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The frontier has moved. Buying tech and AI is easy. Turning it into measurable performance is not. In our work with leading companies, these transformations deliver ~20% EBITDA uplift—but only when they focus on a few domains and change how the work gets done. In Rewired, we show how capabilities turn technology into repeatable, compounding value.

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“For decades, new technologies have created more jobs than they destroyed. But A.I. is different. For the first time, the people building the technology are explicitly trying to automate all human labor. They may not succeed—but the fact that they are trying means government needs to take the possibility seriously. If there is even a meaningful chance that A.I. displaces a significant share of American workers, we need to prepare now—before it happens, not after.”
—Alex Bores, the pro-regulation New York congressional candidate whose new plan for an A.I. dividend is, ironically, not all that different from Sam Altman’s own proposal for robot taxes and A.I.-funded public wealth funds.

And now for the Maine event…

For more than a week, a first-of-its-kind bill to temporarily ban new A.I. data center construction has been sitting on the desk of Maine Gov. Janet Mills. In another era, the self-styled moderate might have already nixed the legislation. But the Democratic governor, who is also currently locked in a tight Senate primary race against the ultraprogressive oysterman Graham Platner, has come under enormous pressure from constituents on the left. Indeed, the scourge of data centers, which have been driving up electricity prices nationwide, has become an easy target for populists on both sides of the aisle. Mills has until April 24 to provide either a signature or a veto.

So far, the ambivalence surrounding A.I. has been largely bipartisan. According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, 65 percent of Americans oppose the construction of data centers in their communities, largely because of sensitivity to rising electricity prices. “What A.I. has that a lot of past technological trends didn’t have to the same extent is tangible, physical resources,” Anton Leicht, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me. “So it’s very easy to make these sorts of grievance-based policy ideas about the specific infrastructure. In a way, data centers were always going to be low-hanging fruit for channeling anti-A.I. sentiment.” The issue has found an engaged audience with Mainers, who have fiercely opposed—and successfully killed—a number of data center proposals in the past year.

And yet even in Maine, which is home to fewer than a dozen data centers, the political battle around their future is complex. Democratic State Rep. Melanie Sachs, the bill’s sponsor, told me she wanted to create the time and space to proactively “get it right here in Maine”—i.e., weigh the consequences of passing electricity costs to residents and business owners; manage questions around who should be responsible for necessary upgrades to the grid, and how that’s handled; contemplate pertinent tax issues; etcetera. “It touches so many different aspects that traditional economic opportunities don’t,” Sachs said. “We have a chance to put in thoughtful, proactive work ahead of time.” She insisted: “It’s not a moratorium. It’s just a pause until the council can do this work.”

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

The frontier has moved. Buying tech and AI is easy. Turning it into measurable performance is not. In our work with leading companies, these transformations deliver ~20% EBITDA uplift—but only when they focus on a few domains and change how the work gets done. In Rewired, we show how capabilities turn technology into repeatable, compounding value.

Learn More

The bill has its share of opponents, including Republicans and moderate Democrats who want to attract data center dollars and A.I. jobs—though data centers historically provide very few local jobs in the long term. “A statewide moratorium on data centers would discourage investment and send a signal that Maine is closed for business,” Dan Diorio, V.P. of state policy at the Data Center Coalition, said in a statement. “It would deprive local communities of the opportunity to compete for investment and jobs, while forcing Maine to relinquish significant long-term economic investment, high-wage jobs, and critical tax revenue to neighboring states.”

The rhetorical volleying reflects larger public uncertainty about data centers. According to Pew research, most Americans believe data centers have a negative impact on the environment and home energy costs, while also seeing them as a net positive for local jobs and tax revenue. One political strategist I spoke with found it notable that Mills, who’s fallen behind in her primary race, hasn’t signed the bill yet. Maybe, this strategist suggested, Mills is worried that a data center ban—even a temporary one—just isn’t good politics.

Fueled by local opposition, data center project cancellations or postponements have been increasing at a rapid clip, quadrupling to 25 last year before spiking to 34 in January and then 71 in February. And public resistance, whether to A.I. generally or localized construction specifically, has led to a surge of policy proposals similar to the one on Mills’s desk. Around a dozen statewide moratoriums have been proposed, including in Vermont, Virginia, Michigan, Maryland, Georgia, and South Carolina. While most of these haven’t really gone anywhere, some local governments—such as those of Monterey Park, California; New Orleans; and Chandler, Arizona—have successfully implemented ordinances that have effectively paused data center construction.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who recently proposed a sweeping, national data center moratorium with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is looking at Maine’s proposal as an early win in the war he’s begun against the A.I. megacorporations. “Maine just became the first state in the nation to pass a moratorium on new A.I. data centers,” he wrote in an X post Monday. “The American people increasingly understand that these revolutionary technologies have got to improve life for all of us, not just make the richest people in the world even richer.”

But Sanders’s quixotic proposal could also backfire. An aggressive, nationwide ban on data center development would likely incentivize a bunch of multitrillion-dollar market cap hyperscalers to move their compute capacity abroad, stripping the U.S. of regulatory leverage and complicating foreign policy, Leicht told me. Statewide bans, he added, would similarly prompt these companies to shop around, taking their tax dollars with them and punting these complex regulatory questions to a different municipality down the road. Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, for one, described Sanders’s more-extreme data center ban as “idiocy”; Sen. John Fetterman called it “China First.” Others, like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, seem more interested in staking out a middle ground where the industry can thrive without harming constituents.

One Democratic strategist told me that the “broader part of the party” is becoming increasingly interested in making data centers work for people, rather than preventing them altogether. Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan, has an entire policy agenda focused on ensuring data centers are “done right,” covering everything from ratepayer relief to local hiring requirements. Zach Dembo, who is running for Congress in Kentucky, said in a recent post that “we need to make sure all of us are able to share in the benefits” of data centers. “I don’t think it makes sense to outright ban any part of A.I.,” he added, “because otherwise, some other state is going to get those benefits. But we’ve got to do it better.”

Even in Maine, this seems to be the overriding mentality behind the bill on Mills’s desk. “I don’t think a straight ban would’ve been helpful,” Sachs told me, adding that if more data centers do come to Maine, she wants Maine to be ready for it. “I’m hopeful that this [legislation] meets the moment, that we can decide together what the regulatory environment looks like,” she said. But the details of that regulation, and how well it resonates with prospective voters, remain an open question—one that’s complicated by the A.I. industry’s own apocalyptic messaging and endless marketing and lobbying budgets. As Leicht noted drily, the industry has struggled to express a “particularly positive story for why exactly this should be happening.” Well, besides money.

That’s all for today. I’ll see you on Thursday.
Ian

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