The Ezra Klein Show: The A.I. Revolt Is Here

Data center construction has become an unlikely bipartisan flashpoint, with journalist Jasmine Sun's Midwest reporting trip revealing that opposition runs far deeper than typical NIMBY concerns about noise or water—it's really a referendum on trust in AI companies themselves.

Key takeaways

Data center opposition has spiked dramatically, from 4 in 10 voters opposing local construction in August to 7 in 10 by May, uniting figures like Bernie Sanders and Ron DeSantis who both back moratoriums or citizen protections against AI infrastructure.
The use of NDAs during site negotiations has badly backfired: city councils sign confidentiality agreements with developers, but word leaks through contractors and subcontractors anyway, leaving officials unable to counter rumors on social media. Microsoft has already dropped the practice, and other AI labs are reportedly considering the same.
Unlike solar farms or chip factories, data centers lack a visible pro-constituency. Solar has environmentalists; auto plants have workers who need cars. Data centers mostly benefit distant tech companies and their executives, so even people who use ChatGPT don't see the technology as essential enough to justify the local costs.
Wisconsin's Foxconn debacle looms over every new deal: the company took hundreds of millions in subsidies, promised 13,000 jobs, delivered about 1,000, and left residual debt. That history feeds fears that AI data centers (built during a possible valuation bubble) could become stranded assets if a company folds or a bubble pops, echoing Janesville's abandoned GM plant, which still has $30 million in uncleaned hazardous waste.
Sun frames this as "AI populism"; opposition rooted not in disbelief that AI has any use, but in resentment that a small group of Silicon Valley billionaires is imposing a technological vision without consent. In Saline Township, Michigan, a data center developer sued after the town council voted against rezoning, and the town settled for a few million dollars rather than fight; a moment Sun says crystallized the "dark money in politics" narrative for locals.
Even AI industry insiders express private discomfort: executives tell Sun they wish the race would slow down, yet keep building because they fear falling behind competitors or China. Sun argues this reveals the race has no real finish line, since AGI itself has no agreed-upon definition and model capabilities remain "jagged" rather than uniformly improving.

Notable moments

"I felt like I was in Eden... as you get closer to a data center, you start to see more power lines... and eventually you just see what looks like an extremely large, flat warehouse."
On sound: "They sound like humming, buzzing, whirring... residents who live next door to some of them say they're producing noise that's not only annoying, but debilitating."
The Irish saying quoted by a construction union VP: "The only way to keep a secret between three people is to kill two of them."
"Nobody wants it," Sun says was the phrase she heard over and over describing data center sentiment in these towns.
On labor market hypocrisy: "If you are so worried about the inequality, why are you building the agents to do it?"
Discussing Sam Bankman-Fried's coin-flip thought experiment on AI risk, Klein responds: "That's a psychopath... you would have to have a very, very low value on human life."
Sun on Silicon Valley's blind spot: "In Silicon Valley, people's worldview is formed by seeing impossible problems prove possible to solve. In D.C., people's worldview is formed by seeing possible problems prove impossible to solve."
On misplaced priorities: when asked what AI utopia looks like, tech workers cite immortality and solved math theorems, but polling shows neither is popular with the public, who mostly want cheaper goods and less tedious work.

Time saved: 1 hour, 21 minutes.

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