What Happens When A Data Center Comes To Town?

Summary

Morning Wire Podcast Summary

Episode: "What Happens When A Data Center Comes To Town?"

Date: May 16, 2026
Hosts: John Bickley and Georgia Howe
Guest: Mark Mills, Founder & Executive Director of the National Center for Energy Analytics, Author of The Cloud Revolution

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the rapid expansion of AI-driven data centers across America, highlighting their economic, infrastructural, and social impacts on local communities. Hosts John Bickley and Georgia Howe speak with energy expert Mark Mills to separate fear-driven narratives from facts, addressing concerns about resource usage, community benefit, and geopolitical stakes.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Background: The New Data Center Boom

• Not New, But Bigger:
  Mills explains that data centers have existed for over twenty years, originally used for things like email, banking, and streaming. The difference now is the scale and power required due to AI advances.
  • Quote: “The country already had before the AI revolution got everybody paying attention to data centers, about 5,000 data centers had already been built in the United States.” (05:50 - Mark Mills)
• Current Scale:
  The number of data centers is set to sharply increase, with new builds representing more total square footage than the last two decades combined.
  • Quote: “The total amount of data centers now under construction and that will be completed in the next few years is greater than all the square feet of data centers that are built in the last 20 years.” (05:15 - Mark Mills)
• Larger, Not More:
  Rather than thousands of new buildings, the trend is towards building hundreds of much larger data centers—"skyscrapers instead of shopping malls.”

2. Community Impact: Utilities, Jobs, Aesthetics

• Energy & Water Demands
  • Data centers require enormous power but use less water than often assumed. Water is typically used for cooling and is often recycled.
  • Mills clarifies that rate hikes attributed to new data centers are often premature; in most cases, data centers aren’t drawing from the grid until operational.
  • Quote: “Their power use is not yet impacting electric rates... It’d be like claiming your car is using gasoline while it’s being built in a factory.” (05:57 - Mark Mills)
• Grid Management
  • Where the grid can't support new demand, data centers use independent power sources and don’t impact local rates.
  • Negotiations between operators and grid authorities ensure users—data centers—pay for their draw, not the broader community.
  • Quote: “All the data center operators have pledged to [pay for their power]...so I think there’s a lot of hype and concern that runs ahead of what the reality is.” (07:11 - Mark Mills)
• Economic Benefits
  • Data centers are a “huge financial boon,” primarily during construction (creating jobs), but significantly via expanding the local tax base.
  • Limited permanent jobs after construction, similar to large utility plants.
  • Quote: “The data are pretty clear. They’re a huge financial boon for communities.” (08:20 - Mark Mills)
• Aesthetic Concerns
  • The main ongoing pushback is how massive, boxy buildings alter the local landscape:
    “If you don’t want a big ugly warehouse... it may not be pretty. So the siting issue becomes very important to local communities.” (08:20 - Mark Mills)
• Building Size & Energy Use
  • Comparable in size to the largest warehouses (like Amazon’s), but their power draw is unprecedented—up to ten times more than a skyscraper.
  • Quote: “It’s unusual levels of power demand. In fact, in some respects, almost unprecedented. We haven’t built very many things that use that much power per building ever.” (09:32 - Mark Mills)

3. Information Warfare & Narratives

• Media Portrayals vs. Reality
  • Mills cautions listeners about “scary articles” that may conflate legitimate concerns with fearmongering.
• Foreign Disinformation
  • He validates concerns that adversaries like China (CCP) may be fueling anti-data center sentiment within the U.S. to slow progress for geopolitical advantage.
  • Quote: “It would be naive to think that our enemies aren’t funding, fueling and promoting disinformation and propaganda to slow down America’s economic machine and frankly… its military capabilities...” (10:28 - Mark Mills)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Mark Mills on the boom:
  “We’re now building skyscrapers instead of shopping malls.” (05:15)
• On power use and misconceptions:
  “It’s not a new thing, but it’s a big thing.” (03:50)
• On adversarial propaganda:
  “It would be really naive to think that they aren’t doing that now.” (10:28)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Data Center History & Context: 03:34–05:09
• Current Expansion Details: 05:09–05:42
• Energy & Water Use Explainer: 05:42–07:01
• Grid, Costs & Power Negotiation: 07:01–08:09
• Local Economic Impact & Aesthetics: 08:09–09:18
• Building Size & Unprecedented Power: 09:18–10:02
• Information Warfare / Foreign Influence: 10:02–11:46

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Tone & Language

The conversation is fact-driven, pragmatic, and accessible, with Mills dismissing alarmism but acknowledging legitimate concerns about the social, economic, and geopolitical stakes of the data center boom. The hosts maintain a measured, inquisitive approach, probing implications for everyday Americans.

