The US midterm election results are here and the Democrats will take control of both the House and the Senate early next year. It will be interesting to see how President Donald Trump conducts in the remaining two years of his term.

Silicon Valley spent two years acting as though political power could be bought wholesale. On Tuesday, American voters sent back the invoice. Prices and the Iran war drove the wave.

But for technology, the deeper message is this: AI’s scarcest input is no longer chips, capital or talent. It is public permission. The evidence is hard to dismiss. In NBC’s exit poll, 56 per cent called AI and data centres a crucial or major factor in their vote. Voters opposed data centres in all but one of 41 related local measures across 10 states. Democrats spent more than $100 million on ads tying opponents to Big Tech and data centres.

The industry misread its own opponents. It talked about superintelligence and geopolitical destiny, while voters looked at their electricity bills.…