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

Summary

Decoder with Nilay Patel: The Left and Right Agree on One Thing: No Data Centers

Date: August 6, 2026
Host: Nilay Patel (The Verge)
Guest: Gabby Del Valle (Policy Reporter, The Verge)

---

Overview

In this episode of Decoder, Nilay Patel dives into America’s growing bipartisan backlash against the rapid buildout of AI data centers. He’s joined by policy reporter Gabby Del Valle, who recently reported from the front lines in Hernando County, Florida, where local, conservative voters—once politically aligned with big business—are now protesting new data center projects. Their motivations span environmental worries, job concerns, and a sense of being alienated by technological change. Gabby and Nilay explore how opposition to data centers is realigning traditional party lines and becoming a lightning rod for wider frustrations with AI and technology.

---

Key Discussion Points

1. Local Backlash to Data Centers

(01:28–05:38)

• Gabby’s On-the-Ground Reporting: Residents in Florida and Arizona oppose data centers for reasons tailored to local conditions—humidity and water issues in Florida, water scarcity in Arizona. Across communities, people believe, "It doesn’t make sense to build a data center here because of X reason." (Gabby Del Valle, 03:38)
• Tech Anxiety as Local Action: Protests against data centers have become "a proxy for the public’s feelings about AI—something physical they can aim their fear and frustration at and even create enough pressure to stop through community organizing and protests." (Nilay Patel, 01:28)
• Not Just an Environmental or NIMBY Fight: Many concerns reflect wider unease about the effects of AI and tech on jobs, community, and even social cohesion.

2. Scrambling of Political Alignments

(04:24–05:38 | 09:12–10:19 | 15:28–18:55)

• Old Lines, New Battle: Data centers "do not neatly map to the usual right-left culture war alignment." Instead, the tension is between "populists" (on both left and right) and "technocrats."
• Former Tea Partiers Become Protest Organizers: Humans First, originally bipartisan, now organizes primarily conservatives ("kind of has a similar vibe…it’s not like a left-right thing. It's a populist-technocrat divide." — Gabby, 04:48).
• Environmental Concerns on the Right: Diehard Trump voters are rallying around issues usually seen as left-coded—like water contamination and "forever chemicals."
• Jobs and Broken Promises: Both left and right realize that AI/data center jobs are few and short-lived. The hope that tech brings jobs is wearing thin: "the promises of like the AI boom will lead to jobs related to data centers is like not actually true." (Gabby, 09:16)

3. Proliferation of Conspiracies and Expanded Fears

(05:38–07:52)

• Rumors Fill the Information Gap: From bizarre rumors ("cattle born near data centers are all stillborn") to more generalized distrust of AI applications, data centers attract conspiracy thinking.
• AI’s Social Impact: Personal anecdotes link AI to social atomization and mental health issues—e.g., a story about a chatbot "telling someone not to be friends with me anymore."
• Physicality Matters: The data center, as a giant, visible project, becomes a scapegoat for generalized tech pessimism.

4. Economic and Societal Anxiety

(07:52–10:19 | 18:55–20:55 | 23:44–27:52)

• Data Centers as Symbols of Alienation: Unlike historic factories ("I made that thing"), data centers represent job loss and enrichment for distant billionaires.
  • Nilay: "...all I get is more, like, AI-generated movie posters on Amazon Prime, whose price keeps going up every month, like, screw you." (26:19)
• Loss of Local Identity: Transformation of local landscapes (orange groves, cattle ranches) into anonymous, noisy data centers deepens the sense of loss.

5. The Local-Global Political Pipeline

(33:07–35:24 | 35:24–37:57)

• From Local Action to National Trends: Gabby compares the movement to school board activism—localized issues that "may end up driving, if not national policy change, then national political vibes."
• Trump and Party Leadership in Flux: Trump’s ability to "contain multitudes" makes his stance unpredictable. Gabby points out, "He can say literally whatever and he can do literally whatever and the people who like him will continue to like him." (36:17)
• Disconnect Between National and Local Perceptions: Many see data centers as the work of disconnected tech oligarchs, not as political acts directly linked to Trump.

6. Concrete Political Consequences

(15:28–18:55 | 37:57–39:46)

• Political Fallout in Florida: Republican primary frontrunner Byron Donalds, endorsed by Trump and supported by industry, faces grassroots backlash.
  • Gabby: "One woman I talked to told me...she said she would vote for a Democrat or an independent if Donalds won the primary." (15:28)
• Policy Responses: Candidates attempt to straddle the divide by introducing regulations on utility costs and water use.
• Potential Midterm Shockwaves: "If any of the anti data center candidates win the Republican primary, like, that is going to be huge and completely unexpected by everybody in the state." (Gabby, 38:15)

7. Community Agency and Demands

(28:39–29:51 | 34:10–35:24)

• Desire for Local Control: The heart of opposition often centers not on absolute rejection, but on wanting "a degree of community input on how they’re built, if they’re going to be built." (Gabby, 28:39)
• Return to Local Politics: The issue is "catalyzing actual community building and local political engagement," crossing lines not just of party, but of traditional urban-rural divides.

