America has positioned itself as a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI). As the Federal Reserve noted in October, private AI investment in America thus far is at nearly $500 billion, more than the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, and even China combined. American leadership in AI would simply not be possible without its vast network of more than 4,000 data centers, more than anywhere else in the world. But if some U.S. politicians had their way, the U.S. would stop building data centers and cede leadership to hostile countries like China.
Recently, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) stated he will push for a moratorium on new data center construction to “give democracy a chance to catch up” amid the allegedly “unregulated sprint” to deploy AI. This far-reaching restriction would cripple the economy and harm consumers while doing nothing to save jobs, help the environment, or lower electricity prices. Policymakers need to double down, not surrender, on growth and innovation.
Unfortunately, Sen. Sanders is not the only politician determined to put data centers out of business. Anti-tech politicians have seized on data centers’ supposed heavy use of resources and pressure on power prices to push for laws to halt or penalize development. For example, Arizona, Illinois, and Arkansas passed laws that either suspended data center development or restricted where they can be built. In 2024, Prince William County in Virginia passed a tax hike of 70 percent on its computer equipment. In 2025, Minnesota HF 16 became law, which mandates that regulators keep close watch on water use in permitting new data centers. Meanwhile, Kansas SB 98 makes the tax rate levied on data centers contingent on practices that will “conserve, reuse and replace water.”
But as The American Prospect manager editor, Ryan Cooper points out, “It is true that data centers use some water. But there is a great deal of missing context. Even in highly water-stressed areas, all data centers combined are a rounding error compared to the real water wasters: farmers, especially of livestock feed.” There is not a single demonstrated instance where data centers have raised household water bills in the U.S. Furthermore, a detailed 2025 analysis by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory concludes that data centers are not the primary driving force of increasing electricity prices and can actually lower prices by spreading fixed infrastructure costs such as poles and wires across more consumers.
There is a big problem with data center deployment in the U.S., but it has nothing to do with water or electricity prices. A recent analysis by real-estate investment management firm Hines found that the world will need about 40,000 new acres of land (or almost 2 billion square feet) to meet growing demand for AI services. To continue being a leader in AI deployment, America will need to contribute about 25,000 new acres worth of land—or almost two Manhattans—for these power-intensive operations.
There’s good news: the federal government has already begun identifying underused agency- owned lands that it could sell or lease to data center operations. One agency that could lead this effort is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which helped drive America’s last technological revolution. NASA maintains several large campuses not primarily used for data infrastructure, but that nonetheless have substantial power and network capabilities that could conceivably host data centers. Part of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio, the Neil Armstrong Test Facility spans about 6,400 acres and was originally developed for nuclear and rocket testing. Today, only a handful of its test facilities are actively used, and a 2015 NASA Inspector General (IG) report found that all but one of the major test facilities there had few or no customers. The vast contiguous acreage and existing utility hookups could be repurposed for a secure data center campus, and high-bandwidth connectivity could likely be established without great difficulty.
Then there’s the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), which owns 8,500 properties (including about 7,200 post offices) totaling an astounding 20,000 acres of land. What the USPS does not have is a lot of money. The struggling agency lost $9 billion in fiscal year 2025 and has accumulated more than $100 billion in red ink over the past fifteen years. Selling underused land to high-value operations such as data centers would cement American AI leadership while delivering the USPS out of debt.
The USPS is sitting on thousands of acres of land it does not need. Post offices, of course, provide a valuable function to the millions of Americans who need their mail delivered every day. But it doesn’t follow that there needs to be dedicated brick-and-mortar post offices with an army of federal employees serving consumers. The USPS can sell its real estate and save a significant sum on labor and maintenance costs by outsourcing “window” operations (e.g., stamp sales, package hand-offs) to private retailers. The USPS currently has about 2,500 “alternative retail access points” in which private retailers take the lead on postal operations.
Lawmakers should reject Sen. Sanders’ moratorium talk and find new ways to bolster AI leadership. With regulatory reform and federal land conversions, America has a bright future as a technological leader.
Ross Marchand is a senior fellow for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.