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Conclusion

This episode of Morning Wire demystifies the rapid growth of data centers, clarifying their resource demands and significant local benefits, addressing aesthetic and political concerns, and underscoring the broader technological and geopolitical contest at play. For U.S. communities and policymakers, the takeaway is clear: thoughtful management is needed, but so is a watchful eye on the sources—domestic and foreign—of public anxiety and resistance.

Transcript

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[Host 1]

In towns across America, the AI boom is no longer some abstract story out of Silicon Valley. It looks more like acres of land, new transmission lines and warehouse sized buildings. And a question many communities are suddenly asking what happens when a data center comes to town?

[Host 2 (Georgia Howe or John Bickley)]

Supporters say these projects bring jobs, tax revenue and a chance for America to stay ahead in the race for artificial intelligence. But critics worry about the power bills while water use, noise and whether small towns are being asked to trust big tech with too few answers to help

[Host 1]

separate the reality from the fear today we're joined by Mark Mills, founder and executive director of the national center for Energy analytics and author of the Cloud Revolution.

[Host 2 (Georgia Howe or John Bickley)]

I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley, and this is a weekend episode of Morning Wire.

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[Host 2 (Georgia Howe or John Bickley)]

Joining us now to discuss the explosive growth of data centers is Mark Mills, founder and executive director of the national center for Energy Analytics. Mark, thanks for coming on.

[Mark Mills]

My pleasure.

[Host 2 (Georgia Howe or John Bickley)]

So we're hearing a lot about these data centers that are moving into some rural areas. I've also heard that they're going to some urban areas as well. Do you have a sense of how many of these are currently being built? And then I want to ask you about the effect that they have on the immediate area.

[Mark Mills]

Well, first we should do the context. The framing is as if we the country has just started building data centers. The country already had before the AI revolution got everybody paying attention to data centers. About 5,000 data centers had already been built in the United States. The first one was built in Santa Clara in 1998, back when it was big news to say you got mail. And since then, we've had this explosion of services that so many people take for granted. Mapping your banking, social media, doing what we're doing right now, storing family videos, dreaming movies, all that takes place in data centers. So data centers have been around for a very long time. The big difference between data centers of the last 20 years and today is that we're building more of them, which is important because of AI. And they're bigger because of AI. AI is much more compute, intense, that is takes a lot more computer chips and it takes a lot more energy. So the combination of those two things is sort of like a slow Roll from building for two decades to all of a sudden seems like an overnight revolution. Hey, we're building data centers. It's not a new thing, but it's a big thing.

[Host 2 (Georgia Howe or John Bickley)]

So now we're going to basically double the number of data centers we have. Is that kind of the scale of the increase we're looking at?

[Mark Mills]

Well, that's why, that's why the news. So the total amount of data centers now under construction and that will be completed in the next few years is greater than all the square feet of data centers that are built in the last 20 years. Now, the square feet are fewer buildings. They're not going to build. We're not building thousands more, we're building hundreds. But each of them are larger. So it's square footage. It's like we're now building skyscrapers instead of shopping malls.

[Host 2 (Georgia Howe or John Bickley)]

Now, you mentioned that they're very energy intensive. What kind of resource draw does it pull from the surrounding community? Is this something that's gonna spike people's electricity costs? Is it something that's going to spike their water costs? What are the immediate effects on the people that live around these data centers?

[Mark Mills]

Well, the immediate costs are what all industrial. It's a form of industrial construction, except once it's built and running, the industrial activity is building it. It's like building a warehouse. Strictly speaking, it's not like building a factory that emits, you know, fumes and smoke. And it's not like a factory, a chemical factory that consumes water for chemical processing and then has to clean water to put it back into the, into the river or the water system. So water is used for cooling. When you use water for cooling, you don't have to use water. You can close the cycle, use it over and over again. It's cheaper to use it once through if there's adequate water. I mean, all the data centers I'm aware of get permits that there's adequate water to use for that purpose. So it uses land, it uses power from the local grid, or sometimes they power themselves increasingly because they haven't been. Most of the new ones haven't been built yet. Their power use is not yet impacting electric rates. So they claim that electric rates are up because of data centers as a cause and effect problem. They be like claiming your car is using gasoline while it's being built in a factory. It's not the way it works.

