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Jesse Watters says communities should tax tech for data centers
‘The Five’ co-hosts discuss concern over artificial intelligence’s rapid growth.
On November 17, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed an executive order fixing the eastern terminus of the transcontinental railroad at Council Bluffs, Iowa. A modest town on the Missouri River became Mile Zero of the infrastructure that built industrial America. By the early 20th century, eight major railroads ran through Council Bluffs, and a farm-state river crossing had become one of the great junction points of the American economy.
A century and a half later, Council Bluffs is Mile Zero again.
In 2007, Google chose this town of 62,000 for one of its first company-built data centers. The company recognized, as Lincoln did, that America’s infrastructure runs through the middle of the country. What’s also clear today are the extraordinary benefits that flow to the states and cities hosting 21st century infrastructure, such as data centers.
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Consider Iowa, where Google has now invested more than $20 billion since breaking ground in Council Bluffs. The investment is ongoing. Last year, the company committed another $7 billion to expand its presence in Council Bluffs and build an entirely new campus in Cedar Rapids.
Google is not alone in committing capital to Iowa. Meta operates one of its largest data center campuses in Altoona. Microsoft has poured billions into West Des Moines. The state that critics once flew over has become the crossroads of the cloud.
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A small but vocal band of pressure groups claim that data centers are big buildings with few workers inside. But judging a data center by the headcount is like judging the transcontinental railroad by the number of stationmasters. The wealth was never in the depot. It was in everything the depot made possible.
Look at what the buildout actually creates. Google is funding a partnership with an entity known as the electrical training ALLIANCE. It was created by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the National Electrical Contractors Association and the partnership will massively expand Iowa’s electrical workforce pipeline. Seven hundred apprentices will be trained in Cedar Rapids by 2030.
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These are careers in the skilled trades: electricians, pipefitters, welders, HVAC technicians. No four-year degree, no student debt. A high school graduate in eastern Iowa can walk into an apprenticeship and wire the machines that run the artificial intelligence economy. Construction of a single campus puts more than a thousand tradesmen to work for years at a time. And the ripple effects reach Main Street: Google’s presence generated $2.7 billion in economic activity for Iowa last year. That translates to high-paying jobs for Iowa workers throughout the state.
The community dividends are just as concrete. When Google learned that some Council Bluffs students had laptops but no internet at home, it extended its own wireless network to serve them for free. The company has put millions into local schools and nonprofits and funded the city’s free public Wi-Fi. It also committed to replenishing 120 percent of the water it consumes, starting with a $1.3 million Missouri River Basin conservation project.
AMERICA’S AI BOOM IS A JOBS OPPORTUNITY, NOT AN EXCUSE FOR UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME
None of this happened by accident. Iowa’s leaders — Governor Kim Reynolds, Senator Joni Ernst, local officials in both parties — competed for this investment with low taxes, sensible permitting, and a simple message: build here. Other states chose differently. They held hearings, added conditions, studied the question until the cranes went elsewhere. The capital didn’t wait. It never does.
This is the choice now facing hundreds of American communities, because the AI buildout is the largest infrastructure project in our history — bigger in real dollars than the railroads, rural electrification, or the interstate highways.
Lincoln understood, even amid a brutal civil war, that laying the groundwork to bind the country together with iron and steam merited his firm commitment. That same resolve is needed today. The states and cities that welcome the technology companies laying the foundation for America’s economic future will, like Council Bluffs, reap the benefits of being at the junction points of the next American century.
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