Big Tech, and their political counterparts, have done a horrible job pitching data centers to you, and you are absolutely correct in your gut instinct to reject them in your community given the current pitch. The histrionic tweets by industry leaders about how unsafe AI is and how it will take your job do the exact opposite of selling AI to the American people. Big Tech has given us a decade full of reasons to be skeptical of new technology after censoring and deplatforming many Americans who dared to oppose the technocratic leftwing orthodoxy. To this day, nobody in Big Tech has apologized, and I agree with the mainstream sentiment that Big Tech should be expected to do so before we accept any new offers from them.

However, I see a way to thread the needle, forcing Big Tech to take seriously the demands of the American people and to revitalize the great swathes of Middle America forgotten and rejected by coastal elites. What Big Tech overlords must accept is that data center construction happens only on our terms, not theirs. And that means, first and foremost, providing high-paying jobs, cheap power, and community investment to Americans - and Americans only - if they want to add more compute to a country that resents what Big Tech has done to them.

A truly American, populist model for this technological relationship will require the buy-in of stakeholders from the grassroots to the boardrooms who are responsible for approving the construction of a new data center. Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is the natural place to showcase the model.

Oak Ridge is the town that America’s leaders chose during WWII as the beating heart of the Manhattan Project in the race to build the atomic bomb. Nuclear and nuclear-adjacent companies dominate this region in addition to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, runs the nation’s oldest nuclear engineering department and has a pipeline that feeds many skilled graduates into the nuclear industry.

The nuclear heritage of Oak Ridge can provide the power necessary to scale data centers, and this synthesis could make Oak Ridge the template for a resurgent American industrial strength. But this rosy vision faces pushback before the first shovel breaks ground.

Knox County and the City of Knoxville each enacted data center moratoriums that don’t expire until 2027. Anderson County, which contains the majority of Oak Ridge, has a data center moratorium of its own that doesn’t expire until 2028.

The mood in East Tennessee is nearly entirely opposed to data centers; again, the citizenry is correct in their instinctual rejection.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Big Tech could win support by taking care of East Tennesseans instead of trampling over their concerns.

Promise and produce high-paying jobs for Americans, only. Not just construction jobs on the front-end, but jobs afterwards too. Rather than promising that AI will eradicate American employment, Big Tech should be selling a future of permanent high-wage positions that recruit exclusively from American pipelines. The overwhelming reputation of data centers is that, after construction is completed, there won’t be any new long-term jobs for locals. That reputation is a mistake of Big Tech’s own making. Data centers should be extolling the creation of permanent high-wage positions from reaction operators and radiation-protection specialists to mechanical and electrical engineers and cybersecurity staff.

UTK’s graduates are already positioned for these roles, which create a stable ladder for young Tennesseans to thrive rather than yet another importation scheme that enriches outsiders and harms the American youth.

Further, Big Tech should promise and deliver energy production that lowers local retail electricity rates via an energy abundance that actually reaches the American household. A data center requires a fraction of the total output of a co-located nuclear plant, and the excess energy should subsidize the bills of Oak Ridge families. Big Tech should learn a lesson from the Kingfish’s playbook: richly reward your new clients to create loyalty. The distribution of a benefit, rather than a cost, will convert resentment into political affiliation. The Left rewards its followers constantly - Big Tech needs to accept that the Right requires similar rewards in exchange for our cooperation.

Finally, Big Tech must deliver on what prior generations of oligarchs understood intrinsically. A significant investment per data center into the beautification of the local community is the modern equivalent of the vast public works that the hyperwealthy from the Gilded Age provided to their masses. Andrew Carnegie spent 56 million, which is the equivalent of 1.6 billion in today’s dollars, on free public libraries across the country. John D. Rockefeller spent 35 million, which is the equivalent of over 1 billion in today’s dollars, investing in the University of Chicago. The oligarchs of our past spent tirelessly on public goods that bought social stability and domestic goodwill. A nuclear-powered data center that fixes our roads, beautifies our parks, and rebuilds the dirty downtown cores of our cities accomplishes the same. A resistant community that sees their own backyard become rebuilt and beautiful once again won’t be resistant for long.

Rightly ordered objections to data centers can collapse under the weight of accomplishing specific deliverables. We want data centers to provide high-earning jobs to Tennessee’s graduates so that they can stay in our state and lead in this industry while beautification projects can provide a timely answer to the urban decay gripping our cities.

Oak Ridge has the history, the labs, the university pipeline, and the industrial base needed to make this model function well. Deliver on these three asks, and Tennesseans will find a deal worth making.

Big Tech must play ball with the people of East Tennessee.