Virginia Moves to Slow Data Center Approvals and Study AI Job Displacement

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Governor Abigail Spanberger signed an executive order directing state government toward steps that give local communities a larger say in data center development and slow approvals, in the state with the densest data center footprint in the country. The same order creates an AI task force to evaluate workforce displacement. It lands the same day as California's frontier-model order, putting two state executives on parallel but different tracks — Virginia on siting and power, California on model safety.