The Lawfare Podcast: A Trip Through Pennsylvania’s Nascent AI Data Center Industry
Date: September 18, 2025
Hosted by: Tyler McBrien (Managing Editor, Lawfare)
Guests:
- Maya Wolecham (Director, Trustworthy Infrastructures Program, Data and Society)
- Livia Garofalo (Researcher, Trustworthy Infrastructures Program)
- Joan Cagosi (Affiliate, Trustworthy Infrastructures Program; PhD Candidate, London School of Economics)
Episode Overview
This episode investigates the rapid emergence of the AI data center industry across Pennsylvania, exploring its social, economic, and environmental impacts on local communities. Drawing from a series of road trips and research, the team discusses how local narratives about Pennsylvania's industrial past are colliding with new technological realities. The episode unpacks the complex trade-offs communities face, the new environmental questions these centers provoke, and the national and global stories being sold around AI development—contrasted with daily realities on the ground.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Why Focus on Pennsylvania?
[03:11]
- Pennsylvania’s mix of rural, industrial, and post-industrial communities presents a unique landscape to study AI infrastructure’s effects.
- The state’s deep history in extraction industries (steel, coal, rivers) is being re-invoked as justification for AI data center investment.
- All three researchers have personal roots in Pennsylvania, adding a qualitative depth to their investigation.
“Pennsylvania… has a real importance for the nation in terms of its, in many ways, kind of responsibility every election cycle, the kind of fictions that people tell about what the meaning of an industrial state and a state that's changing as much as Pennsylvania is.” — Maya Wolecham [03:30]
2. Understanding ‘AI Infrastructure’ and Data Centers
[05:46]
- Data centers are pitched as economic renaissance projects, especially to communities hit hardest by industrial decline.
- On the ground, the physical distinction between an Amazon warehouse and a data center is minimal—most are just big, unremarkable buildings, complicating the narrative of “cutting-edge” progress.
- Jobs are often temporary (construction, setup) and rarely provide stable, long-term employment for locals.
“The difference to someone in a community between an Amazon warehouse and a data center might not be apparent, but the narratives around… employment and energy and electrical bills are different.” — Livia Garofalo [06:39]
3. Economic and Social Trade-offs
[08:20, 11:48, 12:36]
- Community members must often choose between hosting a data center (with temporary jobs, environmental costs) or even less desirable projects like prisons or detention centers.
- Promised economic benefits seldom materialize as hoped; many jobs are not stable or rooted locally.
- Public investment in schools, health care, and transit is declining, leaving towns desperate for “any” new lifeline—even suboptimal ones.
“We're often seeing that the job numbers discussed are largely construction jobs… they're not huge employment centers… not the kind of stable family forming things that you might expect would kickstart a rural place.” — Maya Wolecham [09:40]
“…there is this choice: do you have the data center or the prison? And the data center sort of seems better than perhaps the prison.” — Joan Cagosi [13:07]
4. Environmental Impacts—The Case of Three Mile Island
[15:00]
- Three Mile Island is infamous for its 1979 nuclear accident, but now, one reactor is being restarted by Constellation Energy to power Microsoft data centers, sparking mixed reactions.
- The plant's return is emblematic of Pennsylvania’s layered extraction history—coal, fracking, nuclear, now AI.
- Environmental concerns remain pressing: AI data centers require vast electricity and water—burdening rivers already scarred from generations of exploitation.
“It’s different when you actually see the river that is being impacted. So the Susquehanna river is a hugely important river and … has been part of the history of extraction of Pennsylvania for more than a century.” — Livia Garofalo [16:26]
"Somebody else had spoken about the fact that Pennsylvania is full of every generation's trash—they have every version of a fracking well, a hydropower plant that's no longer active, a coal plant that we haven't yet torn up. There's just so much infrastructure that represents so many attempts to start and restart and start again." — Maya Wolecham [19:00]
5. National & Geopolitical Narratives vs. Local Realities
[21:30, 22:08]
- Federal leaders and industry craft a narrative of “patriotic duty”—building data centers is cast as fighting an AI race (often framed as ‘against China’).
- On the ground, this story feels disconnected; most locals simply want jobs and stability, not to play their part in a nationalistic tech race.
