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Rohome Productions.
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You're listening to The Hum, a new podcast where we're sharing stories from people across the US who are fighting the incursion of AI and data centers into every aspect of our lives.
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I'm Saul Levin, your host.
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Welcome to season two.
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In season one, we interviewed farmers, politicians, a beauty salon worker, and a former Google staffer about their opposition to AI data centers.
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We learned about the rich recent history of an organic nonpartisan movement that is transforming the political landscape and notching winds against the CEOs of big tech companies.
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New reports suggest the resistance is working remarkably well, with delays costing tech giants millions and politicians flip-flopping to keep up.
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This week, we're kicking off season two with a banger.
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Drew Small was once producing Christian rock music at a mega church.
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He eventually became a music advertiser in Nashville and then started his own business supporting artists.
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But recently, AI companies started harming Drew's family business, and a data center was announced next to the zoo where he takes his kids.
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That was too much.
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Drew shares the tale of how he used his research and advertising skills to team up with public librarians, soccer moms, and retired neighbors to win a data center moratorium and tough restrictions in the city of Nashville.
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Yeah, thanks for having me, Saul.
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So can you tell us a little bit about uh your story and and how you got into music production in the first place?
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I mean, who hasn't accidentally joined a cult in their life?
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So um, you know, I think a lot of people can relate to to this, but you know, I say that jokingly.
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Uh I didn't grow up religious.
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We, you know, kind of were the very much like the Simpsons, right?
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Like we're just not Jewish.
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So therefore we go to church on Christmas.
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Um, and then it wasn't until I was like in my late teens, early 20s that I started just kind of exploring theology.
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And I've been a lifelong musician.
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And so it was just kind of a natural progression from there.
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I got very involved in church.
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I went to, I went and got a degree in biblical studies and went to ministry school and served in churches for a long time before disassembling all of that.
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And um, you know, unintentionally became a sector expert in not so much production in Christian music.
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I started as a producer and quickly ended up finding that my niche was marketing.
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And so ended up getting moved from Universal Music Group to here in Nashville in 2018 to do marketing for them.
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And I've lived here in Nashville ever since.
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All right, rewind for me for a second here.
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So you you got into this Christian church after growing up in a Simpsons-like household.
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Then you got involved in Christianity, you joined a mega church.
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What were you doing?
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Like, what do you mean you accidentally stumbled into you know, marketing and music?
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Can you walk us through that a little bit?
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So this would have been 2009, kind of the early days of Facebook marketing.
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And I was producing for them and worked for the church as uh like front-of-house audio engineer as well.
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And they as they started to see more and more success as a micro label, they started hiring more and more talented producers than me.
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And I wanted a seat at the table.
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And so the the easiest way to continue to be around is to be useful.
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So I asked if I could help run Facebook ads, if I could help do their marketing.
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And I like really fell in love with that whole.
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To me, it was always very fascinating that if you can subvert democracy with Facebook ads, why can't you use it to like get a gold record or do other, you know, like does it always have to be overthrowing a government when you're using Facebook ads?
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Could it be something more wholesome and and better for people?
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And so I think at the time, the thought was, well, we're making this music that's supposed to be making the world a better place.
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Now, that there's a whole rabbit trail of whether or not that's true.
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But that was the logic at the time was like, can I could I use this thing called digital marketing to make a difference in the world?
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Then you left, as I understand it.
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You got hired by Universal Music Group, which is kind of a household name, as far as I know.
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If you're listening, being like, wait, I thought this was a podcast about anti-data center organizing.
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It is.
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And part of that story is people like Drew who are like, yo, I'm good at some things.
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I'm gonna use those things to make sure my community doesn't get screwed over by an AI data center.
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Everyone has a part to play, right?
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And and I think that's the thing, the big takeaway is like the this whole movement here in Nashville was not, it wasn't just me.
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It was a bunch of people who had a bunch of different skill sets.
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So we had soccer moms that were pulling records requests for us.
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We had, you know, some senior citizens who are retired making sure that all of their bingo besties were calling the mayor's office nonstop.
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So it's everybody has a part to play.
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And, you know, what I did was took my skill set and created a landing place for all of that and a central hub and allowed community members to be the spokes on that wheel that rolled us forward into some of the most aggressive data center legislation in the nation.
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Can you tell me a little bit more about that coalition?
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I mean, we have soccer moms, we have senior citizens.
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Who else was playing a part?
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What's the what's the cast of characters in this story?
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Yeah, this was such an interesting experience for me because I think what I hope is that Nashville learned that it is not right versus left, it is up versus down in in this world right now.
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We had Party for Socialism and Liberation, we had DSA members, we had, you know, centrist Democrats, centrist Republicans, and then we had people way to the right, MAGA and and some beyond, here all agreeing that we deserve to breathe clean air and have clean water, and the lights should turn on when we flip the switch and we shouldn't have to pay an arm and a leg for that to happen.
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You know, it was really incredible to see soccer moms and stay-at-home dads and lawyers who are stepping out of work meetings to help me understand complicated words that I don't know yet.
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I think the advantage that we had was we created an I just did what I know how to do.
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I created an Instagram and I created a website and everybody started DMing me and it, you know, it just spiraled from there.
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But there were so many odd bedfellows in this process.
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How is the massive build-out of AI and and its infrastructure affecting you as a professional and an American?
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You know, I I would view that AI is often cognitive surrender, right?
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That people don't necessarily want to think through issues or work through problems.
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And AI offers this really easy off-ramp from difficult situations to get to quick conclusions.
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And so part of my job as a marketer is to sit and take complicated issues and not only figure out how to make them simple, but then how to activate strangers to take action on that issue, right?
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And so there's this struggle of one, we're losing clients as an agent.
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When I say as an agency, it's my wife and I from my basement.
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You're you're looking currently at 50% of the company I work for.
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You know, we're losing clients because they're paying a bunch of money a month to these LLMs and then having access to outdated or inaccurate information and then making, you know, big business decisions that ultimately end up getting them worse results for more expensive costs to them when the the belief is it's gonna, we're just gonna save a bunch of money.
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I'm gonna spend 40 bucks a month on the premium Chat GPT or whatever it costs, and we're gonna get better outcomes, only to have them snake into my ecosystem a few months later and go, like, hey, this thing didn't work.
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Like, is it me?
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Is it what's what's wrong?
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And you know, you quit right now.
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I'm in legal trouble.
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I've made a series of bad decisions, and I'm coming, you know, kicking and screaming back to the small family business that was actually helping me be successful.
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Yeah.
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It's really horrifying and existential the way that AI is impacting so many people's lives and careers.
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And you connected that to the data center in Nashville, or actually a couple of data center projects in Nashville.
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So, so tell me about, you know, how do you think about the relationship between the way that AI is impacting your life and career and the physical infrastructures of data centers in Tennessee?
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Yeah, I think, you know, we found out late May that some applications had been filed for a data center.
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And there was also an HBCU in town here called Fisk University that announced a what they called a quantum leap forward.
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And in order to solve some of their financial problems, they were going to put 30 megawatts of compute power into 70,000 square feet of data center directly on their small 40-acre campus in the heart of a historically black neighborhood.
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And then the other permits that were filed were for directly adjacent to the Nashville Zoo, which is about a mile from my house.
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And like I can hear zoo animals from my house regularly.
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Which ones?
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Gibbons specifically are very, very top.
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The lesser apes.
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Yes.
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They're so loud.
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They're so loud, and we love to hear them yapping.
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And um, it was immediately clear to me, you know, I went and looked at this company that applied to the, you know, the Fisk University data center is a field of dreams.
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If you tell them they can build it, they will come, essentially.
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They didn't have a partner, they didn't have financing, they just they just announced this plan against the wishes of student body and staff and residents around there.
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The data center next to the zoo was announced by a company called DC Blocks.
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And DC Blocks basically is uh a similar model where they build data centers and then find clients to utilize that compute power.
