THIS WEEK IN AI
Candice Bryant Consulting
Strategic Intelligence & Public Affairs
AI'S NIMBY MOMENT
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has called this the largest infrastructure buildout in human history. But with U.S. data center energy needs set to nearly triple by 2030, local communities are pushing back against rising utility costs, massive water usage, and the constant hum of cooling fans.
This week, I'm tracking state and local opposition to data centers, the emergence of a "shadow grid," and India's bid to woo big tech.
For those already across the headlines, skip to "What I'm Watching" for insights, including why for once the bottleneck isn't chips, it's power.
300 BILLS IN SIX WEEKS — In the first six weeks of 2026, legislators on both sides of the aisle filed more than 300 bills across 30 states to limit or regulate data centers — including moratoriums, rollbacks of tax incentives, and new requirements that data centers pay the full cost of their grid connections.
THE SHADOW GRID — Tech companies including OpenAI, Meta, and Oracle are building what the Washington Post has called a "shadow grid" — private, off-grid power plants fueled primarily by natural gas. Dozens of projects are planned across Texas, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Utah, Ohio and Tennessee. The most efficient gas turbines are back-ordered for years, forcing developers to use older, more polluting equipment. Gas plants also typically spend a third or more of the year down for maintenance, and data centers run around the clock. One project in West Texas will consume more power than all of Chicago.
INDIA'S BID FOR THE WORLD'S DATA — At the AI Impact Summit in Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Modi positioned the country as a global destination for AI infrastructure, declaring "We invite the whole world's data to reside in India." In a bid to attract the next wave of AI computing investment, India has offered foreign cloud providers zero taxes through 2047 on services sold outside the country if they run those workloads from Indian data centers.
WHAT I'M WATCHING
The U.S. has chips, but China has power. For decades, China has been expanding electricity capacity to fuel industrialization and urbanization. Today it has a surplus and generates more than twice as much electricity as we do.
Here at home, power demand was flat for 20 years. Our grid and consumer cost-sharing models were built for a different era, and AI simply broke the math.
The costs are now landing on regular people. A 57-year-old on disability in Baltimore saw his electric bill jump 80 percent in three years due in part to data centers 50 miles away in Northern Virginia.
Because we're asking everyday people to bear the costs, the biggest infrastructure buildout in human history is trapped in local zoning disputes. That local frustration is what's driving 300 bills in six weeks.
The White House is urging tech companies to bring their own power, but a "shadow grid" only partially solves the problem. Most off-grid data centers still require backup power and compete with local utilities for the same scarce equipment and skilled labor.
Nuclear has been floated as another option. The ADVANCE Act passed with a near-unanimous vote in 2024, signaling nuclear enjoys rare bipartisan support. But despite the Navy's 70-year safety record with nuclear submarines, civilian nuclear power still faces a massive PR problem. And safety advocates warn that fast-tracking approvals risks undermining the public trust nuclear needs to succeed.
Without a clear path forward at home, the industry is looking elsewhere. If we can't build here, compute could move offshore to countries like India.
When most people hear the phrase "Not In My Backyard," they think of noise, pollution, and aesthetics. Those concerns are real. But AI's NIMBY moment is increasingly a fight over shared costs. How we approach it will have lasting consequences.
Every major infrastructure buildout in American history has eventually had to answer the same two questions — who pays, and who benefits. We haven't answered either yet.
— Candice
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