The accelerated development of artificial intelligence infrastructure now faces a major political hurdle in the United States. Dina Powell McCormick, president and vice president of Meta, believes that building new US data centers will be much more difficult after the midterm elections.
“Building new data centers in the United States today is going to be very complicated.” she said at the WSJ Tech conference. According to her, large cloud operators are now asking themselves: “Should we build outside the United States?”
The concern of the head of Meta confirms that data centers have become a real electoral issue, since several candidates have won the elections after having defended moratoriums or restrictions.
Hyperion and Prometheus represent gigantic investments
Meta, however, is preparing infrastructure on an unprecedented scale. Hyperion, in Louisiana, should reach several gigawatts of power, while Prometheus, in Ohio, constitutes another pillar of the group’s AI strategy. The company plans to spend up to $145 billion in capital this year.
Mark Zuckerberg had already had to publicly defend the expansion of his data centers in the face of criticism about their electricity consumption, their environmental impact and the costs imposed on local networks.
Meta could move part of its investments
However, Dina Powell McCormick believes that expanding existing sites will undoubtedly be easier to defend, as communities can already measure their economic benefits. Meta promises, in particular, to fund its own electrical needs, promote local employment and contribute more to the communities that host its facilities.
At the same time, the group seeks to secure its energy supplies, in particular through various nuclear agreements. However, if US constraints strengthen, some of the next wave of investments could leave the country. The battle over AI computing capabilities could soon take on a global dimension.
