New York just became the first state in the country to sign a moratorium on data centers. There are two paths forward on this issue. One path builds the infrastructure that runs the next 50 years of the American economy. The other bans the future, then acts surprised when the jobs show up somewhere else. I’m here to defend the data centers because most of the fear you’re hearing is manufactured.

Most people opposed to data centers don’t live anywhere near one. Their concern isn’t experience. It’s a propaganda campaign. The legitimate worries all have answers.

Yes, you often have to run new power lines. Those power lines are placed by power companies that sometimes must take private land. They do that whether it is a data center or any other grid expansion. They pay homeowners and landowners fair market value and often pay a premium to avoid using eminent domain power. Here in Georgia, Georgia Power used eminent domain last year five times and not once against homeowners. It recently purchased private homes to expand the power grid, part of which will be for a data center.

But people hear the fear scenarios, like claims that your power bill went up because of data centers. It didn’t. They pay their own way and help fund the grid’s expansion. Want to know why New Yorkers pay so much? New York banned fracking, still runs on natural gas it now imports at a higher cost and then closed a perfectly good nuclear plant. Less supply, same demand, higher prices are basic economics, not data centers.

Virginia, Texas and Georgia have hundreds of data center projects in the pipeline. New York has six, and rates there run more than double what Virginians pay. Residential rates rose 27% nationally from 2019 to 2024, with the steepest climbs in the states that strangled supply and piled on climate mandates.

In Georgia, despite one of the biggest buildouts anywhere, Georgia Power is cutting rates this year and freezing base rates through 2028. States that build power capacity get cheaper power. States that ban power capacity get expensive power. New York picked the expensive path and now blames the buildings it refused to build.

Then there is the water. No, they won’t drink the town dry. A modern facility recirculates through a closed cooling system with limited evaporation. It works like a golf course. Those water hazards aren’t out there just to swallow my tee shots; the course recycles its own water and uses more of it in a day than a data center.

Noise gets mitigated. Architects are designing them to look attractive instead of like warehouses. The real concerns are being addressed. What’s left is fear.

Look at what we give up if we cave: jobs and property tax relief. Electricians, plumbers and welders have more limited opportunities. Impoverished rural counties have land and few people, and one data center’s tax revenue could zero out the property tax bill for everybody else living there. That’s not a threat to rural America. That’s a lifeline.

So who benefits from the panic? China. Much of this fear campaign runs through TikTok and Chinese-funded green groups because China wants these built there, not here. If China controls the data centers, China controls the data, and if China controls the data, China controls you. Own the stack; don’t rent it from Beijing. New York’s ban isn’t a precaution. It’s surrender.

My fear is that we are in a bubble that will burst, leaving more capacity than we need. That’s an argument for building, not against it. Companies laid far more fiber in the dot-com era than anyone needed and went bankrupt doing it. Twenty years later, we’ve used nearly all of it, and the economy is stronger for the overbuilding. Some data centers will fail. New owners will reopen them when demand catches up. The welders still get paid.

We shouldn’t treat AI the way the blacksmiths treated the automobile. The concerns are real, they have fixes and the future will be built by the states willing to innovate. New York is leaving that on the table. Let it. The rest of us should build.

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