The public reaction against the technological advances brought by artificial intelligence began with data centers — those loud, hulking utility eaters that provide few permanent jobs in a community. However, as the spring of 2026 entered a summer that would never end, the great tech backlash rapidly expanded to Flock Safety cameras and to AI more broadly. It is now a set of issues blobbed together that equate to fundamental doubt about whether the promise of technological advance through AI is promising at all.
Moreover, partly thanks to President Trump’s hard-headedness on the issues, the data center/Flock/AI issue joins the economy, the war in Iran and corruption as a driver of the 2026 election and is emerging as THE issue of the 2028 presidential race.
As big tech’s impact on their neighbors became more obvious, the backlash began in earnest. These data centers became a traditional NIMBY issue like the numerous land-use issues that had preceded it. However, the passion around data centers, even for people not facing imminent threat of a new one moving into their town, showed it was something different and bigger. Data centers are now a public-opinion loser in every state.
Close to home, in a 2nd Congressional District survey in August, the Talk Business & Politics-Hendrix College poll took up data center regulation as the Pulaski County Quorum Court’s debate over this hot topic was in full tilt. Specifically, a question asked respondents’ views on “the construction of a data center in your area to support artificial intelligence, or AI, technology in the U.S.” In the 2nd District, 7 in 10 voters either “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed the notion, with 52% in the “strongly” camp, slightly higher than national numbers.
What is distinctive about the data center issue is the universality of opposition to them. As shown in the 2nd District data, Republicans are slightly more open to their arrival than Democrats or independents, but a majority of GOPers are opposed. Although different age groups, education levels, geographies, genders and races have all had emphatically different worldviews about politics during the Trump era, they agree on this topic. Opposition by the youngest voters is perhaps the most telling, since younger adopters have historically driven technological innovation.
Daily users of AI technology were less opposed to having data centers in their communities. However, even there, a majority of daily users still didn’t want one close by. Somewhat counterintuitively, it was young voters who oppose data centers emphatically who are most likely to be daily AI users.
Seeing the antipathy toward data centers, politicians began to shift in their views. Generally, Democrats were more elegant in their embrace of opposition, from Pulaski County judge candidate Wendell Griffen to U.S. Senate candidate for Michigan Abdul El-Sayed, who put it simply, “[P]eople really effing hate data centers.” Republicans often tried to dance away from data centers, but had more difficulty because of their deep reliance on political money from the tech industry. In perhaps the most cynical approach to data centers to date, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott reacted to anger about data centers by issuing an executive order placing a moratorium on data center construction in the state until just after Election Day.
From data centers, the AI backlash quickly spread to Flock Safety cameras, the AI-driven cameras that process photos of all license plate numbers and other details about cars no matter their engagement in any criminal activity. The linkage of such “crime-fighting” tools to AI has suddenly reframed the debate as an invasion into the privacy of innocent folks.
In mid-September, I was in Mayflower to moderate a League of Women Voters forum in a community where the two Flock cameras at use had been ripped up, along with the city’s contract with the company. I asked a question about the issue and the role of technology in crime fighting more generally. To a person, the candidates for city office agreed that there was no role for this technology in their city, and “invasion of privacy” was regularly used as the reason. I don’t know these particular candidates’ personal views on national politics, but I know their neighbors went for Donald Trump by 41 points in 2024. The candidates’ answers could have been those of candidates in the most liberal enclave of Brooklyn, albeit with different accents.
This shows the extraordinary way in which these issues reflect the horseshoe theory, where those on the far left and far right come together to become the most emphatic opponents on a topic. Now we are seeing statewide candidates in conservative states like Montana centering their campaigns on the Flock camera issue.
And then there is the issue of regulating AI more broadly. Suddenly, American AI executives have witnessed a series of disconcerting threats, including biological weapons and autonomous warfare, hinted at by the actions of the Frankenstein they helped to create. As a result, these AI execs have called for an industrywide slowdown and increased federal regulations to put up industry guardrails before it gets out of hand.
AI accelerationists, however, have Trump’s ear. The president has consistently opposed any slowdowns on AI development in the United States, arguing it would stymie the country’s competitive advantage against China. As he wrote in a Truth Social post in mid-September, “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so.”
Considering the speed at which data centers and Flock cameras became central for voters across America, there now seems little doubt that the more complex issue of AI and its regulation by federal policy will be red hot by the time the 2028 presidential primaries begin. It’s also clear the Democrats will be pro-regulation, although they may differ on the shape such regulations take. The remaining mystery is whether Republicans break from Trump on this key (arguably existential) issue or remain true believers that “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!”