A 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation included in President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” has brushed up against a mounting battle over the growth of data centers.
On Thursday, Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, posted on X that the megabill’s 10-year block on states regulating artificial intelligence could “make it easier for corporations to get zoning variances, so massive AI data centers could be built in close proximity to residential areas.” Massie, who did not vote for the bill, followed up his initial tweet with a screenshot of a story on a proposed data center in Oldham County, Kentucky, which downsized and changed locations following local pushback.
“This isn’t a conspiracy theory; this was a recent issue in my Congressional district,” he wrote of concerns over the placement of data centers. “It was resolved at the local level because local officials had leverage. The big beautiful bill undermines the ability of local communities to decide where the AI data centers will be built.”
The same day, the National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan group representing state lawmakers around the country, sent a letter to the Senate urging it to reject the AI provision. Barrie Tabin, the legislative director of the NCSL, told WIRED that the organization had heard directly from multiple state lawmakers who were concerned about how the moratorium may affect data center legislation. Laws passed by local legislatures, the letter states, “empower communities to weigh in on data center sitings, protecting ratepayers from increasing utility costs, preserving local water resources, and maintaining grid stability.”
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who admitted that she hadn’t read the provision in the bill when she voted for it, posted a long response to Massie in which she compared AI to Skynet, the fictional AI from the Terminator movie franchise.
“I’m not voting for the development of skynet and the rise of the machines by destroying federalism for 10 years by taking away state rights to regulate and make laws on all AI,” she wrote on X. “Forcing eminent domain on people’s private properties to link the future skynet is not very Republican.”
Since its introduction in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the AI moratorium has drawn widespread criticism, including from some major AI companies, for what some say is a heavy-handed regulation of all state AI laws for the next decade. On the other hand, supporters of the moratorium—including White House AI adviser and venture capital investor David Sacks—say that the proliferation of state-level AI laws is creating a patchwork of policies that will stifle innovation if they continue to be passed.
A senior official directly involved in negotiations in the Energy and Commerce Committee told WIRED that restricting states’ rights over data centers, including the use of water, is not the intent of the moratorium—something lawmakers should have “communicated better.” Rather, the goal was to establish a framework for regulating AI models at the federal level and to avoid any confusion that might come with a patchwork of state policies.