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Resistance to data centres (the large facilities that house the computing infrastructure behind AI systems) has grown large enough to reshape politics, according to historian Jill Lepore.
She places that shift inside a longer record of how societies have tried to regulate new technologies. Lepore's case is that the opposition is no longer local.
What started as site-by-site objections to specific facilities has become something politicians have to account for at a broader level. The pattern she draws on is a recurring one.
New technologies tend to outpace the rules written for them. Regulation arrives after the industry has already set terms that are difficult to rewrite.
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