8. Party Lines Blur on Environmental Concerns

(39:20–39:46)

• Unexpected Alliances: Even "deeply conservative women" are now engaging with environmental protection arguments traditionally associated with the left.
• Nilay sums up: "We're still doing climate change hoax at the national level and on the ground we're talking about pesticides." (39:46)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On local anger and motivation:
  "What I found was people are really, really, really, really mad...But they're also all kind of the same. They have, like, localized concerns."
  — Gabby Del Valle, 03:38

• On conspiracy thinking:
  "...one of the people I talked to told me that cattle born near data centers are all stillborn...So like that got spun out…the Internet rumor, social media mill. I think like that's part of it." — Gabby Del Valle, 06:22

• On jobs and disconnection:
  "You take all of that energy and you're like, actually, what we're going to make is data centers. And no one can see at the end of that, I made a Jeep Wrangler. They get to see that Elon Musk got richer, right? And they just lost their jobs, and their children feel like they have no future and their feeds are full of slop..." — Nilay Patel, 23:44

• On party scrambling:
  "It's cutting across party lines, I think, not just in that people hate it, but like, I had these, again, like, deeply conservative women talking to me about, like, local environmental and ecological issues." — Gabby Del Valle, 39:20

• On Trump as a political phenomenon:
  "The thing about Trump is that he can say literally whatever and he can do literally whatever and the people who like him will continue to like him." — Gabby Del Valle, 36:17

• On the local/national divide:
  "Data centers are very local. They're happening to people in their backyards...Is there an element of a return to actual local politics and actual community building here that could be catalyzed by opposition to data centers?"
  — Nilay Patel, 33:07

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro to Gabby, context for protests – 01:28
• Localized anger and environmental concerns – 03:38–04:24
• Political alignment scramble: Populism vs. Technocracy – 04:48–05:38
• Conspiracy theories and control – 06:22–07:52
• Anti-data center as anti-AI/anti-tech backlash – 07:52–09:12
• Jobs promise debunked – 09:16–10:19
• National headlines and media framing – 10:19–11:41
• Local government responsiveness & political fallout – 15:28–18:55
• Economic anxiety and party realignment – 23:44–27:52
• Community input and zoning – 28:39–29:51
• Return to local politics & national implications – 33:07–35:24
• Trump, party, and cultural backlash – 35:24–37:57
• Prediction for primaries and midterms – 37:57–39:46

---

Conclusion

Gabby Del Valle’s reporting reveals a fast-growing, bipartisan coalition united against data center expansion, driven by local concerns but emblematic of broader social, economic, and political anxieties. The episode underlines how opposition to AI infrastructure is uniquely capable of crossing today’s polarized party lines, hinting at unpredictable consequences for upcoming elections and policy.

Final thoughts from Gabby:
"Literally nothing [else]. Nothing at all [is crossing party lines this way]..." — (39:20)

---

Further Reading and Coverage:
Expect more Decoder episodes tracking how the data center and AI backlash will shape America’s politics in the midterm and presidential races ahead.

Transcript

[Nilay Patel]

We secure the world's AI future by securing the world's AI leaders. AI is being adopted faster than companies can secure it. Sensitive data is moving across AI models and attackers are using AI to strike with unprecedented speed and precision. That's why CrowdStrike built the Agentix cybersecurity platform for the AI era to secure

[Gabby Del Valle]

AI and to stop breaches.

[Nilay Patel]

So you can embrace AI with confidence, not compromise. CrowdStrike we secure AI, we stop breaches. Hey, I've got the campaign brief ready

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

built from last quarter's data and the competitive landscape approved.

[Gabby Del Valle]

Oh agents, where would we be without you?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Somewhere with a lot more tabs open.

[Gabby Del Valle]

Create your first Monday agent in [e-mail]

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need to it's an all in one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, E commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you try Odoo for [e-mail] that's o d o o.com.

[Nilay Patel]

Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilai Patel, editor in chief of the Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking with Gabby Del Valle, a policy reporter here at the Verge, about the growing backlash against AI data centers. Gabby recently published a fantastic piece for us about Hernando County, Florida. Gabby attended a protest there organized by a group called Humans First, a conservative grassroots movement focused on combating AI data center buildouts. You'll hear Gabby explain that the protest was part of a bigger, broader and bipartisan opposition to data centers. Not only the physical buildings but also the infrastructure that powers an AI boom, taking local jobs and filling our feeds with slop. So data center construction has become a proxy for the public's feelings about AI. Something physical they can aim their fear and frustration at and even create enough pressure to stop through community organizing and protests. I wanted Gabby to talk me through what these protests look like on the ground from voters whose party affiliations have typically aligned them with big business. You'll hear Gabby say data centers are scrambling party lines, turning diehard Trump voters into protesters who care about traditionally left coded issues like groundwater contamination and forever chemicals. It's a time of great political realignment. And my prediction is that data centers and the politics of AI will play a major role in the midterm elections coming later this year. So I suspect this won't be the last time we hear from Gabby on movements like humans First. Okay, Verge reporter Gaby Devai on the bipartisan data center backlash. Here we go. Gabbie Del Valle, you're a policy reporter here at the Verge. Welcome back to Decoder.

