If I could break apart the debate over data centers (sic), it would be in five parts.

First and foremost is energy — Virginia has punted on energy for the last six decades and the chickens are coming home to roost. Someone in state government should be honest enough with the voters to explain the problem.

Second are the data centers, something we have had in Virginia since 1990. There is an explosion of growth in data centers in Virginia for several reasons. Not only is the aorta of the internet right here in Northern Virginia, but there are four different types of data center — some of which are focused on artificial intelligence, most of which are focused on streaming data and private use, and a few of which are localized for hospitals and the like.

Third is artificial intelligence. For all the hand wringing about data centers, it is a distraction against the very real presence of AI and the rush to AGI — that is to say, superintelligent machines — and the rush to achieve it. In many ways, we are in a race against China and Russia to get there first. In other ways, as AI infiltrates so many aspects of our day-to-day lives, we are going to eventually have to deal with the question of technology and freedom becoming inseparably linked (pace George Grant).

Fourth will be the changing nature of work and economy. By 2027, the Optimus robot will cost $15,000 and replicate much of the drudgery of labor, from warehousing to lawnmowing to folding the laundry to taking care of the elderly in nursing homes. Far cheaper than paying a human a minimum wage. The impact in high-skilled roles is already being felt. New associate lawyers are no longer in demand, as three using AI do the job just as well as twelve. Do not imagine there is a job safe from AI — so sayeth the architects of the future.

Whether or not we get to AGI is a question still up for debate (we will get close, but never quite there unless we cheat). Until the architects figure out the “knowing that” vs. “knowing how” problem — namely that computers can only know that, but embodied persons (that’s us) can also know how — then we are a long ways off from resolving the question.

The problem right now is that we are being presented with an AI utopia where all of the things we are good at as humans are about to be done better by a $15,000 robot or an AI that can do it for the price of the energy it takes to boil a cup of coffee.

Fifth, final, and perhaps most important? The surveillance state. Since 9/11, Americans have tolerated a great many intrusions in the name of public safety, only for marketers and other bad actors to use them to create “patterns of life” and psychological profiles on us as consumers. Flock cameras are controversial because they are visible; smartphones aren’t so much and yet they hoover in vast amounts of personal information and data on just about every move we make.

This is a problem a lot bigger than political parties, and it is going to take more than political leadership to pilot the new future.

Voters Aren’t Dumb: If You Explain Things, People Really Do Come Around

Now someone needs to shoot the rest of us straight on artificial intelligence and the economy. The short version is that it is happening no matter what.

One could even take this argument backwards: we live in a dangerous and complicated world, the surveillance state and international politics are driving the charge towards AI and whoever gets there first wins, this race will change our economy and our work patterns, which require data centers for not just the national security concerns but the economic patterns that most certainly will improve our way of life, and it is going to take some reconsideration on energy and how we provide it.

So we should have questions about it all.

What if we just ban data centers and keep the Trojan Horse from entering the city? States like New York are on that path and Virginia is most certainly being forced to consider such options — but it doesn’t slow down the inevitable:

We buy days — not years — and certainly not enough for a pause.

What most Americans want to know is “who benefits?” from data centers. Forget the tangible economic advances that come with the promise of AI (sic), but when you boil it down into the property tax benefits, workforce development, pushing the cost of energy improvements onto data centers themselves, and explaining either the efficiency of using water or alternate methods such as alcohol?

It’s almost as if you explain a thing to people, they get it. Weird, right?

Here’s the other concern. Technology should be in service to humanity, not humans in service to technology. In fact, even people who don’t use AI have the same complaints about data centers, but come along once the conditional benefits are explained:

The lack of partisan or ideological resistance to persuasion got us thinking, maybe it’s the usage of AI by voters that could stop a proposed conditional benefit from moving them? But that doesn’t appear to be the case either. Once again, there are some interesting quirks. Voters who never use AI are curiously more persuaded to allow a local data center by addressing grid costs and improvements. They also out very opposed. Yet this group still shows enormous shifts when presented with all of these conditions; their staunch opposition narrows considerably. The starting position is real and correlates with usage, just like partisanship and ideology. But the size of the shift doesn’t correlate at all. Persuasion is considerable across all groups.

For those who might argue that this is a series of kickbacks or socialism-lite or a method of bribing the public, consider the alternative view that new technologies must have a glide path to connecting them to the public. You wouldn’t introduce automobiles without roads. You wouldn’t build sanitation without pipes. Eisenhower forced the electric companies to provide services to rural America. You wouldn’t even build factories without the education system necessary to create technicians.

