Republicans Are Pandering to Data Center Hysteria — and Helping China Win the AI War

“Grandma, why are you sad?”

The old woman sighed before answering: “Sweetie… Grandma gained some weight over the holidays. Nothing fits anymore! Everyone thinks I’m fat!”

“But you’re beautiful, Grandma. Everyone else is wrong!”

“Aw, aren’t you precious. Have another cookie, sweetie. Wanna go to Toys R Us?”

And that’s when I discovered the totally awesome power of pandering!

Naturally, politicians discovered pandering eons ago. (Turns out that telling people whatever they want to hear is a nifty way to get elected.) It’s effective for two reasons — one of which is obvious; the other, not as much.

The obvious reason is vanity: We desire validation. It makes us feel better about ourselves and fosters a sense of shared values.

We like people who like us and agree with us.

The less obvious reason is that it’s cost-free: Your opponent can’t really bust you for it. Certain lines of political attacks — moral outrage, hypocrisy, corruption — carry a heavy toll. They can literally end a career.

If those charges stick, your opponent is toast: You just won the election.

But the “pandering” charge never seems to resonate. The last high-profile politician to champion it was Paul Tsongas in 1992, who taunted then-Gov. Bill Clinton with an actual “pander bear” prop. (It was more cringey than effective.)

For whatever reason, American voters are indifferent to pandering. I don’t know why. (My best guess: We think so lowly of politicians that the concept of them telling us whatever we want to hear isn’t exactly a shocker.)

So it shouldn’t be a jaw-dropping revelation that Republicans have stooped to pandering on the data center issue. Nobody should be surprised. It’s the perfect storm for shallow, uninformed political opportunism because:

The final factor is political jiu-jitsu: We already know the Democrats are gonna use AI data centers as a political club, so it’s smart to get ahead of the issue! 

Our lakes run dry. Family farms paved over. Why? Because Crowley’s campaign is funded by the people building them. Data center David Crowley: Big tech wins. Wisconsin pays.

Fun fact: AI only accounts for 15% to 20% of data center usage. (Satellite info, TikTok videos, Netflix streaming, etc. gobble up the rest.) 

Still, data centers use about 17 billion gallons of water on-site annually. That’s a fact.

And residential car washes use 100 billion gallons annually. Private swimming pools use 120 billion gallons annually. Golf courses use 531 billion gallons annually. 

Want more?

We lose 900 billion gallons of water annually to leaky pipes. Corn irrigation uses 1,860 billion gallons. 

And residential lawn care uses 2,900 billion gallons of water each year!

So why aren’t politicians banning private swimming pools, golf courses, corn chips, and lawn care? Why attack data centers?

You already know why: crass political expediency. It’s as simple as that.

Politicians are pandering, telling voters what they want to hear.

The trouble is that opposing data centers is anti-growth, anti-prosperity, and anti-innovation. Not only will it make Americans poorer — and prices higher — but it also surrenders the AI arms race to communist China.

And if AI is as revolutionary as its harshest critics claim, that’s the last thing we ought to be doing.

Hey Wisconsin: Data centers will generate $27 billion in tax revenue over the next decade. Don’tcha want your share?

From USA Today:

Quincy, Washington, is now home to more than two dozen data centers, which pay more than half the city's property taxes. That windfall has bought Quincy a new high school, sports complex, hospital, library, police station, fire department and even a water park. A population of 8,500 people got all of that, plus 900 new jobs. Its poverty rate has fallen from nearly 30% in 2012 to 6.2% in 2024.

[…]

An increase in tax revenue let Richland Parish, Louisiana, pay its teachers $50,000 bonuses. Loudoun County, Virginia, now known as the data center capital of the world, has used the money to cut property tax rates.

And it’s more than extra tax revenue: Building data centers creates new, high-paying jobs. As USA Today noted, data centers “need engineers and electricians to maintain them and construction crews to build them. Salaries for construction workers on these projects have ballooned into six figures amid the ‘gold rush.’”

Yet Rep. Tiffany warns that data centers will drain Wisconsin’s lakes dry — even though they account for a scant 0.14% of all U.S. water consumption, roughly 449 million gallons a day. (Meanwhile, California almond farms use 4.2 billion gallons a day.)

Hey, I like almonds too, but I’m pretty sure they’re not NINE TIMES more valuable to our children’s future than data centers!

The industrial revolution transformed the world by replacing manpower and animal labor with machines. It led to an era of unparalleled growth: Suddenly, products were cheaper and more plentiful.

We rode the gears of the Industrial Revolution to an age of abundance. The Industrial Revolution — plus the one-two punch of free market capitalism — has freed more people from the chains of poverty than anything else in human history.

Two hundred years ago, 84% of the world lived in extreme poverty. Today it’s less than 9%.

And the richest, wealthiest country of all is the United States of America.

As transformative as the Industrial Revolution was, what’s coming next — the intellectual revolution — will be even greater. No joke, no hyperbole: It’s gonna change the world.

