How Data Centers are Undermining Consent of the Governed

I may be speaking for myself, but when I used to think about the AI apocalypse, I imagined hordes of robots and flocks of drones waging an endless war on humanity.

​Too bad it’s much more terrifying than that.

Because, as we’re finding out, the AI apocalypse’s inception resembles Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil far more than it does Octavia Butler’s novels - prescient as they are.

Rather than a Terminator-style action scene, our self-imposed imminent demise at the hands of artificial intelligence begins with undrinkable water spewing from kitchen taps and skyrocketing electric bills opened at the Saturday morning breakfast table. It’s not enslavement at the hands of androids which we need to fear first, but emissions from data centers that are already causing serious lung disease and premature death. And it’s not the nightmares of World War III that are keeping residents unlucky enough to live around data centers awake, but the noise and light pollution of these energy vampires that have to be lit, cooled, and patrolled 24/7.

Nor does AI’s opening barrage on humanity star Tom Cruise in a battle royal between man and machine. Instead, this war is being waged with seconded motions in the drab meeting rooms of city halls where tech giants are pushing data center development deals through without public approval or comment.

And this is the real danger.

Because the target of these attacks is democracy itself.

​In Saline Township, MI, the township board voted to reject a massive OpenAI and Oracle new Stargate data center FOUR TO ONE. And yet, despite overwhelming opposition by the will of the people, the project is underway.

In Festus, Missouri, the city council ignored the express will of the people and approved a $6B data center sprawling over 360 acres of wooded land.

And this is just to name a few of the hundreds if not thousands of attempts by AI companies to obfuscate the democratic process.

The end goal of AI is to capture the profits of industries from education to medicine. It is to steal human worth, value, and meaning for the benefit of the few. In short, they’re out to make the Visigoths look like amateurs.

But this wholesale theft requires denying citizens the ability to protest and protect against this all-out plundering. So they are attacking the one thing standing in their way: Consent of the governed.

But let’s be honest: this isn’t the first time in America that an enormous swath of the citizenry has been denied the ability to consent.

After all, women, more than 50% of America’s population, weren’t even allowed the vote until 137 years - almost a century and a half - after the country was founded. Even then, women’s consent was far from codified into law, and it wasn’t until 1993 - the same year Jurassic Park came out - that marital rape was outlawed by all 50 states.

​The recent debacle with disgraced Maine Senatorial Candidate Graham Platner proves that society as a whole still fails to fully acknowledge a woman’s consent - or lack thereof - as the determining factor in the trajectory of her life.

Given this multi-racial, cross-class, generational struggle for our consent to be recognized, acknowledged, and understood as our final word, it is no wonder that WOMEN are leading the fight against these data centers that are raping and pillaging American communities and our democracy.

With a jar of murky tap water on the House Floor, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez brought the trail of destruction left by data centers onto the national stage.

Environmental warrior Erin Brockovich has launched an all-out assault on data centers that makes me want to pull my Lynda Carter Wonder Woman costume out of storage and wrap my Lasso of Truth around these lying tech villains.

In a fight where information is power, under the leadership of Krystal Two Bulls, Honor the Earth has developed a data-center tracker that highlights proposed sites as well as key victories against data-center expansion.

Even former Tea Party leader and January 6th rally organizer Amy Kremer co-founded the group Humans First that has so far organized a nationwide day of action with over 100 protests spanning 42 states.​

Consent of the governed is the cornerstone of democracy. It is also the fundamental right that women are still fighting for at the ballot box and in our personal lives.

It is no wonder then, that ultra-male-dominated AI industry is taking aim at the consent of the governed. They know, just as patriarchal authoritarians have always known, that if you take away the capacity to consent, you deprive a person the possibility of freedom - because that is exactly how they have controlled women in America for the entire history of this nation.

Nor is it a surprise that they are waging this war on a municipal level because it is here, in our cities and towns, where democracy lives and dies. But it is also on a local women where women have historically had the greatest amount of control over their lives and their government whether through serving on the board of the PTA, showing up to city council meetings, or organizing on grassroots movements.

Women know the enemy. Women know the terrain. Women know how to survive and how to win.

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