The AI infrastructure fight is becoming local first. Communities see the land, power lines, water use, tax promises, and construction noise long before they see any abstract national productivity gain from AI.
That matters because data centers are now the physical footprint of model ambition. Labs and cloud providers can announce huge capacity plans, but the projects still need permits, utilities, workers, and public trust in the places where they are built.
Pagish will watch whether local agreements become more specific. The serious version of this story is not whether people support or oppose AI; it is whether communities receive clear terms for energy use, environmental impact, jobs, and long-term accountability.
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