[Gabby Del Valle]

Thank you. Happy to be here.

[Nilay Patel]

I'm excited to talk to you. You were on previously with our friend Alex Heath, but this is the first time I've gotten to talk to you in Decoder. And I think the story you just wrote about data centers and conservative backlash in Florida is just a real preview of of what tech policy going into the midterm elections is going to be like. You were just there. You talked to a bunch of people who are protesting data centers. It is a real alignment scramble in terms of our politics. Tell us what you found.

[Gabby Del Valle]

What I found was people are really, really, really, really mad. And the reasons why they're mad kind of are different depending on the community. But they're also all kind of the same. They have, like, localized concerns. Like they were telling me, you know, like, Florida is really humid. It doesn't make sense to build a center that needs to be kept very cool and dry in such a humid place. A lot of them were concerned about their groundwater. They were concerned about PFAs getting dumped into the water. But I've also talked to people in Arizona who have the opposite concern. Arizona is not very humid. Arizona is very dry. And they're also like, it doesn't make sense to build a data center in the desert. So whatever your community is, you're like, it doesn't make sense to build a data center here because of X reason.

[Nilay Patel]

The thing that really strikes me in reading your piece and hearing about the other reporting you're doing for pieces is to come is that data center buildouts and data center protests do not neatly map to the usual right left culture war alignment that we have seen play out for so long. And I'm curious for your view on that. Why? Why can't Elon Musk just command his army of followers to be pro data centers.

[Gabby Del Valle]

This is like a little bit of backstory that's going to answer your question. The woman who organized Humans first, which was kind of bipartisan and now is focusing only on organizing conservatives, was an early, I don't know, a founder or like organizer, what the right word is with the tea Party. And this kind of has a similar vibe to me. It's not like a left right thing. It's kind of like a populist technocrat divide. And you're seeing that on the right and the left. So like for example, at the Abundance conference last year, it was like center right to center left ish. And everybody was like, pro nuclear, pro AI. And it was like, these things are here to stay. We have to figure out how to like do it smartly. Whereas, like the populist left and the populist right are both skeptical of tech development.

[Nilay Patel]

To put it lightly, that skepticism plays out across a number of dimensions. I couldn't help but be struck as I read your story by how many strains of conspiracy thinking there are about data centers. And I'm curious if they're just visible, right? They're so big and they require so much development and so much build out that you can just glue any concerns you have onto them. This big thing is happening and I don't feel any control. And I'm also worried about 5G and I'm worried about Chinese government interference and I'm worried about xyz. And I can just point it all at this very big thing by which there's a process to say no, right? I can go to my local town board meeting and literally say no.

[Gabby Del Valle]

I mean, I think that's part of it. I think it's interesting because I think there's like a spectrum of conspiratorial thinking to, I guess like misinformed thinking. Like on the water use question, we now know that they don't use as much water as we previously thought, et cetera, et cetera. But like on the far end of the spectrum, like one of the people I talked to told me that cattle born near data centers are all stillborn. And I tried to track that down. I was like, where did this come from? And it was one farmer in Texas who claims he had one stillborn born calf on his cattle farm. So like that got spun out like via, you know, the Internet rumor, social media mill. I think like that's part of it. And I also think like, there's this issue of like social collapse that I think like once you talk to people, a little bit comes out. Like one of the women I talked to is like, you know, I have, I had this friend who chat GPT told her she couldn't be friends with me anymore. You have all of these stories of like people harming themselves or going off their medication or whatever because like they've been Talking to like a chat bo and it goes awry. And I think this gives people a feeling of control. They're like, I can go to my community board meeting or my council members meeting or whatever and I can say I don't want this big building that houses the scary thing that is fracturing my community here. So it's not just the actual building. I think it's a broader backlash to generative AI and to LLM specifically.

[Nilay Patel]

One of my ideas that I've been pushing on lately is that the AI products are not winning over hearts and minds in the market. So if the data centers just said Netflix on them, maybe people would like them more. But instead that's where the slop is coming from and that's where the jobs are going to go away into and that's where Mark Zuckerberg is just going to get even wealthier. Is there a dynamic of that that people just don't like the thing that the data centers make?

[Gabby Del Valle]

They don't like a lot of the things that the data centers make. It's not just AI. I think AI is a big part of it. In Arizona, in Tucson, there's like a data center project that's getting built out and the people I talked to there were like, yeah, this might be like an Amazon Web Services facility and Amazon works with ice. So like this technology is fueling mass deportations like through, you know, not like directly but like creating the kind of non sexy infrastructure that like work, that surveillance is built on. Like there's two things to it. Like part of it is like a kind of like nimby. I don't want this thing in my backyard, literally. I don't want my town to get polluted. I don't want this, I don't want that. I don't want to see it. I don't want the noise pollution. And then the other thing is like I do not like what this big building represents and what it has wrought on society.

