{"id":4662,"date":"2026-10-18T10:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T10:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/18\/data-centers-have-a-new-pr-plan-your-kids-field-trip\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T10:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T10:36:12","slug":"data-centers-have-a-new-pr-plan-your-kids-field-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/18\/data-centers-have-a-new-pr-plan-your-kids-field-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"Data Centers Have a New PR Plan: Your Kid\u2019s Field Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><span class=\"lead-in-text-callout\">Welcome back to<\/span> Power Play! Each week, senior writer Molly Taft tackles a topic around this midterm season\u2019s biggest issue: data centers. They\u2019re out this week, so Caroline Haskins is reporting for duty. If you\u2019ve got a question or thought for the column, feel free to shoot Caroline an email at <span class=\"__cf_email__\" data-cfemail=\"751614071a191c1b102a1d14061e1c1b0635021c0710115b161a18\">[email\u00a0protected]<\/span> or reach her securely on Signal at carolinehaskins.61.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">The nonprofit 7&#215;24 Exchange International wants to promote data centers, which they believe are &#8220;mission critical\u201d infrastructure. As part of this work, the group recommends a children\u2019s story, \u201cWhat is a Data Center?,\u201d which follows a honey badger named Honey who gets a guided tour of a data center from a worker named Oliver. Oliver explains that the job of data center employees is to make sure that the \u201cfunctions supported by the data center\u201d are available to anybody, \u201cno matter what time it is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">&#8220;Like when my mom shops online late at night because my dad is sleeping and won&#8217;t know about it?&#8221; Honey asks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">The story is part of a broader pattern across the data center industry. In addition to lobbying, job creation programs, tax breaks, companies and interest groups are trying something a bit more creative: winning over the youth. As pushback to massive data center build-outs and energy-guzzling campuses intensifies, the industry is apparently taking a softer approach to community building using a tactic other industries with a public relations problem have tried.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Alex Molnar, a research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and the director of the National Education Policy Center, tells WIRED that, for over a century, industries with an image problem\u2014fast food, tobacco, oil and gas\u2014have brought their messaging to schools.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cA very, very big reason why corporations get involved in the schools is, quite simply, corporate propaganda\u2014for the purpose not necessarily of selling a product, but of telling their \u2018story,\u2019\u201d Molnar says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">In May, the Potomac chapter of the Association for Computer Operations Management (AFCOM), a trade group for the data center industry, sponsored Memorial Day-themed flag-making kits to be distributed to 3,100 first graders across 37 schools in Loudoun County, Virginia, also known as Data Center Alley. In addition to the flag kits, kids received an informational card with statistics about \u201cthe positive impact\u201d that the data center industry has on the local economy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome back to Power Play! Each week, senior writer Molly Taft tackles a topic around this midterm season\u2019s biggest issue: data centers. They\u2019re out this week, so Caroline Haskins is reporting for duty. If you\u2019ve got a question or thought for the column, feel free to shoot Caroline an email at [email\u00a0protected] or reach her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4663,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}