Vance attributes data center protests to power shortage: US electricity should be so cheap it's 'not even metered'

Beating AI News Flash: U.S. Vice President JD Vance said at the All-In Summit that AI data centers in the United States are facing growing opposition, largely because power supply has not kept up. Residents see data centers being built continuously while their own electricity bills are rising, so backlash is natural. He believes the solution is not to build fewer data centers, but to add generation capacity alongside them.

Vance said the United States has not built enough power infrastructure over the past generation, and in the future it should pursue a state where "electricity is too cheap to meter." He also compared the United States with China, arguing that U.S. power generation growth has been too slow in recent years and has already affected the development of new industries such as AI.

"Too cheap to meter" is in fact an old slogan from the history of American nuclear energy. In 1954, Lewis Strauss, then chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, used it to describe an era of cheap electricity brought by atomic energy. More than 70 years later, Vance has brought the phrase back, placing it in the context of a new wave of electricity demand driven by AI data centers.

The electricity conflict over U.S. data centers is indeed heating up. The IEA estimates that data centers contributed about half of U.S.新增 electricity demand in 2025; the U.S. Congress this week is also advancing legislation aimed at preventing the grid costs of data center expansion from being passed on to ordinary households.