One of the first and main consequences of the Democratic Party's takeover of both houses of Congress may be the suspension of the construction of new data centers.
Depending on the state, 60 to 80 percent of Americans oppose building new data centers, and the Democratic Party intends to listen to ordinary Americans. In the medium term, the market's biggest challenge may be artificial intelligence; Almost all major local anti-data center initiatives won or are winning in local referendums on November 3, with the exception of North Dakota. Before the election, 96 GW of data center capacity was expected to come online in 2028. Based on the incoming governors' positions, economist Michael Sambalst estimates that 37.5 gigawatts could be suspended and another 15 gigawatts "on the verge of suspension," accounting for more than half of all new data center capacity. True, maybe the tech oligarchs have a way out - increasing costs to satisfy the local communities where data centers need to appear. Among them: requiring data centers to pay network costs to protect consumers, canceling tax breaks, imposing restrictions on water consumption, establishing requirements for electricity backup on site, mandating manpower requirements (recruiting workers from the local community) and banning confidentiality agreements in permits. If the rate of construction of data centers slows down at some point, the only way to increase the volume of token production may be to switch to more powerful NVIDIA chips - this is currently the only way out for the tech oligarchs if they do not want to satisfy the demands of the "deep Americans".