Americans are rallying against data centers. Surprisingly few are getting built

Posted by mapping365 16 hours ago

Comments

Comment by mapping365 14 hours ago

I think it can't be categorized as NIMBYism because the underlying sentiment is not just no data centers in my backyard, but anyones backyard. It's about the AI project itself, even if it expresses itself differently for a local context.

Comment by christophilus 14 hours ago

I’m fine with datacenters being built as long as we have some rules: they have to be quiet enough to not be audible beyond the border of the land owned by the datacenter. They have to pay for new electrical capacity so that they don’t burden locals with that externality. Really, that’s it. I think most people could get behind that.

Comment by varenc 14 hours ago

Theres always going to be some negative externality effecting people that live near anything getting built. Even if the operational data center isn't loud enough to be heard beyond its property lines, the construction process will be louder. I'll also negatively effect peoples views and cause generally increased activity in the area.

But that all seems fine as long as not egregious. But for anything to get built, housing or data centers or what not, we have to accept that those right next to any building project will experience some negative externalities.

Comment by mindcandy 14 hours ago

Does anyone have any numbers on what percentage of recent datacenters don't follow those rules? Those are completely reasonable requirements. But, the high-pitched online discussion tends to imply building a datacenter requires doing everything the worst possible way every time.

I know there are problematic data centers. I just want to know what the stats are vs. the rhetoric.

Comment by throwfaraway4 13 hours ago

I don't have all the numbers but as someone who lives in VA and has had their power bill _double_ over the last year, I'd be hard-pressed to think DCs are commonly paying their fair share when tariffs like this need to be passed: https://virginiamercury.com/2026/08/05/scc-orders-dominion-t...

Comment by SoftTalker 14 hours ago

They also cover acres of ground with impermeable surface so if they are in an area where rain runoff is an issue they should have to mitigate that also. Maybe they could collect the water to use for their cooling needs.

Comment by inigyou 12 hours ago

That isn't how water cooling works.

Comment by MinimalAction 14 hours ago

No. If they still draw an enormous amount of water, that's the finite resource that's getting wasted no amount of money could immediately retrieve. Paying for electricity doesn't mean the resources are not shared.

Comment by preg_match 4 hours ago

My understanding is that the water argument is the weakest one - the water is given back to the city, it's not like it's used up. And using water for cooling is one of the "cleanest" uses of water, it's not like toilets or showers.

Personally I am much more concerned about datacenters that take it upon themselves to burn natural gas. And noise. Noise pollution can actually be detrimental to your health, and there's basically no mitigation that exists. So we really have to look at noise.

Comment by Retric 14 hours ago

NIMBY may be the incorrect term, but objecting to building something that raises your electricity bill extends how far your “back yard” goes. Objecting because it raises your ram prices extends that to a global scale.

Comment by to11mtm 7 hours ago

I can speak from a relative perspective, at least for my state;

- The major Electrical provider has a terrible track record for improving overall reliability of service to local homes. The average outage time is 3x the normal average, and the percentages for rate increases always favor corporate customers vs residential. Yes, Residential often has more 'long tail' cost in outage scenarios but it should be better balanced IMO. but also our grid seems to be a bit stressed and adding that additional stress is a big concern.

- The water usage for these data centers is an unknown, and sure they can do a closed or mostly closed loop but we aren't getting any promises on that. My state is lucky enough to have a LOT of water around it, but we also have awareness about what industrialization has done to those waterways and the ecosystems that live in them. We don't need more problems.

- In fact we actually have an issue where communities have newish data centers, that frankly have ggravating shrill sound at all hours. [0] [1]

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc5XZJfF0kQ

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wDr2dec474

Comment by boc 14 hours ago

One under-discussed topic is whether Americans hate data centers in their neighborhoods, or whether they actually just hate gas turbine generators running 24/7 in their neighborhoods.

Comment by b40d-48b2-979e 14 hours ago

    whether they actually just hate gas turbine generators running 24/7 in their neighborhoods.

Or the increased pollution (air, light, and sound) from having a warehouse-sized building of GPUs next to you. I'm already annoyed by my neighbors having spotlights pointed at their own houses or leaving garage lights on through the night that shine in through my bedroom windows.

Comment by rzerowan 14 hours ago

Im wondering why the typical design is a warehouse with horizontal sprawl . Wouldnt it make sense to go vertical up or down .

