Shapiro’s comments to CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” came a day after President Donald Trump said the only reason American communities should not want AI data centers “is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.”
“The reality is, I want CEOs that give a damn about the community where they’re going to be,” said Shapiro, who appeared on CNBC with Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya to talk about the Greek yogurt maker’s planned $1.2 billion investment in a new Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, dairy manufacturing hub.
“Unfortunately, we’ve seen too many developers who don’t care about our communities who are trying to run roughshod over our communities, and those are the kinds of data center projects we don’t want here,” Shapiro said. “We want to work with people that want to work with local communities.”
The governor, who is considered a potential contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, on Aug. 18 signed an executive order aimed at controlling data center development, mandating that any proposals for centers comply with the Governor’s Responsible Infrastructure Development (GRID) Requirements, and removing all artificial intelligence data center projects from a fast-track approval program.
“This executive order represents the most stringent requirements in the entire country,” Shapiro said when he signed the order. “And my word to developers is you better follow these requirements. Otherwise you shouldn’t plan to do business here.”
Shapiro’s order came as he seeks re-election as governor against Republican nominee, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity.
He cited that order during his appearance with Ulukaya on Tuesday.
Tom Brenner | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Asked what that means, Shapiro said data center developers have to earn local support before seeking permits from the state.
“Number two, you’ve got to generate your own power, and you got to pay for the power,” he said. “You can’t saddle local homeowners and businesses with that. Number three, you’ve got to protect our water supply and our air quality.”
“All of those things are common sense, and you are now legally bound to those standards.”
Shapiro is one of several governors who have imposed new restrictions or called for greater scrutiny of data center development amid widespread public opposition to the projects, which has become a political flashpoint in the upcoming congressional and state elections.
Opponents to AI data centers, which house computing equipment used to train and operate artificial intelligence models, say they can boost electricity demand and utility costs and strain local water sources.
In June 2025, Shapiro had touted Amazon‘s announcement that it would spend at least $20 billion to build two data center complexes in Pennsylvania as the biggest private investment in state history.
“It’s important to note that this is just an initial investment coming from Amazon, so this is going to grow,” Shapiro told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that month. “Pennsylvania is going to be better off. I think America is going to be better off because we’re going to win the battle of AI supremacy and it’s going to be done right here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
Shapiro’s challenger, Garrity, in response to his executive order in August, released a video calling it “damage control.”
“Josh Shapiro spent the last year rolling out the red carpet for massive data center development in Pennsylvania,” Garrity said in the video. “He celebrated it, he promoted it, he said he was proud of it.”
Garrity said that if she is elected, “I will pause data center development in Pennsylvania.”
But Garrity, in a radio interview a year earlier, had said “Ohio is kicking our butt” in having more than double the number of data centers that Pennsylvania has.
“We could be doing so much more in that space, she said.
A Gallup survey released in May found that “seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area.”
On the same day Shapiro signed his order in August, the National Republican Senatorial Committee issued a memo warning voter backlash to data centers has put Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, at risk of losing a special election to Democratic nominee Sherrod Brown, himself a former senator.
“If Husted loses because of data centers, the industry will be blamed, and elected officials of both parties will learn a cautionary lesson,” the NRSC said.
David Sacks, who is co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology, in a separate interview later Tuesday on “Squawk on the Street,” said “there is a good deal to be made here between local communities and data centers and the AI companies.”
“You educate the average residential consumer and voter, that actually there’s a way for these data centers to bring down their electricity costs,” Sacks said.
“That actually the data center operators are willing to fund grid upgrades. That actually data centers don’t use a lot of water now because the water recirculates,” he said. “When you actually educate them about the issue, the poll numbers change dramatically, and you’ll see that a majority of voters will actually support data centers.”
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