Their Machines Can't Leave. They Can.

The AI boom is building the most immobile assets in America and owning them in the most mobile way money allows.

The most immobile thing being built in America this decade is the AI data center. It cannot chase cheaper labor abroad or slip into a friendlier tax code. It is poured into one county, wired to one set of substations and fed by power plants built beside it for that purpose. The arrangements that own it are designed for the opposite quality. They can be sold, refinanced, renewed or walked away from on terms fixed years in advance.

That gap, between a machine that has to stay and owners who are not bound to, is the best way I know to read this fall’s anger at data centers, even when the ads describe it as a utility bill.

Both Parties Found the Same Villain

The midterms have produced one rare point of agreement. An NPR analysis of AdImpact data counted more than $45 million spent since January on ads mentioning data centers in races for governor, the House and the Senate. The money split almost evenly, a little over $22 million behind Republicans and a little over $21 million behind Democrats. The scripts converge as well: the facilities get too many tax breaks, push up electric bills and need reining in. Florida’s Republican nominee for governor and Wisconsin’s Democratic nominee are running nearly the same promise for opposite parties [1].

Voters got there first. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in June found 77 percent of Americans worried that data centers would raise their electricity costs, with two-thirds of Democrats and half of Republicans saying they would oppose one in their own community. An internal memo from the Republican Senate campaign committee called data centers a “sleeper issue” for the whole cycle and warned the industry that a loss in Ohio would make politicians everywhere wary of it [2].

A bill is the version of the grievance that fits in a thirty-second spot. Underneath it, on this reading, sits a question about place: who has to live beside these things for the next thirty years, and who has arranged not to.

A Building That Cannot Move

Richland Parish, in the northeast corner of Louisiana, is a rural parish of about 20,000 people. In December 2024 Meta announced a $10 billion data center campus there. In July 2026 the company said the campus, called Hyperion, would grow to five gigawatts of computing capacity and more than $50 billion in total investment [3].

Almost nothing about it is portable. In August 2025 the Louisiana Public Service Commission voted 4 to 1 to let Entergy Louisiana build three gas-fired plants totaling 2,262 megawatts, along with a new 500-kilovolt transmission line and a substation, to serve it. Two of the three plants are going up next to the campus [4].

The expansion needs more. In March, Entergy filed a second agreement with Meta covering seven more gas generators of about 750 megawatts each, 2,500 megawatts of solar and three battery projects, which the utility’s chief executive described as about half again as much generation as Entergy Louisiana now runs. It is still awaiting the commission’s approval [5]. A data center can be emptied of its chips. The plants, the lines, the cleared land and the road and water work around them stay where they are.

A place does not get to renegotiate with geography. It hosts what is built on it for as long as the steel lasts.

An Owner That Can

The ownership looks very different. In October 2025, two months after the first power plants were approved, Meta moved Hyperion into a joint venture with funds managed by Blue Owl Capital, a New York asset manager. The Blue Owl funds took 80 percent and Meta kept 20 percent. Blue Owl’s funds put in about $7 billion in cash, and Meta took out a one-time distribution of about $3 billion. Part of the money was raised as debt sold to PIMCO and other bond investors, and the structure keeps that debt off Meta’s own balance sheet [6].

Meta then leased the finished campus back from the venture. The leases run for an initial four years with options to extend, an arrangement the company’s announcement said would provide “long-term strategic flexibility.” To make that flexibility affordable, Meta gave the venture a residual value guarantee covering the first sixteen years of operation: if Meta declines to renew or terminates a lease, it makes a capped payment based on what the campus is then worth. Meta’s exposure therefore does not end with the lease. It still holds a fifth of the venture and manages the construction and the property, and leaving would cost it real money.