Smaller footprint if insidea a metro area by having a skyscarper type data center , as i recall AT&T used to have such windowless anonymous buldings scattered in some cities for their equipment. Or have a Silo type structure going down if in a more rural area to not blight the landscape.With added advantage of dampenig on the sound pollution (although not sure what effects a humming underground building will have on subterrerean life).

Probably cost? All those would cost more that the biz are willing to spend , while putting up four walls and a roof is ordeers of scale cheaper.

Comment by b40d-48b2-979e 9 hours ago

    as i recall AT&T used to have such windowless anonymous buldings scattered in some cities
    for their equipment

I worked in Cleveland, and the AT&T building there was one such case. I heard their cabling went 3 stories underground on top of being around 50 floors tall.

Comment by dylan604 14 hours ago

Coming from a construction family, the saying oft heard saying was "it's more expensive to build up than out". Also, zoning codes can set limits on how tall of a building can be built. Four stories is a common limit which also happens to coincide with the max height for a timber construction is also four stories. If you're out in the 'burbs, you probably wouldn't want to see a random 10 story boring windowless concrete building sticking up somewhere.

Comment by inigyou 12 hours ago

I see you've been to Avalon Studios.

Comment by rtkwe 14 hours ago

It's cheaper to build out rather than build up. Datacenters are mass dense so building up requires thick floors and supports for the upper floors.

Comment by lbriner 14 hours ago

Definitely cost although your idea does sound more attractive. A small footprint much further away from the boundary than normal. You could even make them look nice but since demand is massive and timescales so long, I think anything that might take longer is a "no".

Comment by JohnFen 14 hours ago

At least in my part of the US, the datacenters built (and planned) are not running their own gas generators, but are just as hated here as they are most other places due to the other adverse impacts they have.

Comment by rainsford 7 hours ago

Does everyone there know they aren't running their own generators or are they legally prevented from ever doing so? I don't disagree people may dislike them for other reasons, but the horror stories around generator noise mean the data center builder would need a very strong counter argument for why residents would never have to worry about that.

Comment by Legend2440 14 hours ago

I don't really think it's about the adverse impacts.

That one in utah everybody hated was gonna be built in an empty valley. There would have been no impact to neighbors because there weren't any, and no impact to the grid because they planned to build their own nuclear power plant.

Comment by mindcandy 14 hours ago

Are you talking about the Box Elder County Stratos project? I did some digging into that. AFAIK, they are mostly going to be powered by a natural gas pipeline. I haven't heard of them using nuclear. Got any links?

It is in a remote valley. And, it's going to use less groundwater than the previous use of the land. The only things to really complain about are huge amounts of gas consumption and AI bad. If the locals pinned them down to building out solar and mini-nuke power, the only thing left would be AI bad.

Comment by tempfile 14 hours ago

They are being built to support an industry which is itself an adverse impact.

Comment by wiether 14 hours ago

Aren't all DC equipped with gas generators as backups? And they have to run it for an hour every quarter to make sure they work?

Comment by inigyou 12 hours ago

Probably, but that isn't the problem people have with gas generators. Musk is running 30 of them 24/7 to power xAI because there isn't enough grid capacity in the area, and he removed exhaust filters for efficiency and gave several entire towns permanent chronic asthma from NOx poisoning.

Comment by rainsford 7 hours ago

The gas turbine thing really is justifiably killing the public perception of data centers since the obvious message is that even if your local data center isn't destroying your quality of life with incessant noise, it's only because they have decided it's not in their best interest to do so right now and that decision could change at any moment. As long as that is a possibility ever, you'd have to be nuts to want a data center built anywhere near where you live.

Comment by arctic-true 14 hours ago

I think the “in their neighborhoods” thing is really the key. These things have got to be poison for property values. Younger, less wealthy people have economic anxiety about AI for fear of displacement and oppose data centers on that basis - more data centers = more AI. Older, wealthier people have less intrinsic reason to oppose the technology. But anything that threatens property values, be it a data center, a jail, a landfill, et cetera, must be resisted at all costs.

Comment by goda90 14 hours ago

People are going to assume any data center project will have all the worst possible qualities. And a this point I'd say they're justified given how much dishonesty and corruption has been flying around. I don't envy any company that's being open and taking steps to mitigate issues because all the others have caused this hostile environment.

