Myth is all the tycoons have, because reality doesn’t care about tech monarchist fantasies.
Data & Society – Policy Brief ⋅ July 22 2025 Data Centers Aren’t the Future of American Prosperity The material implications of AI’s expansion for the climate, local economies, and global patterns of extraction are often pushed aside in favor of the alleged inevitability of AI’s advantages, especially given deep investments from states, national governments, tech firms, and utility companies. 9 With so much on the line, this policy brief aims to cut through lobbying points and speculative myths, looking instead to what the evidence reveals about the industry’s claims.
This article has a myths vs evidence chart… and the first one is what I’ve been hounding my local reps about
MYTH: #1: Data centers are a key revitalization tool for dwindling local economies.
THE EVIDENCE SHOWS: #1: Economic benefits from data centers are largely short-term and often fail to deliver the promised community revitalization.
This is so familiar because over and over again trickle down economics has always turned out to be a bait and switch. Fracking, call centers, and CNC machinists. Whatever they pump up really hot always seems to go bust and leave the taxpayers and the longtime residents of Pennsylvania holding the bag.
My letter to reps:
There’s no evidence that we’ll need all these monstrosity data centers in the future. I’ve heard the stories in the news about residents near data centers being driven mad with noise pollution and enduring air pollution. And for no good reason. I’ve seen it reported by Data & Society that it’s a myth that data centers revitalize the economy in a place, because the economic benefits from them are mostly short-lived and fail to deliver. That sounds familiar. Over the decades here in our region, I’ve seen many booms like this promised, only to watch the bust leaving us worse off than before. Call centers that skipped out on rent and taxes, fracking that damaged the drinking water of whole communities, and being told that CNC machinists and CNA health aids would be up and coming lucrative professions and seeing them pay so little people wind up getting trained and then getting a better job doing something else somewhere else. Data center power plant stories from elsewhere sounds like the same old somebody done somebody wrong song. I don’t want that in my community based on what looks like baseless financial speculation.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
