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Adi Robertson

Things Adi Says on Podcasts

Senior tech and policy editor at The Verge, where she writes about tech policy, antitrust, child online safety and internet law, along with games and VR. Appears on The Vergecast to discuss tech policy, including the Meta teen safety settlement with Lauren Feiner, and has appeared on Version History.

Where to Find Them

Adi Robertson hosts The Vergecast , writes The Verge and hosts Decoder with Nilay Patel . They have also been a guest on Version History .

Recently: “Will data centers rock the vote?” on The Vergecast (November 2026); “OLPC XO-1: The price of free” on Version History (September 2026); “Meta will cut teens off of Instagram after two hours” on The Vergecast (August 2026); “Let’s build a children’s public internet” on The Verge (July 2026); “Moves of the Diamond Hand is an unfinished, irresistibly weird dice-based RPG” on The Verge (June 2026); “Ferrari reveals its first EV, with design help from Jony Ive” on The Verge (May 2026).

What They Said

“A data center is a physical thing. There was a massive tech lash several years ago, but if you're going up against a website that's very hard to regulate, you can pull their CEOs into Congress and yell, and Congress probably isn't going to do anything. A data center takes a lot of work to get built, and you can do a lot to stop it. I think there's this sense that people have agency here in a way that they don't in a lot of areas.” — Adi Robertson, The Vergecast

The hosts were discussing why data centers became such a big issue in the midterms. Robertson argues that, unlike online platforms, data centers are something local voters can actually stop.

The Vergecast · 2026-11-03 Permalink → Listen →
The Vergecast Around 03:11 into the episode
Adi Robertson

Hey.

David Pierce

…to what extent do you think these midterms in the United States are actually about data centers? It's obviously a thing we talk about, but we are set up in prime to talk about this a lot. There's a lot going on in the world. Do you think this is in some real way an election about data centers?

Adi Robertson

I mean, I think in some ways we're not going to know that until afterward. But I honestly like, I know that I should not say this as we are the verge, we are the technology site. I think mostly no. Like I think that large part when you look at polls, if you ask people what are their top issues, they're sort of broadly economic issues. There's Iran. There are a lot of things that people say before data centers. The thing that we do know is that people, when they are asked about data centers and AI, are like, no, actually, that thing is important though. And I don't like that this is happening. So I don't think these are the data center elections, but it does seem like they're happening while data centers are prominent and people feel strongly about them.

David Pierce

Well, and the thing that I struggle with is I think all of those things are really connected, right? Like I was reading over a lot of our coverage and a lot of what folks have been saying. And we have a lot of records from town hall meetings and stuff. And all this stuff is just so tied up in…

Adi Robertson

I think it's that. And I think we have said this on earlier podcasts and people have written about it, but it's also that it's something that you can stop. Like I think that there was a massive tech lash several years ago. And I think the thing people found out is if you're going up against a…

David Pierce

That's really interesting. That makes a lot of sense. It is physical and understandable in a way that so much about technology is not. And even, you know, you've been on the show many times being like, what are we supposed to do about privacy? And you're right. In this case, the answer is just…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

Collections They Appear In

Tech Strategy & Big Tech