Mark Cuban Issues Checklist for Towns Approving Data Centers
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What happened
Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban posted a 10-part checklist on X for towns considering their first data center, saying local governments should secure enforceable protections on water use, noise, backup generation, and infrastructure costs while they still have leverage. He said every major developer promise should have a measurable limit, independent oversight, financial backing, and a practical remedy if it is broken, and that towns should hire their own lawyers and technical advisors, assess a project's full planned build-out, and require upfront decommissioning funds and parent-company guarantees. Separately, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) told Breitbart News in an Aug. 31 interview at the 2026 Republican Jewish Coalition National Leadership Summit that township supervisors and county commissioners—not senators or CEOs—should decide whether data centers are built in their communities. McCormick said any invitation should come with a "covenant" covering energy-rate protection, closed-loop water systems that recycle, explicit tax implications, local hiring, and operator spending on schools, roads, and bridges.
Sourcing check · Fully on the record · 2 articles
1 of 1 article cites a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.
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This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Right-leaning coverage never mentions Mark Cuban's checklist, so a reader there would not know he told towns to lock in enforceable limits while they still have leverage. Left-leaning coverage at Business Insider lays out his 10-point playbook for a first data center, including independent oversight and a remedy if a promise is broken, plus money for teardown. The McCormick interview on Breitbart never names Cuban and instead treats siting as a choice for township supervisors, not for senators or CEOs.
On water, left-leaning coverage and right-leaning coverage send the same term in opposite directions. Left-leaning coverage warns that closed-loop cooling still uses water in heat, while right-leaning coverage presents McCormick's "closed-loop systems that recycle" as the safeguard.
Has any town put Cuban's terms, or McCormick's five-point covenant, into a signed approval?
Bottom line
You can finish Breitbart's McCormick exclusive without learning Cuban told towns to hire their own lawyers before approving a first data center. That 10-point list ran in Business Insider.
The receipts — 5 facts one side's coverage lacks
- Mark Cuban shared a 10-part playbook for communities considering their first data center
- A Gallup poll found 71% of Americans opposed having a data center built where they live
- McCormick said data centers and AI are 20/80 popular versus unpopular in the United States
- Proposed class actions in Wisconsin and Mississippi allege data-center sound carrying more than a mile
- McCormick said a local covenant should include energy rate protection and hiring of local labor
The Left View
Business Insider framed Cuban's checklist as a warning that towns lose negotiating power once they grant approval, and that a data center can impose demands on electricity, water, public services, and nearby neighborhoods that last for decades. Cuban highlighted water and noise in particular, warning that "closed-loop" cooling can still consume water during hot weather and that conventional noise limits may fail to capture the low-frequency hum of cooling equipment, which the article called now "the most common post-approval complaint" and an active litigation area, including proposed class actions in Wisconsin and Mississippi alleging sound carrying more than a mile. The piece cited a March Gallup poll finding that 71% of Americans opposed having a data center built where they live, compared with 53% who opposed a nearby nuclear power plant, and noted Environmental Health Project warnings that cooling systems and diesel generators can create a constant hum and consume large amounts of water where supplies are already scarce. Cuban had said in July that if a data center "breaks the law or damages the community, the community should go after them with everything they have," adding, "The AI companies need the data centers more than they need air. Take advantage of that fact. Tax the shit out of them if they do any documentable damage." He later told the All-In podcast that technological advances could make some of today's computing capacity redundant, joking that unused data centers might become "pickleball courts."
The Right View
Sen. McCormick framed local control over data centers as part of a real contest with China for global leadership, saying "the driver of power, of economic productivity is going to be AI, and you have to have computing power and energy to support that." He told Breitbart that data centers and AI are "80/20 popular versus unpopular in China" and "20/80 in the United States," adding, "That's not an accident," and attributing the gap in part to Chinese misinformation campaigns in America. He said no senator or "big-time CEO" should tell a Pennsylvania community it needs a data center; the decision belongs to township supervisors and county commissioners, and if they invite one, it should come with the five-item covenant he outlined. McCormick said he owns a family farm in Bloomsburg and "I don't really want a huge big data center in my backyard either," but that if the package helps a community "grow and be dynamic, I think a lot of people are going to opt in." If they do not opt in, "which they have every right not to opt in," he said they will have to ask, "if not this, what is the economic engine that's going to create opportunity for our kids?"
Our Take (balanced)
Cuban's strongest argument is that a town's leverage is front-loaded: once approval is granted, communities are left with lasting water, noise, and power impacts and weak remedies, a claim backed by existing neighbor complaints, proposed class actions over sound carrying more than a mile, and Gallup's finding of 71% local opposition—stronger than opposition to a nearby nuclear plant. McCormick's strongest argument is that siting should be a local democratic choice inside a national AI race with China, and that a concrete covenant on rates, water, taxes, jobs, and infrastructure can make opt-in rational; he pairs that with the counterfactual that communities which refuse still need some other economic engine for their children, and with his claim that the U.S.–China popularity gap on data centers is "not an accident." The central unresolved tension is that both sides endorse local decision-making and conditions on water, energy, and taxes, yet they diverge on the posture of that choice: whether operators should be treated as supplicants who "need the data centers more than they need air" and must be bound before approval, or as participants in a strategic build-out whose local acceptance depends on a benefit package and an answer to what else will employ the next generation.
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