With Congress already on break ahead of the November midterm elections, Independent candidate Bill Hill joined other high-profile Independents in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to call for Congress to return and tackle data centers.
Hill, a commercial fisherman, spoke to reporters from Capitol Hill, flanked by Nebraska independent U.S. Senate candidate Dan Osborn and North Dakota independent US Senate candidate Brian Bengs. Hill argued that Congress—and in particular, his Republican opponent US Rep. Nick Begich III—has done a poor job of protecting people from the impacts of massive data centers.
“The Alaska people are worried about what data centers will do to their lives, and they want assurances,” he said, according to C-SPAN coverage. “We’re paying some of the highest cost of energy you’re ever going to find. In my hometown, gasoline is nearly $9 a gallon. Some of the outlying communities are going to be paying $15 a gallon for heating fuel. We are in an energy crisis in Alaska, and now you want to bring technology to our state that is going to be bought on the backs of ratepayers.”
Hill said he didn’t want to see data centers receive tax breaks or the ability to build vast complexes without local input and support. He also called for national standards and guardrails for AI.
In Alaska, data centers on the scale that have made headlines about noise and water pollution in the Lower 48 haven’t arrived quite yet, but that’s not for lack of trying by Republican officials like Begich and Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
Several proposals by the Dunleavy administration to sell public land cheaply for data centers have faced massive pushback from Alaskans across the political spectrum, including from fellow Republicans. In March 2026, Mat-Su Mayor Edna DeVries, a Republican who was running for governor, vetoed a measure seeking to attract data centers to the borough.
Begich, a reliable supporter of President Donald Trump, has been a cheerleader for data centers, arguing that Alaska’s vast geography and energy resources are especially well-suited to them.
In an op-ed published in the Anchorage Daily News in April 2026, Begich wrote that Alaska should “capitalize on the AI gold rush.”
“Artificial intelligence runs on energy, and lots of it. That is exactly where Alaska has an advantage,” he wrote. “While other states are beginning to bump against limits on power availability, land and infrastructure, Alaska remains one of the most energy-rich regions in the world.”
In it, he was promoting his legislation, the DATA Act of 2026, which would allow data centers to operate their own energy grids separate from regular utilities.
While it was pitched as a way to spare ratepayers from shouldering the costs of data centers’ extreme energy demands, utility bills are just one part of the local impact from data centers. In the Lower 48, they’ve also faced concerns about noise pollution and long-lasting water pollution. They also create far fewer jobs than their backers claim, while local workers see little gain in wages.
While some Republicans in vulnerable elections have backed away from data centers and AI, Begich has stayed firm.
Hill said the impact of the AI wave on workers needs to be better understood, and there hasn’t been enough attention paid to the people who will ultimately be displaced by bots.
“(Alaskans) want assurances that there are going to be guardrails put in place, regulations and protections put in place, for an industry and a technology that could displace thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of workers,” he said. “That work has not been done yet. Our government has not been doing its job.”
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
