# Data Centers’ Political Battle

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughts-on-the-market-980853/data-centers-political-battle
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughts-on-the-market-980853/data-centers-political-battle.md
Podcast: [Thoughts on the Market](https://stenobird.com/podcast/thoughts-on-the-market-980853)
Published: 2026-07-23T21:30:00+00:00
Episode link: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/rss.art19.com/episodes/e9e33cec-9f47-4b35-8490-89ab07c8f77b.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0
Audio file: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/rss.art19.com/episodes/e9e33cec-9f47-4b35-8490-89ab07c8f77b.mp3?rss_browser=BAhJIg90cmFuc2NyaWJyBjoGRVQ%3D--952c5701c84ad333c69d5faa668f8177091704f0
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/thoughts-on-the-market-980853/episodes/data-centers-political-battle
Duration seconds: 300

## Resource

Despite growing political resistance, investment in data centers isn't slowing. Ariana Salvatore explains why supply constraints may actually accelerate AI capital spending. Read more insights from Morgan Stanley. ----- Transcript ----- Ariana Salvatore: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Ariana Salvatore, Head of Public Policy Research at Morgan Stanley. Today, I'll be talking about why we still expect robust AI capital spending in spite of some rising political pushback. It's Thursday, July 23rd at 10am in New York. It should be no surprise to our listeners that data center pushback, a topic that we've been following for some time, has been growing louder. But in 2026, it's accelerated meaningfully. Data we track suggests that an estimated $156 billion of projects were canceled or delayed in 2025. This year alone, in just the first quarter, we've seen almost that same exact number. The opposition is coming from several directions. Communities are raising concerns about rising electricity bills, environmental pressures related to water use, and the local quality of life effects of large-scale construction. But it's also coming from lawmakers across the aisle. State legislatures with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been advancing this type of policy. At the same time, we're forecasting a little less than a trillion dollars of AI CapEx this year alone, and we think it's an increasingly important component of the macroeconomic growth outlook. So how do we square that circle? First, and most importantly, we think this is primarily a supply-side risk rather than a demand-side one. We don't expect the backlash to materially reduce projections for compute demand. Instead, it could widen the gap between that demand and the industry's ability to bring new cap…

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## Transcript

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