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by Paul Gilbert – the former Executive Director of NOVA Parks, and winner of the 2025 Pugsley Medal for parkland conservation for conserving thousands of acres of land in Northern Virginia. Gilbert has worked on numerous Democratic campaigns and ran for the House of Delegates in the 42nd District (now the 18th District). He has been appointed by Democratic Governors and the Fairfax Board of Supervisors to numerous boards and commissions, including Visit Fairfax, where he was Chair, and the Fairfax County Economic Advisory Commission. He currently teaches at George Mason University, consults with park agencies around the country, and serves on the Board of the Northern Virginia Community Foundation.
Data centers are all over the news these days, and the movement against them has gone from a whisper to a roar. Here in Virginia, State Senators Russet Perry and Richard Stuart just asked Governor Abigail Spanberger to call a special session of the General Assembly to address a new DEQ study finding that groundwater east of I-95 cannot sustain the growing demands of data centers and other major users, and that other aquifers are strained too. U.S. Senator Mark Warner has proposed federal legislation requiring data centers to disclose their power and water use and maintain setbacks from neighborhoods before they can claim certain federal tax benefits. Political battles over the insatiable growth of transmission lines and substations needed to feed energy to the data centers are daily struggles in the Commonwealth.
Water supplies, air quality, visual blight, 24-hour noise, exploding energy consumption and its impact on our climate — the practical issues related to data centers are staggering and real. On July 22, there was a very literal disturbance in the Force, when a transmission line failure serving Data Center Alley in Loudoun County sent power fluctuations rippling across the eastern half of the United States, from Chicago to Boston to Miami. But I think there is another level of anxiety about Virginia becoming the data center capital of the world that disturbs us at a more fundamental level.
In some ways, the fight over data centers is the storyline of the Star Wars series. It is people against a repressive system, the Rebel Alliance against the Empire.
Data centers have been around for decades, and they are needed for many of the basic services we depend on daily. The AI revolution, and all it represents, is the real challenge. The hyper-scalers — Meta, Amazon, Alphabet — and their oligarch leaders like Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg seem to have taken over our society and economy in the last few years. Their companies dominate the Fortune 500 and drive the stock market, while higher inflation and affordability issues are creating a K-shaped economy with a wider and wider wealth gap. Many of these same oligarchs are funding Trump and his increasingly authoritarian, non-democratic government. These economic and political undercurrents create an unease with AI that goes beyond the physical impacts of data centers.
No doubt, AI will be used for both good and bad in the future. I anticipate many diseases will be cured when massive computing power can review clinical studies in ways we never could before. Efficiencies in many areas will improve. But are we losing human control of our world in the process? New technologies have often had both good and bad results; now, with AI, computers are “thinking” for themselves, trained by companies with dubious intent. Will we have agency as humans in the future? Will AI have adequate moral safeguards? Anthropic stood up to Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon when they demanded the right to use its Claude models for mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons — the kind that could select and kill a target with no human in the loop. I appreciate the courage Anthropic showed in standing up to Hegseth and Trump, even after Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using the company’s products. Congressman Don Beyer is fighting the same battle in Congress, in introducing the bipartisan Human Authority Over Autonomous Weapons Act.
In Star Wars, the evil Emperor Palpatine rose to power with the support of the Trade Federation and its droid army. Trump has risen to power with the support of many of the tech oligarchs. The Galactic Senate that the Jedi once served (democracy) voted itself out of power in a manufactured “emergency” engineered by the Emperor. We have a Republican-controlled Congress and Supreme Court that have given Trump practically unchecked power. Trump is currently manufacturing false emergencies around the midterm elections to hold and expand authoritarian power and suppress democracy.
Which brings to us, the Rebel Alliance! In Star Wars, the Rebel Alliance was a highly diverse group that refused to be crushed by the Empire. Virginia state government, local government, you and me – we are the resistance, we are the Jedi.
As for Virginia, we are the land of data centers. Loudoun County’s “Data Center Alley” is often credited with carrying up to 70% of the world’s internet traffic. Virginia was recently the nation’s number one importer of electric power; the latest federal data show we’ve slipped to a close second behind California, but data centers remain the biggest reason our imports stay so high. The Commonwealth is also where the internet grew up. Today there are more than 200 data centers in Loudoun County, roughly 55 more in Prince William County with another 75 planned or under construction, and 29 in Fairfax County, with dozens more proposed across the Commonwealth. There is even a new one proposed off Edsall Road inside the Beltway in Fairfax County, near Alexandria. This is not some farm field; it is wedged right next to a dense residential neighborhood, where its impacts will be seen and heard every day. Site plans and proposals are hitting counties and cities all over Virginia. Local governments need the tools to make thoughtful decisions on these buildings and their impacts.
The Empire first built the Death Star, which blew up the beautiful planet of Alderaan, home of Princess Leia. Trump’s Department of the Interior is now weighing a land swap that would hand part of Prince William Forest Park, federal parkland, and pristine forest, to a private data center developer. Carving up National Park Service forest to build a data center for private profit is the modern-day equivalent of the Death Star blowing up Alderaan. There is a tremor in the Force!
Governor Spanberger, you are one of our last hopes – please call a Special Session of the General Assembly to deal with our dwindling water reserves. General Assembly, let’s empower local governments with the authority to analyze impacts like power and water use. Let’s tell the State Corporation Commission NO to the proposed $67 billion NextEra Energy–Dominion merger. Our rates have already gone up to pay for the data centers, and a larger power monopoly in Virginia is the wrong decision. Let’s follow Hawaii’s lead, and cheer on Montana’s ballot campaign, in pushing corporate money out of politics, so we the people, the Rebel Alliance, can regain human control of our environment and our future.
REMEMBER ALDERAAN!!!!