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They are they don't actually, their product is data centers.
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That's their product that they sell.
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They don't sell technology, they don't, you know, they're literally just DM Horton home builder of data centers.
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And their website talks about how they build these AI ready facilities.
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And so from from my end, yeah, it's my business is being impacted.
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Yes, I think that I I think that LLMs as a whole are an illusion in that the users don't recognize how captured they really are and it creates somewhat of a cage where the the users don't see the bars because they're painted on the inside to look like the sky.
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And these LLMs are shaping and controlling the way we see and we think and we feel.
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And so, yeah, that's scary.
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But with DC blocks, it's like I don't care what the compute task is of that facility.
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I care that nearly 100% of the electricity that gets pumped into a data center gets converted into heat.
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And that heat then gets ejected out into the community surrounding.
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And my like next week, I'm taking several of my neighbors to their immigration hearings down in Memphis.
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We are an immigrant community here in South Nashville, and many of them aren't going to speak up and say something because they're just trying to survive.
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They're already fleeing war-torn countries where we've been soft on borders for American corporations, but hard on borders for living people.
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And so my concern about this data center next to the zoo wasn't even so much about clouded leopards or endangered species.
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Certainly, like I take my children to the zoo sometimes more than once a week.
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We love the Nashville Zoo, but we also love our neighbors and we love being able to breathe clean air.
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We've been seeing what they're doing in Memphis, right?
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Elon Musk currently owns 35% of the city of Memphis, and he is purchasing a significant amount of neighboring Mississippi and creating kind of this impossible to stamp out problem.
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You know, when you look at data centers, you're seeing this kind of Venn diagram of tech oligarchy, fossil fuel industry, and military industrial complex all living in harmony under one roof.
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And we're we're seeing, you know, these facilities, you can't do no harm with them.
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And they're so different than legacy data centers that we know and love that send our text messages and fetch our emails and help hospitals out.
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It's it's not the same.
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And I think one of the important things you need to look at is that density per square foot is, you know.
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So what you're telling me is despite all of the impacts of AI on your family, on your industry, on your own job, actually, there was a whole other set of problems from the AI data center that caused you to get involved in fighting back against it where you thought it was going to affect your neighborhood and your neighbors.
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And can I ask you, like, what would you say to someone who's like, oh yeah, like obviously I'm affected by AI.
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Um, I heard there's a data center coming to my town, but I don't really know where to start.
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Yeah, that's a really good question.
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I think the first thing that people should do is go to the public library and talk to a librarian.
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Uh, your local librarian is gonna know how you can find out about local laws.
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It's gonna know how you can find out about permitting processes or where you can look at, you know, a lot of permit applications are public.
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I spent an enormous amount of time at the public library over the last two months developing relationships with my librarians because knowledge is power.
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And the first thing that I did was pull the permits that this developer had submitted and went to the library and I printed out every single page and I grabbed a highlighter and I read through 200 and something pages of geotechnical documents and circled the parts that I did not understand and highlighted the parts that I did.
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And then once I, you know, knew what I knew and knew what I didn't know, I started asking questions.
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Um who were you asking?
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You were asking the librarians.
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I would ask the librarians, like, hey, here's this soil chart.
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Do you have a book that helps me understand how this works?
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Or do you know, you know, how I can find out at who at the University of Tennessee would answer my email?
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Hold on a second.
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So you were like, the only thing more powerful than this new AI data center is the OG data center.
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Hell yes.
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And you went to the library and you're like, yo, what do you guys know?
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And librarians know all kinds of things.
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They're so smart how to conduct research.
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They're so smart.
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This is amazing.
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I've never, I haven't, I don't think I've heard this before, but wow, you said there's only one thing more powerful than an AI data center, and that's uh that's the library.
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That's people.
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It's people.
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Yeah.
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Very cool.
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And I mean, it's kind of intimidating, right?
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To be like, yo, I'm gonna take on this project.
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I'm gonna, I mean, you have things to do, you have your kids going to, you know, getting to school.
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What do you think pushed you over to the edge to be like, you know what, I'm gonna go talk to these librarians.
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I'm gonna really spend some of my valuable time on this issue.
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I mean, when you like when you really think about it, everybody wants the world to be a better place.
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And what I have learned living in, you know, I live in an immigrant community where ICE is here weekly, if not daily, trying to kidnap my neighbors.
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And what I have learned is that if you want the world to become a better place, you start on your block.
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And so when something I can't I can't stop the war in Iran, right?
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I would love to do that.
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But you know what I can do is make sure that there isn't computational facilities in my town that are processing where they're gonna, you know, incorrectly direct tomahawk missiles towards schools full of children.
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Um, and so you start local and that changes the world.
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And and it was this this belief of like, well, why not?
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Why not me?
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Why not here?
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Why not now?
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You can you can give up and you can say that this is inevitable, and you can believe the narrative that these oligarchs are pushing towards us, that you can't stop it, you just have to learn to live with it, you have to accept it, or you can reject this like deeply homegrown American rape culture and say, I want to live in a different world that gives people a chance and a say, because I think for me, the most fundamental of every single human right is autonomy.
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And AI is a subversion of that, and these data centers are a subversion of that autonomy.
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And so when one person pays attention, it becomes problematic.
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But if I could take my skills as a marketer and my ability that I've honed over the last uh nearly 20 years to take complicated issues and make them simple and then get people to take action on that information, and I could get dozens of people to pay attention.
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Well, well, now it's it's impossible to stop us.
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Now you you can't put a misleading headline out because too many of us have been paying attention too closely for too long for us to lose the plot.
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Right.
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Wow.
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So, I mean, using all of those skills, you guys moved forward some remarkable regulations, uh, some of the best ones that we've seen so far on AI data center.
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It's not perfect, but I mean, it's a huge change.
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Could you tell folks a little bit about what those regulations are and and how you were able to make so much progress as a as a community organized?
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Yeah, some of it, let's let's be really honest.
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We're lucky that we have the city council that we do have here in Nashville.
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The legislation that we moved forward had already been underway.
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Uh, the the bill's author had been working on it for about a year.
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And the legislation that we brought forward wasn't reactive.
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It was something that had been researched and been thought through and been approached.
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And we live in a state where a municipal government does not have the ability to ban a land use.
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You know, so data center is considered a land use class.
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And we don't have the ability to ban that here in Nashville because the state legislature holds that power.
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And for those who haven't been paying attention to Tennessee politics, we have a Republican supermajority and uh insanely gerrymandered state, including we just redrew the maps explicitly to remove power from black voters in Memphis.
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And the fear that we had was that if we put forward legislation that essentially banned them, the state would do what it has done again and again, which is come in and preempt local governments and subvert local autonomy.
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So the fear was if we passed legislation that was too strong, that the state legislature would come in and strip away all of the protections.
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And so the the kind of narrow loophole that we have to navigate through here as Nashvilleans is how do we protect people without pissing off power?
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And what we created was a set of really strict zoning rules and regulations that limit we cannot have hyperscale data centers here in Nashville.
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So you can't be larger than 500,000 square feet or 99 megawatts.
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Uh, we also limited where you can build those, restricting them to the most heavily like heavy industrial use building zones.
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Uh we created really strong buffer zones.
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A buffer zone is basically how close to another land use class can you build these things?
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And we included in that schools, churches, daycares, houses, apartments, hospitals, prisons in that category.
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Basically, we had to think through anywhere people have to be and can't live without, and included those in that buffer zone.
00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:21.680
We also created some pretty intense setback rules.
00:21:21.839 --> 00:21:25.200
Setback is how close to the property's edge can you build these things?
00:21:25.359 --> 00:21:35.839
And the difficult thing we had to navigate was you know, the farther back from the property edge you create your setbacks, the larger the parcel you require data centers to have to obtain.
00:21:36.160 --> 00:21:40.960
And therefore you incentivize larger and larger facilities to being built.
