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The Race to Build AI Data Centers — Before the People Can Protest

From Utah to Georgia, communities are demanding data center moratoriums as concerns move from local zoning fights into national politics.

Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary has been making the media rounds defending the 40,000-acre data center project he’s backing in northern Utah. Dismissing residents’ concerns over the environmental impacts and water demands of the proposed project in the drought-stricken Great Salt Lake region, O’Leary has claimed protesters are “bused in,” “misinformed,” and alleged that China has had a hand in orchestrating the public push back.

“The Stratos project in Utah is an example of data center largesse,” says Jim Walsh, the policy director of Food and Water Watch, an organization leading a campaign to stop the rapid development of data centers across the country. As proposed, the project would be more than double the size of Manhattan. Walsh adds, “It’s important to recognize that the impacts of this data center go beyond the water and energy concerns that impact the residents of Salt Lake. They’re going to be pulling gas from the Ruby Pipeline, and this project is going to perpetuate more fracking in the Western U.S., a practice for extracting natural gas that uses extreme amounts of water.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Jordan Uhl speaks to Walsh about the massive Utah project, the environmental and economic impact of data centers on communities especially where water is already scarce, and the Trump administration’s push to cut regulations at the federal and local level to accelerate the build-out of data centers and AI infrastructure.

In response to O’Leary claiming data center development is a national security priority to beat out China in the AI race, Walsh says, “National security isn’t just about having technological and military superiority.” We’re not safe if we don’t have clean air and clean water to drink and breathe. We’re not safe if our communities have massive data centers that are extracting our natural resources. Our entire economy functions on access to water.”

For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.

Jordan Uhl: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jordan Uhl, your host today. 

Jessica Washington: I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept. 

Jonah Valdez: And I’m Jonah Valdez, another politics reporter here at The Intercept. 

JU: So Jess, Jonah, we’re talking to you both today because the California primary is days away: June 2. While there are a few notable races that have captured national attention, one here where I live in Los Angeles is the mayoral primary.

We’ve got a few contenders. It is looking tight at the top with a few candidates jockeying for one of these top two positions. Jess, could you give us an overview of this race?

This California Congressional Hopeful Opposes a Billionaire Tax. So Do His Tech CEO Backers.

JW: As the only non-Angeleno on the podcast, I’m going to try and do a good job. So something important to keep in mind before we even get into the candidates is because of how California’s primary system works, if no candidate gets a majority of the vote — so over 50 percent — the top two are going to go off to a runoff election in November.

The candidates in this race are the incumbent mayor, Karen Bass. She has been leading in every poll, but it should have been really a slam-dunk election, and yet it isn’t. We can get into more of why in a minute. But her opponent is really interesting; two opponents are interesting. So first, there’s reality star Spencer Pratt, who has been consistently polling in second place, although in more recent polling he’s looking to lose a little bit of steam. Then the other candidate is council member Nithya Raman, a Democratic socialist who’s not endorsed by DSA LA, but is recommended by them. So that’s the mix that’s happening in this election right now.

JU: Jonah, there are a few other contenders that could be potentially pulling votes from Nithya Raman or might be waiting to decide till last minute. What is this looking like on the ground? Who have you talked to and what are you hearing?

JV: My focus has been on LA’s left, if you will, and how there might be what people are calling some vote-splitting among the left. And that’s because not only is there Nithya Raman who, as Jessie said, is a Democratic socialist, but there’s also Rev. Rae Huang, who is a housing advocate.

She’s a Presbyterian minister. She actually was in the race before Nithya and was the only DSA candidate, Democratic Socialist candidate, in the race at the time. She launched two weeks after Mamdani’s win in New York, so she has all this buzz going into it. The LA Times was asking, is she LA’s Mamdani?

So that’s the framing that she entered the race in, and it excited a lot of progressives here in the left in Los Angeles. But as soon as Nithya joined the race, very last minute, and the rise of Spencer Pratt, you have this threat of this right-wing figure. Sure, this is a nonpartisan election, but the things he’s saying, demonizing homelessness and really getting on Karen Bass around her record and the fires. There’s this tangible threat now that Spencer Pratt could be in the runoff with Karen Bass, which is a pretty worst-case scenario for LA’s left that is trying to push LA’s politics in a different direction.

