My Letter to the President

This week I wrote a letter to President Trump. That is not something I expected to do.

On most issues, I do not agree with him, and I said so in the first line. But on one subject I think he is pointed in the right direction, and I wanted him to hear it from someone who is not a usual supporter. That subject is data centers, the buildings where artificial intelligence actually lives.

I spend my days tracking AI infrastructure: the chips, the switches, the power and the places it all gets built. The more I watch, the clearer it gets that the way we are building is not the way a country builds something it cannot afford to lose.

Right now, AI data centers go up one county at a time. A company finds cheap land, negotiates with a local utility, and then fights the zoning board, the water authority and the neighbors. Each campus can draw as much power as a small city, and that load lands on regional grids and, too often, on household electric bills.

This week Politico reported that Google is asking to be annexed into the small town of Palo, Iowa, after Linn County passed an ordinance on how much water data centers may draw. That is not a scandal; it is what happens when national infrastructure is sited through local permits. The result is slow, it is fragile, and it puts our most valuable computing wherever a deal happened to close.

I asked the President to treat AI data centers as national infrastructure, with four parts planned together.

1. Public land in the middle of the country. The federal government already holds millions of acres across the central states. Sites there sit away from coastal storms and borders, and a central location keeps the distance to both coasts short. Using land the public owns sidesteps the county by county zoning and water fights.

2. Dedicated power. Every site gets one of two answers before ground is broken: high capacity transmission lines built to serve it, or new nuclear plants on or beside it. Nuclear runs around the clock without fuel supply risk. Either way, the data centers pay for their power, not the families nearby.

3. High bandwidth fiber. Computing in the middle of the country only matters if it reaches the people using it. Long haul fiber trunks would run from each site out to the large metro areas, the way the interstate highways tied the country together. Rural towns along the route would get better connectivity as a side effect.

4. Military protection. This is the part I care about most. These campuses will hold the models, data and computing that our economy and defense depend on, which makes them targets for physical attack, drones and cyber intrusion. Placing them on or beside military installations gives them a secured perimeter, air defense and a trained security force from day one. We already guard nuclear plants and weapons sites this way.

A plan like this deserves scrutiny, and I would rather raise the objections myself.

Who pays? Transmission, nuclear and fiber at national scale are expensive. My answer is that the companies building the data centers lease the land and pay for the power and bandwidth they use, while the government carries the long term infrastructure the way it did for highways and dams.

How fast is nuclear? New reactors take years. That is why the plan offers transmission as the first path and nuclear as the long term one, not a precondition for every site.

Does military protection mean military control? It should not. Private companies would build and run the data centers; the installation provides the perimeter and the defense. Clear rules on who can access the computing, and on what, would have to be written before the first site opens, not after.

What about the communities nearby? Central states would gain construction, operations jobs and fiber they do not have today. They should also get a say in where sites go, which a national plan makes easier, not harder.

Dear Mr. President,
I will be direct with you. On most issues, I do not agree with you. On data centers, I do, and I am writing because I think this is one place where the country can move fast and get it right.

Artificial intelligence will run on data centers the way the last century ran on power plants and highways. Today they are built one county at a time, by private companies, wherever land and a utility hookup can be found. That approach is too slow, too fragile and too easy to block.

First, build on public land in the middle of the country, planned as national infrastructure rather than leased one site at a time. Second, give each site its own power, through high capacity transmission lines or new nuclear plants, so data centers pay for what they use and families do not. Third, connect them with high bandwidth fiber that branches out to the large metro areas. Most of all, protect them with military installations, because the models, data and computing they hold make them targets.

I am asking you to direct the Departments of Defense, Energy and the Interior to select the first sites together, and to treat land, power, fiber and protection as one plan. Private companies can build and operate the data centers; the government should provide the secure ground they stand on and the power and fiber that reach them.

We will keep disagreeing on plenty. On this, you would have my support, and I believe the support of many Americans who do not usually agree with you either.

Respectfully,
Stephen R. Jordan

I could have kept this to myself. Agreeing with a politician you usually oppose is uncomfortable, and staying quiet is easier. But if the only people who praise a good idea are the ones who praise everything, the idea gets treated as partisan, and it dies with the next election.

AI infrastructure is going to outlast every administration that builds it. Where we put it, how we power it and who protects it are decisions we will live with for decades. Those choices are worth making on the merits, whoever happens to be in the White House.

So here is my question for you: would you support putting AI data centers on public land under military protection, or does that go too far? Reply and tell me. I read every answer.