Because in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, intellect matters more than manpower. It’s why the highest-paying jobs are (usually) the ones where you do far more thinking than physical labor. It’s why parents pushed kids into college. (Or at least used to.)

Labor is cheap. Thinking professions — healthcare, legal, financial, tech — make the big bucks.

But if AI data centers do for “thinking professions” what the industrial revolution did for labor, the consequences will be enormous. And we better get ready, because it’s coming one way or another.

Ignoring the industrial revolution didn’t protect nations from the reality of it. The opposite was true: It left them vulnerable and unprepared.

And then they were conquered by the countries that embraced it.

Over the past month, conservatives have been arguing about inflation and $20 burritos. And look, I get it: affordability is still a major issue. Prices are still too high for too many people.

But we’re not going to make things more affordable by spurning technology and pandering to the anti-data center crowd. As conservatives, we ought to know better: Protectionism and government roadblocks aren’t the answer.

It’s innovation and ingenuity that make things cheaper.

Look at what Walmart did to inflation. By inventing (and then investing in) new supply chain technology, Walmart kept prices low for decades.

From Quartz:

In the 1990s and 2000s, economists often credited Walmart with shaving basis points off national inflation rates. Studies from the NBER and the Minneapolis Fed found that Walmart’s presence consistently lowered prices by 10-25% on household staples, generating measurable gains in consumer welfare even as the retailer’s effects on the overall economy were more mixed. Some estimates put the average household’s annual savings from Walmart’s price pressure at more than $700.

It’s no secret that socialism is on the rise in our country. The Democratic Socialists of America are on the cusp of overtaking one of America’s two major political parties. We’ve reached the point where 53% of Gen Z now has a positive view of socialism! Socialism is ascending; capitalism is reeling.

And it’ll continue to ascend until Republicans do a better job at defending free markets.

That’s the hidden cost of pandering to voters about data centers: It reinforces the DSA economic narrative, demonizes capitalism, handcuffs private companies, stifles progress, and casts Big Government as the one true savior of the “proletariats.”

Additionally, it guarantees that NOTHING gets better. Prices won’t drop, wages won’t rise, supply won’t grow. 

It’s an economic dead end.

But the upside is, it might give Rep. Tiffany a temporary political boost.

Sorry, but we won’t defeat the socialists by mindlessly echoing their talking points. Or by selling a watered-down version of socialism. Or by pandering to voters about data centers “draining lakes” and “paving farms.” All that does is give the DSA legitimacy that it hasn’t earned and doesn’t deserve.

We win by showing voters why the socialists are wrong — and explaining how free markets are better.

Besides, time’s a-wasting. China is already blazing a path for AI supremacy:

China is preparing to spend around 2 trillion yuan ($295.43 billion) over the next five years on building data centers across the country, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, as Beijing looks to challenge the U.S. in the intensifying AI race. https://t.co/XSwGxMnEe6

— Reuters China (@ReutersChina) June 9, 2026

China's power demand for data centers is set to rise more than 25% this year, boosted in part by companies’ efforts to bring AI to market, according to Goldman Sachs Research. Read more: https://t.co/b3qKR5GF06

— Goldman Sachs (@GoldmanSachs) November 4, 2025

And at the same time, guess who’s also investing in whipping up anti-data center hysteria in the United States?

While China has been pouring billions into its own AI infrastructure and expansion, it may also be funding an equally expensive influence campaign here in the U.S. to oppose the building of data centers — critical to advancing the technology. https://t.co/MEhMyxafzs

— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) June 6, 2026

NEW RESEARCH from @SamLyman33: China is interfering with US data center development in a campaign to slow the American AI buildout.

In this groundbreaking report, we document 3 vectors of foreign influence: Chinese state media, the Singham network, and foreign billionaires. pic.twitter.com/wtKh9OAmsv

— Bitcoin Policy Institute (@bitcoinpolicy) May 18, 2026

From the New York Times:

A state-owned newspaper in China recently published a satellite image of a data center in Gainesville, Va., writing in English that the development of artificial intelligence posed a threat to Americans’ physical and financial well-being.

A comic strip made to look as if it had been published by a Maryland news outlet — created with OpenAI’s ChatGPT by people in China, the tech company said — circulated on X this year, blaming data centers for soaring electricity bills. It showed a tycoon smoking a cigar and clutching bags of cash.

[…]

China, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran have sought to use state media outlets to turn the controversy over data centers in the United States into “a domestic fracture point,” according to a new analysis by Alethea, a threat intelligence company, which identified scores of articles and posts on social media this year.

By pandering to voters on data centers, we’re committing three strategic mistakes:

Fight for free markets. Champion innovation. Support data centers.

And if you still feel the urge to pander, I recommend pandering to Grandma. Not only won’t it wreck the country, but you might get a free cookie.

(Plus, maybe a trip to Toys R Us.)

One Last Thing: 2026 will reach a crescendo with the midterm elections. Nothing less than the future of our country teeters in the balance.

Never before have the political battle lines been so clearly defined. Blue wave or red wall, one way or another the 2026 midterms will transform our country.

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