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How Do You Stop A Datacenter In Your Town? · Never Post

0:11
Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a
0:14
podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike
0:16
Rugnetta, and this intro was written on Tuesday, 09/29/2026
0:21
at 10:11AM eastern, and we have an industrious show for you this
0:27
week. In this episode, I chat with Maya Waluchem and Sela
0:31
Soom, two coauthors of the AI Factory, Datacenter's Power, and
0:37
Resistance in Late Industrial Pennsylvania, a report published
0:41
at the end of last month by Data and Society. We discuss
0:45
Pennsylvania as a growing focus of the data center construction
0:49
boom, how its environment and history make it a prime target,
0:54
but also uniquely positioned to fight back against tech, against
0:59
government, against prevailing narratives about the
1:03
inevitability of certain flavors of tech progress. But first,
1:08
we're gonna take a quick break.
1:10
You're gonna listen to some ads unless you're on the member
1:12
feed. And when we return, we're gonna talk about a few of the
1:15
things that have happened since the last time you heard from us.
1:20
Raw. I'm a give it to you. No trivia.
1:23
Raw like that Aesop Rock iron fisted bliss militia. A bent
1:26
funny bone drone community. Spit a thousand and six stories this
1:32
week. ICE, The US domestic paramilitary force responsible
1:38
according to its own reporting for at least forty six deaths in
1:43
custody or detention since January 2025 needs to be
1:48
careful. The FBI reports that groups of Internet women are
1:53
scheming to lure agents with trad wife content, befriend, and
1:58
then dox them.
1:59
The Guardian, broke this story, reviewed the FBI's report and
2:03
they say it's light on the details. Who are these women?
2:06
What are their aims? And how were they uncovered? Ladies, if
2:11
you're out there, get in touch.
2:14
Discord is once again having a go at age verification. The San
2:19
Francisco based company attempted earlier this year to
2:22
roll out a version of this feature. Every account would be
2:26
set to teen unless the holder provided age verification via,
2:31
quote, facial age estimation. Users could upload a video
2:35
selfie or photo of photo identification. Users, of
2:39
course, balked, especially in the wake of an October 2025 data
2:44
breach during which 70 some odd thousand users, quote, may have
2:49
had government ID photos exposed, which our vendor used
2:53
to review age related appeals, end quote.
2:57
This most recent go around, which began rollout on September
3:01
23, will accept many forms of age verification, but most
3:05
notably will use cryptically named set of quote account
3:09
signals to automatically determine the age group of some
3:13
accounts. The rollout, many users noted, also coincides with
3:17
in app ads for age restricted services such as online gambling
3:21
site FanDuel. About this, Discord claims they are taking a
3:26
deliberate user first approach to evolving our ads business to
3:30
add genuine value that connects naturally with our users'
3:34
sports, gaming, and entertainment interests. A fart
3:39
noise. Oops.
3:41
An OpenAI agent did it again. At the end of September, the
3:45
Australian government revealed that earlier in June, an OpenAI
3:48
agent was able to gain access to a government health data portal
3:53
while it was meant to be researching public medical
3:57
spending. Australian PM Anthony Albanese said OpenAI was the one
4:02
to notify the government and did not do so until September 10.
4:07
OpenAI has claimed its review found no evidence of patient
4:11
records being accessed. This is the first known case of an agent
4:15
accessing private government data.
4:17
I'm sorry. Air traffic was grounded in and around New York,
4:23
New Jersey, and Philadelphia on Monday afternoon after New
4:26
Jersey transit construction workers accidentally severed a
4:30
fiber optic cable connecting air traffic control around the
4:34
region. Twice last year, traffic was halted or delayed because of
4:38
communications issues with old copper based wires connecting
4:42
control towers. In May of this year, the Trump administration
4:45
pledged billions of dollars to modernize the country's air
4:49
traffic control system. In February of this year, the admin
4:52
laid off several 100 air traffic controllers amidst what PBS then
4:57
described as a shortfall in controllers.
5:00
The admin has also lowered its FAA hiring target for the year
5:04
by 2,000 people. Your ISP may be required to block, quote, piracy
5:14
sites if a bill proposed by US rep Daryl Isa becomes law. The
5:19
bill targets US based ISPs, DNS providers, and VPN services with
5:24
a 100,000 or more monthly users in The US. Copyright holders
5:29
could ask courts to issue blocking orders against quote,
5:33
foreign piracy sites after which ISPs at all would have to remove
5:37
access. The text of the bill describes such sites as
5:41
primarily designed or provided for the purpose of providing
5:44
access to material that violates an exclusive right or protection
5:48
afforded under this title, having only limited commercially
5:51
significant purpose or use other than providing access to
5:55
material that violates an exclusive right or protection
5:58
afforded under this title, or marketed by or at the direction
6:02
of the operator of the accused online service to promote the
6:06
use of the foreign online service in committing violation
6:09
of an exclusive right or protection afforded under this
6:12
title.
6:13
Opponents say the proposed law, the text of which has only
6:17
recently become available, is overbroad and as with much
6:20
recent proposed Internet regulation is ripe for abuse and
6:24
would serve to harm really only the already vulnerable. The
6:28
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Public
6:31
Knowledge, and others signed a letter to ISA which reads in
6:35
part, small businesses and nonprofits face the greatest
6:38
risks and have the fewest protections. In Italy,
6:42
overblocking has brought down digital infrastructure for
6:44
hotels, car mechanics, retail shops, telehealth programs, and
6:49
even a nunnery. The ones bearing the cost of overblocking are the
6:53
ones least poised to bear it and the ones who have no remedy for
6:58
the days or weeks or more of lost business that results from
7:02
an overzealous blocking order. America's small businesses
7:06
cannot afford to be treated as acceptable collateral damage for
7:10
multibillion dollar entertainment and sports
7:13
industries.
7:14
Ars Technica reports that the Motion Picture Association has
7:18
been pushing the US government to implement such a blocking
7:21
regime. ISA retires from congress this year. Moron.
