Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order establishing what the mayor’s office described as the strictest regulatory safeguards on data centers of any city in the country, along with a new task force and a push for the city council to enact a temporary moratorium on new data center development. Dan Proft contrasted the mayor’s approach with research he cited showing counties with operating data centers have seen new housing, higher home values, lower unemployment and stronger job growth since 2024, and said there is little evidence to support claims that data centers are driving up local electricity bills.
For more on the issue, Proft was joined by Steve Moore, economist and co-founder of Unleash Prosperity, in a conversation sponsored by Home State Bank. Moore said he had recently taken part in a focus group of about 25 residents in Culpeper, Virginia, a rural community outside Washington, D.C. that has seen data center development, and found broad opposition among the group, spanning retirees, working-class residents and business owners. He attributed much of the resistance to a general distrust of Silicon Valley, arguing that skepticism is not entirely unwarranted given the tech industry’s past political alignments.
Despite that skepticism, Moore said the country needs to substantially increase its data center capacity, describing the facilities as essential infrastructure underlying cell phones, GPS systems and the broader internet. He said many people opposing new data centers do not fully understand what they are or how dependent modern life has become on them. At the same time, he said he supports local communities having a say in whether facilities are built in their area, and suggested that if a city like Chicago does not want them, developers should build elsewhere.
Moore pointed to Loudoun County, Virginia, home to more than 200 data centers, as an example of the economic case for the facilities, noting the county has lowered its real property tax rate by roughly 30 percent over the past decade while tax revenue grew from $466 million in fiscal year 2022 to $795 million in fiscal year 2026. He compared current resistance to data centers to historical opposition to other transformative technologies, including early 20th-century concerns about automobile manufacturing plants. He also cited estimates that the tech industry plans to invest roughly $2 trillion in data center development over the next decade, and argued the strongest case for building them domestically is competition with China over dominance in artificial intelligence, drawing a comparison to the U.S. victory in building out the internet age over the past three decades.
Turning to the broader economy, Moore said the country is experiencing a labor shortage rather than a jobs shortage, with employers struggling to fill positions such as mechanics, electricians and data processors. He said the more troubling trend is a decline in labor force participation among working-age Americans, particularly men between 18 and 35, and encouraged parents to get teenagers into jobs early, pointing to his own experience working as a caddy from age 11. Proft noted he had a similar experience caddying through college.
The segment closed with both hosts reflecting on their early work experience before Proft thanked Moore for joining the program.