Comment by notyourwork 14 hours ago

Seems there is opportunity for a company to rise to the top if they take a stance that buys societal goodwill.

Comment by inigyou 12 hours ago

But then they wouldn't make a profit.

This whole thing is highly speculative. Most of the buildings won't get any use, and the ones that do will be strictly the ones with the lowest costs.

Comment by forgotpwagain 14 hours ago

And also their electricity bills rising because of datacenter power demands.

Comment by threatofrain 14 hours ago

Would they hate them as much if they were in a Chinese neighborhood? Why not build in China? We say there's not much jobs here anyway, and that it's all negative externalities.

Comment by sulam 14 hours ago

The typical inhabitant of a town that is a good candidate for data center construction is suspicious of authority, hates big tech companies, has heard AI is coming for their job, and consequently not a supporter of data centers, regardless of how they're powered.

Comment by palmotea 14 hours ago

> One under-discussed topic is whether Americans hate data centers in their neighborhoods, or whether they actually just hate gas turbine generators running 24/7 in their neighborhoods.

Actually, Americans hate Silicon Valley and AI, the data centers are just a concrete proxy: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...:

> It’s A.I. as sort of an avatar for a small group of Silicon Valley billionaires’ ability to impose their vision of the world onto everybody else without their consent.

> And I think that’s also what I hear echoed in these data center debates. It’s not just: It’s going to use this much water or that much water. I frankly think that even if there was no misinformation about water use, people would be just as angry about the data centers.

> ...

> And what happened? The data center developers sued Saline Township, a town of, again, a few thousand people, saying: Wait, no, this is exclusionary zoning. You can’t have no industrial use in your entire township. And when a town of that size is getting sued by a giant A.I. data center developer, they just settled.

> They were just like: Fine, give us a few million for the fire department and for some schools, and this fight is not worth it to us. But that, to people, felt like a profound violation of little-D democracy.

> It felt like the dark money in politics story, which is: You have some very rich companies show up with a bag of money to your politicians. They don’t tell anybody else what’s happening. The politicians aren’t allowed to tell their citizens and involve them in the decision-making process, and they themselves work out a deal — a deal that is fundamentally asymmetric because of the amount of money on one side — that will then transform the image of your community, your lived reality, into the world that these tech companies have decided for you.

> And so I think that the data centers, in that sense, are a very visceral microcosm of the way that a lot of people feel that A.I. is showing up in their lives.

Comment by nancyminusone 14 hours ago

That Saline datacenter is the one I live closest to. I actually know a couple people who live right next to it. The above is basically what happened, but done in the open after that first lawsuit, to the tune of "do what we say or we'll sue you into bankruptcy and then get our way anyways".

Mist recent, the datacenter's cost has shot up to ~50 billion, fow which they decided they wanted a tax break of 50% for 12 years, and it was granted using the same methods.

also, they named the datacenter project "The Barn" as an extra slap in the face, like look at how quirky and rural we are. I would actually have more respect for them if they had named it "Fuck You Saline".

Comment by inigyou 12 hours ago

How much copper do you reckon is inside it?

Comment by georgemcbay 14 hours ago

I'm sure there are various reasons why specific individual Americans hate data centers, but in the aggregate I think the main unifying force is that Americans hate the rapidly growing (and already larger than the gilded age) wealth inequality that is making their lives shittier if they don't already own significant capital.

At a national level, the political establishment is doing nothing useful to fix this problem and is instead making things much worse. Many people are very upset about this, but it is is going to take years to fix this problem electorally (though I do believe it is possible for this to happen, given all the recent evidence that giant political money spends on status quo candidates are increasingly not working and arguably starting to have the opposite effect of being toxic for the candidates who receive them).

Data centers are a flashpoint of leverage where the rightfully pissed off populace has the ability to use local political power to take a stand and throw a wrench into the system today rather than 2/4/6/8 years from now.

Comment by bs7280 14 hours ago

I hate that I am subsidizing the power bills for these data centers.

Comment by 0xy 13 hours ago

So you would support the construction of data centers with completely off-grid power sources that you did not subsidize?

Didn't think so.

Comment by bs7280 13 hours ago

What about my comment gave you the confidence to (incorrectly) answer your own question for me?