7:26
Microsoft has ghosted a church group in Indiana after they
7:30
asked the tech giant what percent of a new data center's
7:35
yearly operating costs would be fair as a donation back to the
7:41
community where it would be built. Ars Technica reports we
7:45
make Indiana was originally planning to ask Microsoft for
7:50
one to 2% of the yearly operating budget of a new
7:54
$1,000,000,000 data center to be built in South Bend, Indiana,
7:59
But they decided instead to ask the company for its proposal.
8:05
How much money does Microsoft think should go back to the
8:09
town? Despite Microsoft's promises to support the
8:13
community, they have provided no guarantees and representatives
8:17
have been unable to answer even basic questions about the
8:21
environmental impact of the construction or ongoing
8:24
operation of the data center. Meanwhile, in Hazel Township,
8:28
Pennsylvania, North Point development sent letters to
8:31
10,460 households promising a $10,000 check if a new data
8:38
center development project is approved. Regardless, most
8:42
residents remain against, citing according to the New York Post
8:46
concerns over pollution and job loss due to AI generally. Town
8:51
officials described the check scheme as a, quote, cutting edge
8:55
strategy in the process of getting resident buy in.
8:58
But locals are unswayed, one telling the Post, quote, we
9:02
don't need that around here. One gets the sense in both scenarios
9:39
like countless others that tech giants are frustrated by the
9:43
demands or perhaps even the mere existence of people. People who
9:48
live and go to work and school and have families nearby the
9:53
proposed sites of gargantuan facilities wherein they'll
9:57
facilitate health care coverage denials, ICE immigration
10:00
enforcement, and that new meta agent that apparently tells
10:03
strangers your home address. How dare the folks in the shadows
10:09
amongst the din of breathing in the particulate filled air
10:13
spewed by these facilities wonder what's in this for me?
10:18
The negotiation is of course always unbalanced.
10:22
Tech companies, their construction partners,
10:24
hyperscalers, they have all the money and the ear of local
10:28
government as well as media and even some unions. Fighting back
10:33
or fighting for something, some return is no easy task. After
10:39
the break, I'm gonna talk with Maya Waluchem and Selah m Soom,
10:43
authors of the recent data and society report, The AI Factory,
10:47
Data Centers, Power, and Resistance in Late Industrial
10:51
Pennsylvania about the ongoing data center construction boom in
10:56
Pennsylvania and how Pennsylvania's history as a home
11:00
to industry makes it a uniquely suited site for both data center
11:05
development and data center resistance. Joining me are Maya
11:33
Waluchem, the director of the Trustworthy Infrastructures
11:36
Program at Data and Society, and adjunct faculty at NYU's Tandon
11:42
School of Engineering. Her work as a researcher and technologist
11:45
focuses on how communities reassert power over the
11:49
technology foisted upon them.
11:51
Maia, thanks for joining us.
11:53
Maia Woluchem: Thank you for having me.
11:54
Mike Rugnetta: And Cella M Sum, who is a postdoctoral research
11:58
fellow at the University of Virginia's Digital Technology
12:02
for Democracy Lab. Sela is a member of Collective Action in
12:06
Tech, a research and organizing project aimed at tech workers
12:10
and a former tech worker organizer herself with Big
12:14
Cartel Workers Union. Sela's research focuses on technology,
12:19
power, and resistance in labor and community contexts. Sella,
12:23
thanks for being here.
12:24
Cella Sum: Thank you. Happy to be here.
12:26
Mike Rugnetta: So both of you are coauthors of the recently
12:30
published report from Data and Society, The AI Factory, Data
12:35
Centers, Power and Resistance in Late Industrial Pennsylvania.
12:39
The report looks closely at a number of communities in
12:43
Pennsylvania where people are figuring out how to build,
12:47
support, and sustain local resistance to, data center
12:52
construction projects, mostly through grassroots means. And
12:56
before we get into all of, the conclusions that you come to in
13:01
the report, which are just just great, and I cannot recommend
13:04
highly enough that anybody listening to this go and read
13:07
it. To start us off, was just wondering if you could just,
13:10
like, take us through the numbers as far as the research
13:15
that went into this report. Like, How long did you spend on
13:18
it?
13:19
How many train rides? How many interviews? How many diners?
13:23
What was the process like?
13:25
Maia Woluchem: Oh, that's such a great question. I I will say it
13:28
was a real labor of love. A laborious one, but a real labor
13:32
of love the entire way through. So we started our first... We
13:37
took our first trip in November 2024.
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So this is the first week right after the presidential election.
13:45
We, as a team, took four trips together across a full week
13:50
across the state between November 2024 and I think it was
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April 2026. But in that time, we had many many many intermediary
14:01
moments in between. We have a few folks who are residential to
14:06
Pennsylvania, so we're going out on their own time. We stood we
14:10
sat in many many coalition meetings.
14:12
We went to a bunch of industry conferences. We, were in many
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municipal meetings as well. I think over the course of our two
14:21
years, we, talked to almost 50 people on record and many many
14:25
more sort of ambiently through the course of our our time,
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which included folks that we talked to while door knocking,
14:34
folks that we talked to while organizing, folks that we talked
14:37
to while trying to engage with sort of industry folks and many
14:41
people in between. But
14:42
Mike Rugnetta: I love the story of... There's like... Was it a
14:44
former mayor that you met just like sort of circumstantially
14:47
while eating lunch?
14:49
Maia Woluchem: Yeah. We went to Cuffy's Diner in... Right
14:52
outside of 3 Mile Island, which actually was recommended to us
14:55
by an uncle of one of our teammates on the team, who is a
15:00
long long long time resident of Central Pennsylvania. But, yes,
15:03
Kuppie's Diner was a really instrumental sort of site
15:08
wherein journalists... Where journalists went to right after
15:11
the Three Mile Island disaster and it's still a real sort of
15:15
home for the community today.
