There is a growing contradiction at the center of the data center debate: the people objecting to the buildout are often relying on the tools that make it necessary. Amy Drake’s own words place her squarely in that camp.
In a Feb. 13 Drake Report newsletter, Drake wrote that she pays for ChatGPT and uses it as part of her campaign for County Council. “I started using Chat GPT this past summer. Just a bit at first, now more often. I’m now paying the $20 per month subscription. It’s a great campaign aid. I’m not very good with computer design programs, but Chat GPT is. I feed in my ideas for campaign flyers, and it can give me catchy slogans and layouts,” she wrote.
In a Feb. 8 Facebook post, Drake shared an A.I.-generated caricature of herself and encouraged followers to make similar images with ChatGPT. The post featured Drake as a county officeholder in synthetic campaign-style imagery. She was not warning voters about A.I. there. She was using it as political content.
At the same time, Drake has made opposition to local data center growth part of her political message. On her campaign website, she says she has worked on “stopping data center overgrowth in bedroom communities.” In a Feb. 14 Drake Report, she wrote, “I didn’t vote for the Microsoft project,” and said she also opposed the Amazon incentive package in New Carlisle.
Drake has also made clear that she understands the relationship between the technology she is using and the infrastructure she is opposing. In that same Feb. 13 post, she wrote, “We’re pushing back on data center development while at the same time using these new AI tools,” and added that “our whole economy is now fueled by these build-outs.” Months earlier, she wrote that “the explosion of AI” is “promoting data center growth.”
These projects are not abstract industrial shells. Amazon says its northern Indiana expansion is meant to support “AI and cloud computing technologies,” while Microsoft says its cloud infrastructure supports products including Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, Microsoft 365, Azure, and Xbox. AWS also underpins a large share of the web, with Amazon case studies naming Netflix and Airbnb among its users, and outside trackers estimating Amazon infrastructure is used by tens of millions of websites along with banks, hospitals, and medical providers.
So when Drake pays for ChatGPT to help shape campaign material against data center growth, she is not operating outside the system she condemns. She is participating in the same A.I. and cloud economy that requires more computers, more storage, more electricity and more data center capacity.
Drake has already written the case against her own position. She pays for ChatGPT. She uses it as “a great campaign aid.” She admits A.I. growth is promoting data center growth. She acknowledges communities are pushing back on data center development while still using “these new AI tools” herself. The case against her message is in her own words.