House Democrat: Rein in data centers without losing tech race to China

Democratic Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (Va.), whose district lies in a hotbed of data center activity, pushed to rein them in Thursday, but not enough where the U.S. would lose the technology race to China.

“The reality is, if we want to grow and develop some of these emerging technologies like AI and others, we will need more data storage and data centers as a part of that. What we don’t need is data centers to be steamrolling communities and being put in places that don’t want them,” Subramanyam told NewsNation’s Blake Burman on “The Hill.”

“That is a big problem in and of itself, and so, we need to fix this problem. People talk about the issue with China, but honestly, the, you know, people who are seeing their utility bills double and triple don’t care about the race against China. And we’re going to lose that race because 70 percent of Americans now don’t want data centers in their community,” he added.

Burman pressed Subramanyam about the technology race with China, asking the Virginia congressman if he believes “the race with China will be lost.”

“If we continue to do what we’re doing on data centers, yes, it will be lost,” Subramanyam responded.

“And that doesn’t worry you?” Burman asked.

“It worries me every single day. That’s why I’m out here trying to make us do more sensible policies when it comes to data centers,” Subramanyam continued. “So, if we continue making, for instance, the communities pay for the infrastructure for those data centers, that’s a big problem, right? And communities are not — aren’t going to want them, and we’re not going to be building them the way that we would need to.”

Subramanyam’s district covers Loudoun County , which, according to the county website, “is home to one of the largest concentrations of data centers in the world.” More than half of the world’s internet traffic runs through hundreds of facilities in Loudoun and Fairfax counties.

The U.S. and China have recently raced to lead the field of artificial intelligence , but Americans have recently shown a wariness toward data centers. The data center debate has affected recent political races at multiple levels , with the presence of massive AI infrastructure turning into a hot topic.

Candidates have been forced to deal with increasing concerns from Americans surrounding artificial intelligence, as well as worries over energy prices and land use as a result of data center construction.