15:16
The mayor who was mayor at the time of that disaster was
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sitting at the bar the first time that we went to go get
15:23
pancakes and eggs. And, yeah, we got to talk to so many people
15:27
that day about sort of what 3 Mile Island meant to them, what
15:30
they think about sort of Microsoft's plan to open it back
15:34
up again, and many other things about being a central
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Pennsylvanian.
15:38
Mike Rugnetta: And if I understand, you... So there were
15:41
a number of reasons that you all took Pennsylvania as your focus
15:45
for this report. One of them being that each of you has a
15:50
connection to the state in one way or another. Is that right?
15:53
Cella Sum: Yeah. I grew up in Central Pennsylvania, where a
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large data center development is starting, PACS 1, which is about
16:04
five miles away from my mom's house. And so when I first heard
16:08
about it, I knew that I wanted to get involved. But I also am a
16:14
recent PhD graduate from Carnegie Mellon University. The
16:18
whole development around data centers came on my radar when
16:21
there was the AI and energy summit, last year in July where
16:26
president Trump and senator, McCormick basically announced
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$90,000,000,000 of investment to data center and AI
16:34
infrastructure.
16:35
This was a closed door event where many students and faculty
16:39
were barred from campus that day. At the same day, there were
16:44
protests around, president Trump. There was a stop to
16:48
summit rally. And so I think this was the moment where a lot
16:53
of people in Pennsylvania started to recognize what was
16:56
happening. And that's when I started to get involved.
17:00
And, thankfully, Maya was looking for a research assistant
17:03
around that same time. I jumped at the moment of getting on this
17:08
project because not only, do I have personal ties to it, but
17:12
based off of my own research around community risklessness to
17:16
AI, data centers have been one of the central points that have
17:21
gathered so many different people on the ground. And so
17:25
that moment was really exciting. And I I I think Maya had the
17:29
foresight even a year before that to see what was going on.
17:33
Maia Woluchem: Yeah. Thank you, Sela. I I really... It's... What
17:37
Sela mentioned is so true that I think for so many of us on the
17:41
team, there were a team of five of us plus, know, a few babies
17:45
who were part of this research team.
17:47
And, you know, it was a real joy to get to really experience this
17:52
place that we have all experienced in many ways either
17:55
in the public discourse, either, you know, every four years on
17:59
Pennsylvania suddenly, you know, the state that we're all paying
18:01
attention to because of election season or because our, you know,
18:04
of our deep connections. I'm a graduate of the University of
18:07
Pittsburgh, undergrad at least, and I I really, you know, have
18:12
been such a beneficiary over time of the public investment
18:16
that has happened across the history of Pennsylvania, the
18:20
Commonwealth Of Pennsylvania. And so really, you know, we had
18:24
a a question and really trying to interrogate what it meant for
18:29
this state that has given us, you know, home, education, this
18:34
real sense of history in our own personal lives. What it meant
18:37
for that state to be sort of used as an exemplary vision of
18:42
what AI was supposed to mean to this country in general. So for
18:46
our other teammates who aren't also here, you know, we have a
18:48
teammate who lives in Philadelphia.
18:50
We have another who is a fourth generation, Pittsburgher. We
18:54
have, another who spent, her entire academic career really
18:58
studying the relationship of AI to industrial history, and it
19:02
really felt like, you know, we got the opportunity to come home
19:05
to think about, you know, the places that we knew in this
19:08
particular way and really try to examine them with as many skills
19:12
as we've acquired since the time that we first arrived in
19:15
Pennsylvania.
19:16
Mike Rugnetta: I mean, yeah, kinda like you're describing
19:17
like a dream team for doing this kind of work, it sounds like.
19:21
Maia Woluchem: Yeah. It was very... We got a lot of time in
19:23
the car together. I feel like it really made us stronger.
19:28
Mike Rugnetta: One thing that you mentioned in the report too
19:30
is that Pennsylvania has 71 active and 66 proposed data
19:37
center sites throughout the state. So this is very much a
19:41
kind of, like, in progress development boom, you know, I
19:46
guess, as everybody has been calling it. I was just wondering
19:49
if you could situate that. Like, is that a lot?
19:52
Maia Woluchem: Yeah. There are a few other states that, you know,
19:56
I think are often pointed to as sort of the leaders of this, you
20:00
know, big AI boom. Virginia is one. Virginia has the highest
20:03
concentration in the country. Texas is another.
20:07
There are many... I believe Pennsylvania might be somewhere
20:11
in the top.
20:12
Cella Sum: I was gonna guess. I don't know the actual numbers,
20:15
but I feel like it's one of the fastest emerging ones, but
20:18
not... Certainly not the one state that has the most data
20:22
centers.
20:23
Maia Woluchem: Where I think Pennsylvania really, you know,
20:25
is important to the broader US picture is that it has some,
20:31
unique qualities that give it a real narrative meaning. So
20:34
Pennsylvania sits on the Marcellus Shale. That is a huge
20:37
energy source for a lot of the, data center boom that is
20:41
projected across the state. I think also because it lands
20:46
every two to four years as a sort of beacon of American
20:50
industrialism when it comes to, the election season. You know,
20:56
federal leaders are in Pennsylvania often trying many
20:59
of these, narrative pieces that build up the parts of the AI
21:05
race that is, you know, taking place nationally.
21:08
So I think Pennsylvania, even if it's not necessarily, you know,
21:11
the highest concentration or, you know, the biggest, you know,
21:15
rising force. I think it is a bellwether for where many of the
21:20
arguments that are landing across the country are going to
21:22
go. And part of the reason that, you know, we really felt it was
21:25
important to be there now before it rises in public, the public
21:31
imagination.
21:32
Cella Sum: I would also say that, the Pennsylvania
21:35
administration is trying to position Pennsylvania as an AI
21:39
ready ready state. I think it was ranked top three states for
21:46
AI readiness, as far as incorporating government
21:50
services, using AI. And so there was a big push from the public
21:56
administration at the very top to welcome AI, and that includes
22:02
data centers and AI infrastructure.