I want to see large investment in mass produced nuclear power plants, enabling us to do exactly what you are suggesting.

Comment by inigyou 12 hours ago

Oh boy. I can't wait to see what the people who remove the exhaust filters from their gas turbines would do with a nuclear plant.

Comment by bs7280 8 hours ago

https://www.valaratomics.com/

Comment by nvme0n1p1 12 hours ago

What a goofy comment.

"I hate that my tax dollars were used to bomb Iran"

"So you would support the bombing of countries that aren't Iran?"

Comment by inigyou 12 hours ago

It was actually "so you would support a billionaire bombing Iran with his own dollars?"

Comment by nvme0n1p1 10 hours ago

Yeah you are right, that makes way more sense.

Comment by Legend2440 14 hours ago

If there's one thing Americans can agree on, it's that we don't like building things.

Comment by pixelready 12 hours ago

I think it’s just a breakdown of trust in the government to weigh the interests of the builder and tenants of commercial / industrial properties against the local community. When it seems like government doesn’t have your back in negotiating and enforcing the details, people will fall back to a “default deny” stance to exert what control they have over the process.

I think we’re seeing this in a lot of aspects of society. Commercial interests have pushed aside all other stakeholders in the power structure and people are increasingly resorting to brute force methods to express their grievance. Replacing city council seats over single issues, cutting down Flock cameras, etc…

Comment by notyourwork 14 hours ago

Why should we? Corporations steamroll the public, take their tax breaks and ask for more.

Comment by Legend2440 14 hours ago

Because ultimately those things (apartments, high-speed rail, mines, factories, datacenters, etc) exist for the benefit of the public.

We give tax breaks because we recognize that these things are beneficial to the economy and want to incentivize their construction. Some countries go even farther and directly subsidize development.

Comment by goda90 14 hours ago

"Privatize the profits, socialize the losses"

So many of these things DON'T benefit the public, especially as automation reduces the number of jobs they produce. They mostly benefit the capital holders and they'll take steps to increase their profit even if they hurt the public in the long run.

Comment by Legend2440 14 hours ago

Nonsense. Who consumes the goods produced by the factories and mines? Who lives in the apartments and takes the high speed rail?

Automation is also a massive boon to the common man. It's the only reason we're not both dirt farmers right now, and is responsible for most of the increase in standard of living over the last two centuries. Your views are short-sighted.

Comment by goda90 13 hours ago

> Who consumes the goods produced by the factories and mines?

Not all consumption is good. It can harm health, relationships, etc. And many goods have been ravaged by planned obsolescence and other corner cutting such that we're forced to consume more to maintain status quo.

> Who lives in the apartments and takes the high speed rail?

This is frankly an entirely different class from mines and factories. While there is "NIMBYism" over both, the reasoning for it can be vastly different.

The reason I started my comment with "Privatize the profits, socialize the losses" is not because we shouldn't have any mines or factories or apartments or high speed rail or automation. It's because our corrupted system means the negative impacts of them is felt more by the public while the positive impacts are concentrated in fewer people. Automation that enriches everyone is great. Automation that leaves people destitute is not. These things don't just naturally end up on the positive side.

Comment by Legend2440 13 hours ago

>Not all consumption is good.

That's not your call to make. If I am willing to spend my hard-earned money on a thing, it's because I think it will improve my life. Who are you to tell me otherwise? You're not my mom.

And it is not true that we "Privatize the profits, socialize the losses". Bailouts are rare exceptions; in general, investors take the loss when a business fails. They are last in line in bankruptcy court and cannot be insured.

Comment by inigyou 12 hours ago

And there we have it. Corporations must have unlimited rights because, and I quote, "You're not my mom."

Comment by red-iron-pine 10 hours ago

still a better argument than most of ayn rand

Comment by Timon3 5 hours ago

>> Not all consumption is good.

> That's not your call to make.

That's not your judgement to make. First it's patently false in almost every modern society (there might be some with literally no restrictions on private ownership, idk), and second everyone can come to their own conclusions.

I for one am glad we don't have 8-year-olds enjoying one last smoke before an entire day in the mines, and if we did, I wouldn't let you tell me I can't say whether that's good or bad. You're not my mom.

Comment by bigyabai 13 hours ago

> Automation is also a massive boon to the common man.

