Name: The A.I. Data Center Backlash
Uploaded: 2026-03-01T15:00:00Z
Duration: 6 min 32 s
Description: Journal Editorial Report: Voters revolt over soaring electric bills.

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“We don’t see technology undermining our existence, we see technology helping us,” says Max Hollein, the CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260325/2a63586d-e782-4dc5-be2e-df80e32a8ed2/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Museums in the Age of AI

Max Hollein, the CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, tells Barron’s Andy Serwer why more people are donating to museums and cultural institutions.

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The Changing Landscape of Philanthropy

Jonathan Steinberg, founder and CEO of WisdomTree, tells Barron’s Andy Serwer how gold and metals can be a strong alternative to the dollar and Bitcoin.

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WisdomTree CEO Is Going All In on Gold

Max Hollein, the CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, discusses philanthropy, artificial intelligence, museum security, and more.

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This CEO Runs One of the Biggest Museums in the World

Jonathan Steinberg, founder and CEO of Wisdom Tree, sat down for an interview with Barron's editor at large Andy Serwer.

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WisdomTree CEO on ETFs, IDing Macro Trends, and More

As remote and hybrid work continues, Elizabeth Brink and Jordan Goldstein, co-CEOS of the architecture firm Gensler, tell Barron’s Andy Serwer how the firm is adapting to office design post-Covid.

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Redesigning the Office As a Destination, Not an Obligation

Elizabeth Brink and Jordan Goldstein, co-CEOS of the architecture firm Gensler, discuss how their leadership model works for their company.

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Co-Leading and Collaborating at Gensler

Elizabeth Brink and Jordan Goldstein, co-CEOS of the architecture firm Gensler, sat down with Barron's editor at large Andy Serwer.

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Gensler Co-CEOs on Nvidia, AI, and 'the 20-Minute City'

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"Your 9-5...is just not going to do it," Nick Magguilli, personal finance expert, said on Barron's Streetwise podcast.

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How to Scale Your Net Worth

TJ Thornton, Head of Global Research Product Marketing at BofA Securities, talks to Jack Hough about his favorite stocks outside of AI.

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BofA’s Favorite Non-AI Stocks

Jack Hough talks to TJ Thornton, Head of Global Research Product Marketing at BofA Securities about diversifying stocks to hedge AI risks.

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Evaluating Investing Opportunities Beyond AI

Steve Quirk, chief brokerage officer at Robinhood, breaks down the value of tokenizing stocks in different markets.

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Unpacking Tokenization for Everyday Investors

Jack Hough talks to Steve Quirk, chief brokerage officer at Robinhood, about trends in retail investing.

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How Robinhood Reshaped the Trading Landscape for an Entire Generation

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AI vs. The Dot Com Bubble

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The Outlook For Nuclear

Jack talks to Lyft CEO David Risher about growth potential in the company.

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Lyft's Ride to Profit

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Dividends and Capital Appreciation

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Interviews with top wealth management professionals about topics including compensation, hiring, marketing, next-gen, and more.

Mollie Colavita, CEO of J.P. Morgan Advisors, recommends that advisors seek out a group of trusted people who can act as a sounding board to help address pressing issues.

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The Benefits of Having a ‘Personal Board of Directors’

Mollie Colavita, CEO of J.P. Morgan Advisors, discusses the importance of financial advisors adopting a CEO mindset in their practice.

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Eleni Mavromati, private wealth manager with Merrill Private Wealth Management, who serves as COO of the Jones Zafari Group, says that “listening to everybody’s ideas will help make the team great.”

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Eleni Mavromati, private wealth manager with Merrill Private Wealth Management, who serves as COO of the Jones Zafari Group, discusses activities that are not work related that encourage mingling and engagement across different roles.

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Ways to Foster a Friendlier and Fun Team Culture 

Eleni Mavromati, private wealth manager with Merrill Private Wealth Management, who serves as COO of the Jones Zafari Group, says her team hosts activities, including nature walks for women, who often become friends and sometimes business partners.

