Though the midterms have been dubbed “the AI election” and a resounding repudiation of tech, it’s hard to tell what all this practically means.
There’s a whole lot that’s clear, to be sure. The blue wave was massive, and in part that wave traces back to serious anti-tech sentiment, especially around data centers. It’s worth pinning this down clearly: Americans, right now, overwhelmingly hate data centers. A Gallup and UMass Amherst poll from earlier this year said that more than 70% of Americans oppose data center construction, and the Democrats capitalized (Democrats in over 130 federal and gubernatorial races ran anti-tech or anti-data center ads).
Now, consider: Perhaps the greatest open question around Anthropic, on the eve of its historic IPO, is something like “Can they get enough compute, and can they manage the costs of that process?” The wishes of American voters seem to be on a collision course with the answers that Anthropic (and the AI boom) are looking for.
It gets weirder: While this election was roundly viewed as a disavowal of tech, California’s billionaire tax (famously and financially opposed by Sergey Brin) seems likely dead. And while some data center stocks dropped on Wednesday (Tesla and SpaceX shares also saw non-trivial drops), the Dow actually rallied on Democrats’ victories, up 1500 points.
Brin’s possible success in shooting down the billionaire tax in California has proven singular. Famously, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz were among the most active donors to Republican candidates in these midterms, to the reported tune of more than $100 million. The same was true of Musk, who reportedly donated well over $400 million. This all got a lot of press in the lead-up to the midterms, and rightfully so.
But most of these billionaires were suspiciously quiet on X on Wednesday, at least as of this writing in the afternoon. Musk was notable in sounding off: “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time.”
To me, for all the questions that remain, what these results prove goes something like this: The American people are exhausted and afraid of the AI boom, and no amount of billionaires yapping on X or funneling millions into the election is changing that.
Where that takes this world of people I cover from here, I don’t know.
See you tomorrow,
Allie GarfinkleX: @agarfinksEmail: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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