So much so, that we aren't allowed to download and finetune the model weights that we helped to train?

When OpenAI and Anthropic start begging Uncle Sam for bailouts, I'll be voting to let them go bankrupt. There's no love for companies that leech off of the common man like this and then beg for more tax money to larp as a profitable company.

America's AI corporations are not your friend. They're not as friendly as Apple or Google were, because those companies depended on a positive B2C business relationship. OpenAI and Anthropic both grovel at the feet of the government and eye an IPO at the same time. It's pathetic.

Comment by aselimov3 14 hours ago

Whether data-centers and AI are actually beneficial is still somewhat of an open question with large groups on both sides. So unclear how beneficial data centers are to the general public.

Comment by dlcarrier 13 hours ago

I do like living and working in buildings, using computers, refrigeration systems and transit infrastructure, getting medical care, and eating cooked food, so I think building things is by far a net positive.

Also, banking, scientific research, offsite backups, and the internet have been very useful, so data centers are pretty great.

Comment by surgical_fire 13 hours ago

May they build a data center next to your home.

It's always nice to be close to things we cherish dearly.

Comment by Legend2440 13 hours ago

There is a data center in my town.

I drove by it and don't get the fuss. It's a box in an industrial park. It makes a little bit of noise but not nearly as much as the paper factory next to it. People just like to whine.

Comment by dlcarrier 11 hours ago

A paper factory, on the other hand, smells like barf and has huge vats of chemicals that will dissolve you. It probably uses also more power than a data center, at a much worse power factor.

Comment by surgical_fire 12 hours ago

There's stuff in my town that I don't mind being there, but they are "over there" enough not to bother me.

Comment by dlcarrier 11 hours ago

I used to work two lots down from one. I wouldn't notice at all if it was next to my house. The only way to distinguish it from any other business in the office park was the slightly higher security. There was also a charter school next to it, and it was much more disruptive than the data center.

Comment by notyourwork 12 hours ago

That's dismissive to my point. Society built itself up. Corporations that suck on society's tit and give nothing back, demand profits, and continue to skim off the top are not Mother Teresa.

Comment by dlcarrier 11 hours ago

I've had great experiences with most every large corporation I've chosen to deal with, from suppliers like Toyota with their cars and Perrigo with their pharmaceuticals to distributors like Costco and WinCo Foods, and marketplaces like Craigslist and eBay. The countless smaller S corps I deal with have been even better. I've also benefited greatly from nonprofit corporations like the Wikimedia Foundation, American Automobile Association, and Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

There are plenty of corporations that I haven't had a great time with, so I just don't do business with them. Amazon's marketplace search doesn't support boolean operators and their sort by price feature doesn't work, so I buy from eBay instead. Wal Mart doesn't have as good of products or as helpful of employees as WinCo, so I buy from the latter.

The only corporations that I've had bad experiences with but continue to patronize are: Comcast, Wells Fargo, and PG&E. Just because they treat me horribly doesn't mean I blame any of their wrongdoing on the other corporations I do business with. Their use of tax breaks is far from the worst problem. They all have contracts with various government organizations which force me to do business with them, when I would leave immediately if I had a choice.

Granted, I've had much better experiences with those three than with Department of Motor Vehicles and the Franchise Tax Board, so I'm probably better off with those agreements in place than if the government organizations themselves were providing internet access, servicing my mortgage, and suppling natural gas. Then again, what is a government except the most powerful corporation?

I don't like doing business with corporations that have police and an army backing them, but otherwise the rest of the corporations I deal with have been great.

Comment by polski-g 13 hours ago

"take their tax breaks"...

What exactly do you think a tax "break" is?

Comment by TimTheTinker 14 hours ago

The rumor is going around on X that foreign enemies of the US (especially China) are trying to influence Americans through social networks against building data centers.

Comment by mostlysimilar 14 hours ago

SV has done enough to influence Americans to hate them without the help of foreign enemies.

https://jasmi.news/p/no-data-centers-in-my-backyard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbgvTlt1VB8

Comment by burnte 14 hours ago

Billionaries like Kevin O'Leary and his ilk are behind those rumors because they want to discredit the local resistance. There's one activist in Utah, Caroline Gleich, has been exceptionally outspoken against O'Leary and he's said she's part of Chinese led resistance. It's pure insanity.

