Josh Flynn

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." – Daniel Webster

The fight over AI data centers may be one of the clearest examples yet of how backward American energy politics has become.

Progressive Democrats, including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are pushing legislation that would impose a federal moratorium on new AI data centers until Congress establishes new safeguards.

New York has gone further, imposing a temporary moratorium on large new data centers while officials study electricity, water and community impacts.

The concerns themselves are not imaginary. Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity, and communities have every right to insist that developers pay the costs they create.

But here is where the clown show begins.

For years, the Democratic energy agenda has been built around restricting traditional energy while betting heavily on wind and solar.

Now America suddenly needs staggering amounts of dependable electricity for artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and computing, and the political response is increasingly to attack the data centers.

The smarter answer is not to stop the technology. It is to build the energy.

America should be expanding nuclear generation, natural gas capacity, transmission and every dependable source capable of supporting massive new loads.

Data centers should pay the legitimate costs they impose on the grid, but restricting the infrastructure itself attacks the symptom instead of the disease.

And this clown show has national security consequences.

America is competing directly with China for leadership in artificial intelligence.

China has a significant advantage in available electricity and has been rapidly expanding the energy and computing infrastructure needed for AI.

The United States still leads at the technological frontier, but China is advancing quickly.

So when American politicians make computing capacity slower, scarcer and more expensive, they are effectively doing Beijing's bidding, whether they realize it or not.

What do you think, should America slow down data centers, or start building enough reliable power to win the AI race?