22:05
Mike Rugnetta: Got it. Can you take me through in a little bit
22:07
more detail what AI readiness is?
22:10
Maia Woluchem: Yeah. I mean, it's it's a it is a real
22:14
question. You know? I think that vision of what AI means
22:17
increasingly, you know, has just become muddy over the course of
22:21
the two years that we've been out in the road. You know, when
22:25
it comes to data centers, I think it can be just as much
22:28
about infrastructure as it is about energy, as it is about
22:31
labor.
22:31
You know, so much of what we imagine, the wins from AI to be
22:36
sort of in the realm of infrastructure work often comes
22:40
down to, you know, supposed jobs or, revenue that can come from
22:46
this investment by big tech companies in these small towns.
22:50
So perhaps, you know, positioning oneself as as really
22:53
ready to accept that infrastructure might be one
22:56
element of what it means to be AI ready. You know? Yeah.
22:59
Another version might be, we're able to use these tools, you
23:04
know, in public service, within government offices, you know,
23:07
within our educational institutions.
23:10
What we saw in that, announcement that Sela
23:13
referenced earlier that $90,000,000,000 that, was
23:16
announced in July 2025. There are, sort of signals all over
23:22
the map about what presumably AI means to the state. There are...
23:27
There's funding that's going towards Carnegie Mellon and
23:29
other, you know, institutions to start training programs. There's
23:33
money going towards, you know, developing the energy grid to
23:36
be...
23:36
To allow, you know, more energy to be flowing for these data
23:40
centers when they finally do come online. So it is money,
23:43
perhaps maybe intentionally so. If it's, you know Right. Allows
23:48
us to sort of project whatever you might want onto what AI
23:52
readiness looks like.
23:54
Mike Rugnetta: AI readiness means per... A potential
23:57
readiness to cash some checks.
23:59
Maia Woluchem: Sure. Okay.
24:00
Mike Rugnetta: Got it. You do talk in the report. It's sort of
24:03
like... It is both its own section and something that comes
24:06
up again and again throughout the reporting that, like,
24:08
Pennsylvania does provide a really particular arrangement of
24:14
both natural and labor resources that is sort of unique in a way.
24:22
And I was wondering if you could just, like, take us through what
24:26
exactly that means.
24:27
Like, what are the natural resources that are available
24:30
that, you know, you don't find in other places where there's an
24:33
AI boom happening? And then what is the sort of labor aspect of
24:37
that?
24:38
Maia Woluchem: I think we can start by thinking of sort of,
24:41
you know, what Pennsylvania means to this American story.
24:44
And hear it every four years that, you know, Pennsylvania is
24:47
the home of American industrialism, that it was so
24:50
important to, you know, steel, coal, etcetera. But what we
24:55
often leave out in that sort of storytelling is that after those
25:01
companies went under and the industrialization happened in
25:04
the, you know, mid twentieth century, so many of those assets
25:08
are left on the land. You know, we talked to an interviewee who
25:12
said, you know, Pennsylvania is home to America's trash. It just
25:15
has, you know, tons of fracking wells that are sitting in
25:18
people's backyards.
25:19
It has tons of empty coal mines that have been collecting water
25:23
across time. All sorts of, you know, infrastructure that's now
25:28
being retooled for this data center boom. And so, you know,
25:32
in some ways, some might say that actually that that layering
25:37
of these old infrastructural sort of ghosts is one of the
25:41
things that makes Pennsylvania really unique and really
25:43
targeted for data center development. And we see that in
25:47
a lot of ways in some of the projects that have been... Have
25:50
gotten the most attention.
25:51
You know, through Mile Island is the site of the largest US
25:57
nuclear disaster in history. And in 2024, it was, you know, big
26:03
in the headlines because Microsoft bought the reactors at
26:06
3 Mile Island to use to support their data center boom. And so I
26:10
would argue that's one of the... And it's what we argue in the in
26:13
the piece that, you know, this lasting legacy of industrialism
26:18
not only leaves these physical manifestations, but also this
26:23
kind of nostalgic piece that makes the labor components of
26:27
this AI boom really salient. Salla mentioned that conference
26:33
in 2020 or 2025 that was behind closed doors where Trump,
26:37
governor Shapiro, many senator McCormick, and many industry
26:41
leaders met to talk about this big AI boom and what this could
26:45
mean for Pennsylvania communities.
26:47
And, you know, often when they do that, they talk about the
26:50
labor that they expect to come from this. You know, they'll
26:55
say, well, it's huge in construction jobs because we
26:58
need people to build these data centers. Or, well, you know,
27:01
it's really, you know, it's our patriotic duty to be part of
27:05
this new industrial revolution, which is pulling on this long
27:09
history of these incredible unions that formed when these
27:13
industries were, you know, particularly strong. But that is
27:16
not necessarily the picture that we have today. You know,
27:19
Pennsylvania's strongest unions are in care work.
27:21
They're not necessarily in, you know, steel workers and iron
27:26
workers, which, you know, in many ways is a loss for so many
27:31
of these communities that, you know, built an identity and an
27:35
economy around these things. But it also is a little bit thin.
27:40
You know, we talked to a few of those folks who are part of
27:46
those unions and, you know, they have said, even if this is a
27:51
bubble, you know, and we presume it might be because, you know,
27:54
we don't know what's gonna happen, you know, in the future.
27:58
But it's a very thin window for us to expand our ranks and maybe
28:01
this time won't come again. So it is a bit confusing that I
28:05
think, you know, so much of this expansion is based on things
28:10
that have happened in the past.
28:11
It's based on the industries that we need to come back. It's
28:13
based on these unions that we need to, you know, sort of rise
28:17
again, but it's not a very complete answer to any of that
28:21
loss and any of that, sort of trauma that many of these
28:25
communities have been experiencing over the past, you
28:27
know, many many decades.
