Trump Says He ‘Wouldn’t Necessarily Like’ a Data Center Next to His House

President Donald Trump says he is not certain he would desire a knowledge middle in his yard.

“I want to have knowledge facilities,” Trump informed Time Journal as a part of a canopy story interview revealed on Thursday. “It does not imply I would like them proper subsequent to my home, however definitely I like them in my county.”

Trump has repeatedly defended the advantages of information facilities and the AI trade extra broadly, as polling exhibits widespread public skepticism. Republican governors have also begun to rein in incentives for knowledge facilities.

Communities that do not welcome knowledge facilities, Trump stated, are additionally passing up on doubtlessly profitable tax income. As he has earlier than, the president portrayed communities that oppose knowledge middle improvement as improper and impoverished.

“If you wish to be poor, you wish to don’t have any cash, when you do not wish to have a job, and if you wish to reside in a crime-infested space, squalor, all of the issues that go together with it, you shouldn’t have an information middle,” he stated.

Amid the rising backlash towards knowledge facilities, some AI and tech leaders have begun contemplating different methods to provide the compute they should practice after which run cutting-edge AI fashions. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is pursuing orbital data centers. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has prompt knowledge facilities are better suited for deserts.

As he welcomed AI executives to the White Home on Tuesday, Trump informed reporters that knowledge facilities would turn into “highly regarded” as residents see what their cooperation will carry to their communities.

“They will make the group completely happy,” Trump stated. “That is perhaps supplying oil and gasoline. It is perhaps supplying schooling. It could be serving to academics alongside financially, serving to folks alongside financially.”

Trump described how, in some instances, an information middle could be “proper subsequent to a man’s home,” a actuality some residents in Loudoun County, Virginia, face.

Loudoun County, house to the famed “Data Center Alley,” as soon as allowed many knowledge facilities to be constructed by proper, together with some close to residential neighborhoods. In 2025, county supervisors ended by-right approvals for brand new knowledge facilities. New proposals should now undergo a evaluate course of that features public hearings, amongst different steps.

Trump’s hope for an information middle in his county can also be sophisticated.

Final week, the Palm Seaside County Board of Supervisors unanimously accredited a one-year moratorium on the development of large-scale knowledge facilities. Earlier than the vote, the commissioners rejected a proposed plan for a hyperscale knowledge middle, WPTV reported.

A smaller knowledge middle plan for the location, which was beforehand accredited, is anticipated to proceed.