德克萨斯州是AI数据中心建设的新中心。 可能已经崩溃了
一些世界上最大的AI基础设施项目正在德克萨斯州进行。 政治剧变会减缓他们的建设
德州是美国发展最快的数据中心市场，但席卷孤星国的蓝色波浪可能危及这一立场。
民主党人詹姆斯·塔拉里科赢得美国参议院席位，反对肯·帕克斯顿。 吉娜·伊诺霍萨在竞选州长时战胜了共和党现任者格雷格·阿博特。 在州一级，民主党24年来首次控制得克萨斯州议会。 塔拉里科和伊诺霍萨将数据中心作为中心议题
甚至在民调结束前，数据中心行业的内幕人士就注意到时代正在发生变化。 在星期二在弗吉尼亚州阿什本举行的业界DCD会议上，小组成员感叹德克萨斯州多年来一直是最容易建造的地方——直到9月。 这时，阿博特，也许看到越来越多的两党对这些设施感到厌恶，自己开始改变方向。
开发者称州长办公室停止回应他们的电子邮件。 9月21日，阿博特指示一个关键的州监管机构停止数据中心许可。 许多参加这次会议的小组成员都期望这意味着现有项目可能会放慢速度，新的项目可能会完全停止。
当选州长似乎急于这样做。 Hinojosa支持在2023年对数据中心实行减税，作为提升建筑工作的方法，但在竞选期间，她开始推动全面暂停。
这对Big Tech的超规模人员来说是个问题，他们有雄心勃勃的州内人工智能培训设施计划。 德克萨斯州已经开始的项目规模很大。 Shackelford县的星门边境数据中心预计将服务1,820兆瓦——大约相当于全国最大的数据中心，田纳西州的SpaceQos Colossus 2，以及目前在德克萨斯州运营的最大数据中心的两倍多。 Nexus Hubbard也正在建设中，主要服务于Anthropic，计划规模为6400兆瓦，是美国第二大数据中心，仅落后于路易斯安那州Meta的Hyperion项目。
民主党人有可能下令推迟这些项目或暂停新的项目新增，使AI建设可能拖延的焦虑情绪越来越大。 银行和贷款人已经越来越挑剔他们回来的项目。 而鉴于数据中心的建设程度支撑着目前经济的增长这些力量加起来可能会产生连锁效应
不过，全国各地的选民在中期选举中是毫不含糊的，他们向国家办事处传达了从州选票问题到所有问题的类似信息。 选民支持努力保护付息人不受数据中心造成的电费上涨的影响，他们赞成对新的数据中心实行一些更大的禁令。 如果我们需要更多的说服力，大科技公司已经放弃了出售选民的努力，认为AI的充裕能让医疗保健更好，商品更便宜，科学突破更常见，这就是事实。
一个关键问题是，拥有最大数据中心存在的德克萨斯州县是否是这些民主党人当选的原因之一，或者反数据中心投票是否来自其他地方。
这很复杂：大部分数据中心正在建设的县都在达拉斯附近达拉斯县和离它最近的其他人预测会是蓝色的但附近的埃利斯县允许建立数据中心的要求卡梅伦县(Cameron County)靠近该州南部边境，但是，米切尔县和斯库里县(Scurry County)是德克萨斯州西部一连串项目所在地，它们都走红了。
这很重要，因为州内没有一个办事处来决定项目是进行还是停止。 决策往往反映市政府、县官员和州政府之间的相互作用。
地方官员对数据中心的开发有些发言权，而推动暂停的民主党人也可能面临支持他们一些竞选的建筑工会的回击。 因此，虽然蓝色的波浪在理论上为德克萨斯州数据中心拼写了一个死亡钟，但选举获胜者可能会发现，在他们上任后，追随他们的反对比竞选要复杂得多。
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别被这个夏日的爱尔胡同所愚弄
关于AGI的无呼吸声称和新能力在严格审查下迅速瓦解。
美国花费数十亿用于边境监视。 为何不能在人们死前抓住他们？
监视塔日益由大赦国际提供动力，它保证对过境点作出更快的反应。 我们对塔台附近死亡事件的调查发现，它们未能交付。
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Texas was the new epicenter of the AI data center buildout. That might be kaput.
