> Those in power seem to think that a compute advantage is necessary to maintain economic advantage. Despite this, the voters universally hate data centers, so much so that both NY and TX have data center construction moratoriums.

I don't understand what "despite this" is doing here. People have thoughts about what good/bad policy should be, independent of what good/bad policy should do all the time.

This is not an argument for or against data centers, but rather against populism. People have too many feeling about too many things, that should simply should not be decided by feel (and, sometimes, not enough about things that should).