Comment by kridsdale1 14 hours ago

Classic red scare.

“Oh, you hate the military industrial complex? What are you, a Pinko?”

Comment by cousinbryce 13 hours ago

Literally felony contempt of business model

Comment by burnte 10 hours ago

Yep. "oh, you disagree with me? Clearly you're a dangerous person I need to stop other people from listening to!"

Comment by palmotea 12 hours ago

> The rumor is going around on X that foreign enemies of the US (especially China) are trying to influence Americans through social networks against building data centers.

X is owned by a guy who builds data centers.

Also I don't trust rumors that oh-so-conveniently support the interests of some very wealthy people doing unpopular things. Heuristics say it's probably propaganda planted by their PR operations, and they do not get the benefit of the doubt.

Comment by Lucasoato 14 hours ago

I’m extremely suspicious of this, but have no way to prove it or collect data related to it.

Even more, I’d really doubt that is a US interest to let the public know if such campaign is happening against non-US countries, so I don’t expect Meta, X or whatever to kindly inform me about that.

Comment by colechristensen 14 hours ago

Zoom out and ask yourself which injustices the popular voice care about and which they don't.

There is a hard to miss tendency for the things which get the most noise to be the most useful to national adversaries.

You can't mention specific incidents here for comparison because the comments will be filled with disagreements and accusations about the specifics not the big picture.

Search yourself for things that are getting attention and not getting attention and judge for yourself how useful each would be to external powers.

Comment by pibaker 10 hours ago

Maybe it's my bubble, but most people around me who are against AI cite job loss and Replacement as their concerns.

And guess who has been boasting about replacing workers and making everyone unemployed by 2030? Certainly not china.

Maybe they say different things domestically but I don't even recall any Chinese AI personality going around preaching about the upcoming AI doomsday while also building the doomsday device themselves, either.

Comment by mindcandy 14 hours ago

I don't think outside intervention is necessary.

When I see stories about how a hardware startup like SpinLaunch has had to move over and over because no matter where they go, locals flood the town hall meetings to declare their relatively boring technology is too scary, I'm not surprised town halls are being flooded over AI datacenters.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGxmCvLb9bs

Comment by rtkwe 14 hours ago

There are plenty of reasons to be against datacenters and I see some people trying to say the possibility that it's foreign influence illegitimates the opposition.

Comment by boothby 14 hours ago

This wouldn't be the first time that homegrown dissent was characterized as foreign meddling. Red Scare is back in vogue.

Comment by bigyabai 13 hours ago

In fairness, a lot of Red Scare propaganda did stem from grounded and realistic espionage concerns.

McCarthyism was a total overreaction in hindsight, but had roots in pervasive foreign meddling. For the past 100 years, America has been a target of influence campaigns from both foreign and domestic organizations.

Comment by foco_tubi 14 hours ago

This does more to discredit X as a trustworthy source of information than anything else.

Comment by jedbrooke 14 hours ago

I wonder, if indeed there is astroturfing going on, if instead of a foreign actor it’s competing AI companies. Eg OpenAI astroturfing opposition to when Anthropic wants to build a datacenter, and vice versa

Comment by 13 hours ago

Comment by klipklop 13 hours ago

Nope. People don’t want them because they fear the DC will further increase utility bills. These companies openly talk about eliminating their jobs via AI with glee. Why would anybody help them? They are against the average persons best interests for their profit.

It’s debatable if a DC will affect local energy costs but people don’t want to risk it. Big tech has lost all their social capital. I would say at this point all of corporate America has. They have too much power over the public. People are starting to push back.

Comment by Analemma_ 14 hours ago

I can't think of a faster way to permanently solidify someone's opinion than being told "you only have this opinion because an enemy foreign government told you to; get your opinions from your friendly local government instead."

Comment by baggy_trough 13 hours ago

It's of course entirely believable that they would do this. Why wouldn't they?

Comment by CodingJeebus 14 hours ago

Of course a company like X has an incentive to push a narrative like that, given their AI position. People are concerned about their property values, utility prices, etc. It's not hard to see why the average person doesn't want one of these built in their backyard.

Comment by rabf 14 hours ago

Their position is to build the data centers in space, so apposition on the ground plays directly into their hands!

