The Data Center Guy Wants This Election to be About Trans People
Elon Musk obviously hates trans people, but let's not pretend he has nothing to gain personally from a Republican win this fall
Elon Musk obviously hates trans people, but let's not pretend he has nothing to gain personally from a Republican win this fall
Last week, the Republican Senate Campaign Committee went up on the air with ads running ad nauseum claiming that Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico of Texas is "for they/them." It's a redux of the Trump campaign ad last cycle that sought to paint Kamala Harris as overly obsessed with trans issues and therefore, the claim goes, out of touch with the American public.
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Many pundits think the ads worked, despite the fact that Harris, and Democrats more generally, were almost completely silent about trans issues. The ad run started just as Talarico sought to distance himself from his past statements of support for trans issues in an interview with Fox News last week.
All of this might be moot regardless as polls show Democrats dominating almost everywhere in the country (except, oddly, New Hampshire). But not to be outdone, Elon Musk, the world's richest man and owner of SpaceX along with X the nothing app, has pledged the money to run millions of dollars in anti-trans ads on behalf of Republican candidates in the midterms.
Now Musk has a long track record of irrational transphobia, much of it likely linked to the estrangement between him and his trans daughter, model Vivian Wilson.
It would be easy to write off Musk's ad buy as purely a symptom of his own bigotry, but I think that would be a huge mistake. Musk's company has invested billions into building out several large data centers and have announced plans to expand with even more compute in the near future.
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Data centers are genuinely politically unpopular right now. In a recent poll reported by The Verge this week, 61% of people oppose constructing a data center in their neighborhoods, though voters favor neither party on the issue.
Given the state of AI and data center development today, this fall's midterms is likely the most important election cycle determining the future of data center regulation. The Trump administration has repeatedly said they will not stand in the way of data center construction and Trump himself posted on social media about how any community that doesn't want a data center is a community that wants to be "backwards and poor."
But generally, data centers don't create much economic benefit to local communities. It's not like an office building that would create jobs for people to work on site. it's just computer servers that don't require much supervision besides maybe one tech and a couple security guards.
Additionally, the large multinational corporations building these data centers will likely build in the town or city that gives them the best tax incentives, meaning the property taxes collected from a data center may not cover the costs of the town's expanded infrastructure needed to develop the property. Imagine a Walmart without the low prices and underpaid employees but with higher energy and water costs for you.
Now what do you think will happen with government oversight of Elon Musk's data centers if all of these Republican candidates win off the back of all of his anti-trans ads?
The answer is Musk gets his data centers and keeps getting richer.
So remember, every time you see one of those "Talarico is for they/them" ads, it's just Musk trying to build a data center down the road from you. He wants the election to be a referendum on how you feel about trans issues while trying to make your local community louder, more polluted, and more expensive with nothing in return.
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