AI data center outrage is showing up everywhere from ads to elections

During a brainstorming session earlier this summer, a group of comedians and employees at beverage company Liquid Death kicked around an idea for a brazen new advertising campaign that would humorously shed light on the amount of water required to operate massive artificial intelligence data centers. 

“It was an idea of just, hey, what if we used pee to cool data centers instead of water?” Andy Pearson, vice president of creative at Liquid Death, told CNBC in an interview.

The outlandish idea turned into a collaborative 90-second video, created with Garage Beer, which is owned by Jason and Travis Kelce. The clip pledges to “send your pee to the AI data center of your choice.”

Liquid Death and Garage Beer dropped the video on Tuesday, the same day voters in Florida headed to the polls to vote in the gubernatorial primaries, with the leading Republican candidates focused on data centers as a central issue. Rep. Byron Donalds, President Donald Trump’s pick to succeed Gov. Ron DeSantis, won easily to move along to November’s general election.

Last month, Donalds introduced the “Protecting Ratepayers Act,” which aims to “ensure that private developers, rather than American taxpayers, bear the investment costs of data center developments that advance our country’s technological dominance,” according to a release. Donalds, however, received significant financial support from AI PACs like Leading the Future.

The Marc Andreessen-backed group congratulated Donalds after his win, saying he “understands that new, emerging technologies like AI play a key role in advancing that priority.

AI data centers, the large facilities that house the hardware for training and running AI models, are popping up all over the country, with far more coming down the line, if leading AI companies and hyperscalers get their way. But with the midterm elections less than three months away and Americans grappling with increased costs for groceries and stubbornly high prices at the pump, data centers have become a physical manifestation of the widespread antipathy for AI, which consumers associate with inflated electricity bills and job loss.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, or NRSC, warned on Tuesday that data centers have become a “sleeper issue” for the entire midterm election cycle, according to a memo obtained by CNBC. Democrats are currently ahead in the generic ballot by 6.4 percentage points, according to a polling average from RealClearPolitics.  

Pearson said Liquid Death tries to “stay out of political things,” but so many people are talking about AI and data centers that it’s become a “pretty…