Comment by tempfile 14 hours ago

Why would you believe anything posted on X? The platform deliberately promotes misinformation, and has for years.

Comment by TimTheTinker 13 hours ago

> deliberately promotes misinformation

I think it deliberately avoids censorship of any kind, which makes it both more open to truth (if anyone posts it there) and more susceptible to manipulation.

Comment by inigyou 12 hours ago

No. First, it will censor you for any number of reasons, but it's a shadow censor so they can point you to your own post and say it's not censored since you and anyone you share the link to can see it. Second, it's known to be manipulated. A few years back they accidentally leaked that one of the key factors influencing a post's ranking was - I kid you not - whether Elon posted it. I'm sure they've only gotten better at manipulation since then.

Comment by archagon 14 hours ago

An unsourced rumor going around a notoriously right-wing social media site? Definitely credible.

This is basically a content-free comment that only serves to rile up the community.

Comment by inigyou 12 hours ago

Is the left wing really any better?

Comment by archagon 12 hours ago

I'm not here spreading unsourced rumors from "the left."

Information of this sort should come from journalists, not vibes on social media.

Comment by bofadeez 11 hours ago

Well according to Fable both parties have a good point. But Fable definitely needs data centers so the economy can continue chugging along.

Comment by thefz 59 minutes ago

God forbid if the citizens actually speak against the rampant destruction of their living spaces by techno-bros! There must be THE COMMUNISTS behind!

Comment by j_rosenberg 14 hours ago

These data centers will be a net loss for people, higher electricity cost, pollution, etc... The idea that if you don't comply with big tech plans, you are being dissuaded by a foreign entity is dumb at best. Simping for billionaires and their plans, won't make you one of them.

Comment by lbriner 14 hours ago

We see the same thing in the UK and probably lots of countries. Data Centres are large, expensive and secretive so most people will have all kinds of theories about why they are to be resisted at all costs.

* Job attrition because "AI". * Blamed for high energy prices * A totem for high wealth individuals * A lot of building for not that many jobs * In small countries like the UK, some are a massive blot on the landscape compared to their surroundings

Oh, but at the same time, we want everything to be cheaper. But not with AI. Or Data Centres.

Comment by Tempest1981 14 hours ago

I'm surprised they haven't tried painting them "Go Away Green", vs stark off-white monoliths.

https://themeparkarchitect.com/go-away-green-disneys-paint-c...

Comment by palmotea 14 hours ago

I don't think that would work. Per your article:

> While many theme park fans may initially believe there is only one ‘magical’ go away green color that was developed by Imagineering, that couldn’t be further from the truth. There are a plethora of varying shades of green hues developed and utilized by Walt Disney Imagineers, and other theme park designers, depending on the theme park’s location and surrounding color palette.

There's no color that would make an building that takes minutes to pass at highway speeds "go away."

Comment by Tempest1981 13 hours ago

In that case, try the "Blue Cube" method, like the old Onizuka Air Force Station near Moffet Field.

https://heritageparkmuseum.org/blog/what-is-the-blue-cube

Comment by rurp 10 hours ago

The most surprising thing to me about the data center backlash is how surprised a lot of people in tech are about it. The public tradeoffs seem pretty terrible from the perspective of folks who aren't spending all day enamored with agentic coding loops, aka normal Americans. There have been a number of utility related scandals, with residential power bills doubling as data centers go in and water being illegally taken for their use. In the online arena most people are exposed to AI as social media slop and dumb chatbot features being crammed into every piece of software they use.

Long term, the goal for this buildout is to drive millions of people out of their livelihood. But maybe a rogue AI will go nuts before then and become even more catastrophic.

So people are looking around, seeing their physical space being worsened in order to make their digital lives worse, with the possibility of much more misery to come. No kidding they aren't a fan.

It's interesting that the companies building these haven't even tried to smooth over the public relations until recently. I get it, this is all terribly exciting for VCs and a subset of techies, but their inability to even comprehend the objections shows what an extreme bubble they are in. The rest of the country gets a vote, and snidely dismissing everyone else as a knee jerk NIMBY, or Chinese shill, or illogical moron isn't going to convince anyone.

Comment by red-iron-pine 10 hours ago

> Long term, the goal for this buildout is to drive millions of people out of their livelihood.

