One of the authors led the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under President Biden; the other chaired the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) under President Trump. In a joint commentary for Fortune, the two former officials write that while they “disagree on plenty,” they agree on this: “the status quo is failing America.”

Data centers, they argue, are being developed faster than the rules meant to govern them can evolve. Communities are pushing back against rising power bills, air pollution, strained water supplies and constant noise. Grid operators are warning about reliability. Governors and county boards are improvising with measures ranging from moratoriums to new permitting rules because Washington has no framework—even as the industry asks for one. Without such a framework, the country risks either stalling tools central to its competitiveness or building them at the expense of the communities next door. Elected officials and communities in both parties, the authors note, are raising the alarm.

Lessons From Early Aviation

A century ago, the airplane was years ahead of the rules governing it. Pilots followed rail lines and roads a few hundred feet off the ground, and in low light they landed by bonfire. The United States had invented the airplane but had no national aviation policy, and Europe was pulling ahead.

In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge convened a board to study aviation for national defense. Its findings were blunt: aviation was essential to the country’s defense, civil aviation served a national purpose, and the public would not trust it until the federal government set standards for the aircraft and the people flying them. Congress answered with the Air Commerce Act of 1926, which put the Commerce Department in charge of commercial flight.

By the late 1930s, the country had four major airlines and well over a million air passengers a year. When aviation outgrew the Commerce Department, Congress consolidated oversight into a single independent agency in 1938, and then again in 1958 under the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which moved quickly to strengthen air traffic management and safety rules. As the industry kept growing, Congress added safety, noise and emissions standards to protect the communities living beneath the flight paths. Each framework, the authors write, was designed to keep the country competitive and secure while protecting the public—and the industry grew up inside them.

“Data centers are at the bonfire stage,” they argue, “but we don’t have decades to get it right.”

The Warning Signs, and State Responses

The authors point to mounting warnings from grid authorities. In May, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), which sets and enforces the country’s grid reliability standards, issued a Level 3 alert—its most serious—warning that sudden swings in data-center demand threaten the stability of the grid. Last month, Pennsylvania’s Public Utility Commission reported that the largest grid in the country will miss its reliability standard starting next year.

Governors, they write, are responding the only way the current system allows. Some are imposing moratoriums of up to a year on new hyperscale facilities—the warehouse-scale campuses that house cloud and AI computing—while Virginia removed future large data-center projects from its fast-track permitting process, allowing developers to develop community benefits agreements, protect grid reliability and meet standards on water, pollution, noise control and local hiring.

The “blanket response of no,” or forging ahead unbridled, are more of a short-term political response, the authors contend. “The ‘maybe, but here’s what you have to do’ is the beginning of a responsible framework.”

Why We Can’t Just Say No

Data centers house the computing power that underpins American competitiveness, national security and, increasingly, everyday digital life. The facilities will be built, the authors say—the questions are how, where and who will benefit—and the country’s responsibility is to set the terms.

AI has quickly become a matter of national security and global competitiveness. The country that leads in artificial intelligence will help write the rules of the global economy for generations, and the United States will need all of it: cloud computing, the everyday AI tools Americans currently use, and the most advanced systems that can propel society to its highest levels or possibly alter it as we currently know it. Simply put, to stay economically competitive, America needs computing power that matches or beats its adversaries’.

The debate over the most advanced AI systems will keep playing out in national security circles, the authors acknowledge. Their focus is more immediate: the infrastructure behind the ordinary AI tools that a quarter of American adults now use daily, according to Pew Research Center.

Still, they argue, the country must charge forward without a one-size-fits-all approach. Facilities differ in cooling technology, load profile, footprint and demand for water, and community needs differ across the nation—residents should have a say in how they participate. The fit should be a deliberate choice, not an imposition. The authors outline what that choice looks like done well.

Start With the Community

With a pragmatic and fair approach, they write, data-center infrastructure can operate on a combination of baseload fuels, battery storage and renewables while prioritizing community needs and impacts. Communities should not shoulder the costs of water infrastructure, interconnection and transmission upgrades. Under the right conditions, data centers can leave the grid stronger than they found it while providing significant co-benefits to the community—if held to that standard.

Industry, the authors note, has made this harder than it needed to be, and it is a familiar story. After the fracking boom, some pipeline developers raced for market share and cut corners on siting, restoration and appearance. Projects that communities had originally welcomed were suddenly met with fierce opposition, and companies had to improve Today, data centers are on the same path. In Northern Virginia, much of the noise neighbors complain about comes not from the buildings but from the gas generators running behind them.

Much of this is solvable, they contend, if the right people are engaged to ensure the community is involved from the onset. The appropriate parties should negotiate a transparent community benefit agreement that puts value back into the community and makes lasting changes suited to its unique needs—such as replacing aging water and electricity infrastructure, lowering costs for affected residents and building a trades at the local high school. These are just examples, the authors say, but residents across generations could point to exactly what the data center gave them: students graduating ready for jobs in their local facilities, and infrastructure built to sustain.

The authors point to a model taking shape in Virginia, which would require local approval of any data center using more than 25 megawatts of power, regardless of prior approvals, and would ban nondisclosure agreements that keep communities in the dark. It is also a model that has outlasted a change in party: Governor Spanberger, a Democrat, is building on the groundwork laid by her Republican predecessor, Glenn Youngkin, rather than tearing it up. Under this approach, a developer with a sound project has nothing to lose, and the community decides which projects fit best and how they should benefit residents.

The right facility suits its site, they add. A closed-loop plant that recirculates its cooling water, set on a remediated industrial parcel behind an enforceable setback and a noise standard, makes an unobtrusive neighbor. Such facilities successfully operate today, prioritizing community leadership, transparency, compensation and quiet all at once. Ultimately, the authors argue, it is in the companies’ own best interest to put people and communities first, allowing everyone to benefit from this new technological frontier.

A Patchwork With No One in Charge

None of this enforces itself, and today no one is positioned to enforce all of it. “The federal government currently regulates a snack cake more rigorously than it regulates some of the infrastructure that now underpin the economy,” the authors write. Data centers are permitted through a patchwork built for a different era: pieces at the EPA, FERC, the Army Corps, state utility commissions and county zoning boards, with no one responsible for the whole.

Infrastructure on this scale, they argue, needs a dedicated body that can keep pace with the technology and draw on the expertise already spread across existing agencies. Its job would be AI infrastructure, not AI itself, they clarify. The body would hold developers, hyperscalers and utilities each accountable for their part and require projects to answer to the communities that host them. With one entity in charge, no community slips through the cracks.

One of the authors is a smaller-government Republican who is cautious about the call for a new bureaucratic entity to serve as the point of coordination; the other is a Democrat who agrees but is clear-eyed about the muscle required to compete globally and at home. Together, they propose putting oversight of AI and digital infrastructure—the infrastructure and the power behind it—under one roof.

Data centers will not follow aviation’s path exactly, the authors concede, but the shape of this moment is familiar. A century ago, Congress answered Coolidge’s study board with the Air Commerce Act the very next year; whether Washington can move at anything like that pace is the open question this proposal leaves hanging. For the security of the country, the strength of the economy and the trust of the people, they conclude, it is time for “a national guardrail with a community touch.”

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune. This article was originally published on Fortune.com.