Local communities — not corporate chief executives — should decide whether data centers are built in their backyards, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) said in an interview with Breitbart News, as the country races China for dominance in artificial intelligence.
Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow spoke with McCormick on Aug. 31 at the 2026 Republican Jewish Coalition National Leadership Summit, asking how Republicans should address voter concerns about a growing surveillance state and the environmental fallout of a rapidly expanding AI industry.
McCormick opened by framing the AI competition with China as a defining national challenge. According to Breitbart, he described the driver of global power and economic productivity as AI, and said the U.S. must have both the computing power and the energy to support it.
He went further, claiming that China is already running influence operations inside the United States. “China is having misinformation campaigns in America,” McCormick said, according to Breitbart’s account. He then pointed to a striking polling gap: data centers and AI, he said, are viewed favorably by an 80/20 margin in China but unfavorably by roughly the same margin in the U.S. — a split he attributed to something other than chance.
A covenant, not a command
The Pennsylvania Republican’s central argument was procedural: the decision to host a data center shouldn’t be handed down from Washington or from a boardroom. “No senator, no big-time CEO is going to go to a community in Pennsylvania, Pike County, or Columbia County where I grew up and say, ‘Hey, you need a data center,'” McCormick told Marlow. The people who should make that call, he said, are township supervisors and county commissioners.
But he paired local control with a demand for concrete guarantees. If a community chooses to invite a data center in, McCormick said, there should be a “covenant” attached to it. He laid out five conditions he believes should be part of any deal.
First, rate protection on energy. Second, protection on water — with closed-loop systems that recycle rather than consume. Third, clarity on taxes: in most cases, McCormick said, data centers expand the tax base and lower property taxes, and that benefit should be stated explicitly rather than assumed. Fourth, local hiring, so that the economic upside lands in the community itself. Fifth, commitments on schools, roads, and bridges — a point he emphasized by noting that these companies are spending tens of billions of dollars.
“That’s the package, and with that package, local people can make the decision,” he said.
‘I understand it’
McCormick conceded he is not immune to the skepticism he is asking constituents to weigh. He owns a family farm in Bloomsburg, the town where he grew up, and told Marlow he doesn’t particularly want a massive data center next to it either.
Still, he argued that the trade-off deserves an honest accounting. If a project arrives with rate and water protections, tax clarity, local jobs, and infrastructure investment, he said many residents will opt in. And if they don’t — a right he said they fully possess — he wants them to confront the follow-up question: if not a data center, what economic engine will create opportunity for their children?
McCormick’s comments land in the middle of a national debate over how fast to build out AI infrastructure. Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity and water, and proposals to site them have run into organized local opposition in a number of states, turning zoning board meetings and county commission hearings into the front line of the AI boom. At the same time, lawmakers in both parties have warned that falling behind China on computing capacity carries strategic costs.
By handing the decision to township supervisors and county commissioners — and then conditioning his support on a specific list of community benefits — McCormick is staking out a position that tries to separate the national case for AI from the local case against a particular project. The framing avoids telling constituents they must accept data centers, while avoiding a blanket endorsement that would put him at odds with the homeowners, farmers, and ratepayers who show up to oppose them.
The interview was conducted by Breitbart’s editor-in-chief at the RJC summit, and reported by Breitbart political reporter Katherine Hamilton. It offers one of the more detailed accounts to date of how a Republican senator in a major energy-producing state is trying to navigate the politics of AI infrastructure — an issue that pits economic development and national competitiveness against land use, utility bills, and water supply.
Whether that approach satisfies either side remains an open question. Data center developers have generally preferred streamlined state-level approvals over a patchwork of local conditions, while community groups opposed to specific projects have argued that voluntary covenants are no substitute for enforceable rules. McCormick’s answer — that the decision belongs to the people who live there, and that the terms should be spelled out before construction begins — puts the burden on both developers and local officials to negotiate terms the public can see.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/09/09/sen-dave-mccormick-locals-determine-want-data-centers-not-ceos/