[Nilay Patel]

Does that cut across bipartisan lines or is that more culture war coded?

[Gabby Del Valle]

It cuts across culture war lines in that people like have different concerns about like what do. So like the woman I spoke to was talking about like the fracturing of social bonds on the construction front. She was like, we're like a kind of rural ish community. We don't want this like big blight on our like nice rolling hills. So that's like kind of a right coded thing. And there was a lot of like anti development stuff that is kind of neither right nor left, both sides. I think are concerned about the job losses because of AI. And both sides have kind of caught on to the fact that these facilities don't really have a lot of long term job prospects. There's the big construction boom, there's an H VAC situation. But to actually maintain these facilities, it doesn't require that many people. And I think just people have caught onto that. Like the, the promises of like the AI boom will lead to jobs related to data centers is like not actually true.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, at most it's. It's a few hundred jobs for each of these facilities, at least in the data centers we have now. Why do you think some of the protests make national news? Like the. The Kevin o' Leary data center in Utah is a national story. Maybe it's just because he's a cartoon character. And then, you know, there's a project in Georgia where there might be a huge open air facility that seems to go under the radar. There are all of the projects in Florida that you are reporting on, but don't seem to be explosive in the way that some of the other ones are.

[Gabby Del Valle]

Yeah, I think that's a good question. There was one in Florida that was explosive and it was just because it was near Mar a Lago. I think like that one pretty obviously made the national news because it's like kind of related to the president. I honestly think like a cartoon character at the center of it is the deciding factor a lot of the time on whether it'll become a national story or not. And then also the numbers, the Utah one, I don't remember off the top of my head how big it's supposed to be, but it's supposed to be huge. So then that becomes kind of a proxy for all data center development. They're being planned everywhere. And I think what's so interesting is the backlash exists kind of everywhere too. And I think local publications like, I relied a lot on like for example, the Tampa Bay Times to like figure out the background for this story. They're on top of it. They're going to like these meetings and watching people get yelled at and asked, did you sign an NDA? Yes or no?

[Nilay Patel]

We need to pause here for a quick break. We'll be right back.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Support for the show comes from even Realities. For a long time, the reality of Smart Glasses was that they were these bulky, inelegant pieces of tech that were much cooler in concept than really in practice. Well, even Realities has fixed that. Even G2 are productivity smart classes designed to keep real time support right in view. With Teleprompting conversation support, real time translation, AI assistants and more. They help you stay on top of work in daily life. And unlike most smart glasses, they're designed to look and feel like premium eyewear with no camera and a lightweight 36 gram design you can wear all day. The more context you give them, the smarter they get, adapting to how you work and what you need. To learn more about Even G2, go to EvenRealities.com and see how everyday smart glasses keep helpful information in sight so you can stay productive and hands free throughout the day. And for our listeners, use promo code [e-mail] to get 10% off even ring one and or even clip when you add them to your even G2 order. That's even realities.com promo code decoder

[Nilay Patel]

support

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

for the show comes from Horizon 3 the only way to really know if your cybersecurity system is working is to stress test it and then stress test it again and again. Well, you get the idea. Horizon 3's Node Zero is an autonomous AI hacker that continuously attacks your own environment at machine speed, the same way a real attacker would, finding all the areas that are vulnerable. It covers your entire attack surface, external cloud, internal identity, web apps in a single test, deploys in minutes, and has run 225,000 production safe tests with zero downtime. It's trusted by the NSA, CISA and Fortune 100 companies, so you know you can trust it too. See exactly what an attacker would find in your environment before they do. Go to Horizon 3 AI decoder and request your free node zero demo. That's HORCHINECHENUMBER3AI decoder again. Visit Horizon 3 AI decoder. No commitment required. Results in hours, not weeks.

[Gabby Del Valle]

Time is your most important asset and AI is transforming the speed of business. Your innovation and how you protect it depends on the technology you choose to trust. 70% of the Fortune 100 trust CrowdStrike's leading AI native cybersecurity platform built to secure their business and the AI fueling their innovation. AI is changing the world. We're securing it CrowdStrike. We stop breaches.

[Nilay Patel]

We're back with Verge reporter Gabby Devai, who reported on the ground from Florida's Hernando county about why local residents really do not like data centers. Do you think the local governments are being responsive? Right. You've now gone to some of these protests. You've talked to people on the ground in various counties across the country. You know the basic unit of democracy is supposed to be your local government, because you know those people and you can yell at them in the grocery store and the town board meeting. And we're seeing there's. There's a wall going up in some of these cases where the local governments are saying, no, we have to do this development. This is the only economic development available. And the people are saying, no, we're going to throw you out. Do you think local governments on the whole, are being responsive or not responsive at all?