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Be More Intentional About Business Development

Eleni Mavromati, private wealth manager with Merrill Private Wealth Management, who serves as COO of the Jones Zafari Group, says COOs must ensure that compliance, human resources, business development, marketing, and team culture are all in sync.

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How the COO Role Is Similar to Being an Orchestra Conductor

Nancy Daoud, CEO of Opus: Advice First, a private wealth advisory practice of Ameriprise Financial Services, says that alts have become “one of the most important components of portfolios in more recent years, probably in the last eight to 10 years.”

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The Growing Importance of Alternative Investments

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A “willingness to roll up your sleeves and understand the issues that your clients are facing, not just from an investment perspective,” is common among the industry’s most successful, says Kelly Gaur, a Mercer Advisors regional vice president.

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Best Advice for Someone Considering Wealth Management as a Career

Kelly Gaur, a Mercer Advisors regional vice president, says she was drawn to working for a registered investment advisor partly because they generally offer a more personalized, modern approach to wealth management.

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The Appeal of Working for an RIA

“The best client development professionals are those who have served clients in some capacity,” says Kelly Gaur, a Mercer Advisors regional vice president.

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Client-Facing Experience Can Help Advance Your Career

The Mercer Advisors regional vice president discusses her business development role and tips for breaking into the industry and gaining valuable experience in a non-advisory capacity.

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Kelly Gaur: Tips for Pursuing Non-Advisor Roles in Wealth Management

“You want to make sure that everybody's excited and prepared and that you're all pulling the rope in the same direction,” says Nate Fisher, managing director and wealth advisor at Carson Wealth.

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A Successful Transition Requires Honesty and a ‘Heavy Lift’

Young advisors considering a succession plan should maximize engagement with clients because “it can take a long time to gain that trust and build those relationships,” says Nate Fisher, managing director and wealth advisor at Carson Wealth.

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The Carson Wealth managing director and wealth advisor says his decision to partner with the firm was driven by the need for increased capacity for holistic services and a clear succession plan for his retiring father.

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As trust grows, advisors tend to spend less time discussing investments and more time on clients’ families and well-being, says Nate Fisher, managing director and wealth advisor at Carson Wealth.

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The capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and Middle East tensions are reshaping oil supply expectations. The U.S. is intervening in energy markets in decades-unseen ways. Experts break down what’s next for oil, gas and energy stocks.

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Oil and Gas in a Volatile World

For the first time in decades, U.S. power demand is rising - driven by AI data centers, EVs and electrification. Utility and clean-energy stocks are climbing, but costly buildouts threaten affordability. We explore what’s next for the power trade.

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The Gold Rush in Electricity

Will Nvidia and other technology companies keep powering the stock market in 2026? We'll speak with two veteran money managers about their views on tech and their favorite stocks for the coming year.

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Finding Bargains in a Pricey Market

Explore what could go right for investors, and what could go wrong, in a year that will see the AI trade evolve, the Fed's leadership change, and global competition for resources increase in this 2026 Outlook.

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Stocks are expensive, risks abound, and AI is about to change the world. Other than that, building a calamity-proof retirement portfolio should be a cinch. Tune in as two veteran money managers size up the markets and share their investment ideas.

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Not Your Father's Utility

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Journal Editorial Report: Voters revolt over soaring electric bills. Photo: Yuri Gripas/Pool/Cnp/ZUMA Press/Noah Berger/AWS/Reuters

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260228/4cda72c7-968a-4581-82e3-2cfb12e89b43/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Journal Editorial Report: Voters revolt over soaring electric bills.

The A.I. Data Center Backlash

Many Americans are also concerned that energy demand from AI data centers could unfairly drive up their electric utility bills. We're telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs. They can build their own power plants as part of their factory, so that no one's prices will go up.

That was President Trump Tuesday demanding that big tech pay for its AI power needs. The president's call comes amid a growing backlash to the AI data centers that are springing up across the country, with voters blaming the rapid expansion for rising electricity prices. Executives from tech giants, including Amazon, Google, Oracle and OpenAI, are expected to join the president at the White House next week to sign the so-called Rate Payer Protection Pledge, promising that they will build or buy their own electricity supplies for their data centers. We are back with our panel. So I guess first, Allysia, how serious is this backlash? And is this so-called effort for direct energy sourcing by the companies to fund data centers as opposed to supplying energy through the grid, does that make sense?

