The siting process is where AI infrastructure goes to stall. Before a kilowatt flows or a rack is bolted down, a data center requires local permits, and permits require community acceptance. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro drew a line: too many data center developers, he said, "don't care about our communities."
A Gallup survey released in May gave the sentiment a number: seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area. A seven-in-ten opposition rate reshapes permitting timelines and forces site selection back to the drawing board.
Where the industry has traditionally modeled risk in terms of power availability and grid interconnect, Shapiro's framing introduces a different variable: the relationship between a developer and the municipality it moves into. He is characterizing the problem as a failure of engagement, not a failure of regulation or infrastructure.
The practical consequence is predictable. Permitting friction slows the interval between site selection and construction start. In markets where power interconnect queues are already congested, adding community opposition extends that gap further. The Gallup figure is national. The dynamic Shapiro is describing is not a Pennsylvania-specific condition.
Shapiro did not name specific developers or projects in his remarks. The seven-in-ten number does the naming for him: resistance to AI data center construction is distributed across the American population, which means it is distributed across every jurisdiction where a developer wants to break ground.