President Trump’s White House AI czar just tore into New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s new data-center moratorium, accusing her of turning the industry into a scapegoat for every fear surrounding artificial intelligence.

David Sacks did not hedge.

He said the accusations being used to justify New York’s first-in-the-nation statewide pause are false — and warned that data centers are being blamed for problems they did not create.

His response came in a fresh interview Sunday:

“These data centers have become the scapegoat for all of the angst that people have about AI,” Sacks said.

That line gets to the heart of the fight.

Albany is presenting its moratorium as a sober pause to protect ratepayers, water supplies, and local communities. Sacks sees a familiar political maneuver: concentrate every complicated fear about a new technology into one highly visible target, then take credit for stopping it.

What New York Actually Stopped

Governor Hochul’s office announced the order as the first statewide data-center moratorium in America.

It directs state agencies to pause pending permits and approvals for new hyperscale facilities expected to draw at least 50 megawatts of electricity. The hold can remain in place while officials conduct a sweeping review of grid demand, utility bills, water use, noise, air quality, and other environmental effects.

Existing facilities are not being closed. Smaller projects are outside the threshold, and some applications already deemed complete may escape the pause.

The order gives the Department of Public Service and Department of Environmental Conservation until July 2027 to finish their review and recommend statewide rules. Hochul said the state must prevent economic development from leaving families with higher power bills, depleted water supplies, or constant noise.

But the projects being frozen are precisely the enormous campuses capable of supplying the computing power required by frontier AI systems, cloud platforms, financial networks, and national-security work.

Those projects involve billions of dollars, years of construction, and decisions that companies can make somewhere else.

Sacks Says The Blame Is Misplaced

Sacks rejected the idea that data centers are responsible for every pressure now appearing on the electric grid.

Electricity demand is growing for several reasons. The economy is electrifying, manufacturing is returning, and aging infrastructure needs replacement.

States are simultaneously pushing electric vehicles, electric heating, and renewable-power mandates that require major new transmission and storage investments.

Data centers are large customers, but “large customer” does not automatically mean “public burden.” States can require developers to fund new substations, generation, transmission, water systems, and other infrastructure instead of shifting those costs onto families.

That is the distinction buried beneath the politics.

The real question is not whether a 50-megawatt facility uses substantial power. Of course it does.

The question is whether government writes rules that make the developer pay its full freight — or simply slams the door before a project can be evaluated on its merits.

The Numbers Are Enormous

State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, one of the moratorium’s leading supporters, said potential New York projects are seeking more than 9,000 megawatts of new electricity.

She compared that amount to roughly one-third of the state’s annual power use and argued that rapid development could drive up household utility bills.

Gonzalez also pointed to Virginia, the country’s largest data-center market, where rapidly rising demand has become part of a fierce fight over electricity prices and new grid construction. Supporters of the New York pause want Albany to study those risks before locking communities into decades of power-intensive development.

That is a serious concern. It is also an argument for building more power and demanding enforceable protections — not for pretending the AI economy will wait patiently while New York studies itself.

President Trump has already demanded that Hochul reverse course. TechRadar reported that he called data centers economic “money machines” and “liquid gold” because of the investment, jobs, and tax revenue they can bring.

The president’s point is brutally practical: capital moves.

New York does not have a monopoly on land, power, fiber connections, or skilled workers. If the approval process becomes politically unpredictable, developers can take the project — and everything that comes with it — to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, or another state eager to compete.

The report said President Trump demanded that Hochul change the policy “immediately” and framed the fight as part of America’s competition with China. His administration treats domestic computing capacity as strategic infrastructure — the foundation beneath advanced weapons, medicine, finance, manufacturing, and communications.

The Fight Is Already Local

The tension is not theoretical. Residents in Batavia have been debating a proposed data-center project while developers and local officials try to determine what Hochul’s order means for their plans:

The Associated Press reported that Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, Hochul’s Republican opponent, believes communities should be allowed to negotiate their own agreements when the jobs, tax revenue, and infrastructure commitments make sense.

A statewide freeze strips that choice away before many local governments can even examine the offer.

The AP noted that lawmakers in at least a dozen states have floated some form of data-center moratorium, but most proposals failed to advance. New York went farther by imposing the country’s first statewide pause, turning what had largely been a local zoning fight into a national test case.

That makes the coming review consequential well beyond Albany. Other governors and legislatures will be watching whether the pause produces workable protections or simply drives projects, jobs, and tax revenue across state lines.

There is a reasonable middle ground: hard rules, transparent contracts, grid protections, local approval, and no hidden subsidy for corporate power consumption.

New York did not choose it.

Fear Is Not An AI Strategy

America is in a global race to build the infrastructure behind the next generation of computing.

China is not declaring a timeout. Neither are the states trying to attract the laboratories, factories, energy projects, and data centers that will support the industry.

Sacks’ warning should land far beyond Albany. Politicians cannot spend years demanding an electrified, high-tech economy and then act shocked when that economy needs electricity and physical infrastructure.

Protect residents. Make developers pay.

Reject bad projects.

But do not turn an entire industry into a villain because fear is easier to sell than competent government.

New York may call its policy a temporary pause. The companies making billion-dollar decisions may hear something much simpler:

Build somewhere else.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.