{"id":677262,"date":"2026-11-07T01:06:19","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T01:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/677262\/"},"modified":"2026-11-07T01:06:19","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T01:06:19","slug":"data-center-double-down-hassett-says-blue-wave-wont-stop-ai-build-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/677262\/","title":{"rendered":"Data center double-down: Hassett says blue wave won&#8217;t stop AI build-out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"InlineVideo-videoThumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/108532858-1793975127678-1793974926-49472961147-hd.jpg\" alt=\"NEC Director Kevin Hassett: Any locality that doesn't want a data center doesn't have to allow it\"\/><\/p>\n<p>National Economic Council Director <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/video\/2026\/11\/02\/dont-think-theres-risk-of-wholesale-sell-off-nec-director-hassett.html?qsearchterm=kevin%20hassett\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kevin Hassett<\/a> said Friday he expects <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/11\/05\/democrats-data-center-restrictions-midterms.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">data center<\/a> growth to continue as projected, despite the blue-wave <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/11\/04\/2026-midterm-election-results-live-updates.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">election<\/a> that saw voters overwhelmingly favor limiting the tech infrastructure buildout.<\/p>\n<p>Hassett, on CNBC&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/squawk-on-the-street\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Squawk on the Street<\/a>,&#8221; acknowledged the dozens of measures on states&#8217; midterm ballots seeking to constrain data centers, a crucial part of President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/donald-trump\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Donald Trump<\/a>&#8216;s push to win the global <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/ai-artificial-intelligence\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">artificial intelligence<\/a> race. <\/p>\n<p>In at least <a href=\"https:\/\/ballotpedia.org\/Data_center-related_ballot_measures,_2026\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">46 of the roughly 50<\/a> such initiatives on ballots in 2026, majorities voted to restrict development of the facilities, according to Ballotpedia&#8217;s tally.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We respect the localities that decide that&#8217;s what they want to do,&#8221; Hassett said. &#8220;But America is a big place, and right now, the data centers scheduled over the next couple of years aren&#8217;t affected by these ballot initiatives.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Read more CNBC politics and policy coverage<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And the stuff after that, you know, there&#8217;s plenty of room in the U.S. for data center growth to continue, as it was projected ahead of the election,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Hassett said he expects data centers will continue to expand in states with more welcoming governors, and he suggested that even hostile states will eventually come around.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s exactly what&#8217;s going to happen,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That, or what&#8217;ll happen will be that the benefits of the data centers will be so obvious that people decide to change their minds about the way they regulate them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"InlineVideo-videoThumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/108533085-17939786451793978640-49473872379-1080pnbcnews.jpg\" alt=\"Watch CNBC's full interview with NEC Director Kevin Hassett\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Hassett also blamed Thursday&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/11\/04\/stock-market-today-live-updates.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">tech-driven market plunge<\/a> on &#8220;uncertainty about what the political change is going to mean for data centers going forward.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve now got a &#8230; new majority that maybe is going to go in there and muddle around in there, and I think that markets are anxious about that,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But I think that the economic strength that we see everywhere else is so strong, and of course, in the end, you could take something that&#8217;s growing as fast as the data centers and make it grow a little bit slower, and you still have a blockbuster economy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And so, I think we&#8217;re still very, very optimistic about what&#8217;s going to happen going forward,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/11\/03\/midterm-elections-2026-live-updates.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">CNBC Voter Poll<\/a> found 56% of midterm voters identified data centers as either a crucial or major issue \u2014 and of those who considered it crucial, 62% favored the generic Democratic candidate.<\/p>\n<p>Trump has strongly embraced AI and data centers and has even tried to reverse their seeming unpopularity by rebranding the tech as &#8220;super intelligence,&#8221; or SI.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/truthsocial.com\/@realDonaldTrump\/posts\/117569389226840480\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Truth Social post<\/a> Friday, Trump made clear that despite the midterm losses, his support for the nascent industry has not faltered.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As President, I am 100% in favor of Super Intelligence (SI), and will work with the many States in the U.S. that want to become RICH by having them,&#8221; Trump wrote. &#8220;They are GOLD, and only foolish leadership will say &#8216;NO&#8217; to the riches they bring!&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Friday he expects data center growth to continue as projected, despite&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,3393,10093,122,249513,7234,969,113,4644,1223,61,60,66149,14840,283166,1650,415,80,18423],"class_list":["post-677262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-breaking-news-economy","tag-breaking-news-politics","tag-business-news","tag-civil-rights-violations","tag-donald-j-trump","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-elections","tag-generative-ai","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kevin-hassett","tag-labor-economy","tag-mid-term-elections","tag-politics","tag-social-issues","tag-technology","tag-u-s-democratic-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}