"We're fighting an AI war against China and it's being fought in Pennsylvania." — Eric Epstein, Three Mile Island Alert [21:30, cited by Tyler McBrien]
“I don't know if it's very compelling to see oneself as a soldier in the AI race, because what does that really mean for your day to day life? Does that mean that your electricity bill is going to go up… or that your water is going to be undrinkable?” — Joan Cagosi [22:25]
6. Deregulation and the AI Action Plan
[27:43 - 32:53]
- The Trump administration's “AI Action Plan” and a stream of executive orders catalyze deregulation—making it harder for states/locals to control the siting and environmental impact of AI infrastructure.
- Local zoning and permitting are being overridden by federal incentives and policies prioritizing “speed” in building out capacity.
- Transparency is lacking—in many cases, locals aren’t told which companies are moving in until the last minute.
“…because we framed this as a race, we have used the power of the federal government to clear the way for other things that might get in the way… making it very, very difficult for states and localities to do any sort of real regulation around the environmental impacts, the land use—like the pieces that could get in the way of setting up this kind of infrastructure…” — Maya Wolecham [30:40]
7. Community Organizing & Growing Resistance
[35:18, 40:53]
- Some localities are fighting back: examples include using local zoning to set building size limits or safeguard water resources.
- Activists and researchers are working to shed daylight on what’s happening, push for transparency, and allow communities to have a say.
- A ‘People’s AI Action Plan’ was assembled in response to the top-down federal approach—grounded in civil society and community priorities.
“I actually think some of the serious work for so many groups on the ground is just providing daylight… even getting a sense of, you know, which companies are active, how many data centers do we have, what deals are in motion right now—all of that stuff is … growing increasingly harder to track…” — Maya Wolecham [34:14]
8. Reflections from the Road: Voices & Moments
[44:16 - 48:45]
- Joan credits her Uncle Johnny, a local resident who helped the team navigate Harrisburg and independently began researching developments around Three Mile Island.
- Livia shares the story of Don Young, an 80-year-old former foreman at Bethlehem Steel, whose reflections on pride and sadness over industrial change deeply moved the team.
- Maya praises the archivists at the Heinz History Museum in Pittsburgh for preserving and sharing the cyclical stories of industrial boom-and-bust in Pennsylvania.
“Listening to [Don Young’s] ambivalence right about and pride about his life in steel… just seeing, you know, his hands and what they had done and built for America. I mean, that was sort of the source of his pride… it was an honor, truly, to meet him and have him speak with us.” — Livia Garofalo [45:32]
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
On the disconnect between high-level narratives and lived experience:
“I don't think that it is really being received in that way… what we've heard is more of those considerations about jobs and local investment rather than having a place in history when it comes to this battle against China.” — Joan Cagosi [22:25] -
On environmental “boom and bust”:
“There’s just so much infrastructure that represents so many attempts to start and restart and start again… this beautiful ecological landscape… has just been mined within every inch of its life for all of the sort of visions of what this future could be.” — Maya Wolecham [19:27] -
On transparency and the need to “provide daylight”:
“Many of these deals happen under the cover of night… you might not find out that there's a deal happening until it's like 10 minutes before the public hearing.” — Maya Wolecham [34:03]
Timestamps for Key Segments
- [03:11] Why Pennsylvania?
- [05:46] Defining AI infrastructure and what’s being built
- [08:20] Economic promises versus on-the-ground reality
- [12:36] Community trade-offs: data centers vs. prisons
- [15:00] Three Mile Island: environmental history and AI’s new demands
- [17:45] Reflections on activism and layered extraction
- [21:30] Geopolitics and the AI “war” narrative
- [27:43] Deregulation & federal/state tension
- [30:12] How deregulation is impacting local communities
- [35:18] Organizing and transparency
- [44:16] Personal stories that stood out from the fieldwork
Conclusion: Looking Ahead
The researchers plan to continue their multi-sited fieldwork across Pennsylvania, focusing on key locations at different stages of data center development. They are careful to foster community connection and trust, aiming to both document these changes and support renewed local organizing. Their work, rich in personal narrative, seeks to turn a national story of AI progress into an honest account of what technological infrastructure means for real people and real places—now and in the future.