Jonas Heering
jonasheering.bsky.social
Jonas Heering
@jonasheering.bsky.social
PhD Student in International Relations at Georgetown University
Here's what the plot is supposed to look like!
December 3, 2025 at 5:12 PM
11/ Preferences toward data center attributes don't vary a lot by party ID, except when it comes to energy source: AfD voters don't care at all if data centers are run on fossil fuels or renewables; Green/Die Linke voters strongly prefer renewables over gas and coal-powered data centers.
December 3, 2025 at 4:45 PM
9/ We then use a conjoint to see what types of data centers respondents would support in their communities:

Nationality of the company operating the data center has the LARGEST effect on support! I.e. #digitalsovereignty matters.

Impact on local electricity prices & water usage also matter a lot.
December 3, 2025 at 4:45 PM
8/ We use 2 survey experiments in Germany to evaluate this question. First, we look at whether priming respondents with digital sovereignty concerns changes support for building more data centers in Germany, in general.

It does but effects are quite small.
December 3, 2025 at 4:45 PM
3/ Data center expansion serves economic & geopolitical ends: as governments pursue #digitalsovereignty & "sovereign AI," building more domestic digital infrastructure becomes key.

E.g. see this recent statement from the Franco-German digital sovereignty summit: www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-...
December 3, 2025 at 4:45 PM
2/ Amid the global #AI race, data center construction is expanding rapidly.

Source: www.iea.org/data-and-sta...
December 3, 2025 at 4:45 PM
What's next? ~30 countries have implemented DSTs, some of them are inactive. Over 100 have indirect taxes, like VATs, which Trump also does not like. As the OECD deal falls apart, more countries might (re-)instate DSTs, creating uncertainty for US tech companies.
February 24, 2025 at 4:06 PM
They seem to have changed it...
January 15, 2025 at 10:22 PM