Ro Khanna plans to introduce a Data Center Bill of Rights. Not for the workers inside. Not for the people whose electric bills subsidize these things. For the data centers themselves.
Abdul El-Sayed won his primary by endorsing moratoriums on data centers. He looked at buildings that consume enough electricity to power small nations so tech companies can train chatbots to write mediocre poetry and thought maybe we should pump the brakes. Revolutionary stuff.
The fight is over AI power plants. That's what we're calling them now. Power plants. Because these facilities don't just use energy like a normal building. They devour it like a competitive eater at a buffet with a grudge.
Khanna's bill will presumably outline the inalienable rights of server farms. The right to affordable cooling. The right to municipal water supplies for their heat exchangers. The right to tax breaks while local schools crumble. The right to exist in neighborhoods where residents didn't vote on whether they wanted to live next to an industrial complex that sounds like a jet engine having an anxiety attack.
El-Sayed's moratorium idea makes him a radical in Michigan politics. Suggesting we pause before turning the entire state into a climate-controlled warehouse district for GPU clusters apparently counts as extremism now.
The data centers need their rights protected because someone might ask them to pay market rates for electricity. Or follow the same environmental regulations as every other industrial facility. Or explain why training GPT-7 to generate marketing emails requires more power than keeping the lights on in Toledo.
Your favorite tech stock just spent three billion dollars building a facility that will need its own dedicated nuclear reactor by 2028. But sure, the real problem is making sure the building has constitutional protections before anyone asks uncomfortable questions about the utility bills.
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
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