{"id":162863,"date":"2026-02-20T18:36:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T18:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/162863\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T18:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T18:36:13","slug":"byron-donalds-dismisses-performative-ai-critiques-argues-again-for-data-centers-in-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/162863\/","title":{"rendered":"Byron Donalds dismisses ‘performative’ AI critiques, argues again for data centers in Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gubernatorial candidate\u00a0Byron Donalds<\/a> continues to argue that Florida needs a \u201cplan\u201d on how to deal with\u00a0artificial intelligence data centers<\/a>, making the case that data stored in Florida is safer than foreign countries or Democrat-controlled places.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not anti-data center. I\u2019m pro-having a plan,\u201d Donalds said at a Turning Point USA event at Florida Gulf Coast University.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this is the part of politics where I guess the word now is \u2018performative.\u2019 A lot of people like to be performative these days. It\u2019s actually interesting watching it. Have a strategy. Data centers are going to be a function of American life going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noting that the students he was talking to all rely heavily on technology, the Republican Congressman from Naples said, \u201cthe more you use technology, the more server space that you\u2019re going to need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more server space that you\u2019re going to need, the more racks that you\u2019re going to have to figure out. In Florida, the question is, are we going to do that here? Are we going to warehouse our data in Northern Virginia? Or are we going to warehouse our data in California? Or we\u2019re going to warehouse our data in India. Or we\u2019re going to warehouse our data in China,\u201d Donalds said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He continued along this theme.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to warehouse my data in China. I don\u2019t trust them. I don\u2019t want to warehouse my data in India. I don\u2019t want to get into too deep of a foreign policy conversation, but let\u2019s be very clear. India has to deal with Russia. They share a border. I don\u2019t want my data there,\u201d Donalds said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd to be honest, I don\u2019t trust the Democrats in Virginia. I don\u2019t want my data there. I think when it comes to technology, AI and everything else, Florida should lead. We use common sense. We know how to do this thing. We should lead, not play cute, on social media, not just say no without a planning a strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leading the Future<\/a>, a super PAC launched by\u00a0OpenAI<\/a>\u00a0co-founder\u00a0Greg Brockman,\u00a08VC<\/a>\u00a0founder\u00a0Joe Lonsdale\u00a0and venture capital firm\u00a0Andreessen Horowitz<\/a>, announced it was putting $5 million in support of Donalds and a broader educational effort on the benefits AI will have on Florida\u2019s economic future.<\/p>\n

This comes as Gov.\u00a0Ron DeSantis and others looking to succeed him have argued against AI and its perceived excesses.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gubernatorial candidate\u00a0Byron Donalds continues to argue that Florida needs a \u201cplan\u201d on how to deal with\u00a0artificial intelligence data…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2872,4038,445,52520,28,9149,30,29,9968],"class_list":{"0":"post-162863","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-byron-donalds","11":"tag-data-centers","12":"tag-florida","13":"tag-florida-gulf-coast-university","14":"tag-florida-headlines","15":"tag-florida-news","16":"tag-turning-point-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}