Apparently, American voters aren’t swallowing Silicon Valley’s promises or fancying the idea of a giant, electricity-hogging server farm in their backyard.
As election day approached, many candidates were tripping over themselves to show who could take the hardest line against Big Tech’s AI ambitions, and voters appear to have paid attention.
In Ohio, Sherrod Brown made opposition to data centers a centerpiece of his successful Senate campaign. In Texas, Gina Hinojosa defeated Greg Abbott, campaigning on a moratorium on new data center construction until the state addresses the impact on electricity, water and local communities. In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms scored a win on a platform that included a moratorium, while in Ohio, Amy Acton bested Vivek Ramaswamy, who has deep Silicon Valley ties, AI investments, and backing from Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.
Voters thumbed their noses at Silicon Valley at the ballot box, approving restrictions on data center development in 40 of 41 local ballot measure contests, often by giant margins. The tech industry had shoveled heaps of cash at races trying to influence the political debate, including through PACs backing candidates friendly to its interests. But it didn’t pay off as hoped. In South Carolina, for instance, a PAC funded by data center interests spent nearly $1.5 million promoting Republican Darline Graham, who nevertheless lost to Democrat Annie Andrews, who had campaigned on a two-year moratorium on new data center construction.
Nobody is suggesting AI single-handedly powered the “bluenami”. Voters had plenty to be ticked off about, from painful gas prices and crippling inflation to Trump and the general state of the country. But the midterm results do suggest that the oligarchs of Silicon Valley are on notice that their preferred vision of technological progress will be not welcomed by all.
Indeed, the industry seems to have underestimated the depth of public ire. Consider the Texas shakeup: Texas is one of the most important destinations for data center investment, and the prospect of a Democratic governor committed to slowing construction is a nightmare for an industry – including many refugees from California — that has been planning expansion there on an epic scale.
For years, we’ve seen the rise of Red Tech as industry executives got cozy with Donald Trump. Some handed him cash, some joined his political orbit, and plenty embraced his administration’s gung-ho enthusiasm for deregulation and American tech dominance. They banked on the idea that access to the White House, combined with deregulation and the promise of economic growth, would give them considerable freedom to build.
That freedom may be curtailed. Democrats control Congress, and the ones who campaigned on challenging the data center boom will occupy important state offices. Industry leaders will be forced to deal with people many have spent the last several years ignoring.
There will be phalanxes of lobbyists, PR blitzes, and accommodation. Executives will emphasize jobs, tax revenues, energy investment and community benefits, and talk up responsible development and making sure residents share in the economic upside. They will promise their willingness to work with Democrats.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean they are prepared to accept meaningful limits on their ambitions. Perhaps they will simply try to repackage the same expansion plans in more user-friendly terms. Case in point: Axios reports that OpenAI wasted no time after the midterms launching a Washington charm offensive, complete with a fresh coat of linguistic paint for data centers, now rechristened “AI compute campuses.” (Good luck with that one).
The industry sees that it has a political problem, but that’s not the same thing as accepting the need to change.
Which brings us to the topic of the tension in the Democratic Party over AI. It would be a mistake to assume that Democratic victories automatically translate into a Democratic commitment to challenging Big Tech.
There are at least two increasingly distinct tendencies within the party, with a third straddling the first two.
One group, let’s call them the Skeptics, are genuinely alarmed by the industry’s power. Adherents in this camp see AI not simply as a tech development requiring a few safety regulations, but as a potential transformation of economic and political power. They worry about mass displacement of workers, the concentration of wealth, surveillance, the erosion of human judgment, the effects on children and education, and the huge environmental costs of the AI infrastructure. This is where you’ll find Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and, to varying degrees, Ro Khanna and Greg Casar. Their underlying premise is that technology should serve people, not the other way around.
Then there’s the more tech-friendly Democratic establishment. Let’s call them the Accommodators. Their public rhetoric can sometimes sound remarkably similar to the first group, but their approach is actually quite different.
In this camp, you’ll hear plenty about responsible AI, worker protections and guardrails. But beneath the rhetoric is a considerable comfort level with Silicon Valley’s vision of the future, and an allergy to challenging the industry’s concentration of power. Barack Obama is a notable example — his instinct has generally been to manage technological change and work with industry leaders rather than confront the concentration of corporate power. Hakeem Jeffries is another. His House Democratic Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy, meant to craft legislative agenda, has been criticized for its orientation toward playing nice with the tech industry, and includes corporate-cozy Democrats such as Josh Gottheimer and Ted Lieu. Jeffries has also cultivated relationships with Silicon Valley’s political and business circles, where the emphasis is squarely on partnership with industry. Mark Warner, meanwhile, leans heavily on the language of American competitiveness—essentially, “keep the AI juggernaut rolling or risk letting China win.” Gavin Newsom touts California’s AI future and talks up for innovation and public-private partnerships.
The Accommodators acknowledge the need for “guardrails,” but start from the assumption that expansion is a largely good thing and that government’s role is to help manage the downside.
It’s worth revisiting a little history here. Remember the Obama administration’s approach to Wall Street after the financial crisis? The playbook essentially was 1) talk about the problems, 2) impose some reforms and 3) leave much of the underlying concentration of power intact. Obama’s response was widely criticized for being too easy on the banks and financial executives whose behavior had driven the catastrophe. The banks survived, their power maintained – or even enhanced. Meanwhile, Obama’s failure to hold powerful financial interests meaningfully accountable helped fuel a deep and lasting political backlash (see: Trump’s two presidencies).
