Trump wants data centers everywhere. Neighbors don't want data centers anywhere. The administration calls this opposition a threat to national security. The neighbors call it a noise complaint about industrial server farms humming at seventy decibels next to their breakfast nook.
The scorched earth approach involves yelling about regulations that might slow down AI development. Which regulations? Doesn't matter. The enemy is the concept of friction itself. China's building semiconductors while we're having zoning board meetings about whether Amazon can put another warehouse full of GPUs in Scottsdale.
The tech edge strategy assumes AI dominance requires zero planning restrictions and infinite electricity. Every NIMBY with a petition becomes a Chinese asset. Every environmental review becomes treason. Your HOA president who doesn't want transformer stations ruining the cul-de-sac aesthetic just handed Xi Jinping the keys to artificial general intelligence.
Data centers need power. Lots of it. They need water for cooling. They need land. They make noise. They generate heat. None of these facts care about geopolitical urgency. Physics doesn't negotiate.
The administration thinks the path to beating China runs through eliminating local input on construction projects. Bold strategy. Nothing says technological superiority like overriding Susan from the township council who's worried about her property values. She's the real bottleneck. Not the chip shortage. Not the talent pipeline. Susan.
Retail traders will somehow find a way to lose money on this. They'll buy shares in a data center REIT the day before it gets sued into oblivion by every municipality within a hundred miles. They'll celebrate deregulation as bullish right up until the power grid collapses and takes their RobinHood accounts offline for three weeks.
Trump's raging about obstacles to AI while the actual AI companies are raging about running out of training data because they already scraped the entire internet twice. But sure, the real problem is Karen filing a complaint about the noise.
Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash
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