TechPulse USA

Trump Backs Local Approval for Data Centers — and Payment Update, Oct. 25: The politics behind Trump’s Perry answer keep moving in his direction — and against the industry. A Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll conducted Oct. 5–7 among 2,527 registered voters (margin of error ±1.95%) found 36% want states to limit or pause new data centres, 35% would allow them only with restrictions on electricity, water, land or infrastructure, and just 18% favour tax incentives to attract them. Separately, Stateline counts 39 data-centre-related ballot measures across eight states on November ballots, including proposals to ban facilities, change zoning rules or require voter approval. Trump named no approval process or payment figure in Perry; the ballot box may supply both before Washington does. By Daniel Rao | Washington, D.C. | October 25, 2026 Donald Trump went to Georgia to campaign, and came back with the clearest concession yet that the artificial intelligence boom has a neighbourhood pr...

  By Daniel Rao | Washington, D.C. | October 21, 2026 Photo: Inside a US data centre — server racks at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. (CC0, via Wikimedia Commons) Donald Trump has a new growth strategy for the most unpopular buildings in America: pay off the neighbours. The president took to Truth Social in the small hours of Wednesday morning with a pitch aimed squarely at the companies racing to build artificial-intelligence data centres — and at the angry towns being asked to host them. If companies want their data centres to be popular, Trump wrote, they should cut the locals a cheque. A "dividend", in his words. The post then widened into something much stranger: a claim that every large new data centre in America has already been "mandated" by him to generate its own electricity. Read that again. Not subsidised. Not encouraged. Mandated. By him. In a social-media post. "New and large, in some cases gigantic, Data ...