{"id":750778,"date":"2026-11-01T07:00:46","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T04:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/data-centers-are-now-a-midterm-issue-even-in-brooklyn\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T07:00:46","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T04:00:46","slug":"data-centers-are-now-a-midterm-issue-even-in-brooklyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/data-centers-are-now-a-midterm-issue-even-in-brooklyn\/","title":{"rendered":"Data centers are now a midterm issue, even in Brooklyn"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On Thursday evening, I slipped on my neon yellow heels and a floral mini dress. It\u2019s New York, so I can wear whatever I want to a midterm election event full of media<\/a> types, techies, policy advocates, and, well, does anyone else even exist at these things? I walked into the dimly blue-lit Brooklyn warehouse and was surprised to see the room already filling up.<\/p>\n

News<\/a>reel, the media company founded by former Forbes and Newsweek reporter Jack Brewster, hosted the event, and the lineup was heavy-hitting. Kenneth Schlenker, co-founder of the focus app<\/a> Opal, sat down for a fireside chat about \u201cthe state of attention,\u201d and Aryan Banjan, who built the campaign management software Barza, gave a midterm forecast. I, meanwhile, was moderating a panel on data centers.<\/p>\n

Brewster said the goal was for people to \u201cput their phones away and talk to each other about the election, five days out.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the evening progressed, however, one topic consumed nearly every conversation: AI, data centers, and the backlash against the growing technocracy.<\/p>\n

Lately, as a tech reporter, I\u2019ve noticed a growing chasm between tech and everyone else. I spend most of my days talking to people who see the benefits of AI, who are so ambitious in building it and so optimistic that it will succeed that, when I talk to people beyond the tech world, I forget how ugly<\/a> it all seems to them. Outside the tech bubble, data centers and AI have become such an intense ballot-box issue that they could sway some midterm races<\/a> on November 3.<\/p>\n

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Newsreel\u2019s Midterm Madness<\/span>Image Credits:<\/strong>Taylor Williams \/ Newsreel<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A recent report from Data Center Watch found that almost $200 billion<\/a> in data center projects were delayed, stalled, or blocked in the first half of 2026 due to political and community opposition. Meanwhile, states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, New York, and Virginia are considering more guardrails and transparency around data centers\u2019 rapid development. Hundreds of new data centers are planned in Virginia alone, a state already nicknamed the \u201cdata center capital of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

A fireside chat with New York City Council member Chi Oss\u00e9, just before my panel, set the tone. AI came up near the end; Oss\u00e9 said he doesn\u2019t really use it. To me, though, he didn\u2019t seem to be for or against it. He mostly emphasized that he would like to see tech executives held more accountable and trillionaires like Elon Musk taxed more. He described himself as a democratic socialist, but a \u201claw and order\u201d one. When CEOs talk about a technology<\/a> that could deplete 10% of human civilization, he said, \u201cthey should be called to testify in front of Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

My panel was up next. I moderated a discussion with Maia Woluchem, a technology and human rights researcher, and Hilary Flint, an environmental and public health advocate, about data centers. As I took the stage, I decided to get a better read on the crowd. I asked, \u201cWho here is pro-AI data center?\u201d and was promptly booed. Our conversation covered a range of topics and emotions. People are upset that big tech companies appear to be cutting secret deals<\/a> with local officials to build billion-dollar data centers. In some cases, zoning rules<\/a> make it unclear what is being built until it\u2019s too late to protest.<\/p>\n