Well, I think you are seeing a big backlash in many states that are now threatening to ban data centers. Florida's moving a bill that would restrict the expansion of data centers because a lot of people do worry that electric rates have been rising. Now, they are rising for various reasons, and that's in part because demand is increasing and supply isn't increasing enough to meet that demand. But a lot of that demand is coming from AI data centers. Now, you're already seeing a lot of these, quote-unquote, "Hyperscalers," develop their own power sources. Now, Microsoft is trying to revive the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Meta is going out there and trying to cut deals for advanced nuclear device, or nuclear systems. You have XAI, believe it or not, tried to retrofit old gas engines to essentially power its data centers in Tennessee. So you're already seeing a lot of this happen, and one reason is because they're having trouble connecting to the grid. A lot of the grid operators around the country won't connect the data centers unless they have enough power. So it really is in their own interest to find ways to procure or build their own power plants.

And, Kyle, you live in a state, New Jersey, where they have seen rising electricity prices, but a lot of that isn't from data centers, it's from the previous governor who tried to impose mandates on energy supply for wind and solar, and close fossil fuel plants. So that's part of the problem here, isn't it?

Right, yeah, the difficulty of getting fossil fuels, particularly natural gas, into the Northeast, because it's been made all but impossible to build any real new pipelines from the states that have significant supplies of natural gas. So that is definitely part of the problem. And interestingly also is gonna be maybe something that these AI hyperscalers are gonna have to deal with. If they're looking at, you know, rehabilitating old nuclear reactors, that takes a lot of time. And I don't know that we have that time because the United States cannot afford to lose this AI race to China. China's AI is being powered by a huge build-out of coal plants, which is by the way, you know, eating up any gains that the United States is making on greenhouse emissions and climate. And so part of the challenge here is gonna be for these companies to face the facts that we need this power and we need it soon if we're gonna keep beating China at the AI race that is really important for America's future.

Yeah, Kim, just as a political matter where the president, is he feeding some of this anti-AI backlash with some of this talk? I mean, I think direct energy sourcing is really important, but, as Kyle says, we can't afford to lose the race with China on AI. And I wonder if a lot of this talk about the big companies in AI being part of the problem is going to lead to such a backlash that we're gonna restrain it with regulation.

Yeah, I mean, there was certainly a better way to present this. Look, I appreciate that the administration is actually tackling this in some way. If you think about it, Paul, as we enter this new age, and the race to AI and data dominance is so important, one of the biggest policy errors of the past decades has been the Democrats' attempts to shut down fossil fuels, coal, nuclear power plants. We are way behind. And so what you see Secretary of Energy Chris Wright doing is saying, "Look, we've got a plan here. We've gotta make some lemonade out of these lemons. We need to get you guys directly engaged. You, the tech companies. This could be better for consumers. It could also help with innovation in some of these areas like nuclear. We, the government, will help with permitting, but you're gonna have to step up to the plate." The administration needs to be talking about that, presenting it in that way and those gains, instead of the rhetoric that's way too often these days of, "Big is bad, tech companies are bad," because that does indeed anger consumers when they ought to be looking at the positive benefits of us becoming the first and coming up with new models for energy production.

Allysia, got about 45 seconds left, but how big a threat is state regulation here, state laws say in Florida? New York has passed an AI regulation bill, should that be preempted by the federal government?

Well, I think, in many cases, many of these state laws should be preempted. Now, Congress I think would actually have to pass an act to do that. And in the absence of Congress, acting states do under Constitution, I think, have a leeway to pass certain regulations to restrict, for instance, use of telehealth by AI, or teens, maybe restrict kind of algorithms used in kind of ascending rents. You're seeing that pop up in many states like California and Florida. But I think this really is something that should be regulated at the federal level because it really has national security implications.