At the WSJ Tech conference, Meta President Dina Powell McCormick said that the Democratic wins in the midterm elections will make it harder for companies to build data centers, and that the industry has not explained the benefits of these investments well enough. She tied the backlash against data centers — which she said was on the ballot this election season — to broader public sentiment about AI, calling data centers the visible manifestation of AI that communities say they don’t want.

Meta believes negative consumer sentiment can be turned around by demonstrating value both of local data centers and the technology itself. Powell McCormick described the stakes in terms of who builds technology that cures cancer or improves access to education, and framed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg as “very long human,” betting on humans more than machines. She said the company wants the technology democratized and accessible in a fair and transparent way.

Powell McCormick cited Meta‘s 20 years of data center building experience, noting the company operates in 23 states and has five planned gigawatt-scale projects, including one in Texas. She acknowledged the political environment has become harder after politicians ran on anti-data-center platforms, but said it is becoming clear which models work and states want those. Meta‘s successful local model includes paying for its own electricity, directing tax surpluses from data centers to teachers and first responders, keeping the labor force local, and securing bipartisan support.

Powell McCormick expects data center projects to face more review against whether constituents actually want them. Meta is betting on its AI investments, including its consumer AI agent Muse, which she hopes scales beyond its current 10 million users to serve billions. Even if that bet does not pay off as expected, she argued the data center compute itself is valuable, saying Meta gets calls every day to lease the compute it has built, and sees a path to monetization one way or another.