NewsWrap: Friday 6 November - Mid-term impact on AI and Australia's data centre plans

So we did know those midterm elections, the so-called Blue Nami that has gone through and, you know, everyone's talking about a rejection of Donald Trump, Republicans and all this stuff.

We're interested in data centers and AI.

And we knew going into those midterms that there was at local levels, quite a backlash about data centers at a more general level, a growing swell against AI slash big tech, if you like, that kind of surveillance state.

The people are concerned about.

So it came to fruition.

There are implications for this.

The hot takes immediately afterwards have been that data center rollout will potentially slow in the US, which has implications for us, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, we saw the Democrats taking that approach to the midterms.

And obviously, like you mentioned in the intro, just America is much further ahead than us when it comes to data centers and just the scale of data centers that are rolling out and the number that have been approved in recent years.

But yeah, this will definitely have implications here for the government you know as we go through what we are we know we've seen a couple of data centers that haven't progressed here recently i mean lane cove was probably one of the recent examples that i can think of it's quite high profile there's a lot of opposition to it from the community there you know we've seen things like next dc with what happened in melbourne around not being able to connect that site or at least the the power poles because of community opposition So it'll definitely have an impact here, I think.

And already this morning, the acting Prime Minister, Richard Miles, was talking about this on ABC Breakfast, you know, about how we're not going to be building these data centres in suburban areas anymore.

They've talked a bit about this throughout the development of those standards.

But, you know, really laying that out about the data centres we have now in suburban areas kind of being the end of it.

So that's really interesting and clearly informed by what's happening over there in the States.

But I think there's a long way to go.

You know, we've talked about this at length on this podcast as we've been following the AI inquiry here.

So yeah, it'll be certainly interesting to see how they land with those standards that are coming through.

Yeah, you would have to say government has been watching what's going on in the US very closely.

And I think that's where the can't build data centers in suburban areas is certainly coming from, because that's really where the backlash came from.