Marketplace Tech · Friday, July 17, 2026
The data center industry is becoming a more central political issue, with 14 other state legislatures considering moratoriums similar to New York's. Companies like Meta and Google are launching public relations campaigns to highlight the positive impacts of their data centers and to show they are working with local communities.
“14 other states, uh, legislatures or, you know, lawmaking bodies have been considering kind of similar moratoriums on hyper-scale data centers. Does it seem like this is going to become an increasingly more central political issue?”
“Absolutely. You know, we've seen it come up in a number of local and federal races, uh, has an issue that, um, candidates are stumping on and that is seemingly resonating with voters, uh, you know, from city councils up to congressional seats, up to state Senate seats. So, uh, this is going to continue to come up over the next several months as we head towards the November mid-term elections.”
“Well, we're already starting to see some of these companies try to push back and win back voters. Uh, Meta recently released, uh, a whole video about its, uh, big data center construction project in Louisiana to try to show that the positive impact that that will have on the community. Uh, Google recently opened up its data center to television cameras to better explain what actually goes on in a data center.”