Hurst, Aug. 16 -- Blake Hurst spent a decade as president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, which means he spent a decade learning how rural communities decide what they want. What Nodaway County, Missouri decided in July was that it didn't want a $6.3 billion artificial intelligence data center campus. On July 21, the county's commissioners voted a six-month moratorium on the White Cloud Acres project, citing unresolved concerns about water consumption, grid load, and noise. Seven thousand residents had already signed a petition against it.

make him an offer.

The internal contradiction in that sequence is not lost on anyone watching how rural America has come to define its relationship with AI infrastructure. A former Farm Bureau chief is p...