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See below for video of a fascinating interview Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA10) did with the Brookings Institution earllier this week – focused on AI and data centers. The whole thing’s worth watching, but for this post, I just wanted to highlight three things Rep. Subramayman said:
- First, I’m REALLY glad that somebody who actually knows what he’s talking about (unlike 99% of politicians and the media!) called out the idiocy of “SMRs” (small modular nuclear reactors): “I’ll tell you some solutions that have been presented that are not good ideas right now that sound like good ideas. So, one thing that sounds like a good idea is SMRs and nuclear power. We’re not there yet. And so, if you do the math right now, you need like hundreds and hundreds of SMRs to power the data centers in in my community. And we have yet to build one successfully in this country. And so, to tell me that, hey, we’re going to power these SMRs in a couple years, like that that’s not a real solution. I hope one day we have a miraculous SMR, but I don’t even know. I want to make sure that it’s safe and it’s the impact on the communities is is such that it’ be okay to put there. And so as someone who lives next to the data centers, I don’t want like four SMRs in my backyard either.” EXACTLY!
- Second, I’m also glad to hear Rep. Subramanyam talk about the idiocy of the concept that if data centers just “bring their own power,” that will solve the problem of powering these things: “The second thing that people say is bring your own power. So you don’t have to be on the power grid. But it’s really important to understand what power you’re bringing. Because if you’re powering your data center through your backup generators and you’re just doing that all the time, these backup generators are diesel powered usually and the particulates from these diesel-powered generators are really bad for you and really bad for kids and really bad for your community. And just one example is there’s there’s a ‘bring your own power’ data center now in in Loudoun County and it’s a diesel power generator and the community next to it there’s a family of four where every kid now has a respiratory problem. And a gentleman who spoke at the launch of our data center legislation talked about how he’s had health problems that he never thought he would have, don’t run in his family and because of the the data center bringing its own power. So I think what would be better is to make sure that we have a system where they’re paying for their own power, that we’re understanding what the impact of the power would be on the community and that we use a little bit of common sense here and not just talking points.” BINGO!
- Finally, I think Rep. Subramanyam is spot-on here: “Yeah, you know, the data center industry is is not happy with me right now. I’ll start there. But my legislation is not a moratorum because we already have a moratorium proposed…by famous people like AOC and Bernie, right? And then we already have the administration position, right? And so to me, I look at what I’m trying to propose as if a moratorum is not going to pass and if you don’t want a moratorum and if people are not happy with the ‘golden goose’ side, then what are we going to do? Are we just going to sit back and argue between all or nothing, or are we going to see if this is possible to build out in a way that makes more sense in a way that puts communities first? That’s what I’m trying to propose to people. And so you know, I tell the data center industry and anyone else that listens to me that if we do nothing I think that moratorium will win. I think national moratorium will win. And I think it won’t be a national moratorium passed by Congress. It will be every state basically passing a moratorium because of the politics of pretty much every state, right? And it’ll be up to the politicians to decide what’s more important, me building a data center or keeping my job, right? And we know which one they’ll choose. So at this point, to me, if where we’re headed is more moratorium than not moratorum – and if you want to do this right, then you need to put communities first.”
By the way, note that Rep. Subramanyam worked as a White House technology policy adviser in the Obama administration, so this is his area of expertise for sure. Plus, as he points out in this interview, he LIVES in Loudoun County and has experienced the impacts of data centers personally, so he’s “living it” as well…which is pretty much exactly what a REPRESENTATIVE of a community is supposed to do.