Fast forward to Silicon Valley today. The tech titans represent an eye-popping new level of concentrated private power, with fortunes, platforms and infrastructure that give them massive leverage over public life and government itself. Elon Musk, the poster boy for all this, has taken the fusion of corporate wealth and political influence to a level that would have been difficult to imagine even during the financial crisis, using his vast fortune, media platform and business empire to exert unprecedented political influence, including from within government.
Now, substitute “banking industry” with “Big Tech.” The danger is that Democrats will negotiate a bit, bring the powerful players to the table for a chat — maybe even some performative upbraiding — and then call it a day, declaring the problem managed.
That approach could further dissolve public trust in government and deepen the sense that economic and political institutions work for the powerful, not regular folks.
There’s a third group that’s a bit harder to pin down, let’s call it the Hedgers. These politicians may be genuinely responsive to public unease about Big Tech, but their stance on economic development and attracting corporate investment make them reluctant to take on sweeping confrontation with the industry. Their positions shift with the competing pressures of their constituencies and the economic interests they seek to represent.
Consider Sherrod Brown. Despite his tough campaign talk, he has previously welcomed major technology investments in the state, and while he now calls for eliminating tax breaks and protecting consumers from higher electricity costs, he has stopped short of advocating a blanket moratorium. Brown has a documented history of accepting campaign contributions from Google and individuals associated with its lobbying operation, including $20,000 from Google’s corporate PAC over his political career and thousands more from Google lobbyists between 2017 and 2026. This kind of thing raises questions about how far he’ll go to challenge the industry.
James Talarico appears to be another Hedger. In a recent conversation with Mark Cuban, he referenced guardrails and protecting children and workers, and also problems like deepfakes, but he deployed some ambivalent language, saying he felt both optimistic and concerned about AI. Some worry that Talarico is too friendly with Silicon Valley because he accepted substantial support from wealthy tech investors like Reid Hoffman while campaigning against billionaire influence. It remains to be seen whether he’ll aggressively challenge tech companies on AI regulation, data-center expansion, corporate tax breaks, and economic inequality.
Voters are not happy about the concentration of wealth in America. A recent Gallup poll suggests their economic concerns in the midterm went beyond inflation and affordability, with 44% saying income and wealth distribution was extremely important to their vote, reflecting growing concern about concentrated wealth and economic power – and the discomfort they may have with politicians talking tough on Silicon Valley while taking money therefrom.
There is nothing inherently nefarious about consulting the industry on AI issues. But the orientation of the effort matters. If the people advising Democrats are disproportionately drawn from Big Tech’s orbit, the resulting definition of responsible AI may be considerably more accommodating than what voters were demanding last week.
Many voters will expect Democratic congressional leaders to support serious investigations into the industry’s political influence and its relationships with the Trump administration. They will want them to challenge the enormous subsidies and tax incentives offered to data center developers, and to confront the potential effects of AI on employment, wages and the bargaining power of workers. They may well balk at the argument that America can’t afford to slow down because China is racing ahead, that almost any restriction is economically irresponsible or dangerous to national security.
Silicon Valley is quite adept at political maneuvering, and companies that were comfortable with Trump’s deregulatory agenda will be happy to suddenly discover their enthusiasm for Democratic priorities. They can find Democratic consultants and former officials to make their case, and they will most certainly support carefully constructed regulatory proposals that look meaty but leave the fundamental business model untouched. The industry may even welcome some regulation if it helps establish rules that smaller competitors can’t afford to meet.
This is why the distinction between Democratic camps matters so much. The industry may only need to ensure that the backlash is absorbed by a Democratic establishment that translates public anger into a manageable program of compromise and limited oversight.
Last week’s elections suggest that voters are worried about their electricity bills, their water, their jobs, their children’s futures and the growing power of a small group of extraordinarily wealthy people, with data centers emerging as the physical manifestation of those concerns. It remains to be seen if the establishment Democrats can hear them.
There is a larger historical question lurking beneath this debate. Every major technological transformation in American history has been accompanied by bright promises of abundance, efficiency, national progress, and the democratization of opportunity. But how has that turned out? The industrial revolution made America amazingly wealthy, but it also produced vast inequalities, dangerous working conditions and corporate empires with enormous political influence. The introduction of scientific management promised greater efficiency while transferring control over the labor process from workers to managers. Today’s AI revolution promises to expand human capabilities, but if history is a guide, it will it primarily expand the power of those who own and control it.
Technological progress and social progress do not automatically go hand in hand.
The companies building the AI economy depend on public infrastructure, publicly supported research, enormous energy resources, and communities expected to deal with the consequences. Yet ownership of the technology, the financial returns and the authority to determine how it is deployed remain overwhelmingly concentrated in private, highly concentrated hands. We are being asked to accept a technological future as a collective national project while allowing a relatively small group of corporations and large shareholders to determine its terms.
The industry’s language of inevitability, innovation and national competitiveness helps make this arrangement seem natural. But a technology can increase productivity without improving most people’s lives and generate wealth without raising wages, creating secure employment or strengthening communities. It can make corporations more efficient while making workers less autonomous and more vulnerable.
As to where this is headed, the clock is ticking faster than with any technological shift in history. Politicians can get busy challenging the economic arrangements that turn every technological breakthrough into another opportunity to concentrate wealth and power, or they can let the billionaires write the rules. Without people organizing to fight for a fairer share of power and prosperity, the benefits will flow where they always have: upward. That’s a reality no amount of Silicon Valley hype about autonomous agents ordering our toilet paper can wish away.
Let’s call the script they’re selling us what it really is: “The Gilded Age Gets a Software Update.” Politicians shouldn’t be allowed to pretend otherwise.
*The views expressed here are the author’s own and not that of any organization with which she is affiliated.
