, tax implications and local benefits. It would allow state and local governments to develop the expertise necessary to evaluate projects that increasingly resemble critical infrastructure rather than ordinary commercial developments.
Most importantly, it would help rebuild public confidence.
The greatest threat to America’s AI ambitions may not be regulation. It may be the growing belief that ordinary citizens are expected to bear the costs of AI infrastructure while having little say in how it arrives and impacts their lives.
Running for Congress convinced me that this isn’t just an issue to swat away. AI data centers are a kitchen table issue.
Washington has the chance to get ahead of that reality. But doing so will require thinking very seriously about the one word the AI industry least wants to hear: moratorium.
