Shaps flashes yellow light on data centers

This will be a cool take on a hot topic — data centers.

Hot because the ginormic energy vampires are mushrooming across the country, often against wishes of the local community the data centers want to be their host.

In June 2025, with the vision of greenbacks dancing in his eyes, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro prostrated himself before Amazon, proclaiming ”the future of AI is going to run right here through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

A few days ago, in an executive order (following polling that data centers are deeply unpopular) Shapiro tapped the brakes.

Data centers will be coming to the Commonwealth, but they will be walking, not running.

And that is how it should be — not a ban, but a contemplative move forward, with Big AI told to get local approval, offer transparency and pick up the bill for the damage it may inflict — to energy use, the environment, water usage, and noise.

The Inquirer calls it a “hard line stance.”

I call it common sense, and political sense. It’s like throwing rumble strips on the highway to slow traffic.

Even his Republican candidate for governor, Stacy Garrity, has called for a “pause” in the rush to build data centers, that are mega warehouses required by energy sucking Artificial Intelligence.

This is not to stop progress, we will need data centers. Like airports, everyone wants to live near one, but not near one, if you catch my drift.  The idea is to tame them.

Here’s what Shaps demands:

Local approval, removing all from the fast-track, signing contracts binding developers to transparency and environmental standards, banning nondisclosure agreements, mandating projects bring their own electricity and pay all costs associated with increased usage, the hiring of local labor.

Seems reasonable to me, and I see no need — other than political — for Shaps to have referred to them as “greedy developers.”

Cheap. How does he like the term “crooked politicians”? Don’t go from cheerleader to trash talker.

That’s Dem trash talk. How would he like “crooked politicians”?

Shaps ought to take a look at nearby Virginia, which is the nation's leader in data centers.

Not that there are no problems; there are always problems, but Virginia seems to have them under control.

There is no turning back from AI, and AI demands them concrete power forests.

They need to be near population centers to draw employees, yet far enough away to not disturb neighbors.

China has just opened — brace yourself — a wind-powered underwater data center, so how hard should it be for PA to stick one in a mountain?

Or somewhere else where it won’t disturb the neighbors, but give us the computing power we must have.