Data centers, AI, and the 2026 elections. Ft. Paris Marx.

If you’ve heard anything at all about the midterm elections, you’ve heard at least two things: it’s going to be a ‘blue wave’ in which Democrats are poised for major electoral gains, and that everyone involved hates data centers.
We’re all used to hearing about that data center hate now, it’s almost a given; “the single most bipartisan issue in politics,” and so on, but I want to pause to underline how remarkable this is. This time last year, data centers were a niche issue in a handful of local political fights. Now they’re one of America’s most visible, universal and undeniable political battlegrounds.
To investigate how we got here, I sit down with Paris Marx; tech reporter, critic, and author of the new book Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires (hyperscalebook.com). Plus, I dig into three things we should be watching during the midterm elections next week.
Hyperscale by Paris Marx (hyperscalebook.com)Paris’s Disconnect Newsletter (disconnect.blog)Paris on Bluesky (bsky.app/profile/parismarx.com)
Brian’s Bluesky (bsky.app/profile/bcmerchant.bsky.social)
Producer Ryan’s Newsletter (thestorieswetell.co)Ryan’s Bluesky (bsky.app/profile/thestorieswetell.co)
Stories Mentioned
Texas sues OpenAI, Sam Altman over product safety - POLITICO (politico.com/news/2026/10/23/texas-sues-openai…)
Media — Angela Gonzales-Torres for Congress (angela4congress.com/media)
James Talarico on X: “There is something deeply wrong with a political system that allows one trillionaire to buy his own personal U.S. Senator.” / X (x.com/jamestalarico/status/2113061182265290843)
Elon Musk’s America PAC Is Quietly Funding November’s Most Consequential Elections (wired.com/story/elon-musks-america-pac-is-quie…)
SpaceX and Tesla have high election stakes as Elon Musk pours $366 million into campaigns (cnbc.com/2026/10/22/elon-musk-midterm-election…)
Ohio Senate special election | Tech Influence Watch (influence.citationneeded.news/2026/elections/O…)
Leading the Future | Tech Influence Watch (influence.citationneeded.news/2026/committees/…)
Exclusive: GOP warns AI companies that data centers are politically radioactive (axios.com/2026/08/19/gop-data-center-memo-ai-e…)
AI and data centers are incredibly unpopular in every poll | The Verge (theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/995917…)
The data center backlash reveals NIMBYism’s great contradiction (washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith…)
Texas gubernatorial election, 2026 - Ballotpedia (ballotpedia.org/Texas_gubernatorial_election,_…)
Data Centers | Gina Hinojosa for Texas Governor (ginafortexas.com/priority/data-centers)
Elon Musk Is Trying To Buy Texas. It Might Earn Him ‘Retribution.’ (huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-2026-spending-tex…)
How Billionaires Are Fighting the Prop 40 California Wealth Tax - The New York Times (nytimes.com/2026/10/27/technology/proposition-…)
thewatt.org/en/nota/gas-centros-datos-capacida…
Majority of US’s new AI datacenters to be built on drought-hit land (theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/08/datacenter…)
Exclusive: 75% of Americans Now Oppose Local Data Center Development - Heatmap News (heatmap.news/daily/data-center-opposition-poll…)
Cheyenne Won’t Take Data Center Wastewater After Meta Contractor Contaminated System | Cowboy State Daily (cowboystatedaily.com/2026/07/02/cheyenne-wont-…)
Why Do Data Centers Use So Much Water? Understanding the Hidden Environmental Cost | Waterless Co Inc. (waterless.com/blog/why-do-data-centers-use-so-…)
Canada’s AI minister blames OpenAI for ‘failure’ after mass shooting - POLITICO (politico.com/news/2026/02/25/canada-openai-fai…)
ChatGPT Gave Me Chilling Advice—as I Simulated Planning a Mass Shooting – Mother Jones (motherjones.com/media/2026/05/openai-chatgpt-m…)
The Deepfake Nudes Crisis in Schools Is Much Worse Than You Thought | WIRED (wired.com/story/deepfake-nudify-schools-global…)
Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon call for curbs on AI at ‘pro-human’ summit | US politics | The Guardian (theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/15/bernie-san…)
Character.ai’s Bankruptcy Documents Show the Economics of AI Don’t Work (404media.co/character-ais-bankruptcy-documents…)
Scoop: Andreessen Horowitz lays off “majority” of portfolio recruiting team (axios.com/2026/10/14/andreessen-horowitz-lays-…)
Anthropic posts staggering $80.7 billion net loss in first half of 2026 as IPO approaches - Tech Startups (techstartups.com/2026/10/20/anthropic-posts-st…)
Investors dump data centre bonds as AI borrowers face ‘Darwin moment’ (ft.com/content/678bcd31-6c2a-447b-a68c-ce6dec2…)
$64 billion of data center projects have been blocked or delayed amid local opposition (datacenterwatch.org/report)

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