Dear Reader,
Boy, oh boy.
America is starting to hate data centers.
About the only thing both parties can agree on these days — besides spending money without end — is hating data centers.
That was hammered home to me this weekend.
Greg Abbott, governor of anything-goes Texas, has brought the construction of 1,800 data centers to a standstill.
On the Democratic side, Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, has done something very similar.
Data centers have become about as popular as a colonoscopy or in-laws you don't like.
It's not hard to understand.
Electric bills are climbing faster than almost anything else right now.
In some parts of the country they've jumped more than 25% in a single year.
I looked at my own electric bill here in Florida recently and thought — when did this become one of my top five expenses?
In Georgia, one power company raised rates six times in the past two years.
The average family there now pays $175 a month for electricity.
Voters are figuring out who to blame.
And they're blaming the giant AI data centers popping up around them.
Seven in ten Americans now say they don't want a data center near their town.
Eight in ten fear it will drive up their electricity costs dramatically.
And look — they're not entirely wrong.
What This Means for Investors
In the first three months of this year alone, towns across the country blocked or stalled 75 data center projects worth $130 billion.
$130 billion in AI infrastructure — frozen by local opposition.
Now here's where it gets really serious.
OpenAI just released findings from their investigation into a Chinese influence operation that was using ChatGPT to create social media posts designed to whip up exactly this kind of anger.
Posts about electric bills going up.
Water being polluted.
Communities being destroyed.
One piece of truth, surrounded by exaggerations and falsehoods.
That is what makes great propaganda.
And it is working.
The Political Stakes
The Democrats have put forward something called the Data Center Moratorium Act — which would freeze all data center development across the country.
Bernie Sanders and AOC are behind it.
Now, I want to be clear.
I am genuinely independent.
I find both parties equally off-putting.
I am a fan of divided government.
But I will tell you this plainly.
If the Democrats sweep the midterms and pass that bill, the AI trade crashes.
Not slows down.
Crashes.
AI build-out is responsible for roughly 75% of the economic growth we are currently experiencing.
Freezing data center development would freeze that growth.
Send the stock market lower.
Hand China an enormous lead in the AI race.
And eliminate the jobs and wealth creation that AI is producing right now.
That is not a political opinion.
That is math.
The Republican answer — Trump's so-called Ratepayer Protection Pledge, where companies voluntarily agree to cover electricity cost increases — isn't a great answer either.
A pledge isn't a law.
It doesn't mean anything.
What I Actually Think
I believe the right answer is somewhere in the middle.
Pass a law — state by state if necessary — that requires the actual builders of data centers to pay their own freight for any electricity cost increases.
Not pass those costs on to consumers.
Big tech builds the data center, big tech pays the electric bill.
That seems fair to me.
And I'm genuinely curious what you think.
Would you support a data center in your town if big tech guaranteed to cover the electricity costs?
Or do you think they should be frozen entirely?
Or something in between?
This matters — not just politically, but for your portfolio, your 401k, and where America lands in the AI race against China.
China is running propaganda operations designed to slow down American data center construction.
Their weapon is the electric bill.
And it's working.
But here's what they don't want you to know.
The energy source that makes the electric bill argument irrelevant — cheaper than natural gas, zero carbon, runs 24 hours a day — was just proven at scale in the Utah desert.
The same drilling technology that made America the world's largest oil producer just unlocked the last energy source the world will ever need.
Google signed a 15-year contract for it in February.
And one company has been building this infrastructure for sixty years.
Get the name and ticker here>>>
Have a good day.
I'll see you tomorrow.
“The Buck Stops Here,”
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Written by Dylan Jovine