The power runs on two clocks, one approved and one still proposed. Under the settlement the commission approved in 2025, Meta’s side pays the full cost of the first three plants for fifteen years. Critics before the commission pointed out that fifteen years is roughly half the working life of a gas turbine. Entergy’s answer was that if Meta does not renew in 2041, the plants will replace older units in its fleet, which is another way of saying that after the first fifteen years their cost falls to the utility’s other customers [7]. The second agreement runs twenty years, over which Entergy says Meta will pay the full cost of the new assets. A consumer advocate warned that if Meta stops being a customer after that, ratepayers could be left carrying billions, and said redactions in the filing kept the public from checking the promised savings [8].

Short initial terms with renewal options are how flexible capacity is often financed, and project-level debt is ordinary infrastructure practice. Hyperion applies those habits at a new scale, tying gigawatt campuses and power plants built for decades to leases measured in years and to debt kept off the tenant’s books. Not every campus is financed this way. Louisiana’s economic development secretary told regional television that the financing changed nothing in the company’s deal with the state [9].

No one in the deal escapes all exposure. What the private parties hold are ways to limit it, price it and pass it on. The investors have a guarantee and bonds that can change hands. Meta has a four-year lease and a capped payment if it walks. Entergy can recover approved costs from the customers who remain. The parish has the plants beside it.

Earlier this year I argued that people protect what they cannot easily leave, and that much of the American upper class has spent decades building ways to leave, so that public institutions end up mined rather than stewarded. Hyperion is a narrower and more physical case of the same asymmetry: the asset is pinned to one parish, and the claims on it trade in New York and Newport Beach. Leases and power contracts written to run as long as the plants, with owners carrying the risk on their own books, would undo that reading and leave an ordinary story about expensive infrastructure.

What the Town Holds

On the largest grid in the country, the fear about bills has real support. PJM’s independent market monitor estimated that about $6.3 billion of the costs from its latest capacity auction came from data center demand, on top of more than $23 billion it attributed to data centers across the three auctions before that. Those charges reach customers in thirteen states and the District of Columbia [10].

The longer record points the other way. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Brattle Group found that from 2019 to 2024 the states with the fastest growth in electricity demand saw inflation-adjusted prices fall, because the fixed costs of the grid were spread over more sales. A causal study presented by the Electric Power Research Institute estimated that doubling a state’s data center capacity lowered residential electricity prices by about 3.5 percent [11]. A grid with spare capacity gets cheaper per customer when large users arrive, and a grid that has run out has to buy new capacity at whatever the auction clears. If the downward pattern survives the current wave of construction, the bill complaint in the ads is mostly wrong, and what is left of the argument is about exposure and duration rather than price.

Teachers in Richland Parish received bonuses of up to $50,000 this year, against about $10,000 the year before, paid from sales-tax collections that rose with the project. Meta says Louisiana businesses have received more than $1.6 billion in contracts since construction began. Entergy projects that Meta’s payments will save its other customers about $2.65 billion over twenty years, a projection rather than a measured result. Coverage of the July expansion puts permanent jobs at about 1,000 once the campus is running [12].

The windfall rides on construction, and construction ends. Louisiana’s 2024 data center law rebates state and local sales and use taxes on qualifying data center equipment for an initial term of twenty years [13]. A parish can be paid generously while the cranes are up and far less once the building is simply running. The plants may stay useful too; Entergy says it would fold the first three into its fleet, and whether that is a gift or a burden depends on what they still cost when Meta’s payments stop, set against what they are still worth. If Richland Parish’s revenues and payrolls hold after construction winds down, the arrangement looks like a hard bargain struck well rather than a mine. That test will be settled long after this election.

Who Is Still There in 2041

Campaigns run on bills because a bill fits on a screen. The terms that decide who carries a data center across its life sit in lease schedules, utility settlements and tax agreements that almost no voter reads. Ohio shows how quickly the politics can turn. Jon Husted championed data centers as lieutenant governor and has since introduced legislation in Congress to protect ratepayers from the higher rates they can cause [14].

Candidates can change sides in one cycle. A gas plant cannot.