00:21:41.039 --> 00:21:59.759
So trying to find this sweet spot of like, let's give people enough distance from the property edge to have a little bit of reprieve if they have to be next to these things without doing something where the actual lived expression of that law was there's nowhere to build these.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:00.799
These things too.
00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:04.559
That was the other really difficult part to get through.
00:22:04.799 --> 00:22:21.200
Was if you make those too strict, then there is no parcel in town that they can build on, which sounds good, but then lawyers will then lawyer that it is an actual ban and the state will come in and remove the law and strip all the protections.
00:22:21.440 --> 00:22:28.000
On top of that, we eliminated the ability of the for them to use gas generators as backup power.
00:22:28.160 --> 00:22:30.720
If they want to have backup power, they're more than welcome to do so.
00:22:30.799 --> 00:22:34.079
It has to be solar, it has to be wind, it has to be quote unquote renewable energy.
00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:46.720
This sounds like something that people are going to be copying in Missouri and other states where the state government has a propensity to attack any local regulations of any kind.
00:22:47.119 --> 00:22:48.880
Yeah, we we certainly hope so.
00:22:49.119 --> 00:22:52.559
The the law is called BL 2026-1391.
00:22:52.720 --> 00:22:58.319
So you can look it up on Nashville's Legistar portal and look at that text for yourself.
00:22:58.559 --> 00:23:01.279
But that for us is just the foundation.
00:23:01.519 --> 00:23:07.039
The goal here is we also passed a moratorium that is extremely temporary.
00:23:07.200 --> 00:23:23.119
You know, our concern with a moratorium is we are seeing like Hill County, Texas, and there's some places in Virginia as well that are passing moratoriums, and then data center developers are turning around and suing local governments for constitutional land use rights violations.
00:23:23.839 --> 00:23:28.319
Americans maybe have noticed that you only have as many legal rights as you have dollars.
00:23:28.559 --> 00:23:42.480
So when you're a small municipal government that's facing a private equity-backed data center developer, you're gonna lose in court every time just because you can't afford to continue to keep showing up to the cases.
00:23:42.640 --> 00:23:43.920
You have to fold.
00:23:44.480 --> 00:23:50.480
And so our concern with moratoriums was, you know, we we made it extremely temporary.
00:23:50.720 --> 00:24:13.680
In the wake of that, what we're gonna do is continue to work on passing additional legislation that, you know, one of the things that Mike Cortezzi is working on is requiring data center developers to place money into a bond that will be used to decommission those facilities if that company should suddenly go bankrupt or the facility shuts down suddenly.
00:24:13.759 --> 00:24:17.359
Uh, and there's some other things that we're gonna do as well.
00:24:17.519 --> 00:24:21.200
You know, the first law we did pass does also include water quality.
00:24:21.279 --> 00:24:25.279
So we force them to use closed loop and we force them to catch and keep their water discharge.
00:24:25.440 --> 00:24:27.759
They can't just put it into storm drains anymore.
00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:37.519
So there's there's additional layers of legislation, though, that are coming, including just some changes to our industrial law and how large industry does business in Nashville.
00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:55.839
Um, we've spotted quite a few asymmetries in things like noise ordinances, the way that we apply a noise ordinance to like at my house, as a musician, I'm not allowed to have as really as any resident, I'm not allowed to have amplified music leave my property.
00:24:55.920 --> 00:24:57.599
There's not a set decibel.
00:24:57.759 --> 00:25:01.759
Whereas industry has specific decibels that they have to adhere to.
00:25:01.920 --> 00:25:16.799
We're looking at addressing some of that asymmetry where it's like, okay, well, if if I'm not allowed to have sound leave my property, then why is heavy industry allowed to create noise pollution and things like that?
00:25:17.200 --> 00:25:18.160
Right, right.
00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:19.440
I love this.
00:25:19.519 --> 00:25:30.960
So you guys were like, all right, we're not only gonna pass a moratorium, we're gonna pass a regulatory scheme to make it much harder to build data centers unjustly.
00:25:31.359 --> 00:25:31.759
Yeah.
00:25:32.079 --> 00:25:39.599
Essentially the the idea is to make it death by a thousand cuts for data center developers in Davidson County.
00:25:39.920 --> 00:25:45.920
And to make sure that look, if you want to build it and you want to jump through all the hoops, come on over.
00:25:46.160 --> 00:25:51.920
Come figure out how to protect the public health and wellness of an area while you do your business here.
00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:59.920
If you want to do it, I guess fine until we get some actual rules and regulations in place on the technology itself.
00:26:00.079 --> 00:26:17.759
But some of the environmental rules and restrictions in place that we put in locked the regulations to EPA regulations as of the date of passage, so that even as the EPA continues to be stripped and gutted, our law is not based on what is current.
00:26:17.920 --> 00:26:21.119
Our law was based on the standard that was set at the time of the passage.
00:26:21.200 --> 00:26:27.839
And so we're just we're really trying to think of all the ways that the Republicans have continued to try and rat fuck people.
00:26:28.240 --> 00:26:36.079
That has been our approach, is like, okay, well, you know, the thing that really helped us block this data center next to the zoo was actually parking minimums.
00:26:36.319 --> 00:26:46.720
And as a like a I am a Yimby, I want to develop and create a strong community around me through common sense zoning rules and regulations.
00:26:46.880 --> 00:26:51.680
It's wild to me that a parking minimum actually saved our ass here on this.
00:26:51.920 --> 00:27:01.920
You know, that was the one thing that blocked them from vesting on their permits next to the zoo and allowed us to pass the legislation in time to stop that development.
00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:08.079
So because the zoo or adjacent buildings had to have a certain number of parking spots, basically.
00:27:08.400 --> 00:27:12.720
Yeah, they we didn't we didn't have data center as a land use class.
00:27:12.799 --> 00:27:15.440
We had telecom infrastructure, but we didn't have data center.
00:27:15.519 --> 00:27:18.480
And that's that's really what most of America is dealing with right now.
00:27:18.640 --> 00:27:20.160
A lot of people are saying, oh, are you right?
00:27:20.319 --> 00:27:25.359
It's not clear where you're supposed to put them or even what the rules are governing data centers.
00:27:25.680 --> 00:27:34.400
What do you think made you all successful that other people could learn from besides sort of looking at the text of your regulations and and we can put those in the show notes?
00:27:34.640 --> 00:27:35.920
How did you guys do it?
00:27:36.240 --> 00:27:39.920
I think we were highly motivated for one, right?
00:27:40.079 --> 00:27:45.039
We have watched what has happened in Memphis very closely.
00:27:45.200 --> 00:27:54.640
And so I think some of that was the Grim Reaper standing in the corners, you know, menacingly motivating us to continue to step up.
00:27:54.880 --> 00:27:58.400
I think for me, the big thing, like I looked at this.
00:27:58.480 --> 00:28:04.799
So there's a book that I really love that I I don't think a lot of people would read at first sniff.
00:28:04.960 --> 00:28:09.920
And it's uh it's actually a tactical manual by the US military called FM3-24.
00:28:10.319 --> 00:28:12.160
To not see that coming, go on.
00:28:12.640 --> 00:28:13.200
Yes.
00:28:13.359 --> 00:28:18.400
Um, this is FM3-24.
00:28:18.960 --> 00:28:22.880
It's a field manual on insurgencies and counterinsurgencies.
00:28:22.960 --> 00:28:30.799
And it is the playbook by which the US military approaches counterinsurgencies and counters them.
00:28:30.960 --> 00:28:40.559
And it is, I think if you read it and you understand it, it is a easy, you can easily train like really what it is is the doctrine of how power works.
00:28:41.039 --> 00:28:53.279
And understanding how power works, all of a sudden, when you have the playbook of imperialism, the levers that they pull don't work as well as they used to.
00:28:53.440 --> 00:28:57.039
And you can get ahead of things much faster.
