In a divided America, the left and right unite to oppose artificial intelligence data centers

(AP) — In rural eastern Nebraska, a technology revolution could rise from fields of corn and soybean in the form of new data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom. Conservative farmers and the state Sierra Club chapter recently found common cause against labor leaders as they filled the firehouse in Murdock — population around 275 — to share concerns about data center development moving too quickly.The scene exemplified an unlikely coalition that worries about dwindling farmland, declining water supplies and rising electricity bills — not to mention how massive corporations could reshape small town America into nodes in a national network of computing warehouses.The debate around data center projects is one of the rare modern issues to cut across party lines, demographics and geography — from Republican-dominated Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming to swing-state Pennsylvania to Democratic-leaning New Mexico.Supporters of data centers, including Republican President Donald Trump and some union leaders who usually back Democrats, praise a potential jobs and economic bonanza, while helping the U.S. thwart China in the geopolitical race for technological supremacy.But hostility toward developments coming at breakneck speed has surged ahead of November's midterm elections, and forced national, state and local elected officials to adapt to a shifting political landscape.Judy Stroy, a fifth-generation Nebraska farmer whose late husband grew corn and soybeans and whose son still does, worried that with “the amount of ground that’s getting gobbled up every year, our food source is in trouble.”“That should scare everyone,” she said.Some areas have paused data center expansionStroy's fields are just outside Murdock, a village named for a railroad official at the company that first laid tracks here in the 1890s.

There's a school, a post office, a bar and a Corn Grower’s State Bank branch, plus the Midwest Farmer's Coop where growers sell their produce and buy supplies like feed and fertilizer.Murdock is in Cass County, where officials recently approved a 12-month moratorium on allowing data center development.That might freeze energy company Tenaska's plans to potentially option 1,300-plus acres of land along Highway 75, south of…