The result was padatacenterproposals.com<\/a>, a public map detailing data center development in Northeast Pennsylvania and across the state. It was inspired by an interactive national map produced by Business Insider<\/a>, but the publication\u2019s data set was too limited for Emilia to be satisfied.<\/p>\n \u201cI realized it was only to the end of 2024,\u201d she said. \u201cUnfortunately, that\u2019s just not good enough for communities to realize what\u2019s coming their way right now. So that was another reason that made me feel better about doing this in the first place, because I think, as of right now, this is the most updated map on data centers.\u201d<\/p>\n Emilia launched the map in August, and works on it in spare time from her paying gigs in video game programming, photography and freelance website development. A recent profile<\/a> produced by the Next Generation Newsroom at the Pittsburgh Media Partnership brought more attention to the project than she expected.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t anticipate this becoming as popular as it did,\u201d she said. \u201cI just kind of wanted to have it as a personal project where I would just put this information out there. But I found that people are actually referring to it now, so I definitely feel like I have to keep on top of it. So I am spending a lot of time curating this and trying to make it as accessible as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, elected officials who are paid to protect and inform the public are mostly twirling pom-poms for developers, or worse \u2014 cashing in.<\/p>\n At the aforementioned \u201cPennsylvania Energy and Information Summit\u201d in July, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro joined Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Connecticut, and Trump at Carnegie Mellon University to announce more than $90 billion<\/a> in AI-related investments in the state.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, the commonwealth is reclaiming its industrial heritage and taking its place at the forefront of the AI technological revolution,\u201d Trump said. (He also riffed on \u201cclean, beautiful coal,\u201d which doesn\u2019t exist.)<\/p>\n Trump has since signed executive orders to \u201cstreamline\u201d data center development and diminish state-level regulatory authority.<\/p>\n On Monday, Meta \u2014 Facebook\u2019s parent company and a major player in data centers \u2014 named<\/a> Dina Powell McCormick, the senator\u2019s wife, its president and vice chairman. Also Monday, Politico reported that U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Wall Street, traded<\/a> in AI stocks at the same time he was touting data centers as \u201ccatalysts for economic growth and technological innovation\u201d in Northeast Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n Talk about cats who ate the canary. Careful not to choke on it in the midterms, Congressman!<\/p>\n In the coal mines, caged canaries were used to signal the presence of carbon monoxide and other toxic gases. If the canaries croaked, it was time to evacuate. Emilia Doda prefers a less passive, more public-empowering approach.<\/p>\n \u201cI really just want the general community to know what\u2019s going on,\u201d she said. \u201cI like to think that, in a way, I\u2019m giving back to my hometown. I feel like if I\u2019m getting information out to people, that makes it worth it,\u201d<\/p>\n Spoken like a true hometown hawk.<\/p>\n CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, trusts Emilia Doda a lot more than he trusts ChatGPT. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emilia Doda could comfortably be characterized as a \u201ccanary in the coal mine\u201d of AI data center development.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2117,1590,2116,1591,201,182,3052,139,1559,1560,28,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-85959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-archbald","tag-chris-kelly","tag-data-centers","tag-facebook","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-midvalley","tag-news","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-columnists","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768345508_765_STT-L-KELLY-01_0f1530.jpg\")
Chris Kelly (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)<\/p>\n