00:28:57.200 --> 00:29:04.160
And so there's there's basically eight layers to the casserole of FM3-2-4.
00:29:04.480 --> 00:29:21.200
It's host nation legitimacy, it's isolating the insurgents, it's co-opting the local elites, it's controlling information operations, it's controlling the population, it's using money as a weapon, it's long-term commitment and its legitimacy as perception.
00:29:21.599 --> 00:29:35.759
And you can break down each one of those, like in a military context, the occupying force props up the local government to make it seem like the regime in power has this moral and legal right to rule, even if it's a US puppet.
00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:53.759
Data center developers are gonna whine and dine local officials and they're gonna hand them the ribbon cutting scissors, and they're gonna frame the project as important to the economic development of the city, even though they're gonna build it with crazy tax breaks and provide like six permanent jobs, right?
00:29:54.000 --> 00:29:57.920
So you you counter that with public pressure and lots of it.
00:29:58.000 --> 00:30:06.640
You pack the public meetings, you demand recorded votes, you pull uh records requests on emails between public officials and data center developers.
00:30:06.880 --> 00:30:11.839
And you also, as a citizenry, you document everybody who shows up to every meeting.
00:30:12.160 --> 00:30:17.759
That I think is one of the best ways that Nashville fought back is constantly.
00:30:17.920 --> 00:30:21.279
I mean, I I'm just a guy in my basement buying Facebook ads for musicians.
00:30:21.359 --> 00:30:23.759
I don't know the who's who in politics.
00:30:23.920 --> 00:30:33.119
But when I showed up to these meetings, people So you've been reading a military manual about how to run campaigns in your basement, perhaps.
00:30:33.680 --> 00:30:34.319
Correct.
00:30:34.559 --> 00:30:42.880
In this chair to try and fight AI data centers with not the violence, but with the sort of strategic tools of the US military.
00:30:43.279 --> 00:30:44.720
There is a lot of violence that the U.S.
00:30:44.799 --> 00:30:54.480
military enacts, but they also they build bridges and roads and hospitals and schools, and they they convince a local population that whatever's going on there is for their best interest.
00:30:54.640 --> 00:31:08.960
And so it is like when you understand how power moves, you can look at every one of those eight layers and see how a data center developer is going to behave and act before they behave and act that way.
00:31:09.279 --> 00:31:11.200
And there's a counter for that.
00:31:11.359 --> 00:31:28.640
Again, one of the things that Nashville did remarkably well was public pressure and allowing the rumor mill to, you know, it was regularly I would get like a DM of like, hey, my cousin just got contracted for a quote on removing all the trees on the property.
00:31:28.799 --> 00:31:34.880
Or, hey, I just took a picture of this city council person having lunch with the data center developer lawyer.
00:31:35.200 --> 00:31:36.240
That's good stuff, Drew.
00:31:36.319 --> 00:31:37.519
That's that's really helpful.
00:31:37.599 --> 00:31:44.480
And I think people are looking for tools because the odds are stacked against communities who don't want data centers, right?
00:31:44.640 --> 00:31:44.960
That's right.
00:31:45.200 --> 00:31:46.960
Drew, it's been a pleasure talking to you.
00:31:47.440 --> 00:31:48.559
Thanks so much for chatting today.
00:31:48.880 --> 00:31:50.079
Thanks for having me.
00:31:51.599 --> 00:32:00.640
That was my conversation with Nashville resident Drew Small, whose team's work in Nashville is now being copied in cities and counties all over the country.
00:32:00.960 --> 00:32:08.960
Drew repeatedly stressed that all he started with were some music industry chops and a willingness to ask questions at the public library.
00:32:09.200 --> 00:32:16.880
Check out the show notes for the text of the Nashville Resolution, the No New Data Center's Instagram page that Drew runs, and more.
00:32:17.519 --> 00:32:19.599
You've been listening to The Hum.
00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:28.640
We're publishing new episodes weekly, so if you enjoyed what you heard, please download and save the hum and bring it up with gusto on your next hinge date.
00:32:28.880 --> 00:32:34.880
Message us on Instagram at The HumPod to get connected to organizers in your state or country.
00:32:35.039 --> 00:32:38.240
The Hum is produced in partnership with Rohum Productions.
00:32:38.400 --> 00:32:40.960
Rohum's creative director is Alex Lewis.
00:32:41.119 --> 00:32:43.279
Their executive producer is John Myers.
00:32:43.599 --> 00:32:45.519
Our producer is Emily Rizzo.
00:32:45.839 --> 00:32:52.079
The Hum's video producer is Adotrehan, and we partner with the Center for Nonviolent Conflict Research.
00:32:52.240 --> 00:32:55.440
I'm Saul Levin, your host and banjo journeyman.
00:32:55.599 --> 00:32:58.400
Thanks for listening and see you next Tuesday.
00:00:00.959 --> 00:00:03.040
Rohome Productions.
00:00:07.839 --> 00:00:18.879
You're listening to The Hum, a new podcast where we're sharing stories from people across the US who are fighting the incursion of AI and data centers into every aspect of our lives.
00:00:19.120 --> 00:00:21.359
I'm Saul Levin, your host.
00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:23.039
Welcome to season two.
00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:32.799
In season one, we interviewed farmers, politicians, a beauty salon worker, and a former Google staffer about their opposition to AI data centers.
00:00:32.960 --> 00:00:42.960
We learned about the rich recent history of an organic nonpartisan movement that is transforming the political landscape and notching winds against the CEOs of big tech companies.
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New reports suggest the resistance is working remarkably well, with delays costing tech giants millions and politicians flip-flopping to keep up.
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This week, we're kicking off season two with a banger.
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Drew Small was once producing Christian rock music at a mega church.
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He eventually became a music advertiser in Nashville and then started his own business supporting artists.
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But recently, AI companies started harming Drew's family business, and a data center was announced next to the zoo where he takes his kids.
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That was too much.
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Drew shares the tale of how he used his research and advertising skills to team up with public librarians, soccer moms, and retired neighbors to win a data center moratorium and tough restrictions in the city of Nashville.
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Yeah, thanks for having me, Saul.
00:01:35.120 --> 00:01:41.920
So can you tell us a little bit about uh your story and and how you got into music production in the first place?
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I mean, who hasn't accidentally joined a cult in their life?
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So um, you know, I think a lot of people can relate to to this, but you know, I say that jokingly.
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Uh I didn't grow up religious.
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We, you know, kind of were the very much like the Simpsons, right?
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Like we're just not Jewish.
00:02:00.719 --> 00:02:03.680
So therefore we go to church on Christmas.
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Um, and then it wasn't until I was like in my late teens, early 20s that I started just kind of exploring theology.
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And I've been a lifelong musician.
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And so it was just kind of a natural progression from there.
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I got very involved in church.
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I went to, I went and got a degree in biblical studies and went to ministry school and served in churches for a long time before disassembling all of that.
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And um, you know, unintentionally became a sector expert in not so much production in Christian music.
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I started as a producer and quickly ended up finding that my niche was marketing.
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And so ended up getting moved from Universal Music Group to here in Nashville in 2018 to do marketing for them.
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And I've lived here in Nashville ever since.
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All right, rewind for me for a second here.
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So you you got into this Christian church after growing up in a Simpsons-like household.
00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:06.879
Then you got involved in Christianity, you joined a mega church.
00:03:07.360 --> 00:03:08.159
What were you doing?
00:03:08.240 --> 00:03:12.400
Like, what do you mean you accidentally stumbled into you know, marketing and music?
00:03:12.479 --> 00:03:14.000
Can you walk us through that a little bit?
00:03:14.400 --> 00:03:19.439
So this would have been 2009, kind of the early days of Facebook marketing.
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And I was producing for them and worked for the church as uh like front-of-house audio engineer as well.
