Virginia Rep.-elect prioritizes datacenter efficiency, bipartisan AI regulation

➤ Rep.-elect Suhas Subramanyam brings AI and cybersecurity experience into the House from his role as a White House technology policy adviser.

➤ The former Virginia State Senator advocated for legislation that would ensure datacenter operators contribute fairly to energy infrastructure costs.

➤ Subramanyam seeks to foster bipartisanship in addressing AI safety standards.

Rep.-elect Suhas Subramanyam, a Democrat, is set to represent Virginia's 10th Congressional District in the 119th Congress. The district includes Loudoun County, which has the largest concentration of datacenters in the US, including sites owned by Amazon.com Inc., Digital Realty Trust Inc. and Equinix Inc., among others. By 2040, datacenter energy demand is expected to account for up to 40% of Northern Virginia's regional energy load, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights and S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research forecasts.

Subramanyam previously served on Capitol Hill as a policy aide, earned a law degree from Northwestern University and served as a White House technology policy adviser to former President Barack Obama, where he tackled policy challenges ranging from cybersecurity to artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. Subramanyam also served in the Virginia state legislature. He spoke with Market Intelligence about his legislative priorities in the upcoming Congressional session and how he plans to leverage his tech policy expertise to improve AI safety standards and regulations and make datacenters more energy-efficient and sustainable.

What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.

S&P Global Market Intelligence: What are some of your priorities for the next Congress? Datacenters are significant to the Northern Virginia economy. How are you seeing that landscape evolve?

Suhas Subramanyam: As far as priorities, we obviously want to protect our economy in Northern Virginia. You know, datacenters are part of our economy. At the same time, we want to protect the environment and our energy infrastructure and make sure that people aren't saddled with really high utility bills because of all the energy infrastructure we have to pay for to power datacenters. When I was in the State Senate, I introduced a few pieces of legislation. One was to see if we can get datacenters to pay more of the bill when it comes to energy infrastructure, or at least protect people and their utility bills. And then the second was to see if they could be more energy efficient with their datacenters and even use clean and renewable energy for a certain percentage of that. And so those two initiatives, I think, are going to be critically important as we look to the future.

We don't have to develop technology and build out all the data storage we need at the expense of our environment. We can do both, but it's going to take work. When I was in the State House and Senate and I was a technology adviser in the Obama White House, one of the things that I've seen is that this is bipartisan and something we can work on together. We do need some regulations, and we need a framework for two reasons. One reason is to protect users, and the second is to give the industry predictable standards so that they can start the work of following them and building their products with those regulations in mind. There's lots of discussions to be had about exactly how to regulate and address the challenges of emerging technology like AI, but we definitely need to start that work to at least bring predictability to the industry and protect people from bad actors.

On the point of bipartisanship, the Biden administration set several goals for AI safety standards, and there was some infrastructure implemented during the first Trump administration as well. Do you think that there can be some common ground there that you'll find with your colleagues in Congress?

I hope so. I think that was a good start, and there's more that we can do. I think we've started the work of putting standards in place, and I'd like to see us take the opportunity this Congress to finally start to legislate and pass laws on these critical industries. A lot of people are afraid of AI right now, afraid of the way misinformation is spreading or the way deepfakes are being spread. If we don't do something to regulate it and give people that peace of mind, then it will lead to bigger problems down the line, and then you'll end up with people wanting to ban some of these practices altogether. I always say, we should ban the bad actors and the behaviors, but don't ban the technology itself — it has immense potential. I don't want regulations that will get in the way of innovation. I don't think it has to. So there are always going to be challenges, but I think if we at least start putting some standards in place, I think we'll be okay. This is this will be a challenge, but I hope it'll be bipartisan. That's something that Democrats and Republicans can work on together.

Do you see opportunities to move forward on AI regulation in collaboration with both agency and industry expertise?

Absolutely. The solution is going to be the public and private sectors working together, whether it's a technology solution or a regulatory solution. I want to make sure that we have as much input from as many stakeholders as possible. I also want to make sure that people who are building technologies to help make AI safer are brought to the forefront and can share their experience, as well as maybe even share their technology and help make government systems secure.

I'm worried about our telecom infrastructure. I'm worried about our infrastructure generally. There are so many ways now to infiltrate our critical infrastructure systems. But if we have the private sector and public sector working together on solutions, that's going to make us stronger, and it's going to help get us to where we need to be faster.