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I think they're saying that "data centers" have become a totem, where people believe that rejecting datacenter development projects will solve problems that cannot be solved this way. I've encountered more than one person who thinks, for example, that if we just ban datacenters there will be no powerful AI systems so we won't need to study their capabilities and risks in detail.

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You don't need to have the correct reason for making the correct decision. What rejecting data centers will do is slow down the obscene excessive demand for more memory being taken off the consumer market, even if just a little bit. It will force AI models to become more efficient within their resource constraints instead of sucking up all the air in the room.

Sure. But it's risky to let people make correct decisions for incorrect reasons, because they may react in very silly ways when their goals aren't achieved. If the populist tide turns onto memory companies ("stop making AI chips!"), and a widely supported protest encampment blocks Micron's new fabs, that's going to increase your memory woes more than datacenter moratoriums helped them.

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