Louisiana Congressional candidate Stephen Wagley said that voters’ concerns about AI data center development are “very valid” and added that officials owe them transparency.
During an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday with host Matthew Boyle, Wagley spoke about how voters’ frustration about Amazon’s drone deliveries was a “good segue” into the topic of data centers. Wagley explained that “the problem” people have “learned” from their frustrations and concerns over Amazon’s usage of drones for deliveries is needing “to know what questions to ask.”
“All this week, I’ve actually been hearing about a new issue. We have a very large Amazon facility here in Baton Rogue — everybody’s pretty excited about it. It’s been here for several years. It’s been pretty good — we get our deliveries very quickly,” Wagley explained.
“But, as of late, they have been experimenting on our area with drone deliveries, which everybody thought that was pretty cool. But now it’s turning out that those drones are coming out just way more frequently than anyone expected, they’re much louder than anyone thought they would have been, and there’s a few dangers. One actually crashed the other day, I think they weigh about 85 pounds, they’re much bigger than you would expect.”
“So, now a lot of the people, especially the ones that are close to these areas, they’re getting so many drones flying over their house every day, that they’re starting to complain about it. They want these things possibly stopped, or maybe just limited to how much they come out every day. But, regardless, they’re kind of scrambling — everyone is, to figure out who exactly do we get in touch with to report these problems? Who’s really in charge of this? What are the rules and regulations?”
“Everyone, including the officials, are learning as they go, and this is a good segue into the data centers. Because, a lot of people are very pro-economic development, growth, and if these data centers are going to be great, well then, they’re going to be great. But the problem we have is we’ve learned from the Amazon situation and other situations. We need to know what questions to ask, and we need to get answers from them. We need transparency and accountability, but it comes back to our elected officials signing these NDA’s [Non-Disclosure Agreements] bringing in these data centers.”
Wagley explained that voters have questions about data centers ranging from “how much water” they will use, whether the data centers will end up “importing people from San Francisco,” or whether they will create “long-term jobs for the locals.”
“Most of the citizens that I’m talking to, I think that their concerns are very valid, because they can’t even get answers to these questions because there is no transparency. There is no accountability, and I think that’s pretty simple, and I think we at least owe them that,” Wagley said.