Some of the largest AI infrastructure projects in the world are underway in Texas. A dramatic political shift could slow their construction—and deepen concerns about the economics of the AI boom.
Texas is the fastest-growing data center market in the US and ground zero for Big Tech's largest AI buildouts. But the blue wave that swept the Lone Star State may jeopardize that position.
Democrat James Talarico won the US Senate seat against Ken Paxton. Gina Hinojosa won the race for governor against the Republican incumbent, Greg Abbott. At the state level, Democrats will take control of the Texas House for the first time in 24 years. Talarico and Hinojosa made data centers a central issue, discussing them constantly on the campaign trail.
Even before the polls closed, insiders in the data center industry noticed that the times were changing. At the industry's DCD conference in Ashburn, Virginia, on Tuesday, panelists lamented that Texas had been the easiest place to build for years—until September. That's when Abbott, perhaps seeing the increasingly bipartisan distaste for these facilities, began changing course himself.
Developers said the governor’s office had stopped responding to their emails. On September 21, Abbott directed a key state regulator to halt data center permits. Many panelists at the conference were expecting this to mean that existing projects might be slowed and new ones could be halted altogether.
The governor-elect indeed seems eager to do that. Hinojosa supported tax breaks for data centers in 2023 as a way to boost construction jobs, but during her campaign she began pushing for a full-fledged moratorium.
That would be a problem for the hyperscalers of Big Tech, which have ambitious plans for AI training facilities in the state. The scale of projects already underway in Texas is massive. The Stargate Frontier data center in Shackelford County is projected to serve 1,820 megawatts—about as much as the nation’s largest data center, SpaceX’s Colossus 2 in Tennessee, and more than twice as much as the largest data center currently operating in Texas. Nexus Hubbard, also under construction and intended mostly to serve Anthropic, has a planned size of 6,400 megawatts and is the second-largest data center being built in the US, behind only Meta’s Hyperion project in Louisiana.
The potential for Democrats to order delays to these projects or moratoriums on new ones adds to growing anxiety that the AI buildout could stall. Banks and lenders are already getting pickier about the projects they back. And given the extent to which the data center buildout is underpinning growth in the economy right now, those forces combined could have ripple effects.
Voters around the country, though, were unambiguous in the midterms, sending a similar message on everything from state ballot questions to national offices. Voters supported efforts to protect ratepayers from increases in their electricity bills caused by data centers, and they favored some larger bans on new data centers altogether. If we needed any more convincing that Big Tech has fumbled its effort to sell voters on the idea that AI-powered abundance will make health care better, goods cheaper, and scientific breakthroughs more common, this was it.
A key question is whether the Texas counties with the largest data center presence were part of the reason these Democrats got elected, or if the anti-data-center vote came from elsewhere.
It’s complicated: The counties where much of the data center buildout is happening are around Dallas. Dallas County and others closest to it predictably went blue, but nearby Ellis County, which leads in permitting requests for data centers, went for Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton. Cameron County, near the state’s southern border, is a hot spot for data centers and voted blue in the midterms, which was a shift. But Mitchell County and Scurry County, where a bunch of projects in west Texas are located, went red.
This is a big deal, because no single office in the state decides whether a project goes ahead or is halted. Decisions often reflect an interplay between city governments, county officials, and state offices.
Local officials who have some say over data center development may resist sweeping restrictions from the state. And Democrats pushing for a moratorium might also face pushback from the construction unions that supported some of their campaigns. So while the blue wave spells a death knell for Texas data centers in theory, election winners may find that following through on their opposition once in office is much more complicated than campaigning on it.
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