By Senators Saxby Chambliss and Kent Conrad:
As President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping prepare to meet later this month, much of the attention will center on trade, tariffs and security. Behind those issues lies a larger competition that will determine the economic and military balance of power for decades to come: leadership in artificial intelligence (AI).
While Beijing remains the top threat to American leadership in AI, an equally concerning wave of state and local data center bans is undercutting the infrastructure American AI and our digital lives require. These measures, while well-intentioned and based on real concerns that require a serious response, threaten our national security.
In fact, more than 300 communities across 44 states have adopted moratoriums or bans on data centers, including one in five counties in Georgia. In July, New York became the first state to halt permits for large facilities. Texas has paused new grid connections while regulators audit the backlog. State legislatures have filed nearly 2,000 bills regulating AI.
Meanwhile, China has made its intentions clear. Beijing’s new five-year plan sets a $1.4 trillion target for its AI industry and is preparing to double its national data center capacity by 2030.
From our experiences on the Senate Intelligence and Budget Committees, we saw firsthand how our adversaries use technology to plot against us and how innovation drives our economy.
Between us, we spent four decades in the Senate, a Georgia Republican and a North Dakota Democrat, and we disagreed on plenty. But we agree on this: outright bans on data centers pose an existential threat to American competitiveness and national security. A ban here does not stop AI from being built. It just means that communities will forfeit thousands of construction jobs, millions in tax revenue, and the economic growth a data center brings.
To be sure, the communities enacting these restrictions have honest concerns about water usage, electricity consumption and siting issues associated with new data centers. Those anxieties are understandable and deserve straight answers and assurances from developers.
But the good news is that the facilities being built today are increasingly environmentally efficient and effective job creators. For example, newer data centers employ closed-loop recycled water systems, which cut freshwater use by up to 70 percent. Microsoft’s latest data centers use the same amount of water annually as a single restaurant.
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