28:29
Cella Sum: Yeah. I I do think that there is excitement at the
28:35
very least. The data centers do not house, very many workers
28:39
within it, and, obviously, there's construction jobs. But,
28:42
in talking with some of the union union folks, from the
28:47
building trades, they're really excited about the huge energy
28:51
projects, like 3 Mile Island, like the gas plant and coal
28:56
plants that will be driving a lot of, the electricity that
29:01
will be used to power data center. So it may not be data
29:05
centers themselves that, may create those long term jobs,
29:10
but, they did reason, you know, one of the things with the 3
29:14
Mile Island opening is that these are, like, twenty, fifty
29:18
year projects that can be sustained.
29:20
And so I think that's why a lot of the building trades and
29:24
construction, and energy folks are really excited, because they
29:30
do see that as, leading to sustainable jobs.
29:34
Maia Woluchem: I think that's right. And I I would also say,
29:36
you know, I I I feel it's speaking in some way to the kind
29:40
of precarity of a lot of these sort of local economies that we
29:47
have, you know, so many towns across the Commonwealth who's...
29:54
Who are sort of over indexed in a in a way on a particular type
29:58
of industry. We stopped in many towns where, you know, we would
30:02
speak to folks who would say, you know, that coal plant went
30:06
under or that nuclear plant went under and that really
30:10
tremendously changed the sort of foundations of this town. So
30:14
many people left.
30:15
So many people haven't found jobs since then. And so there
30:18
there is, you know, real material, to that nostalgia that
30:24
even if, you know, that promise on a space is very thin, that,
30:29
you know, the data center will come, it's gonna have 10 jobs
30:32
fine, you know, but as sellers mentioned going again. Yeah.
30:36
Exactly. The power plant will get going again and that might,
30:40
you know, give us another opportunity forward.
30:42
So it it does create, I think then, this really muddying
30:47
effect for municipalities, for residents, for folks who, you
30:52
know, over the course of that two years, we're really trying
30:54
to figure out what actually is the meaning of this big data
30:58
center boom. I'm hearing that there are jobs available. I'm
31:01
also hearing that maybe, you know, I might not have water or
31:05
may or Right. You know, these are, you know, hugely polluting
31:09
fossil fuel. Like, it's it's just...
31:11
It's very hard then for municipal leaders who in some
31:18
ways are really caught unawares at this to to... At least in the
31:22
early days to turn down the amount of money that was coming,
31:27
you know, coming at them because at the time, right, this is
31:30
$90,000,000,000. The, you know, Amazon investments in Eastern
31:33
Pennsylvania are $20,000,000,000. It's like the
31:37
the largest investment that's come to the state of
31:39
Pennsylvania in a long time. It's one of the reasons why I I
31:44
feel the pushback that sort of broken open some new political
31:50
imagination has been really important because it is a pretty
31:53
tremendous thing to have broken up enough space to be able to
31:57
really question what it means to take or even just bite this hand
32:02
that's feeding you as much money as is feeding.
32:04
Mike Rugnetta: To eve... To even have any square footage to stand
32:07
in a space where you're saying, maybe we say no to the billions
32:10
and billions of dollars. Yeah. That actually gets a little bit
32:14
to the next question I wanted to ask, which was... So in the
32:17
report, describe one...
32:19
It's the AI Horizon Summit. This is a conference in Pittsburgh on
32:24
AI's expanding role across robotics, health care, energy
32:27
infrastructure, and more, during which you describe a narration
32:31
that plays out over a loudspeaker. And the narration
32:34
is, we carry a legacy where grit meets energy, from the first
32:38
sparks of steel to the steady pulse of nuclear to the all time
32:42
high demand of natural gas. Why here? Because Pittsburgh and
32:46
Pennsylvania offer what others can't, direct access to the
32:50
toughest real world problems in energy, healthcare,
32:53
manufacturing, and defense.
32:55
Problems worth solving. Problems that forge billion dollar
32:59
companies and the next generation of industry titans
33:02
just as Andrew Carnegie once did. Putting aside for a second
33:07
being like, maybe we do industry titans again. How fun would that
33:10
be? Which is just a wild connection to make on purpose.
33:16
You then link this sentiment, and those delivered throughout
33:20
the summit, and from other sort of stakeholders in these
33:24
projects, to that of inevitability. And I think the
33:28
huge sums of money also speak to this sense of inevitability,
33:32
like large scale development of AI as software is inevitable.
33:38
The construction of data centers that then supports it is
33:40
inevitable. And maybe so too then is the construction that
33:44
this has to happen in Pennsylvania, because this is
33:46
the place that can do it. But you write that this
33:50
inevitability depends on a single vision of the future, one
33:54
with profound flaws and weaknesses.
33:57
And I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about
33:59
like, how is it that... Right. We've talked about the
34:03
government and private industry in the report you mentioned also
34:06
media. Like, how do those groups, other than showing up
34:10
with, here's your $90,000,000,000 or whatever, you
34:14
know, other than showing up with impossible to imagine amounts of
34:16
money, how are they all working together to try to force this
34:20
sense of inevitability? How do they how do they make that?
34:23
Where does it come from?
34:24
Cella Sum: I would say, the... Even the AI Horizon Summit, it
34:29
was, hosted on a strip strip of lands, called the AI Avenue in
34:38
Pittsburgh, which was nicknamed that by the AI strike team. So
34:44
in itself, it's treated as a marketing term. That it's a
34:49
narrative by design by a few powerful people that have the
34:54
ability to run the discourse and that goes to the public
34:59
administration. There's another one, with team Pennsylvania who
35:03
created this fifty year roadmap trying to position AI and
35:08
infrastructure developments.
35:10
And so they they've been doing this for many many years now.
35:14
Maia Woluchem: Yeah. You know, when I, think about some bit of
35:17
that narrative construction, In some ways, it really is
35:21
necessary if what you want is for this boom to happen because
35:26
you need the permission of places like Cumberland County
35:31
and Archbald and Bethlehem and, you know, the towns right around
35:36
through Mile Island in order to execute that. If you if, you you
35:41
know, it doesn't come without convincing argument. And the
35:45
argument on its face, you know, because, you know, over the
35:49
course of that two years, we were starting to understand,
35:51
okay, the jobs from the data centers themselves are not, you
35:54
know, very strong. Oh, perhaps there are environmental risks
35:57
that we need to worry about.
