President Trump says to ‘let Data Reign’: examining the debate over the rise of AI data centers
The rapid expansion of AI data center projects in the U.S. have come with a slew of moral questions: what impact will these massive projects have on the environment? How could it affect the U.S. power grid? Is more AI a good thing – or is it just the expansion of a surveillance state?
Opinion-editorial by Summer Lane | August 31, 2026
President Donald Trump’s administration has made a hard push for expanding artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the United States, and for the most part, it makes sense. Like it or not, the world is developing this new tech, and it wouldn’t do for the U.S. to be left behind, if only for reasons of national security.
But there is far more at stake here. The rapid expansion of AI has changed the workforce already and is projected to soon put millions – if not hundreds of millions – of people out of a job. This one projection alone poses serious moral and ethical questions. How human can AI possibly be? Is it capable of making human decisions? Should an AI robot teach a human child, or should that special position be reserved for man alone?
These are the existential questions posed by the science-fiction-esque emergence of new technology. For some of these questions, there are no easy answers. For others, the truth seems pointedly obvious.
In the end, AI may be the undoing of everything – but not before Americans throw a few well-placed intellectual barbs first.
Environmental considerations
Billions of dollars are flooding into AI data center projects around the nation. The Stargate Project, for example, is worth $500 billion. A joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, it will build data centers across the country. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
According to Electric Choice, there are more than 570 data centers planned or under construction right now.
But the price is steep. These data centers consume everything around them. For example, data centers require continuous water cooling to prevent overheating. These centers – which are often the size of small cities – frequently draw from local water sources, which means that Americans’ water supplies are then impacted.
According to a field report from the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences, the water demand for these centers is truly staggering:
One analysis estimated that around 57% of all data centers use water from potable water supplies (Mytton, 2021).
It is also estimated that 80% to 90% of this water is consumed from watersheds—such as lakes, rivers, or aquifers—often the same sources providing drinking water through public water systems (Novva Data Centers, n.d.).
Worse yet, most data centers with evaporative cooling systems consume potable water. This removes that water fully out of the local water cycle—usually potable water is not lost entirely to evaporation but is flushed back into municipal water-treatment plants.
And that’s not all. Data center cooling systems can use chemical additives to reduce corrosion of equipment, the university found, which can then potentially impact the groundwater systems if it goes back into the environment. Plus, it’s just bad for human health.
There is also the impact that these monstrously huge facilities will have on the countryside it occupies. Case in point: the whopping 40,000-acre Stratos Project AI campus in Utah, hotly contested by locals and loudly championed by billionaire Kevin O’Leary.
The proposed campus is nearly three times the size of Manhattan Island, and it could raise the local temperatures in Box Elder, Utah, by as much as 28 degrees, Forbes reported. The outlet alleged that it could cost up to $100 billion to build and will, shockingly, twice exceed Utah’s current statewide electricity consumption upon operation.
This, of course, highlights another key concern: the overwhelming energy demands of AI data centers. The consumption of these massive operations threatens to drive up the cost of energy in local communities – as if energy wasn’t expensive enough already.
To be fair, the Trump administration has tried to ensure energy costs remain steady with its Ratepayer Protection Pledge plan, in which tech companies have promised to supply and meet their own energy needs without driving up the costs for ratepayers (consumers).
This is great news, but it’s a temporary solution to a long-term problem.
A problem that will likely arise again with a different administration.
President Trump’s argument
Big Tech companies like Meta and OpenAI have poured unthinkable amounts of wealth into AI development under the second Trump administration. It’s no wonder, then, that President Trump finds public opposition to data center construction unpalatable.
“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” President Trump fumed on Truth Social on Monday.
He continued, “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign. The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them. If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.”
The president’s position is crystal clear. However, so are Americans’.
According to a 2026 poll from Gallup, seven in 10 Americans oppose building AI data centers in their local areas. And as these data centers expand, this opposition is likely poised to grow.
On Monday, the president also argued that China was happy that Americans were pushing back against the data centers in the U.S., alluding to the much-touted federal argument that AI data centers are a matter of national security.
This is certainly true. America’s enemies are developing AI for all sorts of purposes, particularly China. But let’s be clear: why does the U.S. want to emulate China when it comes to AI?
Winning on AI is not necessarily a good thing
China recently rolled out the largest AI-based public surveillance system of all time, tactically paving the way for total and complete control of its citizenry. This is tyranny at its absolute peak.
With the debate in the U.S. raging over something as small – but as sinister – as Flock Cameras, it seems clear that competing with China for AI data centers is probably not a good thing.
What sets Americans apart from the rest of the world is their convictions. It’s the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The passion and creativity of its people. The willingness of the American soldier to die for his countrymen. The rolling countryside, rich natural resources, and wilderness frontiers. It’s the American spirit that consistently adapts, improvises, and overcomes.
AI may be a great tool, but ultimately, it poses an existential threat to humanity, particularly in the hands of the federal government and Big Tech corporations, who are embedded together in a multi-billion-dollar quest for intelligence gathering and surveillance.
No good can ultimately come from a massive AI singularity gobbling up data, encroaching on Americans’ privacy, stealing local water resources, and feeding the mechanisms that fuel Flock Camera devices.
Americans don’t have to use tyrannical tech to beat China or any other enemy, but if Big Tech and the federal apparatus fly too close to the sun on this issue, it’s likely that the country – and the world – will suffer the catastrophic consequences of this unrestrained tech monster that is poised to reshape the modern world in its untrustworthy image.
Photo: Adobe Stock
