Top Democrat proposes excise tax on data centers, including in space

Ron Wyden wants to tax data centers now, including the ones that might someday orbit the planet. That last part is not a typo. Somewhere in Oregon a senator is drafting tax code for facilities that don't exist yet, launched into a place we don't tax anything else in. It tells you a lot about where this idea started and where it's going.

The instinct isn't crazy on its face. Data centers are power hogs, they're popping up next to neighborhoods, and local utility bills are climbing while tech companies rake in AI money. People are right to be annoyed about that. But the answer Wyden lands on is a new federal excise tax dreamed up by the same party that spent four years subsidizing every green-energy build-out you can name, no questions asked about grid strain or water use. The concern for ordinary ratepayers shows up awfully fast once the industry in question is one Democrats didn't personally pick as a winner.

America is in a real race with China over who controls AI infrastructure, and it is not a race we win by taxing our own build-out before it's finished. If the concern is genuinely local costs and grid capacity, that's a matter for states, utilities and permitting reform, not a Washington excise tax dressed up as populism. Tacking "and in space" onto a Senate press release doesn't make it visionary. It makes it clear the policy came before the problem.