The older forms of American stewardship rested on a crude fact. The family that owned the mill often lived in the mill town, and the men who ran a railroad needed the line to work in forty years. That entanglement never guaranteed good behavior; plenty of mill towns were stripped and left. It was exposure, and exposure raised the price of leaving. The AI build-out produces an industry as tied to its sites as the railroads and the steel mills were, and finances it so that the site carries the long tail while the owners hold options.

In Richland Parish the dates are already on paper. The lease runs four years before its first option. The first power contract runs fifteen, and the second, if approved, twenty. The guarantee to the investors runs sixteen. The turbines are built to run about thirty. The parish was there before any of those clocks started, and it is the only party in the deal with no exit date.

Notes

[1] Maham Javaid, “Voters are fed up with data centers. Both parties are trying to cash in for midterms,” NPR, September 5, 2026, https://www.npr.org/2026/09/05/nx-s1-5913671/ai-data-center-campaign-spending. NPR analysis of AdImpact data: more than $45 million on ads mentioning data centers in gubernatorial, House and Senate races since January; from January to August, over $22 million supporting Republican candidates and over $21 million supporting Democratic candidates; the shared argument of both parties’ ads; ads for Byron Donalds in Florida and David Crowley in Wisconsin.

[2] Reuters/Ipsos poll, June 2026, as reported in Javaid, NPR, note [1]; Reuters report at https://www.reuters.com/world/us/americans-wary-ai-driven-data-center-boom-reutersipsos-poll-shows-2026-06-11/. The National Republican Senatorial Committee memo was obtained by NPR and first reported by Axios on August 19, 2026.

[3] “Meta Expands Louisiana AI Data Center to 5 GW in $50 Billion Buildout,” The Energy Mag, July 13, 2026, https://theenergymag.com/news/2026-07-13/meta-ai-louisiana-expand (Richland Parish population of about 20,000); “Meta expands colossal Hyperion AI supercluster plans to 5GW, pushes Louisiana investment past $50 billion as AI race accelerates,” Tom’s Hardware, July 2026, https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/data-centers/meta-expands-colossal-hyperion-ai-supercluster-plans-to-5gw-pushes-louisiana-investment-past-usd50-billion-as-ai-race-accelerates-says-it-plans-to-invest-over-usd1-billion-in-local-infrastructure-improvements (first announced at $10 billion in December 2024; expansion to 5 GW and over $50 billion announced July 13, 2026).

[4] S&P Global Commodity Insights, report on the Louisiana Public Service Commission vote, August 20, 2025, https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/news-research/latest-news/natural-gas/082025-louisiana-regulators-approve-new-entergy-infrastructure-for-10-bil-meta-data-center. The 4-1 vote; three 754-MW plants totaling 2,262 MW; a new 500-kV line and substation; two of the three plants sited next to the data center.

[5] “Entergy Louisiana’s claim customers will save thanks to Meta deal greeted with some skepticism,” Fox 8 (WVUE), March 30, 2026, https://www.fox8live.com/2026/03/30/entergy-louisianas-claim-customers-will-save-thanks-meta-deal-greeted-with-some-skepticism/. Per Entergy Louisiana CEO Phillip May: seven new gas-fired generators of about 750 MW each, about 5,200 MW in total; 2,500 MW of solar; three battery projects; about 50 percent more generation than Entergy Louisiana currently deploys. Commission approval pending at the time of reporting.

[6] Meta, “Meta Announces Joint Venture with Funds Managed by Blue Owl Capital to Develop Hyperion Data Center,” press release, October 21, 2025, https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2025/Meta-Announces-Joint-Venture-with-Funds-Managed-by-Blue-Owl-Capital-to-Develop-Hyperion-Data-Center/default.aspx. The 80/20 ownership; the approximately $7 billion cash contribution and $3 billion distribution to Meta; Meta’s construction and property management role; debt issued to PIMCO and other bond investors; operating leases with a four-year initial term and options to extend; a residual value guarantee for the first 16 years of operations, payable as a capped amount after non-renewal or termination if certain conditions are met. On the debt sitting at project level rather than on Meta’s balance sheet: Michael Marray, “Meta, Blue Owl sign US$27 billion data centre campus deal,” The Asset, October 29, 2025, https://www.theasset.com/article/55209/meta-blue-owl-sign-us-27-billion-data-centre-campus-deal.