[Gabby Del Valle]

I think it really depends. In Hernando county, they did pass a moratorium. There's a lot of counties in Florida where they've passed moratoria, but in Tucson, the city government is responsive to what the people want and the county government isn't. And, like, they're kind of at odds with each other. There are all these videos, you know, of, like, people yelling at their representatives about, like, NDAs again, and then them being like, we cannot say whether we signed an NDA. Yeah, I think it really depends on a lot of things. How small the communities are, for one, how vulnerable the people in office feel to, like, getting voted out. I think is another big one. Um, in Florida, the Republican primary for governor, I think might be affected by this issue. The primary is in a few weeks, and the front runner, Byron Donalds, has taken a lot of money from the industry and, like, data center development groups. And people are mad. People are really mad. Like, he was endorsed by Trump. And everyone I spoke to, proud Trump voter, was like, I don't understand why Trump would endorse him. I'm not going to vote for him. One woman I talked to told me she's opposed to everything Democrat is. Nonetheless, like, she said she would vote for a Democrat or an independent if Donald's won the primary. And Donald's has also kind of changed his. Not his stance on data center development, but the way that he talks about it in response to a lot of this backlash.

[Nilay Patel]

How has he changed the stance? How is he talking about it now?

[Gabby Del Valle]

He previously said he got a lot of flack for this from at least the people I talked to, that he wants Florida to be the financial capital of the world. And, you know, like, that to a lot of people would sound great, but these people are really upset by this. I mean, there's a lot of other things at play here. Like, housing costs in Florida have gone up, like, exponentially, not only in big cities like Miami, but like in the suburbs of Tampa, for example. Like, housing prices have shot up to, like, levels that I, as somebody who grew up there, just, like, don't understand. Like, I literally can't wrap my head around it. So I think, like, a lot of the backlash to development and to data centers is also to people's cost of living going up and to these, in their words, outside developers coming in and changing a community that's already changing. So he has since said that we need data center development, but we need to do it responsibly. He is championing a bill that would prevent data centers from driving up utility costs now. And, I mean, Ron DeSantis, the current governor of Florida, is another really good example of this. He supported a bill that would require data centers to pay their own utilities and also would let counties require them to use reclaimed water, which would address the water issue. But the Tampa Bay Times reported that he also supported legislation that gives massive tax breaks to data centers, and also that he pushed to amend that law, which I think was signed in 2017, recently, pushed to have it changed to only apply to hyperscale data centers, which are the ones that people have problems with. The people I talk to, they know that there are currently data centers in Florida, and they're smaller. There are no hyperscale data centers, but there's, like, around 100, you know, smaller ones for, you know, Netflix or whatever, and they're okay with that. One woman I talk to, she works in it, she's like, I understand that, like, data centers is like a boogeyman, but, like, we need them for stuff. But I don't want this, like, massive facility using all of our power, emitting these frequencies, et cetera, et cetera.

[Nilay Patel]

Wait, can you.

[Gabby Del Valle]

Can you.

[Nilay Patel]

Can you just explain what emitting these frequencies means?

[Gabby Del Valle]

Just, like, the noise. I talked to these guys at the Border Security Expo who work for a data center company, and they all live in Virginia, and even they were like, yeah, it sucks. They were like, I hate walking around my neighborhood because I just hear it all the time. And they work in data centers. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, they don't want. Yeah, I don't. I don't think she meant, like, 5G is going to. Whatever you.

[Nilay Patel]

It's a real element of this, right next to China being a villain of whatever persuasion you need China to be a vill. So I was just very curious because, again, there's just a piece of all this where it's a big thing that you can stop, Right? The power of NIMBYism can stop this, and maybe we can't stop everything else. We can't stop Facebook from doing targeted advertising that feels like it's listening to you. No one knows how to stop this, it's bad, we don't like it, but no one knows how to stop it. I can stop this building from being built. Seems like not only does it scrambled our culture war lines, it's scrambling politics. Right. Byron Donald saying he wants four to be the financial capital of the world. One is very funny in that he has to contend with the existence of New York in London and Beijing and Amsterdam, like, go down the line. Like, there's a lot of places that can compete for that title when Miami might not be in the running. But doing it via building data centers is not the path to that result. Right. It's just a bunch of economic development that might result in some short term gains. And it feels like people have clocked it and they've clocked that. It's a thing you can stop. And I, I'm curious if there's anything else you've spent a lot of time covering the. Right. If there's anything else that scrambles the lines like that. Because in almost every other case, you know, let's build stuff. Let's. Let's tear down the White House and build a ballroom is fine. Right? Like, building things is, is better. And it, it is coated in one side of the culture war.

[Gabby Del Valle]

I mean, this is, again, like, so Florida specific. But it really surprised me how much of the politics around this were scrambled. Like, one of the women was talking about this ballot initiative that's going to pass. It's going to like, give more like tax exemptions to homeowners, which, like, you know, I feel like kind of a standard Republican thing, lower taxes for homeowners. People would like that. And she was like, this is terrible. It's going to deprive county governments of funds that they would otherwise get from homeowners, which will then even, like, entice the counties even further to have data centers come into our communities. So she was like, thinking of, like, the second and third order effects of this, even though, like, that's a pretty, like, populist initiative or like a populist thing to do. But yeah, it's all so scrambled.