So we build the sluices necessary for people to adapt and even thrive on the new technology in service to communities and families, not so that we can all plug ourselves into the Matrix:

Now I think most people agree with the sentiment that technology should work for us, even if the autistic savants of our tech-bro future don’t quite agree with what that means.

Press harder and the solutions become more clear. What folks want is an answer to a very simple question. How will this new technology improve our lives, our families, and our communities?

Yet if you pluck that chord, it resonates through the entire system and to the real root of the most objections: the surveillance state.

Some of this has to do with the changing nature of our politics. Once upon a time it was left and right; today the differences are up and down — or rather black and green, where one side looks to technology and the other side looks to nature. One can already see the odd alliances of conservative/traditionalist types linking arms with progressive greens, while liberal technocrats are cozying up to conservative free marketeers. Is this the new realignment? Perhaps not — but as the public debate catches up to private equity, we are going to have to have the conversation.

And soon.

What Oversight Might Look Like

Governor Spanberger is going to face challenges no other Virginia governor will have faced, not just with the geopolitical impact of World War Three but with the unique challenges and strengths Virginia has to offer. The Port of Virginia is a major hub for the eastern seaboard of the United States, the aorta of the internet is right here in Northern Virginia, and despite the embarrassment of scandal we do indeed have some of the best public and private colleges and universities in the world. We are a center of defense contracting technology and innovation, we have the largest shipbuilding capacity in the United States, and we are the home of several military and intelligence installations which create careers and shape realities.

Spanberger was elected as a moderate and holds the reputation as a moderate even still. Republicans by and large continue to look and hope for that moderate to govern as such rather than merely wear the robes, despite the pull from an increasingly dominant progressive and even socialist left.

Yet getting the answer right on artificial intelligence and data centers won’t just define her political career, but it will set the tone of the Virginia economy for the next 50 years. If we get this question right, then we become the hub on which every other regional economy centers.

If we get this question wrong, the hub moves to Raleigh.

What is needed is a Ministry of All Talents approach. Not just tech leaders or engineers, but labor unions and professors, business leaders big and small, developers and community leaders, hell — throw in a writers’ collective, a throng of teachers, publishers and journalists, the much underutilized and vastly excellent Virginia Community College System (VCCS), and start gathering in all of the challenges and concerns — and then start addressing them.

This cannot be a nonpartisan affair. We are going to need 50 people in the room willing to form and be assigned to committees. We want something unwieldy, messy, complicated, and at the same time realistic, optimistic, and willing to seek answers rather than play prevent offense.

What should they produce? A single set of guidelines for local government in terms of what they should expect from data centers. A revamped set of statewide guidelines that make it easy to build and easy to start small businesses. Replicate the success of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in starting new businesses and provide a path to workforce development through the VCCS. Changes in curriculum in order to adapt AI to the classroom and offer bespoke learning environments to students. Make AI and coding an alternative to our foreign language requirements (or make them a standalone requirement). Make philosophy and bioethics a required senior year course in Virginia high schools. Fix the culture problem — the problem isn’t what we are talking about, but how we are talking about it.

If the General Assembly has the contaminant of performing for voters, then appoint a task force that doesn’t have to perform for anyone and can come up with the best ideas.

Of course, this is going to involve weekends, hotels, dining, and time. You can’t just cram everyone into a room and expect them to gel. Yet I don’t think that this is a multi-year conclave where we shut everyone in a room and wait for white smoke from the Sistine Chapel. Something that can give the General Assembly and the Governor’s Mansion (and most of all, Virginians) something to chew upon and then offer solutions and guidance to local governments — that’s the goal.

Virginia in the Vanguard?

Either way, the future is coming whether we want it or not. The rush to AGI has China in the rearview mirror. The new economy is coming whether we welcome the change or not, so the best solution moving forward is to meet the change with open arms and full sails.

Governor Spanberger should lead the charge on this. So could many of our political leaders in an open and bipartisan way. One is reminded of the heady days where Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling was the leading tip-of-the-spear when it came to technology innovation and business growth in the commonwealth.

While Bolling was by no means a ‘czar’ in the sense of a task force, there are enough questions surrounding AI to start demanding a few answers. The problems are already larger than individual communities or local government. Virginia can and should provide model processes that take full advantage of the future, and whether we call that person an ‘AI czar’ or some other grand title, Virginians are asking for leadership here. Time being the one resource we cannot get back, now is the time to provide it.