Data centers are coming soon to a patch of open land near you feeding off of and fueling the boom in artificial intelligence. With the rapid onset of hundreds of data centers sprouting across the country and the world has come a bumper crop of opposition from local residents concerned about power and water consumption, noise and air pollution, and overall quality of life impacts.

I joined the Mobile Satellite Users Association as president on Monday of this week. I am taking the helm of a more than 30-year-old organization that is coming to grips with an explosion of implementation activity from the launching of hundreds of new satellites to a proliferation of new hardware and software and, most recently, artificial intelligence.