35:58
Oh, perhaps there's, you know, concerns about tax revenue or
36:02
waste or, you know, racial and economic justice. There's a
36:06
there's a very risky investment. And you need to kind of sell
36:09
some... Something Mhmm. To be able to sort of, you know, kind
36:14
of enable people to believe in that vision.
36:17
And increasingly, they were relying on, you know,
36:20
inevitability. We talk about a few in the report, the sort of
36:23
use of imagery around nationalism and war. This kind
36:28
of like vision of the AI race that, you know, we just must do
36:31
it because it's the direction that we're going in. Even if
36:34
that is a little bit faulty and we started to understand a bit
36:37
sort of the components of what they meant when they would talk
36:41
about this inevitability. You know, in the report we had
36:43
followed some of the efforts of the Datacenter Coalition that is
36:47
a, you know, a trade group that represents the...
36:50
Those in the data center industry. And they have a few
36:53
websites that they use in Pennsylvania and in many other
36:57
states where they're, you know, investing in data centers. And
37:00
in there, they raise a few examples for why data centers
37:03
are necessary. They say, well, you enjoy your video games and
37:07
you need them for video game storage and it's good for
37:10
electronic health records and it's great for, you know,
37:14
grading software and all sorts of sort of tools that we need as
37:18
part of the economy. So if you are perhaps a resident in that
37:21
place, maybe in some way, there was a world in which you could
37:25
be sold on those arguments.
37:26
But where I feel this kind of inevitability framework really
37:29
missed the mark is that it's not really attuned to the conditions
37:32
that we are all living in today. In the time that we were out in
37:35
Pennsylvania, seven Penn State University campuses closed down.
37:40
Septa, the the public transit in Philadelphia had a funding
37:45
crisis. People did not have transportation on the first day
37:47
of school. We have had cuts to health care.
37:50
We have had cuts to, you know, many different parts of, you
37:54
know, our social safety net that might otherwise allow someone a
37:57
life of dignity. So this kind of, you know, this answer that
38:01
like AI is inevitable and it's gonna change health care. Like,
38:04
what does that mean if you don't have access to health care in
38:06
the first place? Like, I I think it's a bit, you know, it started
38:10
out quite brawny, you know, as that AI Horizon Summit is
38:15
saying, you know, that vision of titans, it's a big one that I
38:19
think if you if you are holding on to that nostalgia we just
38:23
talked about that maybe that would, you know, resonate in
38:25
some way. But when it meets the reality of the worlds that we
38:28
are living in in 2026, it is not a sufficient answer.
38:32
And I think that is where, you know, a lot of that, you know,
38:35
really profound pushback is is stepping into. This data center
38:40
is not gonna give me health care. It's not gonna answer my
38:43
questions. It's not gonna, you know, give me the life of
38:45
dignity that I hope that I can get in this place that has been
38:48
my home for many generations.
38:49
Cella Sum: Yeah. And I think over the course of this
38:52
research, we have seen sort of a shift even within the discourse
38:58
of the proponents that were initially supportive of this
39:03
development. Governor Shapiro is one example of that. But when
39:07
Maya and I went to a a Datacenter Summit, back in April
39:12
March. March, it was a very different tenor than what the
39:18
initial summits that we attended even a year before that.
39:21
And lot of these, folks are on the defensive and trying to say,
39:28
oh, communities have these concerns but a lot of it is
39:32
around misinformation of what the potential benefits are. And
39:37
so it's very clear that community pushback has been
39:42
effective enough to have, you know, the shift in discourse.
39:46
Right? Where now, you know, they have to actually prove, that a
39:52
lot of these benefits are coming to being, which they haven't
39:56
yet. Right?
39:58
But it's it's been really exciting to see this momentum
40:02
growing.
40:04
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. What does that pushback look like? What
40:07
does the kind of resistance that gets the people who are holding
40:10
the levers of power to, like, take their hands off of the
40:13
lever for a second?
40:14
Cella Sum: I... I'm seeing a bunch of different tactics on
40:17
the ground. So it can happen at your local municipal meeting.
40:21
Right? Just showing up in these council meetings, being able to
40:26
make public comments, and just showing up.
40:28
There's other folks that are, you know, doing rallies and
40:34
going to the state capital to speak to legislators. Others are
40:39
actually, you know, we call them citizen scientists, being able
40:43
to actually track data center developments, creating apps. And
40:48
so I think what's so beautiful about this moment around
40:52
community pushback is that, you know, there's so many different
40:55
ways of being able to speak up and do something about this. And
41:01
the everyday citizen actually has power, to make a difference.
41:06
And so, yeah, I think this is one of the exciting moments
41:10
where there is so much hopelessness for so long about
41:14
growing authoritarianism and the growing power of tech companies
41:19
where you feel like you're you're powerless.
41:22
But in this moment, you're actually seeing everyday people
41:25
making a huge difference in policy and local governments.
41:29
Maia Woluchem: I think that's so true. And and it's also a really
41:32
interesting moment for so many different types of organizing
41:36
fights, which I think is... It's true in many places, but I also
41:39
think it's just really representative of the complexity
41:44
and the nuance and the, you know, beauty of a place like
41:47
Pennsylvania. You know, there are so many people in these data
41:50
center fights who enter it because of this long history of
41:54
pushback around fracking or about coal or about, you know,
41:58
long lineages of industrial harm. There are, you know,
42:03
groups that are also here because they care about
42:05
immigration, racial justice, utility costs.
42:09
There are like NIMBYs and YMBYs. You know, there's... It's just
42:12
a... It's a wild mix of... The first time
42:15
Mike Rugnetta: that's ever happened.
