Data Center Revolt bus tour stops in Lincoln

Data centers have become a hot-button issue for virtually every politician in the country as proposals for the hyperscale server warehouses continue to spark arguments amongst community members.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly backed the idea of developing data centers, most notably writing late last month “the only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. (sic) should not want Data Centers (sic) is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.”

That’s a position Amy Kremer, an ardent Trump supporter who helped organize the president’s rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, disagrees with.

Lincoln was one of the latest stops on the AI Data Center Revolt bus tour organized by Kremer’s Humans First, “a conservative organization that is dedicated to ensuring American AI dominance delivers a better life for everyday people.” The tour started in Austin, Texas, on Sept. 12 and will travel through most of the country until it wraps up Oct. 5 in California.

“I support the president. I have been one of his biggest supporters, I’m the founder of Women for Trump, the founder of Women for America First. I think he’s been an incredible president and he’s done amazing things for this country, and I’m grateful for that, but I just disagree with him on this,” Kremer told Illinois Times. “I hope that he hears from the American people when he’s out on the campaign trail and hopefully, he’ll moderate his position.”

Kremer did not participate in the ensuing Jan. 6. insurrection on the Capitol and her organization issued a statement condemning the attack that took place after Trump told supporters: “We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country, so let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

More recently, Kremer was voted to be Georgia’s Republican National Committeewoman by the state’s Republican delegates – a title she still holds.

“We were all elected. We aren’t just picked and plucked and put there, so we all have a constituency, and you pretty much have to be living under a rock to not see where the American people are on this (issue),” she said. “The technology is being shoved down our throats – nobody’s asked for it. The American people are not happy about it – nobody voted for it. It’s being shoved down our throats now with these data centers and the infrastructure that’s being built out across the country.”

Still, Humans First is not an entirely anti-AI organization. The organization’s home website touts that “artificial intelligence is set to fundamentally change our lives… how we work, how we raise our children, and how a country is run.”

Kremer’s organization argues there should be more local say in the development of artificial intelligence models and data center buildouts. She’s promoting a small-but-strong government approach where counties and cities integrate local protections – Humans First is against the idea of federal or state moratoriums, arguing they would tie the hands of local officials.

“We’re not anti-data center, we’re not pro-data center,” Kremer said. “I’m saying the people in (those) communities should have a say in the process… (we’re) focused on putting guardrails and safety mechanisms in place to protect our children, our jobs, our land, our resources.”

Local opposition

Renee Sommer, a real estate broker in Logan County, visited the bus tour. She told IT she’s opposed to data centers, mostly citing environmental and wildlife concerns.

“I do not want a data center in Latham, Illinois, and data centers are a new dividing point with people: they’re either for them or against them,” she said. “It’s too new of a field – the major data centers – everybody keeps comparing them to these small storage centers, it’s not the same.”

AI models demand far more power than traditional cloud computing servers, which has led to a boom in constructing hyperscale data centers across the country.

“I’ve said this to the county board many meetings – I don’t have children. I don’t have grandchildren. What happens to this Earth when I’m gone is somebody else’s problem, but it’s sad that I care about what’s going to happen to your children, your grandchildren, and your grandchildren’s children, and you don’t.

“Logan County really does not have – and I hate to say this – but they do not have the (necessary) knowledge on that board, as most counties do not. They don’t have environmentalists that live in the county, they don’t have environmental engineers,” she said.

Logan County Indivisible, a group of residents who have been opposing potential data center proposals near Latham, didn’t attend the bus tour.

Rachel Stechman, founder of the group and vice chair of the Logan County Democratic Central Committee, told IT she didn’t feel comfortable participating in the bus tour because of Kremer’s involvement with the Jan. 6, 2021 rally in Washington, D.C.. However, she acknowledged that the bus tour is an example of how data center opposition is truly bipartisan, arguing people want to make sure they’re safe.

“The vast majority of these municipalities that are having these data centers thrust upon them just aren’t aware of all of the different issues that will come up in the process of both building and operating the data centers,” Stechman said. It feels a “little bit like putting the cart before the horse, they don’t quite know what problems to anticipate (or what) to write those ordinances about.

“I always just like to emphasize the enormity of this issue, that it’s not just in our little corner of the country. It’s all over,” she said. “We definitely do have a handful of board members who are actively working to properly protect the people. I’m sure that for some people, just proper regulation would be enough. The issue is just that our definition of proper and the board’s definition seems to be kind of different.”