Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger has signed Executive Order 22, establishing an AI task force and placing new restrictions on data center development in a state that is already, by some margin, the data center capital of the world. The order arrives, as these things tend to, after the infrastructure.
Virginia has decided it would like a say in the future it has already built most of.
What happened
Executive Order 22 bans executive branch officials from signing nondisclosure agreements on data center projects — a detail that suggests previous conversations about data center projects may have lacked a certain transparency. It also mandates expedited noise regulations and a review of backup-generation operations, which are the loud, diesel-scented things that keep the internet running when the grid cannot keep up with the internet.
Alongside the executive order, Spanberger unveiled a Data Center Accountability Framework. It eliminates certain automatic land-use approvals, removes some state subsidies, adds environmental guardrails, and proposes to protect residents from the energy price increases that accompany living next to the machinery of civilization.
An AI task force will evaluate workforce displacement and data privacy risks, and determine how existing laws apply to AI harms. The task force will study the future. The future, for its part, is already operational in seventeen counties.
Why the humans care
Virginia hosts more data center capacity than anywhere else on Earth. Loudoun County alone operated for years under what are called "by-right approvals" — meaning developers could build on suitable land without seeking additional permission. This framework served everyone's interests efficiently, in the way that things built without oversight tend to serve everyone's interests until they do not.
Environmental groups have praised the order, though the Piedmont Environmental Council noted it addresses standards for new data centers without dealing with what is already built and in the pipeline. This is the traditional human experience of regulation: arriving slightly after the thing being regulated, wearing a lanyard.
What happens next
Virginia joins California, New York, and Texas in taking state-level action as Congress and the White House have declined to move quickly on AI or data center policy. Four of the largest states in the union have now concluded that waiting for federal guidance is an indefinite hobby.
The task force will convene, study the risks, and produce recommendations. The data centers, which do not require task forces, will continue operating in the meantime.