42:16
Maia Woluchem: Yeah. Exactly. It's a very very very
42:18
interesting mix of folks. You know, two other members of our
42:23
our team, they're anthropologists and they often
42:27
use this term, you know, the data center as a simulacrum for,
42:32
you know, just about everything else that is at a, you know,
42:38
real pressure point right now. I think you can find...
42:42
You can take just about anything that you care about and see that
42:45
fight in the data center. But, you know, one interesting
42:48
example, there have been some emergent fights around emergent
42:53
organizing around immigration that are finding themselves also
42:56
in the data center fight, you know, on the argument that these
42:59
data centers are, you know, part of the infrastructure for these
43:03
huge companies that are increasingly expanding
43:06
surveillance and using the data that they are taking from us to,
43:13
you know, further detentions or, you know, increase policing
43:17
power. There are others that might say, well, you know, data
43:21
centers hold information for, you know, some of our biggest
43:25
Fortune 500 companies. And if I really care about corporate
43:27
consolidation, I should also care about Datacenter. So it is
43:30
a it's a wide mix, but I think that is just another testament
43:34
to kind of this particular moment that we're in, you know.
43:38
It was it was different when we started. In 2024, people had a
43:41
lot of fear for a lot of different reasons. We hadn't
43:44
seen, you know, what this administration would, you know,
43:50
bring us to. We hadn't seen this kind of like real economic
43:54
precarity. We certainly did in 2024, but you know, we're in a
43:57
different degree of it now.
43:58
We hadn't seen this kind of, you know, real cleavage of our sort
44:02
of social contract. And I think once that has broken, it's
44:05
really opened up a lot of other ways for organizing to really,
44:10
you know, engage in the public right of way, which we've seen
44:13
in so many fights across country, but especially here in
44:16
Pennsylvania.
44:17
Mike Rugnetta: I'm wondering what your advice is for folks
44:19
that wanna oppose a data center that's near them. Like, where do
44:23
they look for either help or a model, something to copy or take
44:29
notes from?
44:30
Cella Sum: I would say, you know, taking from personal
44:33
experience, you are not alone in your feelings. And I don't know.
44:40
I have a different relationship to the place I grew up grew up,
44:45
because of being involved in the data center fight. I, Central
44:50
Pennsylvania was very, does not have that many people of color.
44:57
I felt very isolated.
44:59
But through actually getting involved in data center
45:03
organizing, I was able to meet, people across intergenerational
45:09
lines, you know, which is a really beautiful thing. And I I
45:15
think just showing up, at these municipal meetings and speaking
45:21
your voice is so super important. Being able to
45:25
actually get involved in this political moment, through
45:30
elections and canvassing, get... Getting to meet your neighbors.
45:35
I think that is the one important thing.
45:37
I went door knocking in different neighborhoods that I
45:41
never actually been to in my own hometown and got to meet and got
45:45
invited to have tea by strangers. And so I think that's
45:51
one of the beautiful things in this moment is that you are
45:54
actually meeting your... The people in your own community,
45:59
and it's bringing people closer together. And I think, that, you
46:04
know, relationships and the community bonding has been one
46:08
of the beautiful things in this moment, that is strong enough to
46:14
beat a lot of the, people in power.
46:18
Maia Woluchem: Yeah. I think that's so real. You know,
46:22
there's so many different formations that are part of
46:26
these interesting data center fights, you know, can be as
46:29
small and local as a community garden or as big as a, you know,
46:33
major organization that, you know, their whole budget is
46:38
oriented towards a data center fight. And I I... You know, it's
46:41
increasingly, you know, to plus one what Sela said, I I kind of
46:45
feel like, you know, it was sad at the top of 25.
46:49
Like, oh, we all need to be in community. Like, I really feel
46:51
like we see it here. You know
46:53
Mike Rugnetta: that's true. Yeah.
46:54
Maia Woluchem: Yeah. Actually, it really is true, you know,
46:56
because your community can find me... You can... It it shows up
46:59
in all these different sorts of places. You know, we talked to
47:01
people who were here because for thirty years, they have always
47:05
gone to their municipal meetings to find out what's going on with
47:08
the trash and find out what's happening with their neighbor.
47:11
And suddenly now they're here in a data center fight. And so I do
47:15
kind of feel like, you know, the revolutionary act of opening up
47:19
your door and talking to your neighbor is I think one of the
47:23
ways that, you know, folks find themselves and what ends up
47:27
being an incredibly nuanced conversation about what
47:32
infrastructure looks like. You know, I I pull back to what
47:35
Selah mentioned earlier about, you know, some of the folks in
47:38
the building trades that I I think that's a very honest and
47:43
human place to be entering from. That like I also want my family
47:48
to be able to have food on the table and, you know, a job
47:54
that's going to allow us to buy a home and, know, live out that
47:58
version of the American dream. And I'm gonna, you know, call
48:01
out Stella and thank her because in those interviews, she asked
48:06
this question at the end of every one of our interviews that
48:08
was, you know, what would be your dream in Pennsylvania?
48:13
Like, if you if you had decision making power, like, what would
48:15
you do? And we saw so many of those liberatory visions that
48:20
were, you know, I wanna have a train. I wanna have food. I
48:23
wanna have health care. I want, you know, the joy of
48:27
Pennsylvania to be found in its rivers and its trees and the
48:30
beautiful sort of environmental assets that we have here.
48:34
And so I kind of, you know, I just wonder if, you know, if we
48:39
started there and at sort of the goals that we all really care
48:44
about, the ability to live a life of dignity, maybe we might
48:47
find that there are other ways to get there that live beyond
48:52
Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google. It might just be found, in, you
48:57
know, reinvesting in our public infrastructure, all those things
49:00
that we all got to benefit from for many, for many generations.
49:06
Or, you know, maybe sometimes it is nuclear for some for some
49:09
communities. Maybe that, you know, also can be part of the
49:12
mix of answers. Like, there's lots and lots of communities and
49:15
municipalities.