[7] “Entergy’s plan to power new Meta data center gets regulatory approval,” WRKF, August 20, 2025, https://www.wrkf.org/2025-08-20/entergys-plan-to-power-new-meta-data-center-gets-regulatory-approval (Meta funds 100 percent of plant expenses for 15 years; Entergy on the plants replacing aging units if Meta does not renew in 2041); “Entergy Louisiana gains regulatory approval for massive Meta power project,” Louisiana Illuminator, August 20, 2025, https://lailluminator.com/2025/08/20/entergy-meta/ (the 15-year contract as roughly half the average lifespan of a gas turbine, the basis for the thirty-year figure at the close); The Lens, report on the commission vote, August 2025, https://thelensnola.org/?p=604759 (costs after the first 15 years fall to ratepayers).

[8] Fox 8, note [5] (the 20-year term and May’s statement that Meta pays the full cost of the new assets over it; Logan Burke of the Alliance for Affordable Energy on the post-term cost risk to ratepayers and on redactions in the application).

[9] KTVE, “As development continues, the cost of Meta’s data center in Richland Parish will be 3x more than originally projected,” https://www.myarklamiss.com/news/as-development-continues-the-cost-of-metas-data-center-in-richland-parish-will-be-3x-more-than-originally-projected/. Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois said the financing does not change the terms of the company’s deal with the state.

[10] “Report: Data Centers Create About US$6.3 Billion in Electric Costs for PJM Customers,” Industrial Info Resources, 2026, https://www.industrialinfo.com/news/article/report-data-centers-create-about-us63-billion-in-electric-costs-for-pjm-customers—360334 (Joseph Bowring, Monitoring Analytics); “Another White House Power Grab: PJM,” Legal Planet, January 20, 2026 (quoting the market monitor’s January 2026 report: more than $23 billion in added costs to other PJM customers from data center demand over three auctions); “Data Center Power Demand Expected to Add Billions in Costs Across Maryland and 12 Other States,” Southern Maryland News Net, July 16, 2026, https://smnewsnet.com/?p=562516.

[11] Latitude Media, report on data center rate studies, 2026, https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/studies-say-data-centers-dont-raise-rates-does-it-matter/ (summarizing the October 2025 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Brattle Group study); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and The Brattle Group, “Impact of Data Center Load Growth,” presentation, December 2025; American Public Power Association, summary of the EPRI brief and white paper “Have Data Centers Raised Your Electric Bill? Causal Evidence From the United States,” https://www.publicpower.org/node/30525.

[12] The Energy Mag, note [3] (bonuses of as much as $50,000 against about $10,000 a year earlier, funded through increased local sales-tax collections rather than a direct payment from Meta; Meta and Entergy projections of more than $2 billion plus about $650 million in customer savings over 20 years); Tom’s Hardware, note [3] (more than $1.6 billion in contracts to Louisiana businesses, per Meta); “LA: Meta Commits $50 Billion for North Louisiana Project, Creating Hundreds of Jobs,” Trade and Industry Development, July 2026, https://www.tradeandindustrydev.com/region/louisiana/news/la-meta-commits-50-billion-north-louisiana-project-36079 (approximately 1,000 operational jobs for the expanded campus).

[13] Louisiana Legislature, Act 730 (HB 827), 2024 Regular Session, digest, https://legis.la.gov/Legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=1387051 (state and local sales and use tax rebate for approved data center facilities; initial term of 20 years).

[14] Javaid, NPR, note [1] (Husted’s record as lieutenant governor and his ratepayer-protection legislation).