[Nilay Patel]

How do you see the scramble right inside of the right and then carrying over to the populist left, the idea that a bunch of billionaires threw all of their weight behind Donald Trump in 2024, and that led to, I don't know, a bunch of podcast pros throwing their way behind Donald Trump in 2024. And there was a cultural wave of, I don't know, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk and the all in podcast, you know, driving a cultural wave about building and tech in the future, it feels like that has come to one kind event. Right? I don't, I don't think that, that, that that wave is driving the culture anymore because of the backlash to AI, right? We, we can all see the college students booing at graduation. If the, the backlash is there against the data centers, against AI taking the jobs, against billionaires in general, what does that turn into on the right? Because that was the animating force of the right for so long.

[Gabby Del Valle]

I think that is still an open question. I think the question is whether this backlash is strong enough to, like, shake people's other partisan concerns. Like, if you've got, you know, a Democrat candidate who is anti data center development, but also like, not super gung ho about like, deputizing all Florida police officers to do ICE arrests, like, where does that leave someone who supports Trump's immigration policies but doesn't want a data center in their, in their neighborhood? I don't know. I think that's kind of like what the party is struggling with right now. I mean, I think Trump is like this perfect avatar for people because he like, somehow stands for, like, anti elite sentiment, but also for like, hard work and capitalism. Like, he's just like this perfect blend of. I, I don't even know how to describe it. Like, he, he contains multitudes, I guess, and nobody else can contain multitudes like him. Like, I don't know, they don't have the juice. Like, they just don't have it.

[Nilay Patel]

Like, can I make the argument? I can, I think I can make the argument. And this is, you know, I grew up in Wisconsin, which has many, many similar dynamics to maybe Florida in that people in Wisconsin remember a time when there were big factories in the town I grew up in. And, or seen there used to be a case factory that made tractors, and there was a Chrysler factory in Kenosha that made Jeep Wranglers. Like, this is like a real thing that occurred and all those things are gone. And so Trump would promise all of this huge economic development that basically looked like manufacturing. I think what, what his version of this with even with tariffs was, we will bring manufacturing back to all of these places and that manufacturing will require a lot of hard work, but there will be dignity and hard work. And at the end of it, you're going to get to point to a modine air conditioner and be like, I made that thing. Like, my community made that thing. And I think that is very seductive. I think I Mean, Trump spent years promising that we would build iPhones in America, right? Like this. I. And that's Wisconsin and Foxconn and all this stuff, right? And maybe none of those things were ever going to come true, because that's not how anything gets made anymore. And that's not even the kind of work people actually want to do in America anymore. But you take all of that energy and you're like, actually, what we're going to make is data centers. And no one can see at the end of that, I made a Jeep Wrangler. They get to see that Elon Musk got richer, right? And they just lost their jobs, and their children feel like they have no future and their feeds are full of slop. And I feel like something gets disconnected in the multitudes where you can tell everyone, yeah, the best I can do for you is make you the world's richest factory foreman. And people are like, that sounds awesome. That's better than whatever nonsense I'm doing online. But you can't be like, I'm gonna make Sam Altman richer, because that doesn't mean anything to anyone. And all of this construction doesn't do anything for anyone. And I. I look at the backlash, and I just. Look, all I see is a lot of people across the political spectrum have come to that realization. You can tear down our communities to build bridges and factories, and you can pollute the skies with, like, smokestacks, as long as we all get jobs. But if you're going to do all that and all I get is more, like, AI generated movie posters on Amazon prime, whose price keeps going up every month, like, screw you. And I'm wondering if that connection is. That's my guess. I'm wondering if you see any hints of that connection in your reporting as you talk to all these people.

[Gabby Del Valle]

I think so. I think the Florida version of making a Jeep Wrangler is, like, there were orange groves and cattle ranches, and now there are not. Like, literally, like, I used to drive past an orange grove when I was a kid. That orange grove is gone. It's a Publix now. Like, there was a old cow field. Now that's a mall. And on the one hand, like, that's kind of what people want. Like, people want, like, consumption. But they also, at least in Florida, liked thinking that they lived near an orange grove. Like, oh, maybe the guy's using tons of pesticides. Like, maybe actually the orange grove is worse for your health than the data center. I don't know. I don't have, like, the stats on this. But yeah, like you could see the like tangible effects of like what your economy was producing. And now it's just like there's a building that none of us can go in. It makes a horrible noise and I think it's drinking all my water. And yeah, and then it's also like making your kids dumb and alienated and like losing or making up everybody lose their jobs and people don't like that. And again, these aren't like Luddites. Like the women I talked to were like, I found out about the humans first organizing via Facebook and they were like, I know there's an irony in that. I know, like there's an irony in like me working in IT and opposing this data center. Like, they're not dumb. They understand that like all of these things that we've built our lives around requirements, something to power them, they just don't want that something to be within driving distance of their house. They want it somewhere else.

