Meta President Dina Powell McCormick says the political climate around data centers has become more difficult, and the company plans to respond by making a stronger public case for the facilities it is building across the United States.
Speaking with Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker in an interview published on Yahoo Finance, McCormick reflected on the results of an election held the night before and what they mean for Meta's infrastructure ambitions.
A Push To Tell The Data Center Story Better
Asked how the election outcome changes her role, McCormick said Meta needs to "double and triple down on telling the story" of its data center investments.
She acknowledged that the technology industry as a whole has fallen short in explaining what these projects deliver to the communities that host them. She added that Meta is now going further than its original commitments.
Two Decades Of Building Compute Capacity
McCormick pushed back on the idea that data centers are a recent phenomenon. Meta has been building them for 20 years, she said, because its products depend on enormous amounts of computing power.
The company now operates in 23 states. Five of those states will host projects of one gigawatt or larger, and Texas is among them.
A Governor-Elect Who Wants To Keep The Investment
McCormick shared an anecdote she said she could not attach to a name. A governor who won the previous night, and who had made data centers a significant part of the campaign, reached out to propose a meeting once the inauguration had passed.
According to McCormick, the governor-elect's concern was that the community could lose the investment and the jobs that come with it to another location.
Harder Conditions, Clearer Models
McCormick conceded that the environment for building data centers has been difficult and may become more so. Even so, she argued that it is becoming clearer which approaches succeed.
States want those workable models, she said, because they want to point to investment and employment in their regions. But she stressed that local support remains a necessary condition for any project.
What It Means For The AI Infrastructure Race
The comments highlight a growing tension in the race to build computing capacity for artificial intelligence. Large technology companies need vast new facilities, yet those projects increasingly face scrutiny from voters and local officials over their costs and benefits.
For Meta and its peers, McCormick's remarks suggest that winning community backing, and communicating the economic case clearly, may matter as much as securing land and power. For state leaders, data centers are becoming a campaign issue in their own right.
Source: Yahoo Finance
