I remember the instant the room went quiet: Meta’s president said those three words and you could see spreadsheets and permits rearrange themselves in people’s heads. I felt the same small, sharp panic you do when a contract suddenly depends on a vote. The question she left on the table was blunt and heavy: “Do we need to build outside the United States?”
At the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ Tech conference in Napa, Dina Powell McCormick didn’t hedge. She told an audience of investors, engineers, and lobbyists that midterm results have changed the math for large infrastructure projects—making it harder to break ground on new data centers in the U.S. I’m going to walk you through what she said, why it matters, and who’s likely to win or lose when politics starts dictating where computing lives.
A governor who campaigned on data centers called Meta days after the election.
I heard Powell McCormick relay the call: the governor-elect wanted that investment kept in their state, and asked to meet after the inauguration. That phone call is a microcosm of the new reality—local politics now interfaces with multi-billion-dollar deals.
Meta’s playbook depends on cooperation from statehouses and county commissions. When a winning candidate ran on a platform that explicitly included data-center policy, you can expect promises and pressure to follow. Powell McCormick’s point was simple: even friendly jurisdictions are now hedging, and jurisdictions that swung the other way are more likely to impose pauses or moratoriums.
Why are data centers facing opposition?
Local resistance centers on water use, electricity demand, zoning, and tax incentives. Communities that once welcomed jobs question whether the trade-offs are worth it when the permits and grid upgrades arrive. You’ve seen this in Texas and Ohio, where incoming governors signaled support for limits or moratoria—policies that can delay construction for months or years and shift the project’s financial calculus.
A graphic posted on Threads showed a data center that would cover most of Manhattan.
Mark Zuckerberg shared an image of what Meta calls Hyperion, and the scale landed like a physical fact. When a CEO posts a map-sized data center, you stop treating these as abstract servers and start thinking of land, power lines, and local politics.
Meta has named projects—Hyperion in Louisiana, Prometheus in Ohio, and a planned site in Texas tied to a BlackRock venture in El Paso—and Mark has said the company will “invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute” (for example, $200,000,000,000 ≈ €186,000,000,000). Those are not small bets; they reshape regional economies and the electric grid.
How will midterm results affect tech investments?
If you’re an investor using tools like Bloomberg terminals or following filings on the SEC EDGAR system, the calculus is clear: tighter local politics equals more regulatory risk. Meta’s CEO is building capacity for AI at a scale that makes state and county decisions material to shareholders and procurement teams.
The data center is already a public spectacle—like a skyscraper of silicon—and when state policy flips, the project’s timeline and cost move with it.
Hyperscalers are asking a blunt operational question: build abroad?
At the conference, Powell McCormick said every hyperscaler is now asking, “Do we need to build outside the United States?” That is not hypothetical; AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft, and Meta are all weighing geopolitical risk against performance and legal frameworks.
Will Meta build data centers outside the US?
You have to read Powell McCormick’s line literally: the answer is “maybe.” Companies can shift capacity to Ireland, Singapore, or regions with friendlier permitting regimes, or they can negotiate harder with U.S. states. That choice affects supply chains, data-residency arguments, and relationships with vendors like BlackRock and chip suppliers.
Political change is a tide that can nudge continents: when states tighten rules, money flows to places that promise faster approvals and stable incentives.
I’ve watched deals stall and jobs promises sour when a governor’s stance flips; you will too if you follow permits, land titles, and energy interconnect studies. If you care about where the next wave of AI compute lives—on U.S. soil or abroad—you should be watching state capitols as closely as corporate filings and Threads posts because the answers will change where engineers are hired, where electricity is burned, and where strategic control sits—so which map are you placing your bet on?