[Host 2 (Georgia Howe or John Bickley)]

Now, even if they are providing their own electricity, if they're sharing the grid with the community, is their electricity use on that shared grid going to Potentially cause strain.

[Mark Mills]

Well, this is a good example of. It depends on where you are in the country. So some grids cannot handle the magnitude of demand, in which case the data center operators are not connected to the grid at all. So it has no effect on local grid because you provide your own power entirely off the grid. In some parts of the country where they do connect to the grid, there's a lot of negotiation, or kabuki dance, if you like, between the data center operators and the grid operators to make sure they don't negatively impact consumer rates. In fact, that's probably the hottest topic right now in the data center world, is to avoid impacting consumer rates to make sure, as the president has said, that you pay for it. And you know, who could not endorse that philosophy, that the, the consumer of the power should pay for the costs on the grid to pay for that power. And all the data center operators have pledged to do that. So I think there's a, there's a, there's a lot of hype and concern that runs ahead of what the reality is.

[Host 2 (Georgia Howe or John Bickley)]

Now, are these data centers a boon for communities in terms of things like increasing the tax base? Are they good employers for the community? How does this actually affect the surrounding area financially?

[Mark Mills]

Well, the data are pretty clear. They're a huge financial boon for communities. But there's two kinds of jobs. One, of course, is the construction jobs, which are most of the jobs over a period of a year or two or three years. So some of those jobs are imported labor because there's not enough locally during the operations of a data center. They're kind of like, if you like, the big utility power plants themselves use a lot more labor to build a power plant. It doesn't matter whether it's a solar power plant, wind turbines, or gas turbines, they use far less labor to maintain and operate them. But it does, it does create jobs. The biggest impact, which we have a lot of data on, as I said, because there's thousands of data centers, is on the tax base reduction of costs to the local community. I think the biggest negative impact that people push back on is aesthetic. You know, if you don't want a big ugly warehouse, you probably don't want a, you know, big square building. Looks like a, like a giant warehouse that has. Doesn't matter whether it has computer chips in it or boxes that are shipping toothpaste. It's may not be pretty. So the siting issue becomes very important to local communities.

[Host 2 (Georgia Howe or John Bickley)]

Now, how big are these going to be exactly? You said they're going to be much bigger than what we currently have. I've seen some very large Amazon warehouses. Are these going to be bigger than anything we currently have or is that about the size that they'll be?

[Mark Mills]

Well, if you've driven by a big Amazon warehouse or anybody's warehouse on a highway, those are the typical scale of individual buildings. It's the amount of power used per building which is getting the attention. And it's getting the attention for good reason. It's unusual levels of power demand. In fact, in some respects coastal unprecedented. We haven't built very many things that use that much power per building ever. Roughly speaking, think of it as 10 times more power than a skyscraper, but it's the same size as a skyscraper in square feet.

[Host 2 (Georgia Howe or John Bickley)]

Now, I've seen some kind of scary articles in places like the New York Times about some of the externalities of these data centers. But on the flip side, I've also heard some rumors that the CCP is circulating some propaganda, some anti data center propaganda, because they want people here to fight against putting up these data centers for their own reasons. Do you have any insider information about whether there is a propaganda war being fought over this and if there's any truth to those rumors?

[Mark Mills]

Well, first I think there is a propaganda war being fought for a variety of reasons. Some people don't like data centers for all kinds of reasons. They don't like social media. So you fight the data centers. Data centers are where the computers live to create social media. If you worry about AI taking jobs, I'm on the camp that thinks AI creates jobs, but it does impact jobs, the way AI lives in data centers. So you would oppose a data center? Your point is a serious point is my view. And of course I wrote a book on this called the Cloud Revolution. AI and data centers constitute a substantial and a profound technological revolution that will help and expand our economy, help solve lots of problems. Also has military significance, making our economy stronger has geopolitical significance, which I doubt the Chinese would be particularly happy about. Certainly not many people in Russia, Iran. So it would be naive to think that our enemies aren't funding, fueling and promoting disinformation and propaganda to slow down America's economic machine and frankly, derivatively, its military capabilities, which come from a strong economy and directly from the technologies associated with AI. So, short answer, yes, of course I would believe that there has to be propaganda. That's what, that's what our enemies have done forever. And it would be really naive to think that they aren't doing that now.

[Host 2 (Georgia Howe or John Bickley)]

Right. Always wise to keep that in mind. Mark, thanks for coming on.

[Mark Mills]

Thank you for having me.

[Host 1]

That was Mark Mills, founder and executive director of the national center for Energy analytics. And this has been a weekend edition of morningwire.

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