That's not helping the message.

Yeah, I would agree with that.

That's certainly not the tone that I think we should be taking.

I will say I think there can be and are a lot of benefits to having data centers.

In fact, a lot of people, I think, before this fight probably lived closer to a data center than they realized because they're really just, frankly, nondescript buildings a lot of times.

And they do have a lot of benefits like Loudoun County, for example, in Virginia, they generate about 40% of that county's tax revenue, just the data centers.

And because of that, property taxes are a lot, lot lower than they otherwise would be.

They can be affected by this, and that is a real concern for a lot of the rural farmers in this area.

So what do you think companies, I guess, should have done differently before all the backlash?

Yeah, I think there's really two, fall into two categories.

The first one is I don't think people realize the extent to which most of modern life in America in 2026 is based on digital infrastructure, i.e. data centers.

So we're having this conversation right now through a data center.

When you order food on Uber Eats, you do it through a data center.

When you watch something on Netflix, you do it through a data center.

Uh, most services, whether you're interacting with a data center directly, like you're running an app or working on some on your computer, or you're getting a good or service in the real world, but you know, like you're paying with Stripe or something like that, that relies on digital infrastructure that relies on their data center somewhere to process, uh, that transaction or that interaction.

So I guess when you look at the concerns, how valid are some of the concerns that people have with data centers in their communities and like what can be done to sort of mitigate some of those concerns? I guess kind of walk us through, you've touched on some of that, but I guess walk us through like what the real world concerns are to a community and what can be done to sort of eliminate and or neutralize some of those concerns.

So you lose the narrative, don't you?

That's exactly right.

And let's not forget, people didn't have a lot of trust in big tech, especially in rural communities, going into this fight or this discussion.

And rightly so.

Big tech had been deplatforming conservatives, firing conservatives from their own companies when they were found out to be conservatives.

So big tech doesn't warrant a lot of sympathy here.

My issue or the issue I wrote about is consumers need data centers.

So all this regulation, all this taxation, all of this government interference, it doesn't produce good results overall, does it?

I only use my lawyer powers for good instead of evil.

Yeah, I think there's some truth to that in the sense that you're right.

If you go into some of these areas that are dilapidated closer to cities, what you'll find is a usually Democratic led leadership that would extract and delay construction so much so that it's not worth even trying because these people have clearly destroyed their governance, has destroyed democracy.

So many great American cities.

That's exactly what they would do to any plans to build anything interesting or growth focused, because that's what they do.

That's what far left Democrats do.

That said, I wouldn't say that that these data centers are always bullying.

So how do we reconcile all these competing bits of evidence and pressures?

Hey, what's going on with the AFT? What are they doing?

Well, it's sad.

They're supposed to be representing the interests of teachers.

You know, they've made a big point of saying they don't represent the interests of students or parents or taxpayers.

They just care about teachers.

But in this case, they're not even representing the interests of the teachers, because what they're encouraging their members to do, many members who sit as the members of boards of trustees for pension funds, so not... pension funds through the aft i'm talking about state local pension funds for teachers retired teachers they have been encouraging those members to engage in boycotts divestment movements against profitable businesses just to push a far-left progressive agenda so things like attacking oil companies suggesting that their members divest these state uh pension funds from from those uh from those companies which are incredibly profitable But that doesn't help the teachers, doesn't help the pension fund.

It's just to push a far-left progressive agenda.

supposed to make them money for the retirement.

What kinds of actions from the teachers union does your organization believe shows cause for concern here?

Well, we're seeing from them calls for boycotts and encouraging pension funds across the country to divest of some of these different companies based on political motives.

And this is a complete abrogation of pension fund trustees' duty to focus on returns for beneficiaries.

Not every teacher is a far-left progressive Democrat, and they count on those funds to make money for their retirement, not to push a political agenda.

So having the teachers union encourage that kind of behavior from pension fund trustees from across the country, we're talking about state and local pension funds for teachers, having it encourage its members who may be trustees on these boards to divest of companies that would otherwise be incredibly profitable, but just because they don't share the politics of the union is extremely dangerous.

Take a look.

Well, we're seeing from them calls for boycotts and encouraging pension funds across the country to divest of some of these different companies based on political motives.

And this is a complete abrogation of pension fund trustees' duty to focus on returns for beneficiaries.

Or am I wrong?

No, you're 100% correct, and I actually think that the activism is the main motivation here.

Increasingly, states, again, like Delaware, New Jersey, New York, California, see their role as the state of incorporation is meddling and getting into the actual business of running the corporation to push a far-left progressive agenda.

completely detached from any relation to consumer protection or returns for shareholders.

And I think that was part of the big motivation here.

We're seeing that in Delaware, that judge that overturned Elon Musk's pay package twice after it had been approved by shareholders twice.

That did immeasurable damage to the state.

I mean, figure it out, right?

And it, it's deeply, I think, more pervasive than people understand how some of these companies are just doing the agenda of the left because they've, they bought up the shares and use shareholder pressure, among other things.

That's exactly right, and, and, uh, a lot of these, um, you know, entities, there's only, like, four or five that make up a huge portion of the market.

So for example, you mentioned banks.

Well, if you take the top five banks, they just themselves make about 40% of the banking industry in the United States, and more importantly, when you get to the levels where corporations need financing, hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, they, they're even more of the market share.

There's just not that many entities, uh, that can do that kind of thing.

And one of the things we actually found is, for example, in their 10-K one time, BlackRock admitted that they had a line of credit agreement with a number of large banks for, I think, four, four, around $4 billion of line of credit.

And in that agreement, they had agreed and the banks had agreed to provide an incentive, a monetary incentive.

[laughs]

How does this happen?

It, it's a great question.

I think this goes into the somewhat of the Silicon Valley mentality.

You know, it's, it's sort of a cliché now, but the, the quote, you know, "Move fast and break things," used to typify Silicon Valley at around the time that Uber was, was coming up, and we saw that...

I, I'm a, I'm a longtime DC resident, and I saw that DC was one of the first, uh, cities where Uber deployed, and at the time, it was basically what they were doing was illegal.

They were running an illegal, uh, taxi company outside of the regulations of, of the district, which [clears throat] in their defense, were cumbersome and draconian and had ma- no space for innovation or kind of improvement on, on the service.

But their solution to that was not to lobby for changes or to, to try and fix it.

Get a safe ride." You assume that calling an Uber is a safe ride, and then she was assaulted in the back seat of the vehicle.