Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Tuesday that “too many” data center developers don’t care about the communities in which they are building projects in the field of artificial intelligence, which is facing growing opposition nationwide.
Shapiro’s comments on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” came a day after President Donald Trump said the only reason American society doesn’t want AI data centers is “if we want to be backwards and poor.”
Mr. Shapiro appeared on CNBC with Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya to talk about the Greek yogurt maker’s planned $1.2 billion investment in a new dairy manufacturing site in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.
“Unfortunately, we’ve seen too many developers who don’t care about our community and want to wildly manipulate our community. Those are the types of data center projects we don’t want here,” Shapiro said. “We want to work with people who want to work with the community.”
The governor, who is considered a front-runner for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, signed an executive order on August 18 aimed at governing data center development, mandating that all center proposals comply with the Governor’s Responsible Infrastructure Development (GRID) requirements and exempting all AI data center projects from the expedited approval program.
“This executive order represents the most stringent requirements in the entire nation,” Shapiro said when signing the executive order. “And my word to developers: Please follow these requirements. If you don’t, you shouldn’t plan on doing business here.”
Mr. Shapiro’s order comes as he seeks re-election as governor against Republican candidate State Treasurer Stacey Garrity.
He mentioned the order during an appearance with Ulukaya on Tuesday.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro during the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit on July 15, 2026 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Tom Brenner Bloomberg | Getty Images
“That’s why we put these regulations in place through an executive order that requires us to have local support before coming to the state for permits,” Shapiro said. “We frankly want to slam down people who don’t see the world the same way Hamdi and Chobani do, who don’t see themselves as partners in the community.”
When asked what that means, Shapiro said data center developers will need to get local support before getting permits from the state.
“Number two, you have to generate your own electricity and you have to pay for it,” he said. “We can’t burden local homeowners and businesses with that. Number three, we have to protect our water supply and air quality.
“All of these things are common sense, and you are now legally bound to those standards.”
Shapiro is one of several governors who have imposed new restrictions or called for increased oversight of data center development amid growing public opposition to the project, which has become a political flashpoint in upcoming legislative and state elections.
Opponents of AI data centers, which house computing equipment used to train and operate artificial intelligence models, argue that they could increase electricity demand and utility costs and strain local water resources.
In June 2025, Shapiro advertised: AmazonThe state announced plans to spend at least $20 billion to build two data center complexes in Pennsylvania, the largest private investment in the state’s history.
That same month, Shapiro told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that “it’s important to note that this is just an initial investment from Amazon, and we’re going to see more growth over time.” “Pennsylvania is going to be better. I think America is going to be better. Because we’re going to win the battle for AI supremacy, and it’s going to be fought right here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
Garrity, Shapiro’s challenger, released a video in response to the August executive order calling it “damage control.”
“Josh Shapiro has spent the last year rolling out the red carpet for a major data center development in Pennsylvania,” Garrity said in the video. “He celebrated it, promoted it and said he was proud of it.”
Garrity said if elected, he would “pause data center development in Pennsylvania.”
But “Ohio is kicking our butt” in having more than twice as many data centers as Pennsylvania, Garrity said in a radio interview a year ago.
“More could be done in that area,” she says.
A Gallup poll released in May found that “seven out of 10 Americans oppose building local artificial intelligence data centers.”
On the same day that Shapiro signed the executive order in August, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released a memo warning that a voter backlash against data centers put Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) at risk of losing a special election to Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown, himself a former senator.
“If Husted loses because of data centers, the industry will be blamed and elected officials of both parties will learn a lesson,” the NRSC said.
“There’s a lot of agreement here between communities, data centers and AI companies,” David Sachs, co-chair of the President’s Science and Technology Advisory Council, said in a separate interview on “Squawk on the Street” later Tuesday.
“It’s educating the average residential consumer, the average voter, that data centers actually have a way to lower their energy bills,” Sachs said.
“The fact is that data center operators are actively funding grid upgrades. In fact, data centers are using less water now because the water is being recirculated,” he said. “When you actually educate people on this issue, the polling numbers change dramatically and you see that a majority of voters actually support data centers.”
