Dina Powell McCormick, president of Meta, told the WSJ Tech Conference that Democratic wins in the recent midterm elections will make it harder for companies to build data centers. She added that the industry has “not done as good a job as we needed to explain the benefits of these investments.”
Why this matters
According to Powell McCormick, local opposition to data centers — an issue that featured in some midterm campaigns — is linked to broader public feelings about artificial intelligence (AI). “The visible sort of manifestation of AI is a data center, and it’s something that people can say, ‘I don’t want this in my community,’” she said.
Meta believes demonstrating the concrete benefits of both data centers and AI to local communities could help reverse negative consumer sentiment. Powell McCormick emphasized the company’s stated goal that technology should leave no one behind: “Mark [Zuckerberg, Meta CEO] is very ‘long human,’ and he’s betting on humans more than machines. That’s what we mean when we say the future is for everyone.”
How Meta approaches local deals
Powell McCormick recalled Meta’s two decades of experience building data centers and said the company needs substantial compute to run its social-networking products. She stated that Meta currently has data centers in 23 states, and that five planned projects — including one in Texas — are each planned at capacities of 1 gigawatt or more.
She described measures Meta uses to secure community support: the company pays for its own electricity, directs incremental tax revenues from the facilities to teachers and first responders, keeps the workforce local, and seeks bipartisan backing for projects.
Political risk and future outlook
Meta is concerned it could lose investments after politicians campaigned against data centers in the midterms. Powell McCormick said future projects will face greater scrutiny and will be evaluated against whether constituents actually want them.
Meta is betting on its AI investments, notably its consumer AI agent Muse, which Powell McCormick said currently has about 10 million users and which the company hopes can scale to serve billions. Even if that scale is not achieved, she argued the compute capacity itself will have value: “We’re getting calls every day to lease that compute [we’ve built], and so one way or another, we’re seeing a path to monetization.”
Conclusion
Meta warns that the post-midterm political environment and public unease about AI could make siting new data centers more difficult in the U.S. The company relies on demonstrating local benefits, hiring locally, and directing tax gains to community services to win support, while also exploring monetization of excess compute capacity.