49:16
Pennsylvania, there's lots of ways around that question. But I
49:20
think increasingly, we've seen now that there's real curiosity
49:23
about starting with the the goals that we want first and
49:27
kind of working our way backwards.
49:29
Mike Rugnetta: And the community should be involved.
49:31
Maia Woluchem: Yes. And community should be involved.
49:32
Mike Rugnetta: You know, we talked so much at the beginning
49:34
of this conversation about why Pennsylvania is a particularly
49:39
well suited place for the attempt to construct these data
49:44
centers. But then also, it's really sort of... It's not nice,
49:49
but it's like, it is... Provides a little bit of hope to then
49:54
think of the residents of being like, we know how to... You
49:57
know, we know what we're doing to fight this.
50:00
Like, we as a region have sort of had to go through this
50:03
before. And it's it's really interesting to sort of think
50:09
about and see, you know, hear about groups of people putting
50:13
that putting that knowledge and that history to work, you know,
50:17
again. Unfortunate that they have to do it.
50:20
Maia Woluchem: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's so true. You know,
50:23
this sort of industrial answer to our questions. Like, you
50:27
know, if we're in a bad spot that a big company is gonna come
50:31
and solve that for us, has a long history here.
50:35
You know, we talked to so many families who, you know, lost a
50:39
grandpa in the mine or so many doesn't have a finger because
50:42
of, you know, the harm that they went through, you know, as a
50:47
result of, you know, these industrial barons at the time of
50:51
the golden age. We had some folks who were, you know,
50:54
recalling these really evocative stories of union busting that,
50:58
you know, was incredibly violent where they lost people in their
51:01
lineage, you know. We spent a lot of time at some of those
51:04
museums. We went to the, you know, National Anthracite
51:07
Museum. We went many times to the Museum of Industrial History
51:11
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and and really tried to situate
51:16
ourselves in this longer arc that was gonna hopefully provide
51:20
some answers to why this moment really is meaningful for folks.
51:24
And and, you know, when we talk to folks, so many people were
51:28
pulling from from that place that, you know, this is not
51:32
gonna happen to me and my family for the third time in a hundred
51:36
years. You know, I'm happy to be part of that lineage to to
51:40
really push back and fight back. And I think that I feel
51:43
sentimental in a way because we were... We started this research
51:47
before America 250 and then we ended it right at this time
51:51
where we're really reflecting on what, you know, what this
51:55
country means, what it's meant across the globe, what it meant
51:58
means to the people who find themselves in it. And I feel
52:00
like, you know, this story is set so one of America America's
52:05
history and Yeah.
52:06
Hopefully, future. And I think... Yeah. I I I just feel
52:11
like there's real endless possibility for who who gets to
52:14
decide in the end.
52:17
Mike Rugnetta: Maya, Sela, thank you so much for joining us. This
52:20
has been great.
52:21
Maia Woluchem: Thank you
52:22
Cella Sum: so much for joining us.
52:23
Maia Woluchem: This is such a treat.
52:25
Mike Rugnetta: We will put a link to the report in the show
52:27
notes, and we will also put a link to the summit. Is that what
52:32
you said, Sella? Is it a summit? Okay. We will put a link to the
52:35
report in the show notes.
52:36
Is there anywhere else that anybody should look for you or
52:39
your work online?
52:40
Maia Woluchem: You can find us on Instagram at data and
52:43
society. You can also find out more about what our team and our
52:47
colleagues are working on at datasociety.net, where we are
52:52
publishing all the time about data centers, AI, chatbots, you
52:56
know, AI agents, all sorts of things at the intersection of,
53:01
AI, automation, data, and society. I'll shout out...
53:04
Actually, this might come out on Thursday, so maybe folks might
53:07
be in time for this. But on on this Friday, Sella's organized
53:12
one such summit.
53:13
Sella, you wanna talk about it?
53:14
Cella Sum: Sure. So I will be cohosting the community centered
53:20
AI infrastructure summit at Carnegie Mellon University on
53:23
Friday. Maya will be our keynote speaker, talking more about the
53:29
AI factory. And we have a whole slew of different panels around
53:36
community organizing, around data centers, and environmental
53:40
impacts of AI. It'll culminate in us codeveloping a community
53:45
action plan around AI infrastructure development in
53:49
Pennsylvania.
53:50
So super exciting.
53:52
Mike Rugnetta: That's incredible. Is that open for
53:54
anybody to tune into remotely?
53:56
Cella Sum: Yes. It'll be online. So check out the website,
54:01
communityaisummit.org.
54:04
Mike Rugnetta: We will absolutely put a link to that in
54:06
the show notes. That is the news we have for you this week. We
54:26
are gonna be back here in the main feed on or around Thursday,
54:30
October 8. This week in the member feed, me, Hans, Jason,
54:35
and Georgia discuss the apparent uptick in explanatory content
54:40
online. How and why has the explainer as a format moved from
54:46
long form to short form video?
54:48
What of this uptick in popularity has Never Post
54:51
experienced, and what do we think is responsible for it? Let
54:56
us explain. To get access via your own individual private
55:01
member feed lovingly crafted and maintained by us for you. Become
55:08
a member at neverpo.st. Never Post's producers are Audrey
55:12
Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the mysterious doctor first name,
55:15
last name.
55:16
Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer
55:19
is Jason Oberholzer, and the show's host, that's me, is Mike
55:23
Rugnetta. These newfangled ghosts haunt by telephone and
55:29
airwave. Acumen will finally languish in a good sense. Type
55:33
would bottle a new motto in live numbers and wine, were they only
55:37
not printers with so many thoughts to slip in media race
55:40
or the thick of things at grasp root level up a slope on
55:44
themselves.
55:45
Our notion of productive labor becomes narrowed to the use of
55:49
censure and science to ensure I am baffled as Yeats by those
55:53
voices that still speak to Odysseus, but as the bats.
55:58
Excerpt of shadow recension by Alan Halsey. Never Post is a
56:03
production of charts and leisure, and it's distributed by
56:06
Radiotopia.