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And they as they started to see more and more success as a micro label, they started hiring more and more talented producers than me.
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And I wanted a seat at the table.
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And so the the easiest way to continue to be around is to be useful.
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So I asked if I could help run Facebook ads, if I could help do their marketing.
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And I like really fell in love with that whole.
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To me, it was always very fascinating that if you can subvert democracy with Facebook ads, why can't you use it to like get a gold record or do other, you know, like does it always have to be overthrowing a government when you're using Facebook ads?
00:04:06.479 --> 00:04:10.639
Could it be something more wholesome and and better for people?
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And so I think at the time, the thought was, well, we're making this music that's supposed to be making the world a better place.
00:04:17.040 --> 00:04:21.279
Now, that there's a whole rabbit trail of whether or not that's true.
00:04:21.519 --> 00:04:29.920
But that was the logic at the time was like, can I could I use this thing called digital marketing to make a difference in the world?
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Then you left, as I understand it.
00:04:32.560 --> 00:04:38.160
You got hired by Universal Music Group, which is kind of a household name, as far as I know.
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If you're listening, being like, wait, I thought this was a podcast about anti-data center organizing.
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It is.
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And part of that story is people like Drew who are like, yo, I'm good at some things.
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I'm gonna use those things to make sure my community doesn't get screwed over by an AI data center.
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Everyone has a part to play, right?
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And and I think that's the thing, the big takeaway is like the this whole movement here in Nashville was not, it wasn't just me.
00:05:05.199 --> 00:05:07.839
It was a bunch of people who had a bunch of different skill sets.
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So we had soccer moms that were pulling records requests for us.
00:05:11.839 --> 00:05:19.519
We had, you know, some senior citizens who are retired making sure that all of their bingo besties were calling the mayor's office nonstop.
00:05:19.680 --> 00:05:22.639
So it's everybody has a part to play.
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And, you know, what I did was took my skill set and created a landing place for all of that and a central hub and allowed community members to be the spokes on that wheel that rolled us forward into some of the most aggressive data center legislation in the nation.
00:05:38.319 --> 00:05:40.480
Can you tell me a little bit more about that coalition?
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I mean, we have soccer moms, we have senior citizens.
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Who else was playing a part?
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What's the what's the cast of characters in this story?
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Yeah, this was such an interesting experience for me because I think what I hope is that Nashville learned that it is not right versus left, it is up versus down in in this world right now.
00:06:02.319 --> 00:06:27.680
We had Party for Socialism and Liberation, we had DSA members, we had, you know, centrist Democrats, centrist Republicans, and then we had people way to the right, MAGA and and some beyond, here all agreeing that we deserve to breathe clean air and have clean water, and the lights should turn on when we flip the switch and we shouldn't have to pay an arm and a leg for that to happen.
00:06:27.920 --> 00:06:41.600
You know, it was really incredible to see soccer moms and stay-at-home dads and lawyers who are stepping out of work meetings to help me understand complicated words that I don't know yet.
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I think the advantage that we had was we created an I just did what I know how to do.
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I created an Instagram and I created a website and everybody started DMing me and it, you know, it just spiraled from there.
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But there were so many odd bedfellows in this process.
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How is the massive build-out of AI and and its infrastructure affecting you as a professional and an American?
00:07:08.240 --> 00:07:14.079
You know, I I would view that AI is often cognitive surrender, right?
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That people don't necessarily want to think through issues or work through problems.
00:07:18.399 --> 00:07:25.120
And AI offers this really easy off-ramp from difficult situations to get to quick conclusions.
00:07:25.360 --> 00:07:38.720
And so part of my job as a marketer is to sit and take complicated issues and not only figure out how to make them simple, but then how to activate strangers to take action on that issue, right?
00:07:39.120 --> 00:07:43.839
And so there's this struggle of one, we're losing clients as an agent.
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When I say as an agency, it's my wife and I from my basement.
00:07:47.439 --> 00:07:51.759
You're you're looking currently at 50% of the company I work for.
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You know, we're losing clients because they're paying a bunch of money a month to these LLMs and then having access to outdated or inaccurate information and then making, you know, big business decisions that ultimately end up getting them worse results for more expensive costs to them when the the belief is it's gonna, we're just gonna save a bunch of money.
00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:29.839
I'm gonna spend 40 bucks a month on the premium Chat GPT or whatever it costs, and we're gonna get better outcomes, only to have them snake into my ecosystem a few months later and go, like, hey, this thing didn't work.
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Like, is it me?
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Is it what's what's wrong?
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And you know, you quit right now.
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I'm in legal trouble.
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I've made a series of bad decisions, and I'm coming, you know, kicking and screaming back to the small family business that was actually helping me be successful.
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Yeah.
00:08:44.960 --> 00:08:50.960
It's really horrifying and existential the way that AI is impacting so many people's lives and careers.
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And you connected that to the data center in Nashville, or actually a couple of data center projects in Nashville.
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So, so tell me about, you know, how do you think about the relationship between the way that AI is impacting your life and career and the physical infrastructures of data centers in Tennessee?
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Yeah, I think, you know, we found out late May that some applications had been filed for a data center.
00:09:18.559 --> 00:09:27.120
And there was also an HBCU in town here called Fisk University that announced a what they called a quantum leap forward.
00:09:27.279 --> 00:09:41.039
And in order to solve some of their financial problems, they were going to put 30 megawatts of compute power into 70,000 square feet of data center directly on their small 40-acre campus in the heart of a historically black neighborhood.
00:09:41.279 --> 00:09:48.080
And then the other permits that were filed were for directly adjacent to the Nashville Zoo, which is about a mile from my house.
00:09:48.320 --> 00:09:52.960
And like I can hear zoo animals from my house regularly.
00:09:53.200 --> 00:09:53.679
Which ones?
00:09:53.919 --> 00:09:56.080
Gibbons specifically are very, very top.
00:09:56.559 --> 00:09:57.519
The lesser apes.
00:09:58.320 --> 00:09:58.639
Yes.
00:09:59.039 --> 00:09:59.759
They're so loud.
00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:03.039
They're so loud, and we love to hear them yapping.
00:10:03.360 --> 00:10:13.360
And um, it was immediately clear to me, you know, I went and looked at this company that applied to the, you know, the Fisk University data center is a field of dreams.
00:10:13.519 --> 00:10:16.559
If you tell them they can build it, they will come, essentially.
00:10:16.720 --> 00:10:27.919
They didn't have a partner, they didn't have financing, they just they just announced this plan against the wishes of student body and staff and residents around there.
00:10:28.399 --> 00:10:32.240
The data center next to the zoo was announced by a company called DC Blocks.
00:10:32.320 --> 00:10:42.639
And DC Blocks basically is uh a similar model where they build data centers and then find clients to utilize that compute power.
00:10:42.799 --> 00:10:46.240
They are they don't actually, their product is data centers.
00:10:46.480 --> 00:10:48.000
That's their product that they sell.
00:10:48.159 --> 00:10:56.000
They don't sell technology, they don't, you know, they're literally just DM Horton home builder of data centers.
00:10:56.559 --> 00:11:02.159
And their website talks about how they build these AI ready facilities.
00:11:02.799 --> 00:11:07.840
And so from from my end, yeah, it's my business is being impacted.
00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:28.399
Yes, I think that I I think that LLMs as a whole are an illusion in that the users don't recognize how captured they really are and it creates somewhat of a cage where the the users don't see the bars because they're painted on the inside to look like the sky.
00:11:28.720 --> 00:11:33.279
And these LLMs are shaping and controlling the way we see and we think and we feel.
00:11:33.360 --> 00:11:34.879
And so, yeah, that's scary.
00:11:35.120 --> 00:11:40.720
But with DC blocks, it's like I don't care what the compute task is of that facility.
00:11:40.960 --> 00:11:48.480
I care that nearly 100% of the electricity that gets pumped into a data center gets converted into heat.
