President Donald Trump continued his strong support for controversial data centers Monday, claiming that communities that are against the computer server warehouses “want to end up backwards and poor.”
Writing on Truth Social, Trump warned about the backlash against new data centers, which has become a major issue in the midterm elections.
“If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame,” Trump wrote. “China could not be happier with the anti Data Center movement.”
During his second term, Trump has been an unabashed booster of the push by U.S. technology companies to develop artificial intelligence. As part of that process, tech firms are expected to spend more than $700 billion this year alone to build and maintain data centers across the country.
Trump has touted the economic benefits of the AI development race and the data centers, including more construction jobs and the U.S. maintaining its position as a global technology leader.
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Despite Trump’s bolstering of the industry, polls show that more than 70% of U.S. residents — including many of his supporters in rural areas — don’t want data centers built near them because of concerns about water usage, energy costs and pollution. A recent Gallup poll showed that the opposition to data centers is now stronger than the sentiment against constructing nuclear reactors.
The issue is worrying many Republican and Democrat candidates, who have been forced to backtrack on their support for the massive server warehouses in hopes of getting ahead of the issue and not losing the anti-data-center vote in the upcoming midterm elections.
Trump’s loud support of data centers has put some Republican candidates in the awkward position of having to walk a fine line between supporting the president and opposing unfettered data center expansion.
The growing negative sentiment on the issue hasn’t fazed Trump, who has continued to promote data centers as an economic boon, writing Monday that if communities “want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”