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Newsreel\u2019s Midterm Madness<\/span>Image Credits:<\/strong>Taylor Williams \/ Newsreel<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the same time, people are struggling with the cost of living and doing everything they can to hold onto what\u2019s left of the American Dream, while tech leaders talk about AI replacing workers, or even humanity itself. Residents feel they have lost control over what happens in their communities, and they worry about the environmental and health risks. The panel agreed that data centers are the physical embodiment of people\u2019s fears and anger toward the tech class and the rapid pace of technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is a life worth?\u201d Flint said when I brought up the benefits that some communities have seen from data center build-outs. People still protest, she said, because they \u201cvalue their lives a little bit more than a temporary check.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panel after mine featured NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon; political strategist Morris Katz, who worked on Zohran Mamdani\u2019s campaign; and Vox\u2019s Astead Herndon. They were supposed to be talking about the future of the Democratic Party. But once again, the conversation shifted to data centers. Ungar-Sargon noted that some labor unions support data centers because of the jobs they promise. (Reports show that data centers create many jobs initially, but those jobs are not permanent<\/a> once construction ends.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThere used to be a lot of pride in a community in the Rust Belt about very ugly, enormous buildings in their communities because everybody worked there,\u201d she said, nodding to an earlier comment I\u2019d made about data centers being ugly. \u201cAnd they knew that building represented prosperity for themselves, stability for their children, and a future and a piece of the American dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Newsreel\u2019s Midterm Madness<\/span>Image Credits:<\/strong>Taylor Williams \/ Newsreel<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Herndon noted that Vivek Ramaswamy was booed for making a similar point in Ohio, a Rust Belt state. \u201cI just want to reinforce the lack of consent happening,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause that\u2019s true among Republicans in those places and I\u2019ve watched it.\u201d Katz was also skeptical. \u201cIt\u2019s the same people who have taken so many union jobs away,\u201d he said. \u201cThe same institutional powers that have robbed labor and working people of jobs and profit. Now coming back to essentially finish the job and take whatever scraps remain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along the warehouse walls, I noticed sticky notes answering posted questions, including \u201cWill we ever be able to get Big Money out of politics?\u201d \u201cGod, I hope so,\u201d one note said.<\/p>\n

People rushed the bar when the panel ended, and techno music began to blast. They broke into small groups, where AI and data centers were once again the topic, this time in more private conversations. I asked Brewster if he was surprised by how much of the conversation focused on AI and data centers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt came up in every conversation on stage, and it was the second most common topic in the questions people sent us when they RSVP\u2019d,\u201d he said, adding that it was happening even in New York, where data centers aren\u2019t very visible. \u201cAI has become an election issue for regular voters,\u201d he said. \u201cIn rural communities, the backlash is about feeling replaced. In a place like Brooklyn, it\u2019s more about who gets rich from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before leaving, I made the rounds, asking people to name the craziest thing they\u2019d seen in tech this year. Two tech founders mentioned the AI assistant startup Instinct, while a non-tech person named Sam Altman<\/p>\n

Another non-tech person brought up the rise of deepfakes and AI art. AI art, she said, is starting to signal cheapness. That may be why luxury brands are going the other way: Prada\u2019s holiday campaign features hand-drawn illustrations<\/a>, and Herm\u00e8s has been spotlighting artists\u2019 handmade work on Instagram.<\/p>\n

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Newsreel\u2019s Midterm Madness<\/span>Image Credits:<\/strong>Taylor Williams \/ Newsreel<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On my way out, I spoke to a software engineer who said the craziest thing she\u2019d seen this year was a person who painted their nails orange for Halloween and was asked if it was a tribute to the Anthropic IPO. I admitted that I, too, had once worn a burnt orange dress and briefly thought of myself as the Claude logo.<\/p>\n

She later told me data centers are popping up in her Southern California hometown, too. Hearing that, I thought for the first time about how I\u2019d feel if one popped up in mine. She grew up in a Chinese immigrant community, where neighbors are putting signs in their yards showing dragons choking a data center.<\/p>\n

The signs have since been translated into other languages, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Thursday evening, I slipped on my neon yellow heels and a floral mini dress. It\u2019s New York, so I can wear whatever I want to a midterm election event full of media types, techies, policy advocates, and, well, does anyone else even exist at these things? I walked into the dimly blue-lit Brooklyn warehouse…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":750779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Newsreel-Midterm-Madness-22.jpg?resize=1200,800","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[77337,153835,151537,151443],"class_list":["post-750778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-ai","tag-data-centers","tag-government-policy","tag-media-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}