Learn the Tool. Judge the Plant
Late Friday night my brother and I spent nearly an hour on artificial intelligence, data centers, jobs, water, and electricity. We do not usually spend Friday that way. The subject was on his mind.
It is on many people’s minds.
A teacher at a noted boys’ school in Alexandria spoke with real heat about keeping AI out of the classroom. My women friends have said they are uneasy. The subject came up around a wedding. At a university chapel even the title of the talk suggested the old worry: technology is destroying human relationships.
Meanwhile rural Texans are putting No to the data centers on their fences.
People are being handed two scripts at once. On one side is extinction. On the other is “whoever wins AI wins.” Neither script measures a well, a rate increase, or what gets left on a county road.
We can.
The tool is not the plant.
AI is software running on machines. The data center is the warehouse, the water, the substations, the power contract, the tax deal, and eventually the question of what happens when the boxes go dark. Confuse those two and you get a stampede. Either AI is evil and the laptops must be smashed, or AI is the future and a county must take whatever hall is set in front of it.
I refuse both.
Learning the tool takes formation in both directions. We need the science, the engineering, the money, the law, and the local ground. We also need to ask what the technology does to the human person, to stewardship, to the common good, and to the moral order.
In my own house AI has not produced a job apocalypse. The young people I know who use it are busier, not idle. I am busier too. That is witness, not a labor study. It is enough to doubt the most breathless prediction.
The physical plant still has to answer for itself.
A responsible data hall should close or responsibly manage its water loop; add power rather than take it from the community; pay for the electrical infrastructure its operation requires; distinguish temporary construction jobs from permanent local work; pay its taxes instead of demanding a holiday; obtain real community consent; and fund its removal and restoration before construction begins.
These are no longer only arguments on a blog.
Citizens saw the load coming. They live closer to the ground than Austin or Washington. They put the signs on the fences, filled the hearings, and forced the water and the rate question into public view. That is how a constitutional republic is supposed to start: the people who will inherit the remains speak first.
Governor Greg Abbott then did the ordinary work of office. He directed Texas regulators to require data centers to fund their electrical infrastructure rather than pass the cost to families. His standards call for water reuse, onsite generation or other measures that ease the draw on ERCOT, disclosure of public incentives, neighborhood protections, and more transparency.¹ That does not guarantee a good plant. It gives the county a better shot than silence. Attaboy, Governor. Thank you.
The existing Texas tax preference still deserves a hard look. A qualifying data center can receive a state sales-tax exemption for ten or fifteen years after committing at least $200 million in capital and creating only twenty qualifying jobs.² Twenty jobs may matter in a small town. They are not enough, by themselves, to close the questions about water, power, taxes, and land.
President Trump is right that American AI leadership is a strategic and economic matter, and that a willing community may receive real investment from a well-designed project. A possible opening is not a blank check. A county may still judge the particular hall on its water, its watts, and what it leaves behind.
Vice President Vance put the necessary condition on the table when he said companies building data centers should build the power plants with them and put power back into the grid. The administration’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge likewise calls on the large technology firms to build, bring, or buy new generation and cover the infrastructure upgrades their facilities require.³ Praise the act. The community still holds the right to say yes or no to the pad on its own ground.
Small advanced nuclear reactors may in time give data halls the steady onsite power they need. Idaho National Laboratory is already looking at advanced-reactor and microreactor uses for energy-heavy facilities, including data centers.⁴ Promising is not magical. Licensing, cost, fuel, security, and waste still have to be answered.
We already know, from offshore installations in the Gulf of America, from aircraft carriers, and from nuclear submarines, that engineers can design remote systems that carry their own load. Those are not tidy commercial twins of a county data hall. They show that serious engineering begins by accounting for the whole system.
I start from the view that large plants should sit near the people and institutions that chiefly use them whenever that is technically responsible. Urban industrial districts, brownfields, and even underground construction ought to be examined before rural land is treated as the default destination for urban demand.
A rural county may still choose a project. If it receives lasting work, infrastructure, tax revenue, and reliable power without surrendering its water or the character of the place, that can be a genuine opening. Consent is not ignorance either way. A community may say yes. It may also say no.
If responsibility raises costs and cuts the margin, too bad. Too sad. Responsibility is the price of admission.
We are quick to name the moments when government pushes past the people. We should be equally willing to say when the people speak, the office answers with concrete rules, and the republic is working as designed. The process does not guarantee the outcome. It is still the better shot.
A constitutional republic depends on citizens who can do more than repeat the script handed to them. Formation makes judgment possible. Judgment makes self-government possible.
Take this sentence to the county meeting:
A community should not be required to subsidize a private plant, surrender its essential resources, and inherit its remains.
Learn the tool. Judge the plant. Protect the people who must live with the decision.
Notes
- Office of the Texas Governor, “Governor Abbott Directs PUC and ERCOT to Shield Texans from Data Center Infrastructure Costs,” June 10, 2026; and “Governor Abbott Announces Galaxy, Compass Datacenters and Montera Infrastructure Commit to Comply with His Data Center Standards,” August 13, 2026.
- Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, “State Sales Tax Exemption for Qualifying Data Centers and Qualifying Large Data Center Projects.”
- The White House, “President Donald J. Trump Advances Energy Affordability with the Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” March 4, 2026. For President Trump’s and Vice President Vance’s August remarks, see Emily Chang, “‘Let Data Reign’: Trump Goes All In on Controversial Data Centers,” ABC News, August 31, 2026.
- Idaho National Laboratory, “Bridging the Gap for Powering Data Centers.”