We Can Live With AI. But Not Like This. Here Is What Has To Change.

Melissa A Tamberella

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We Can Live With AI. But Not Like This. Here Is What Has To Change.

Melissa A Tamberella<br>Jun 12, 2026

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Nobody asked us. That is the part that keeps getting lost in every conversation about artificial intelligence and what it is doing to our jobs, our water, our electric bills and our communities. Nobody held a town hall. Nobody put it on a ballot. Nobody sat down with the people whose lives were about to be turned upside down and said here is what is coming, here is what we are going to do about it, and here is how we are going to make sure you are not left behind. The technology just arrived, the data centers just got built, the jobs just started disappearing, and everyone in power kept saying trust us, the benefits are coming. We are still waiting on the benefits. The costs showed up right on schedule.<br>I have been writing about this all week and every piece connects back to the same question. Can humans and artificial intelligence actually coexist in a way that works for everybody and not just the people who already have everything? The answer is yes. But not the way we are doing it right now. Right now we are doing it the worst possible way - full speed, no guardrails, no plan for the people getting displaced, no transparency for the communities getting a data center dropped in their backyard, and no honest conversation from anybody in power about what the finish line actually looks like. That has to stop and here is what has to replace it.<br>WAIT - WHY ARE THEY SCATTERED EVERYWHERE IN THE FIRST PLACE? ────────────────────────────<br>A lot of people are asking the same question I had - why are these things being built all over the place instead of in one location away from everybody? It is a smart question and the answer will make you angry because none of the reasons have anything to do with what is best for the communities absorbing them. There are four reasons and every single one of them is about money and speed.<br>First is power. Every data center needs an enormous amount of electricity hooked up immediately and no single location in America has enough available grid capacity to handle thousands of them at once. So companies fan out across the country hunting for wherever the power is available and the local government is easiest to work with. Second is speed - the AI race between Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and the rest of them is moving so fast that nobody is stopping to ask whether a location makes sense for the people living there. They find available land, available power and a local government they can work with quietly and they break ground before anyone knows what happened. Third is tax breaks - states and counties are in a bidding war offering billions in incentives to attract these facilities, so companies shop around for whoever gives them the sweetest deal and moves fastest. Virginia got so overrun it is now the most concentrated data center region in the entire country and its own residents are fighting back hard. Fourth and most important - nobody is in charge. There is no federal agency coordinating where these go. No national plan. No zoning authority at the federal level telling companies they cannot build next to a neighborhood school or pull water from a drought-stressed county. Every company just picks wherever works for them and moves before anyone can stop them.<br>Sixty seven percent of all new planned data centers are going into rural areas. Thirty nine percent are going into counties that currently have zero data centers - meaning communities with no experience, no existing regulations and no idea what is about to hit them. The South alone accounts for nearly half of all planned construction. Working class and rural communities are being targeted because the land costs less and the assumption is that the people there have less power to fight back. That assumption is wrong and the communities proving it wrong every week in packed council chambers across the country are the reason $98 billion in projects got blocked or delayed between March and June of last year alone.<br>THE SMARTER WAY TO DO THIS<br>────────────────────────────<br>Here is what a rational national approach would look like. Designate federal data center zones in areas with abundant renewable energy, access to water that can actually support the demand, distance from residential neighborhoods, and existing infrastructure that can handle the load. The desert Southwest has solar power and space. The upper Midwest has wind. Parts of the Pacific Northwest have hydroelectric. Build the massive training facilities - the ones that consume the most power and water - in places designed and resourced to handle them, with federal oversight, federal environmental standards and real community benefit agreements that put money back into the host region. Keep the smaller inference centers - the ones that just deliver AI...