00:11:48.639 --> 00:11:53.120
And that heat then gets ejected out into the community surrounding.
00:11:53.279 --> 00:11:58.399
And my like next week, I'm taking several of my neighbors to their immigration hearings down in Memphis.
00:11:58.559 --> 00:12:07.600
We are an immigrant community here in South Nashville, and many of them aren't going to speak up and say something because they're just trying to survive.
00:12:07.679 --> 00:12:16.879
They're already fleeing war-torn countries where we've been soft on borders for American corporations, but hard on borders for living people.
00:12:17.679 --> 00:12:24.799
And so my concern about this data center next to the zoo wasn't even so much about clouded leopards or endangered species.
00:12:24.960 --> 00:12:30.240
Certainly, like I take my children to the zoo sometimes more than once a week.
00:12:30.399 --> 00:12:37.919
We love the Nashville Zoo, but we also love our neighbors and we love being able to breathe clean air.
00:12:38.080 --> 00:12:40.159
We've been seeing what they're doing in Memphis, right?
00:12:40.320 --> 00:12:55.679
Elon Musk currently owns 35% of the city of Memphis, and he is purchasing a significant amount of neighboring Mississippi and creating kind of this impossible to stamp out problem.
00:12:56.000 --> 00:13:10.480
You know, when you look at data centers, you're seeing this kind of Venn diagram of tech oligarchy, fossil fuel industry, and military industrial complex all living in harmony under one roof.
00:13:10.960 --> 00:13:18.000
And we're we're seeing, you know, these facilities, you can't do no harm with them.
00:13:18.159 --> 00:13:29.519
And they're so different than legacy data centers that we know and love that send our text messages and fetch our emails and help hospitals out.
00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:30.879
It's it's not the same.
00:13:30.960 --> 00:13:36.159
And I think one of the important things you need to look at is that density per square foot is, you know.
00:13:36.480 --> 00:13:53.519
So what you're telling me is despite all of the impacts of AI on your family, on your industry, on your own job, actually, there was a whole other set of problems from the AI data center that caused you to get involved in fighting back against it where you thought it was going to affect your neighborhood and your neighbors.
00:13:53.600 --> 00:14:00.480
And can I ask you, like, what would you say to someone who's like, oh yeah, like obviously I'm affected by AI.
00:14:00.720 --> 00:14:04.559
Um, I heard there's a data center coming to my town, but I don't really know where to start.
00:14:04.799 --> 00:14:06.639
Yeah, that's a really good question.
00:14:06.799 --> 00:14:14.399
I think the first thing that people should do is go to the public library and talk to a librarian.
00:14:14.559 --> 00:14:20.559
Uh, your local librarian is gonna know how you can find out about local laws.
00:14:20.720 --> 00:14:28.080
It's gonna know how you can find out about permitting processes or where you can look at, you know, a lot of permit applications are public.
00:14:28.240 --> 00:14:38.159
I spent an enormous amount of time at the public library over the last two months developing relationships with my librarians because knowledge is power.
00:14:38.480 --> 00:15:00.960
And the first thing that I did was pull the permits that this developer had submitted and went to the library and I printed out every single page and I grabbed a highlighter and I read through 200 and something pages of geotechnical documents and circled the parts that I did not understand and highlighted the parts that I did.
00:15:01.200 --> 00:15:08.559
And then once I, you know, knew what I knew and knew what I didn't know, I started asking questions.
00:15:08.639 --> 00:15:09.840
Um who were you asking?
00:15:09.919 --> 00:15:11.279
You were asking the librarians.
00:15:11.519 --> 00:15:16.720
I would ask the librarians, like, hey, here's this soil chart.
00:15:17.039 --> 00:15:19.919
Do you have a book that helps me understand how this works?
00:15:20.080 --> 00:15:25.919
Or do you know, you know, how I can find out at who at the University of Tennessee would answer my email?
00:15:26.240 --> 00:15:26.960
Hold on a second.
00:15:27.039 --> 00:15:32.879
So you were like, the only thing more powerful than this new AI data center is the OG data center.
00:15:33.120 --> 00:15:33.679
Hell yes.
00:15:33.919 --> 00:15:37.440
And you went to the library and you're like, yo, what do you guys know?
00:15:37.600 --> 00:15:39.200
And librarians know all kinds of things.
00:15:39.600 --> 00:15:41.120
They're so smart how to conduct research.
00:15:41.360 --> 00:15:41.919
They're so smart.
00:15:42.080 --> 00:15:42.559
This is amazing.
00:15:42.639 --> 00:15:51.440
I've never, I haven't, I don't think I've heard this before, but wow, you said there's only one thing more powerful than an AI data center, and that's uh that's the library.
00:15:51.600 --> 00:15:52.159
That's people.
00:15:52.399 --> 00:15:52.960
It's people.
00:15:53.120 --> 00:15:53.600
Yeah.
00:15:53.840 --> 00:15:54.399
Very cool.
00:15:54.559 --> 00:15:57.360
And I mean, it's kind of intimidating, right?
00:15:57.440 --> 00:15:59.519
To be like, yo, I'm gonna take on this project.
00:15:59.600 --> 00:16:04.559
I'm gonna, I mean, you have things to do, you have your kids going to, you know, getting to school.
00:16:04.879 --> 00:16:09.200
What do you think pushed you over to the edge to be like, you know what, I'm gonna go talk to these librarians.
00:16:09.279 --> 00:16:12.320
I'm gonna really spend some of my valuable time on this issue.
00:16:12.639 --> 00:16:18.000
I mean, when you like when you really think about it, everybody wants the world to be a better place.
00:16:18.559 --> 00:16:28.240
And what I have learned living in, you know, I live in an immigrant community where ICE is here weekly, if not daily, trying to kidnap my neighbors.
00:16:28.639 --> 00:16:36.320
And what I have learned is that if you want the world to become a better place, you start on your block.
00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:41.120
And so when something I can't I can't stop the war in Iran, right?
00:16:41.279 --> 00:16:42.480
I would love to do that.
00:16:42.639 --> 00:16:55.200
But you know what I can do is make sure that there isn't computational facilities in my town that are processing where they're gonna, you know, incorrectly direct tomahawk missiles towards schools full of children.
00:16:55.360 --> 00:17:00.159
Um, and so you start local and that changes the world.
00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:04.799
And and it was this this belief of like, well, why not?
00:17:04.960 --> 00:17:05.839
Why not me?
00:17:06.000 --> 00:17:06.640
Why not here?
00:17:06.799 --> 00:17:07.759
Why not now?
00:17:08.240 --> 00:17:38.400
You can you can give up and you can say that this is inevitable, and you can believe the narrative that these oligarchs are pushing towards us, that you can't stop it, you just have to learn to live with it, you have to accept it, or you can reject this like deeply homegrown American rape culture and say, I want to live in a different world that gives people a chance and a say, because I think for me, the most fundamental of every single human right is autonomy.
00:17:38.960 --> 00:17:44.720
And AI is a subversion of that, and these data centers are a subversion of that autonomy.
00:17:44.880 --> 00:17:49.200
And so when one person pays attention, it becomes problematic.
00:17:49.359 --> 00:18:09.680
But if I could take my skills as a marketer and my ability that I've honed over the last uh nearly 20 years to take complicated issues and make them simple and then get people to take action on that information, and I could get dozens of people to pay attention.
00:18:09.839 --> 00:18:13.119
Well, well, now it's it's impossible to stop us.
00:18:13.279 --> 00:18:21.839
Now you you can't put a misleading headline out because too many of us have been paying attention too closely for too long for us to lose the plot.
00:18:22.160 --> 00:18:22.640
Right.
00:18:22.880 --> 00:18:23.279
Wow.
00:18:23.599 --> 00:18:34.400
So, I mean, using all of those skills, you guys moved forward some remarkable regulations, uh, some of the best ones that we've seen so far on AI data center.
