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Supporters and developers of a data center in Marshalltown keep promoting the tax revenues, jobs, and infrastructure boon that a data center will bring to town. These benefits are misleading and short-term at best, but data center expansion should be extremely worrying to anyone looking at the long-term health and well-being of our community and society. Any “positive” benefits a data center will bring will be offset by the great harm it would bring to Marshalltown and the enormous harm it would perpetuate on societal level.
The supposed financial benefit to Marshalltown is overstated and short-sighted. If precedent and history are any guide for us, data center construction will not hire local construction crews. We would only see a short influx of hotel and food spending, the vast majority of that construction money will leave town almost immediately. Once data centers are built, only a handful of full-time permanent jobs might be created and the staggering amount of dollars of profit will leave our town immediately, never to be spent here. Tax benefit revenues are also overblown. Recent studies show that nationally, over $9 billion of tax revenue has been forgiven or exempt. The only people earning money off data centers are tech billionaires and developers, not the community.
On a larger scale, the US already has more than enough data centers to handle our nation’s everyday internet usage. In fact, the US has 10x the number of data centers than any other country, so there’s little risk of being “left behind.” Data center expansion is not intended to support our everyday internet use, it is almost exclusively designed to support increased AI usage and surveillance. That is extremely troubling for a number of reasons, both culturally and economically.
Yes, there are a limited amount of useful research purposes for AI, but the goal of introducing AI into more and more of our business and commercial enterprises has the expressed goal of streamlining operations and increasing revenue. To us laypeople, that means cutting jobs. We are already struggling, why should we hand them the tools to make matters worse? And as an artist, I have deep and sincere concerns with generative AI stealing original artwork and flooding our culture with regurgitated slop. And I challenge you to ask any teacher about our children’s ability to think independently and apply logic and problem-solving skills in a world that’s eager to keep them glued to a screen and engaged in heart-felt “conversations ” with AI instead of living a full life in the real world.
In addition to all of these concerns, there are also considerable environmental hazards associated with data centers (closed loop systems are not the fix supporters claim they are), issues with technological obsolescence and industrial waste, and significant quality of life factors for those with the misfortune of having a data center built near their homes.
Our civic and business leaders love to talk about supporting our local economy, but nothing about a data center is local and very little about a data center in Marshalltown would benefit the bulk of our community. Building a data center here in Marshalltown (or anywhere else for that matter) is a lose lose lose proposition. Don’t sell us out.
Josh Cox is a United States Postal Service mail carrier and artist based in Marshalltown.