It felt like a family feud on steroids last week when San Francisco supervisors voted for a 45-day moratorium on approving new data centers. The city that birthed the AI industry was turning on it. Later that day, Oakland passed its own urgency ordinance for a 45-day moratorium on data centers being approved.

So what now? Will these twin ordinances have an impact on the tech sector and our local communities? The right answer is probably: “yes, but.” Yes, it will have an effect on the issue, but it probably won’t be significant enough to satisfy the advocates behind it.

Take a look at two numbers to understand more about these votes: 18 and 500.

The first number is 18, which is the combined number of votes the two measures won while being adopted. In San Francisco, it was a unanimous 11 to 0 vote in favor of the moratorium, and Oakland wasn’t outdone, as its city council gave its measure a unanimous 7 to 0 vote. The data center industry is pedaling uphill from here on out. That is a shellacking.

To understand why the loss was so overwhelming, take a look at the other key number here: 500. That is the number of local governments across the country that have implemented some sort of data center ban, pause, or moratorium. They stretch across more than 40 states at last count, and the number grows by the week. The data center backlash has turned into an honest-to-God, all-American legislative frenzy.

These two data center bans instantly become symbols of the national unpopularity of the AI and data center industries. People don’t want data centers nearby, according to reams of recent polling data, and they don’t trust the AI industry. Given all that, how could the savvy politicians in The City and The Town pass up the opportunity to join in?

The immediate impact will be that proposed projects, such as one in the Dogpatch neighborhood and another in downtown Oakland, are probably on hold. It’s hard to predict the ultimate fate of those projects. 

What is clear, though, is that questions of environmental racism will remain a key frame for projects in these cities. Supervisor Shamann Walton introduced the ordinance, and pointed out that many of the city’s data centers are concentrated in areas like the Bayview and Hunters Point, which have a long history of discrimination and pollution. Diverting these data center projects might also open up space, funding, and workers to build more housing in these areas.

Now, the “but.” The ordinances themselves are just first steps toward what could become a permanent ban. The 45-day moratoriums can be extended for nearly two years under California law, giving the cities time to study the impacts and draft regulations. That’s a lot of time for horse-trading, and it seems logical to expect some carveouts in the final rules. For example, Supervisor Matt Dorsey proposed an amendment to exempt server rooms that only support the onsite operations of local companies. That idea could be revived for future votes.

Many data centers will still be built, probably just elsewhere. Cities like San Jose and Santa Clara, for example, are taking a “fix it, don’t nix it” approach for their planning. They’re setting out the welcome mat, but weighing tougher rules around water and air quality as well as noise, lighting and neighbor notice. On the other side of the Sierras, Nevada is in the middle of a data-center boom.

Even if the data centers get built elsewhere, the national public discontent remains. Maybe, just maybe, the San Francisco and Oakland bans will spur the industries to change tack and focus on the public benefits they can provide.

If data centers really are so important to our economy, then their developers can pass out more money to local governments and residents. They can promote a clean-energy revolution, and promise to lower electricity costs and strengthen water infrastructure. Maybe they could offer to build some houses as a sweetener.

Call it pay to play if you want, or just call it politics.

It’s become clear that AI companies and their data centers are in the midst of a political crisis. It’s time for them to try something new.

Shum Preston is a political analyst and a Certified Information Privacy Professional. He is the former director of communications at Common Sense Media and at the California Department of Justice, and tracks data center politics on X.com/DataCenterPol.

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