Washington, DC — On Tuesday, President Joe Biden issued an executive order allowing data centers the size of multiple football fields to be built on federal lands. Previously, the White House met exclusively with big tech and dirty energy executives to discuss data center construction. Demand Progress Education Fund led a coalition demanding that the White House also hear from environmental, consumer advocate and civil society groups about the harms of building destructive data centers to power unproven AI.
The following is a statement from Emily Peterson-Cassin, Director of Corporate Power at Demand Progress Education Fund:
“The Biden administration is going out, not with a bang, but with a giveaway to Big Tech snake oil salesmen. While we appreciate the inclusion of some consumer protection language, we are concerned that these provisions provide insufficient safeguards to prevent a Big Tech takeover of federal lands.
By signing this executive order, President Biden risks signing away our water, our energy and our land to the same billionaires who promised that the future was fiber-optic cables, driverless cars and NFTs. Like other fad-chasers before them, AI executives made huge promises but instead are hitting roadblocks, failing to create meaningful products and burning through billions of dollars. Now they say they need more power- and water-guzzing data centers when the limits of AI may actually have more to do with these companies running out of training data. Meanwhile, energy executives are salivating at the thought of more data centers justifying their continued use of fossil fuels and higher energy costs for all of us.
The big winners here are Big Tech and Dirty Energy executives—and any Biden administration officials who may move on to jobs in those sectors. The American people, who will be paying for this mistake for generations, deserve better.”