00:18:34.480 --> 00:18:37.119
It's not perfect, but I mean, it's a huge change.
00:18:37.279 --> 00:18:45.759
Could you tell folks a little bit about what those regulations are and and how you were able to make so much progress as a as a community organized?
00:18:46.160 --> 00:18:48.799
Yeah, some of it, let's let's be really honest.
00:18:49.039 --> 00:18:53.279
We're lucky that we have the city council that we do have here in Nashville.
00:18:53.519 --> 00:18:57.119
The legislation that we moved forward had already been underway.
00:18:57.279 --> 00:19:01.200
Uh, the the bill's author had been working on it for about a year.
00:19:01.519 --> 00:19:05.359
And the legislation that we brought forward wasn't reactive.
00:19:05.519 --> 00:19:10.640
It was something that had been researched and been thought through and been approached.
00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:19.759
And we live in a state where a municipal government does not have the ability to ban a land use.
00:19:19.920 --> 00:19:23.359
You know, so data center is considered a land use class.
00:19:23.680 --> 00:19:30.240
And we don't have the ability to ban that here in Nashville because the state legislature holds that power.
00:19:30.480 --> 00:19:48.319
And for those who haven't been paying attention to Tennessee politics, we have a Republican supermajority and uh insanely gerrymandered state, including we just redrew the maps explicitly to remove power from black voters in Memphis.
00:19:48.640 --> 00:20:02.880
And the fear that we had was that if we put forward legislation that essentially banned them, the state would do what it has done again and again, which is come in and preempt local governments and subvert local autonomy.
00:20:03.519 --> 00:20:14.240
So the fear was if we passed legislation that was too strong, that the state legislature would come in and strip away all of the protections.
00:20:14.960 --> 00:20:27.039
And so the the kind of narrow loophole that we have to navigate through here as Nashvilleans is how do we protect people without pissing off power?
00:20:27.519 --> 00:20:37.599
And what we created was a set of really strict zoning rules and regulations that limit we cannot have hyperscale data centers here in Nashville.
00:20:37.680 --> 00:20:41.839
So you can't be larger than 500,000 square feet or 99 megawatts.
00:20:42.319 --> 00:20:52.319
Uh, we also limited where you can build those, restricting them to the most heavily like heavy industrial use building zones.
00:20:52.480 --> 00:20:55.039
Uh we created really strong buffer zones.
00:20:55.119 --> 00:20:59.200
A buffer zone is basically how close to another land use class can you build these things?
00:20:59.279 --> 00:21:07.920
And we included in that schools, churches, daycares, houses, apartments, hospitals, prisons in that category.
00:21:08.079 --> 00:21:17.680
Basically, we had to think through anywhere people have to be and can't live without, and included those in that buffer zone.
00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:21.680
We also created some pretty intense setback rules.
00:21:21.839 --> 00:21:25.200
Setback is how close to the property's edge can you build these things?
00:21:25.359 --> 00:21:35.839
And the difficult thing we had to navigate was you know, the farther back from the property edge you create your setbacks, the larger the parcel you require data centers to have to obtain.
00:21:36.160 --> 00:21:40.960
And therefore you incentivize larger and larger facilities to being built.
00:21:41.039 --> 00:21:59.759
So trying to find this sweet spot of like, let's give people enough distance from the property edge to have a little bit of reprieve if they have to be next to these things without doing something where the actual lived expression of that law was there's nowhere to build these.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:00.799
These things too.
00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:04.559
That was the other really difficult part to get through.
00:22:04.799 --> 00:22:21.200
Was if you make those too strict, then there is no parcel in town that they can build on, which sounds good, but then lawyers will then lawyer that it is an actual ban and the state will come in and remove the law and strip all the protections.
00:22:21.440 --> 00:22:28.000
On top of that, we eliminated the ability of the for them to use gas generators as backup power.
00:22:28.160 --> 00:22:30.720
If they want to have backup power, they're more than welcome to do so.
00:22:30.799 --> 00:22:34.079
It has to be solar, it has to be wind, it has to be quote unquote renewable energy.
00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:46.720
This sounds like something that people are going to be copying in Missouri and other states where the state government has a propensity to attack any local regulations of any kind.
00:22:47.119 --> 00:22:48.880
Yeah, we we certainly hope so.
00:22:49.119 --> 00:22:52.559
The the law is called BL 2026-1391.
00:22:52.720 --> 00:22:58.319
So you can look it up on Nashville's Legistar portal and look at that text for yourself.
00:22:58.559 --> 00:23:01.279
But that for us is just the foundation.
00:23:01.519 --> 00:23:07.039
The goal here is we also passed a moratorium that is extremely temporary.
00:23:07.200 --> 00:23:23.119
You know, our concern with a moratorium is we are seeing like Hill County, Texas, and there's some places in Virginia as well that are passing moratoriums, and then data center developers are turning around and suing local governments for constitutional land use rights violations.
00:23:23.839 --> 00:23:28.319
Americans maybe have noticed that you only have as many legal rights as you have dollars.
00:23:28.559 --> 00:23:42.480
So when you're a small municipal government that's facing a private equity-backed data center developer, you're gonna lose in court every time just because you can't afford to continue to keep showing up to the cases.
00:23:42.640 --> 00:23:43.920
You have to fold.
00:23:44.480 --> 00:23:50.480
And so our concern with moratoriums was, you know, we we made it extremely temporary.
00:23:50.720 --> 00:24:13.680
In the wake of that, what we're gonna do is continue to work on passing additional legislation that, you know, one of the things that Mike Cortezzi is working on is requiring data center developers to place money into a bond that will be used to decommission those facilities if that company should suddenly go bankrupt or the facility shuts down suddenly.
00:24:13.759 --> 00:24:17.359
Uh, and there's some other things that we're gonna do as well.
00:24:17.519 --> 00:24:21.200
You know, the first law we did pass does also include water quality.
00:24:21.279 --> 00:24:25.279
So we force them to use closed loop and we force them to catch and keep their water discharge.
00:24:25.440 --> 00:24:27.759
They can't just put it into storm drains anymore.
00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:37.519
So there's there's additional layers of legislation, though, that are coming, including just some changes to our industrial law and how large industry does business in Nashville.
00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:55.839
Um, we've spotted quite a few asymmetries in things like noise ordinances, the way that we apply a noise ordinance to like at my house, as a musician, I'm not allowed to have as really as any resident, I'm not allowed to have amplified music leave my property.
00:24:55.920 --> 00:24:57.599
There's not a set decibel.
00:24:57.759 --> 00:25:01.759
Whereas industry has specific decibels that they have to adhere to.
00:25:01.920 --> 00:25:16.799
We're looking at addressing some of that asymmetry where it's like, okay, well, if if I'm not allowed to have sound leave my property, then why is heavy industry allowed to create noise pollution and things like that?
00:25:17.200 --> 00:25:18.160
Right, right.
00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:19.440
I love this.
00:25:19.519 --> 00:25:30.960
So you guys were like, all right, we're not only gonna pass a moratorium, we're gonna pass a regulatory scheme to make it much harder to build data centers unjustly.
00:25:31.359 --> 00:25:31.759
Yeah.
00:25:32.079 --> 00:25:39.599
Essentially the the idea is to make it death by a thousand cuts for data center developers in Davidson County.
00:25:39.920 --> 00:25:45.920
And to make sure that look, if you want to build it and you want to jump through all the hoops, come on over.
00:25:46.160 --> 00:25:51.920
Come figure out how to protect the public health and wellness of an area while you do your business here.
00:25:52.000 --> 00:25:59.920
If you want to do it, I guess fine until we get some actual rules and regulations in place on the technology itself.
00:26:00.079 --> 00:26:17.759
But some of the environmental rules and restrictions in place that we put in locked the regulations to EPA regulations as of the date of passage, so that even as the EPA continues to be stripped and gutted, our law is not based on what is current.