Right now, the contention for a lot of voters in LA’s left is between, do I vote for Nithya Raman, someone who I at least agree with, but have to hold my nose on some issues, like police accountability, where she has fallen short in the eyes of some of her opponents? Or Rae Huang, who has a bolder vision? Some members of DSA LA have said that she has the true socialist platform amongst the two Democratic Socialist members. I should say that Rae Huang is only polling at about 5 percent. That’s nowhere near the second place spot to get into the runoff.

JU: We’re seeing a wide array of polling in this race, and there was a new poll that dropped on Thursday morning from Berkeley IGS, which had Bass, unsurprisingly, in the top spot with 26 percent. But in second place, this I think caught many people off guard, Nithya Raman at 25 percent, Spencer Pratt at 22, and Rae Huang at 9 percent, with 10 percent undecided. That presents a totally different outlook going into the general in this runoff. 

But Jess, I want to bring you back in here. Spencer Pratt was widely considered to have a guaranteed spot in the runoff because he had a ton of press, a ton of buzz, especially from outside LA. He had Trump’s endorsement. He’s been getting featured in national press.

One of the things that he really rose to prominence on was his criticism of Karen Bass, like Jonah said, for her, “handling of the fire.” But I think many people who live here felt that some of it was disingenuous because those fires were exacerbated by the Santa Ana winds. You can only do so much as mayor.

You can’t get helicopters up in the air in 80-mile-an-hour winds to fight those fires. So I think some of it came off as very disingenuous to people here in LA. But what are you hearing? What are you seeing from Spencer Pratt that puts him even in contention?

JW: For anyone who doesn’t know who Spencer Pratt is, he’s this former reality star from “The Hills.” He’s the guy who told People Magazine that he blew, I think, about $1 million on crystals, blowing through his $10 million reality television fortune on other lavish purchases. So that’s just a little bit of who Spencer Pratt is, the guy who yelled at women on television for about a decade.

But the reason he’s catching steam, I think, is twofold. I think, one, the fires are a very visceral moment. The mayor obviously has no control over the fires, but the fact that she was in Ghana during the Palisades fire did really anger a lot of people. The fact that she didn’t come home until the following day is a large part of that narrative.

The Housing Hunger Games

The other thing that’s happening is also people’s concerns over homelessness. What Spencer Pratt is pushing is we have to arrest, arrest, arrest, force treatment. But if you talk to most people on this issue, homelessness is caused by housing, unaffordability, and inequality in our system, and those are huge issues to tackle.

Spencer Pratt is not looking to tackle those issues. He is looking to move people out of spaces where he and his friends can see them. It’s also worth noting that his plans of mass arrest also aren’t going to even fix that problem. But what you’re looking at in Los Angeles is frustration over Karen Bass’s handling of these fires and this kind of visible problem of homelessness that frustrates people on both sides of this issue.

That’s what Spencer Pratt has really honed in on. I think it’s important to note that none of his solutions are going to fix any of those problems, but he is tapping into a real anger and a real frustration in the electorate.

JU: Yeah I think what’s interesting to watch is the national support for Spencer Pratt. But that comes at a cost for him because 80 percent of his donors don’t live in Los Angeles, according to analysis that I saw from one Gabe Sanchez. And sure, you can run ads, you can get press, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that people within the city, within your jurisdiction, would vote for you. 

What I found so interesting and Jonah, I want to bring you back in here, people dug up some of his old appearances or guest appearances on Infowars with Alex Jones, and during one of those interviews, he talked about his belief that climate change was a hoax.

A Climate Dystopia in Northern California

What I found so ironic is that this is somebody who made losing his home in the Palisades fire a centerpiece of his campaign, but we know that worsening climate change leads to more frequent and more severe wildfires. So on the one hand, you have somebody who believes it’s a........

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