A pro-data center panel was featured at the GR Chamber of Commerce annual Policy Conference last week

Last month I wrote a piece about how the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce has publicly endorsed Data Centers. I cited a recent report from Data Center Watch there has been $64 billion of data center projects that have been blocked because communities have become organized.

However, despite massive public opposition, the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce is in favor of data centers. The Chamber’s Vice President of Government Affairs, Christine Simon wrote an article entitled, BUILDING NEXGEN INFRASTRUCTURE: DATA CENTERS IN WEST MICHIGAN, which was posted on February 6th.

At the GR Chamber’s annual Policy Conference, they had a panel discussion that not only features a representative of Microsoft, the entire panel was pro-Data Center. Crain’s Grand Rapids Business wrote about this panel discussion in an article entitled, Microsoft faces the public as it pursues two Grand Rapids-area data center projects.

The Crain’s article provides numerous comments from the panelists, especially Microsoft’s senior director of government affairs and infrastructure, Jonathan Noble. Noble made some claims about being responsive to public concerns, but he also laid out their strategy for increasing the number of data centers around the world. This strategy is called, Microsoft’s Community-First AI Infrastructure Plan.  Despite the flowering pro-public rhetoric from Microsoft they have never in their corporation’s history been pro-community. Microsoft’s goal is to maximize profits and to answer to their board of directors and their shareholders, which is not the same as the public.

Another pro-data center member of the GR Chamber’s panel said:

“If Michigan wants to remain relevant in this space, we as an industry really need to embrace it, and we’ve taken the right steps to get there, We’re just starting to build this state up for this industry and what we really don’t want to see is kind of taking another step backwards. I would like us to continue to see the positive policies that were set forth for this industry a couple of years ago continue so that we can bring in great businesses like Microsoft to the state and really help build up the communities that we’re in.”

Wow, so this person thinks that Microsoft will be good for our communities and that we all need to embrace data centers.

The Crain’s article goes on to say:

Don Shoemaker, co-founder of Franklin Partners and part owner of the Lowell Township site, said Microsoft is under contract to purchase the property. Franklin Partners, an Oak Brook, Ill.-based commercial real estate firm, specializes in the sale and redevelopment of large industrial sites.

“We’ve gotten pretty much into the data center world,” Shoemaker said. “The demand isn’t slowing down. It’s about where you can get zoned with the community that wants us and get power. It’s all about getting the community support behind it, really.”

So, it’s all about getting community support. What Shoemaker did not say was that getting the public to support data centers means that companies like Microsoft want to con the public into believing that data centers will be good for the community regardless of all the evidence to the contrary. As I mentioned earlier, if data centers are so wonderful why have communities rejected data center projects to the tune of $64 billion that the public said no to?

On Tuesday, the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce provided a summary of their Policy Conference, which included a link to the slides from the Microsoft representative. The slides are primarily about Microsoft’s Community-First AI Infrastructure Plan, all to convince the public – or in the case of the GR Chamber Policy Conference attendees – that they really care about the public and that data centers are really about serving communities. Here is one slide that provided their definition of what a data center is:

Are we really supposed to believe that data centers are all about keeping our lives connected and efficient? Microsoft, and by extension the GR Chamber of Commerce,  must really think that the public is so gullible that we would believe this shit. We never need data centers to keep our lives connected, since human beings have connected with each other for as long as humanity has existed, long before data centers ever existed. All the more reason to oppose data centers when corporations like Microsoft want to shovel more of their propaganda in our communities.