The article by Tom Still, a familiar voice in Wisconsin’s technology and business community, opens with a scene almost every Wisconsinite recognizes: a television ad that flashes across the screen during dinner, full of ominous music, grainy images, and a narrator who sounds as though he is reporting from a bunker. The subject is data centers, and the ad warns that these sprawling, anonymous buildings are somehow plotting to destroy the Wisconsin way of life. They use too much power. They take too much water. They steal public money. They don’t create real jobs. By the time the ad ends, the viewer is left feeling that a monster is creeping into the countryside. Still’s response is not to dismiss concern, but to ask a simple question: Are any of those claims actually true? His answer, grounded in decades of watching Wisconsin reinvent itself, is a firm and patient no. Data centers are not invaders. They are infrastructure for the modern age, as important to Wisconsin’s future as the mills and factories were to its past. The attack ads, he argues, are built on misinformation, and they are dangerous precisely because they feel so plausible. They exploit a natural human fear of change, and they turn a complicated public policy question into a cartoon.
Still goes on to unpack the most common deceptions, and this is where his humanizing touch really matters. The ads love to say that a single data center uses enough electricity to power a small city, which sounds alarming until you realize a small city’s electricity is a matter of engineering, not magic. Of course data centers use power; they are the digital hearts of hospitals, banks, universities, and even farms. But the ads never mention that much of Wisconsin’s new data-center capacity is tied to renewable energy projects, battery storage, and more efficient cooling systems. They also never mention that the grid is being strengthened for everyone, not just for a cloud company’s servers. The same ads talk about water, often showing a dry creek bed and suggesting that a nearby data center will drink the state dry. The truth is less dramatic: many data centers consume water mainly for cooling, and the industry is moving rapidly toward closed-loop and liquid-cooling systems that use far less. Still asks the reader to imagine a farmer in central Wisconsin who uses soil sensors to decide when to water. That information travels through a data center. Imagine a nurse in a rural clinic who gets instant diagnostic results from a machine-learning program. That too lives in a data center. Data centers are not separate from Wisconsin life; they are the quiet machinery underneath it. The ads take one moment of high energy use and turn it into an existential threat, while ignoring the actual tradeoffs that every community weighs when it welcomes any large facility.
When Still turns to jobs, he sounds less like a lobbyist and more like a community organizer. The ads like to say that once a data center is built, it only needs a few dozen maintenance workers. That’s true in a narrow sense, but it leaves out the construction army. Building a major data-center campus takes thousands of craftspeople: electricians, plumbers, ironworkers, concrete finishers, security staff, truck drivers, and engineers. These are the same union workers who built Wisconsin’s highways and hospitals. The construction phase alone can last years, pumping wages into local economies. After the doors open, the jobs are different but not meaningless. There are operations managers, cyber-security analysts, IT technicians, and janitorial staff. More importantly, there are the indirect jobs: restaurants, hotels, childcare centers, and supply chains that spring up around a long-term employer. Still also reminds his readers that data centers do not exist in a vacuum. When a Microsoft, Meta, or another major company chooses Wisconsin, it sends a signal to every other company in the world. It says Wisconsin has reliable power, a skilled workforce, and a business climate that welcomes advanced technology. That signal brings cloud-focused startups, software firms, and research labs. The chamber of commerce math is not always flashy, but it adds up over time. Still compares this moment to the 1970s, when people laughed at the idea that Wisconsin could make high-tech medical devices or electric power tools. Today, those industries are pillars of the state economy. Data centers, he argues, are the early seeds of a similar story, and tearing them down with false ads is like uprooting an orchard before it has a chance to bear fruit.
Of course, Still is not so naive as to say that every concern about data centers is baseless. He acknowledges, in a calm and reasonable voice, that communities should ask hard questions. Where will the power come from? How will the local utility manage peak demand? What happens if the company leaves? How much public subsidy is fair? These are legitimate questions, and he believes they should be answered honestly at public meetings and in the state Capitol. What he objects to is the all-or-nothing panic that leaves no room for nuance. A data center is not a coal mine or a casino. It does not leave ashes in the air or wrecked lives in its wake. It is a highly engineered building designed to run computers for decades. But it is also true that energy markets are changing, and Wisconsin has not built a major new natural-gas plant in a long time. The grid will need investment regardless of data centers because every household and business is using more electricity. Data centers accelerate that need, but they also help pay for it through property taxes and utility rates. Still points out that the biggest data-center developers are signing agreements to purchase renewable power, sometimes from new solar and wind farms that might not have been built without their commitment. That is not corporate charity; it is rational self-interest. But the public benefits anyway. Water is a trickier issue, especially in dry western states, but Wisconsin sits on the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. With good planning, water use can be managed, and many data centers are being designed to recycle water or use no water at all. The real enemy, Still suggests, is not data centers. It is sloppiness, misinformation, and the attachment of a political narrative to a facility that most people never see.
The political dimension of the attack ads is where Still’s voice sharpens. He knows that these ads are not grassroots citizens worried about their electricity bills. They are often paid for by groups with names that sound civic and noble but are backed by money that never touches Wisconsin soil. They use the language of populism to serve a larger agenda, which is usually partisan conflict or competitive sabotage. In one election cycle, the same strategy might be used against a hospital system, a public library, or a solar farm. The goal is not to solve a problem; it is to make people afraid enough to vote against their own interests. Still writes with a certain weariness, as someone who has watched this playbook before. It begins with a grain of truth, then stretches that truth until it snaps. It finds a few local citizens to put in front of cameras, and it leaves out the engineering reports, the tax filings, and the economists who say the project is a net win. It appeals to nostalgia, to a Wisconsin that was simpler and slower. But Wisconsin was never simple or slow. It built paper mills and tanneries. It hosted explosives plants during war time. It has always been a state of heavy industries, and it always wrestled with the downsides of those industries while enjoying the pros. Still argues that the current debate should be no different. Let the legitimate concerns be heard. Require transparency in tax incentives. Create a state-level framework for siting large data centers. Hold companies to their promises on energy and water. But do not let a television ad, funded by people who cannot point to their own district, write the state’s energy policy.
In the end, Still offers a broader vision of what is really at stake. Wisconsin is at a crossroads, not because data centers are evil, but because the world has changed. The old economy of assembly lines and cheese factories still matters, but it no longer stands alone. Every young person in the state deserves a chance at jobs that do not require leaving for Chicago or Silicon Valley. Data centers are not the final answer to that dream, but they are a bridge. They are the physical foundation for artificial intelligence, telemedicine, precision agriculture, and a thousand other technologies that will shape the next half-century. If Wisconsin rejects them, the computers will still be built somewhere. The power will still be used somewhere. The jobs will still exist somewhere. But they will not exist here. Still’s closing paragraphs are almost gentle, like a teacher ending a lesson. He asks readers to imagine Wisconsin in 2050. Will it be a state that looked back at every new thing and said no? Or will it be a state that looked forward and said, “Let’s build it right”? He does not pretend the choice is easy. There will be tradeoffs, and the market will not always behave. But he believes the people of Wisconsin are smarter than the attack ads give them credit for. They can hold a source of energy next to a source of jobs and understand that both are needed. They can ask a company hard questions while still welcoming it to the neighborhood. They can see beyond the dark cinematography and the ominous soundtrack to the simple truth that a data center is just a building, full of wires and light, humming with the electricity of human connection. And that, if anything, is something worth investing in.