[Nilay Patel]

And it's unclear where that somewhere else should be. Apart from space. Apart from space, which is a very different episode of decoder. But that's, you know, that's one answer the industry has is these, these people, their stupid concerns are too annoying. We'll just put the data centers in space and maybe they'll solve that problem. Who knows? The other answer is we'll just horsepower over the concerns. Like, this is too important. We're going to do it anyway. And maybe we'll just subsidize a bunch of education in some community. Maybe we'll just pay a bunch of extra money. Maybe we'll pay for everyone's electricity. And I don't know if those have gotten any traction. Is there anything that the tech companies or the Neo clouds could do in these communities to overcome the objections? Could they just pay for healthcare or is that just a non starter?

[Gabby Del Valle]

I don't know about paying for healthcare, but something that I didn't include in the piece because it was extremely dry and very technical was that the small protest ended with about like an hour and a half long presentation from a land use expert on like how to write zoning. Like local zoning ordinances to prevent hyperscale data centers from being built. Like really specific stuff. And it was like you could have them on multiple small parcels of land. You can look at the. It was like really dry, specific stuff. It was like you could require them to use this amount of reclaimed water. Da da da da. And I think honestly what people want more than the data centers not being there is like a degree of community input on how they're built, if they're going to be built. I think if they got that, they would maybe not be pacified, but they would at least not feel like there's a big external force coming in and like steamrolling their community when like they already feel like that in like every other aspect of their life.

[Nilay Patel]

We have to take another short break. We'll be back in just a minute.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Support for the show comes from Granola. The one thing everyone in the office truly dreads is a late scheduled meeting. You can almost hear the collective virtual groan the moment it pops up on the calendar. While there isn't much you can do about those kinds of meetings, Granola can help ease the tension and make those meetings go smoothly. Granola is an AI powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet. Here's how it works. You can take rough notes like you normally would, and in the background, Granola securely transcribes the meeting. Then it turns everything into clean, structured, actually useful notes when the meeting ends. And the best part? Granola works through your device's audio, which means it integrates seamlessly into the video conferencing tools you already use. No setup, no awkward bots. So if meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just head to Granola AI Decoder. That's Granola AI Decoder. To get your time back, get three free months at Granola AI Decoder. Support for the show comes from Rippling. Imagine you just found out your sales team is at risk of missing quota. No need to panic, just ask Rippling AI since it's built on your real time people and business data. Rippling AI can pull metrics from Rippling and Salesforce into a meeting ready dashboard showing quota attainment, headcount trajectory and monthly revenue to quota by region. In seconds, you can see exactly what's behind your quota risk and fix it before it's missed. Question answered, action taken, Crisis averted. So when you have critical business questions that need answers, don't just file a ticket and wait weeks for an outdated report. Describe what you need and have Rippling AI build it instantly from your live people and business data. Whether it's a dashboard with detailed charts or automated workflows with the right triggers, conditions and approvals. Ready to roll your business? Head to Rippling AI Decoder to get the only AI built to give you full visibility and take complex actions across your entire organization. That's R, I, P, P, L I N G AI Decoder Sign up for exclusive access today.

Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, E commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you try Odoo for [e-mail] that's o d o o.com.

[Nilay Patel]

We're back with Verge reporter Gaby devai discussing the data center protest movement and how growing opposition to AI is scrambling all sorts of party lines. So much of our politics and our culture has been nationalized, right? Everything happens at the national level. And the fact that the mayor of New York is a national political figure is once very silly and also just the funniest thing that has happened a long time. Data centers are very local. They're happening two people in their backyards. And a data center being built in Florida or Georgia or Tucson has nothing to do with me in New York. It's far away enough and maybe what you're hearing from everybody is just somewhere else. And as we get to somewhere else I won't care. But it is very local and then it is very in person. You people are going to the meetings or encountering one another. There have been stories of bridges across party lines from people who would never like each other normally because they both hate the data centers. Is there an element of a return to actual local politics and actual community building here that could be catalyzed by opposition to data centers?

[Gabby Del Valle]

I really think so. Like I again I'm talking to organizers in multiple states who are going to like these like community or like town council or county council meetings and just like yelling at their representatives and sometimes it's like hundreds of people. This is like maybe a weird analog, but it reminds me of the right wing organizing and like local education policy, which is kind of like where a lot of the anti trans backlash started at like the school board level. You know, like you'd go into the school board and you'd be like I don't want this gender stuff being taught to my child. I don't want my kids to know that slavery was bad. I'm not comparing them in terms of like value judgment. I just think it's like at a level of like local engagement that is at the same time like a national issue where it's like these really, really, really localized policies that may end up driving, if not national policy change and like national policy discussions or like even just like national political vibes. Like whoever wins the Democratic and Republican primaries and runs for president in 2028. Like, what are they going to be saying about data centers? I don't know, but I know it's going to be informed by what happens this year and next year.

[Nilay Patel]

I'm actually very curious how Trump handles it. As you said, he contains multitudes. He is very good at reading his own base. It feels like the Trump base is very much polarized around data centers. There's a lot of people who love Donald Trump but hate data centers. And then there's his money, which loves the AI buildout and loves data centers. And that is a fracture as deep as anything. A lot of those folks will say, AI just has a marketing problem. Right. If we only could convince people of the benefits of this build out and the super intelligence to come, they would be on board and the best marker they could have for that would be Donald Trump. But he doesn't seem to be willing to make those claims at the level that they might need. And certainly he is very attuned to his base hating AI. How do you think he's going to play it? And how do you think the sort of MAGA coalition will respond to it?