00:26:17.920 --> 00:26:21.119
Our law was based on the standard that was set at the time of the passage.
00:26:21.200 --> 00:26:27.839
And so we're just we're really trying to think of all the ways that the Republicans have continued to try and rat fuck people.
00:26:28.240 --> 00:26:36.079
That has been our approach, is like, okay, well, you know, the thing that really helped us block this data center next to the zoo was actually parking minimums.
00:26:36.319 --> 00:26:46.720
And as a like a I am a Yimby, I want to develop and create a strong community around me through common sense zoning rules and regulations.
00:26:46.880 --> 00:26:51.680
It's wild to me that a parking minimum actually saved our ass here on this.
00:26:51.920 --> 00:27:01.920
You know, that was the one thing that blocked them from vesting on their permits next to the zoo and allowed us to pass the legislation in time to stop that development.
00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:08.079
So because the zoo or adjacent buildings had to have a certain number of parking spots, basically.
00:27:08.400 --> 00:27:12.720
Yeah, they we didn't we didn't have data center as a land use class.
00:27:12.799 --> 00:27:15.440
We had telecom infrastructure, but we didn't have data center.
00:27:15.519 --> 00:27:18.480
And that's that's really what most of America is dealing with right now.
00:27:18.640 --> 00:27:20.160
A lot of people are saying, oh, are you right?
00:27:20.319 --> 00:27:25.359
It's not clear where you're supposed to put them or even what the rules are governing data centers.
00:27:25.680 --> 00:27:34.400
What do you think made you all successful that other people could learn from besides sort of looking at the text of your regulations and and we can put those in the show notes?
00:27:34.640 --> 00:27:35.920
How did you guys do it?
00:27:36.240 --> 00:27:39.920
I think we were highly motivated for one, right?
00:27:40.079 --> 00:27:45.039
We have watched what has happened in Memphis very closely.
00:27:45.200 --> 00:27:54.640
And so I think some of that was the Grim Reaper standing in the corners, you know, menacingly motivating us to continue to step up.
00:27:54.880 --> 00:27:58.400
I think for me, the big thing, like I looked at this.
00:27:58.480 --> 00:28:04.799
So there's a book that I really love that I I don't think a lot of people would read at first sniff.
00:28:04.960 --> 00:28:09.920
And it's uh it's actually a tactical manual by the US military called FM3-24.
00:28:10.319 --> 00:28:12.160
To not see that coming, go on.
00:28:12.640 --> 00:28:13.200
Yes.
00:28:13.359 --> 00:28:18.400
Um, this is FM3-24.
00:28:18.960 --> 00:28:22.880
It's a field manual on insurgencies and counterinsurgencies.
00:28:22.960 --> 00:28:30.799
And it is the playbook by which the US military approaches counterinsurgencies and counters them.
00:28:30.960 --> 00:28:40.559
And it is, I think if you read it and you understand it, it is a easy, you can easily train like really what it is is the doctrine of how power works.
00:28:41.039 --> 00:28:53.279
And understanding how power works, all of a sudden, when you have the playbook of imperialism, the levers that they pull don't work as well as they used to.
00:28:53.440 --> 00:28:57.039
And you can get ahead of things much faster.
00:28:57.200 --> 00:29:04.160
And so there's there's basically eight layers to the casserole of FM3-2-4.
00:29:04.480 --> 00:29:21.200
It's host nation legitimacy, it's isolating the insurgents, it's co-opting the local elites, it's controlling information operations, it's controlling the population, it's using money as a weapon, it's long-term commitment and its legitimacy as perception.
00:29:21.599 --> 00:29:35.759
And you can break down each one of those, like in a military context, the occupying force props up the local government to make it seem like the regime in power has this moral and legal right to rule, even if it's a US puppet.
00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:53.759
Data center developers are gonna whine and dine local officials and they're gonna hand them the ribbon cutting scissors, and they're gonna frame the project as important to the economic development of the city, even though they're gonna build it with crazy tax breaks and provide like six permanent jobs, right?
00:29:54.000 --> 00:29:57.920
So you you counter that with public pressure and lots of it.
00:29:58.000 --> 00:30:06.640
You pack the public meetings, you demand recorded votes, you pull uh records requests on emails between public officials and data center developers.
00:30:06.880 --> 00:30:11.839
And you also, as a citizenry, you document everybody who shows up to every meeting.
00:30:12.160 --> 00:30:17.759
That I think is one of the best ways that Nashville fought back is constantly.
00:30:17.920 --> 00:30:21.279
I mean, I I'm just a guy in my basement buying Facebook ads for musicians.
00:30:21.359 --> 00:30:23.759
I don't know the who's who in politics.
00:30:23.920 --> 00:30:33.119
But when I showed up to these meetings, people So you've been reading a military manual about how to run campaigns in your basement, perhaps.
00:30:33.680 --> 00:30:34.319
Correct.
00:30:34.559 --> 00:30:42.880
In this chair to try and fight AI data centers with not the violence, but with the sort of strategic tools of the US military.
00:30:43.279 --> 00:30:44.720
There is a lot of violence that the U.S.
00:30:44.799 --> 00:30:54.480
military enacts, but they also they build bridges and roads and hospitals and schools, and they they convince a local population that whatever's going on there is for their best interest.
00:30:54.640 --> 00:31:08.960
And so it is like when you understand how power moves, you can look at every one of those eight layers and see how a data center developer is going to behave and act before they behave and act that way.
00:31:09.279 --> 00:31:11.200
And there's a counter for that.
00:31:11.359 --> 00:31:28.640
Again, one of the things that Nashville did remarkably well was public pressure and allowing the rumor mill to, you know, it was regularly I would get like a DM of like, hey, my cousin just got contracted for a quote on removing all the trees on the property.
00:31:28.799 --> 00:31:34.880
Or, hey, I just took a picture of this city council person having lunch with the data center developer lawyer.
00:31:35.200 --> 00:31:36.240
That's good stuff, Drew.
00:31:36.319 --> 00:31:37.519
That's that's really helpful.
00:31:37.599 --> 00:31:44.480
And I think people are looking for tools because the odds are stacked against communities who don't want data centers, right?
00:31:44.640 --> 00:31:44.960
That's right.
00:31:45.200 --> 00:31:46.960
Drew, it's been a pleasure talking to you.
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Thanks so much for chatting today.
00:31:48.880 --> 00:31:50.079
Thanks for having me.
00:31:51.599 --> 00:32:00.640
That was my conversation with Nashville resident Drew Small, whose team's work in Nashville is now being copied in cities and counties all over the country.
00:32:00.960 --> 00:32:08.960
Drew repeatedly stressed that all he started with were some music industry chops and a willingness to ask questions at the public library.
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Check out the show notes for the text of the Nashville Resolution, the No New Data Center's Instagram page that Drew runs, and more.
00:32:17.519 --> 00:32:19.599
You've been listening to The Hum.
00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:28.640
We're publishing new episodes weekly, so if you enjoyed what you heard, please download and save the hum and bring it up with gusto on your next hinge date.
00:32:28.880 --> 00:32:34.880
Message us on Instagram at The HumPod to get connected to organizers in your state or country.
00:32:35.039 --> 00:32:38.240
The Hum is produced in partnership with Rohum Productions.
00:32:38.400 --> 00:32:40.960
Rohum's creative director is Alex Lewis.
00:32:41.119 --> 00:32:43.279
Their executive producer is John Myers.
00:32:43.599 --> 00:32:45.519
Our producer is Emily Rizzo.
00:32:45.839 --> 00:32:52.079
The Hum's video producer is Adotrehan, and we partner with the Center for Nonviolent Conflict Research.
00:32:52.240 --> 00:32:55.440
I'm Saul Levin, your host and banjo journeyman.
00:32:55.599 --> 00:32:58.400
Thanks for listening and see you next Tuesday.
