The left and right agree on one thing: no data centers

The Verge's Decoder podcast has turned its attention to a phenomenon that is quietly redrawing the political map: the bipartisan backlash against AI data centers. The episode, featuring policy reporter Gaby Del Valle, documents how a single, tangible piece of infrastructure has become the focal point for a wide range of anxieties about artificial intelligence, economic displacement, and community control.

Del Valle's reporting from Hernando County, Florida, where a unanimous county commission approved a yearlong moratorium on data center construction, reveals a movement that defies conventional political alignment. The opposition is led by Humans First, a conservative grassroots group, yet the concerns voiced at these protests—groundwater contamination, forever chemicals, noise pollution, and the fracturing of social bonds—are not easily categorized as left or right. As Del Valle notes, the divide is not between left and right but between populists and technocrats, a split that runs through both major parties.

The core insight from the conversation is that data centers have become a proxy for the public's feelings about AI. They are physical, visible, and stoppable. Unlike the diffuse threats of algorithmic feeds or targeted advertising, a data center is a building that can be opposed at a town board meeting. This tangibility gives citizens a sense of agency that they feel is otherwise absent. The result is a strange coalition of voters who, in Del Valle's telling, are becoming fluent in local environmental policy and zoning law, even as they remain deeply skeptical of the technology itself.

There is a deeper economic narrative at play. The promise of data center jobs, which has been a key selling point for developers, is increasingly viewed with suspicion. As Del Valle points out, these facilities require relatively few permanent workers, and the construction boom is temporary. The public has caught on. The old bargain—accept the disruption and the pollution in exchange for stable, dignified work—no longer holds when the end product is not a tangible good but an abstract service that enriches a few billionaires and fills feeds with what many call slop.

This dynamic is already scrambling electoral politics. In Florida, the Republican gubernatorial primary is being shaped by the issue, with front-runner Byron Donalds facing backlash despite a Trump endorsement. Del Valle reports that some proud Trump voters are so opposed to data center development that they would consider voting for a Democrat. The issue is creating fractures within the MAGA coalition, pitting the president's tech-industry donors against his base's visceral dislike of the AI build-out.

The broader significance may be the return of local politics. The backlash is driving people to county commission meetings and town halls, where they are encountering neighbors across party lines. This is a rare point of agreement in a polarized era. As Del Valle observes, there is little else that cuts across party lines in the same way. The question now is whether this localized anger will translate into durable political change, or whether it will remain a series of isolated victories against a single, highly visible target. Either way, the data center has become the unlikely battleground for the future of AI policy.