[Gabby Del Valle]

Do you remember when Trump was talking about H1B visas? Or like, not even when he was talking about it, but just the whole swirl around, like, what are we going to do about these? And he goes, I think we should stamp an H1B visa to every foreign student's college graduation diploma. And I was like, what are you talking about? Like, your administration is charging $100,000 for these visas. And you're like, these kids are really smart. We need them in America building chips. Like, I think he's just gonna do it like that. Like, the thing about Trump is that he can say literally whatever and he can do literally whatever and the people who like him will continue to like him. Sometimes they'll be like, oh, well, I don't like this particular policy of his. I don't know why he endorses candidate, but they're still going to back the guy.

[Nilay Patel]

But enough, enough to split the difference on this issue. Every, in every other issue, he could polarize the electorate and he would get there. But I'm going to put a data center in the backyard. And it's going to make that noise. Maybe not enough, but they don't see

[Gabby Del Valle]

it as coming from Trump is the thing. They're like, these companies are coming into our community and like, if you, like, you know, connect the dots, it's like, who supports those companies? The president. Who is giving the president a lot of money. You know, all these different companies. But that's not how people see it. They see it as like these tech oligarchs who are just disconnected from politics and disconnected from anything because of all their money. They don't see that as having, like, a connection to the president. They see that as like having a connection to the governor, to like the board of Commissioners or whatever. But Trump is like, floating above it all. I, I just, I don't know why.

[Nilay Patel]

Well, I'm curious and maybe we should end it here. The Florida gubernatorial primaries are coming up. If Donald's loses even with that Trump endorsement over the data center issue, do you think that that will be a signal or a predictor of what will happen in the, in the midterms?

[Gabby Del Valle]

I think it would be a massive signal, if only because Donald is pulling so much further ahead than everybody else. He's the clear frontrunner. And the lieutenant governor, who's kind of pulling second is also kind of pro data centers. If any of the anti data center candidates win the Republican primary, like, that is going to be huge and completely unexpected by everybody in the state. But it could happen. Crazier things have happened.

[Nilay Patel]

We're going to be doing a lot of coverage of this in the months to come, especially ahead of the midterms, because this scrambling of party lines, the scrambling of the culture war, seems very important. Like the politics we've had for so long, it. They don't seem like they can hold up to everyone hating the same thing. And maybe that's all America needs. It does seem like every American hating these big buildings that make loud noises might be the thing that unifies us, which is good or bad. You can, you can make your own decisions, but I can't think of anything else. Like, there's nothing else that's cutting across party lines this way. Can you?

[Gabby Del Valle]

Literally nothing. Nothing at all. And it's cutting across party lines, I think, not just in that people hate it, but like, I had these, again, like, deeply conservative women talking to me about, like, local environmental and ecological issues. They were talking about, like, pesticides and like, forever chemicals in their water, which you wouldn't expect, looking at Republican politics like five, ten years ago like that. This is where we would have ended up.

[Nilay Patel]

We're still doing climate change hoax at the national level and on the ground we're talking about pesticides. There's something there. Gabby, we're gonna have to have you back as this story develops and certainly as we go into all these elections. Thank you so much for being on Decoder.

[Gabby Del Valle]

Yeah, thanks for having me.

[Nilay Patel]

I'd like to thank Gabby for taking the time to join me on Decoder and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. It. If you like to let us know what you thought about this episode or really anything else at all, drop us a line. You can email us atdecoder the verge.com we really do read all the emails or hit me up directly on threads or Blue sky. We're also on YouTube. You can watch full episodes at Decoder Pod. We also have a TikTok and an Instagram. Same handle at Decoder Pod. If you like Decoder, please share it with your friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Decoder is production the Verge and part of the Boxing Media Podcast Network shows produced by Kate Cox Nick Stat. This episode was edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The decoder of music is Redbreak Master Cylinder. We'll see you next time. Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile.

[Gabby Del Valle]

Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat emotional arc, and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately, though, Mint's story is better. Every plan $15 a month, even unlimited.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

That's it.

[Gabby Del Valle]

Happy ending, zero tears. Give it a [e-mail] Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy.

[Nilay Patel]

See Terms New finance tools pop up every year, but not all of them are built to scale with your business. The American Express corporate program combines flexible cards, real time insights and smart controls to help support growing businesses with the reliability, protection and expert support that comes with American Express Express. Connect with a member of the American Express team live at 1-855-531-3491.

[Gabby Del Valle]

Picture it summer. You and your girls at your favorite patio bar. The sun's out, the breeze is perfect, and you're looking stunning in that new sundress. And what are we drinking? A Campari Spritz it's just Campari, Prosecco and soda water. Bold, iconic, and perfectly bitter, just like you. Check out official cocktail [e-mail] Campari Spritz Stay Bitter Campari Liqueur 24 alcohol by volume 48 proof 2026 Campari America New York, NY Please enjoy responsibly.