Local opinion: Data center action, a litmus test for officials

Last month, Tucson’s Mayor and City Council welcomed public input on possible standards for large data centers. Nearly a hundred pages of community comments are posted so far, full of well-researched concerns for water crises, pollution, and electricity cost manipulation. Yet, the efficacy of this effort is called into question by current affairs and massive national opposition to misaligned development of AI and data centers.

New data centers are infrastructure for AI. There is overwhelming overlap between the richest investors in AI and in AI-enabled surveillance, arms, and media. A 2021 AP poll found that 7 in 10 US adults say mass surveillance is wrong. 2025 polls from Pew to Gallup found 60-80% of Americans want safe regulation of AI in collaboration with global allies. In recent months, multiple polls show 60-80% of Americans disapproved of U.S. arms or forces used against either Gaza, Venezuela, or Iran, even before last week’s resignation by the National Counterterrorism Center Director over unjustified war. These issues are becoming the crux of the United States’ legacy.

How officials act on the junction of these issues will decide elections. Three-quarters of Americans is a landslide consensus in a system where deciding votes are typically barely above half. Trust around these issues has been grossly violated, from petty local secrecy and corruption to sweeping debasement of our constitutional right to privacy outside a lawful warrant. AI investors with partners in warfare are snatching resources at home and abroad. Individual autonomy is being siphoned into tech that monitors our every move, which they will set permissions and prices for in perpetuity. All aspects of this junction are underpinned by data centers and the resources they devour.

Last month, Anthropic, in keeping with their federal contract, asked for a guarantee that their AI would not be used for no-human-in-the-loop killbots or mass surveillance. In response, the Pentagon threatened to blacklist Anthropic. This month, after striking Amazon data centers in the UAE and Bahrain for complicity in the war, Iran declared facilities used by Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle or Palantir in Israel and the Gulf to be potential targets for retaliation. Such new paradigms confirm AI-enabled risks I’ve asked regional officials about for three years, getting no replies.

With data centers, these risks exist on top of the concerns for water crises, pollution, and electricity cost manipulation. Most of our county supervisors dismissed public consensus on this fact. As did our state corporation commission. As have most Arizona legislators. Our mayor and council get credit for declining Project Blue and considering data center policy. These are the top policy asks circulating in the national movement:

— Transparency and community oversight

— No non-disclosure agreements

— High standards and mitigations for jobs

— Electricity ratepayer protection and benefits

— No tax incentives, yes tax revenues

— Strict water protection

— 100% renewable energy, 24/7

— No diesel generators, natural gas turbines, or modular nuclear

— Conditional use permits with community benefits

— Strict noise limits

But, no matter how our mayor and council change code, it will be too little too late and quickly outdated. Just a few months ago, there was talk of construction work mitigating the lack of jobs inside data centers. Now, robotics firms are entering data center construction to deliver tasks faster than “conventional” workers. The balance of desert resources, the parameters of AI deployment and infrastructure, even the parameters of our very system of government, are all changing too fast to define — let alone to accurately conceptualize impacts at the junction of AI, surveillance, and war, elevated by Arizona’s premier status in the AI arms race.

Data centers do not belong in deserts, and untimely standards the AI class can manipulate at the expense of regular people will never be enough. Our mayor and council must find a way to join the rising moratoriums on new data center construction. Moratoriums are imperative to fix AI incentives in collaboration with global allies and to avoid hyper-scaling a predatory AI rollout that the American majority rejects. You can tell local officials where you stand until March 31 at the TucsonAZ.gov survey, and exercise your stance in elections to come.