Remember HN -- this applies to most of you, too

Comment by WhiteDawn 14 hours ago

Clearly hyperscalers are seeing datacenter commitment exceeding demand, and are now running PR campaigns to have the public push back against construction to get them out of their contracts.

Joking conspiracy theories aside, perhaps the over-commitment was part of the plan with the expectation that there will be rejections from government

Comment by insane_dreamer 9 hours ago

Datacenters haven't been a huge problem until now -- it's 1) what they're being used for (AI that clearly benefits the largest companies and threatens to decimate jobs while providing little tangible benefits for the average person so far), and 2) the rate at which large companies desire for them to be built and the consequent demands on water and electricity at a time when these resources are already under considerable strain (not to mention that we're supposed to be _reducing_ energy production to mitigate the effects of climate change)

Comment by gyanchawdhary 14 hours ago

Coming from a third world country (emerging/developing for the sensitive souls) .. and having many friends from former Soviet countries, one thing we all seem to agree on is the sheer luxury rich countries have .. it’s like a cancer of prosperity .. where a society becomes so successful that it starts attacking the very things that created its success ..

Comment by goda90 14 hours ago

AI data centers aren't the source of America's prosperity. In fact many arguments can be made that they will contribute to its loss.

Comment by gyanchawdhary 14 hours ago

I respectfully disagree

Comment by woah 14 hours ago

It's sad. For all the lamenting that the US is losing industrial capacity (or lost it long ago), we can't even handle some of the lightest industry possible. A big building that hums and releases slightly warm water, and the only sector in which we could still be called a world leader.

Instead of trying to find property tax arrangements that work to give municipalities a big payoff, and power supply arrangements that could be an opportunity to boost the green and nuclear sectors, we have political hobbyists jumping on a bandwagon of misinformation.

Comment by kdheiwns 14 hours ago

All hours humming is absolute torture and anyone who dismisses it has lived a very privileged life. Low humming penetrates walls, goes through ear plugs, and can be felt by the body. It carries for miles. It's inescapable. It makes it impossible to focus. It ruins sleep and destroys health. If I were the CIA and I wanted to demoralize a population and also cause a violent uprising, I'd have low bass humming constantly howling in the background within earshot of residential areas.

Years ago, I lived in a town where low humming would start up in the early mornings and go for hours. It drove me insane with the back of my mind trying to figure out what was causing it while simultaneously trying to ignore it and failing. I moved far away but sometimes I hear a rumble that goes on a little too long and that sense of dread starts to creep back into my mind.

Comment by Dylan16807 14 hours ago

A building that makes no physical products and has barely any workers isn't the kind of industry we lament losing.

But I would say datacenters are fine if they're prevented from screwing up electricity prices and have proper pollution controls.

Comment by inigyou 12 hours ago

Why wouldn't we lament losing it? If all else was solved, a DC is just as valid industry as any other. The fact that the provided service is nonphysical doesn't matter - every industry is different. Should probably pay taxes though, and not terrorize the neighbors.

Comment by Dylan16807 11 hours ago

The reasons to care about "industry" in particular are process knowledge and highly skilled labor and supply chains. Datacenters have very little involvement in any of those. And they don't bring many jobs.

Comment by inigyou 9 hours ago

So basically your opinion is that data centers should not be illegal. Great! Let's start by dismantling the one serving your internet connection.

Comment by Dylan16807 8 hours ago

> So basically your opinion is that data centers should not be illegal.

Huh? Sure but that's not what I was talking about?

> Let's start by dismantling the one serving your internet connection.

There's a huge gap in explanation for how you got here. But home internet connections aren't served by data centers anyway.

Comment by inigyou 8 hours ago

You just said there's no reason the government should care to allow data center construction. Any DC, not just AI DCs.

Comment by Dylan16807 8 hours ago

No I didn't...

I just said it's not relevant to "the lamenting that the US is losing industrial capacity".

Comment by bofadeez 11 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by thefz 57 minutes ago

A hum but 24x7 is devastating, and even a very little increase in water temperature can kill local fauna. Additionally you are occupying public space for a private profit.

Comment by gessha 14 hours ago

If only datacenter developers started with the tax and power arrangements we wouldn’t be where we are.

If only the LLM-peddlers didn’t slurp up all tech supplies using VC money leaving regular people scraping up a small fortune for a heavily used DDR3 1GB stick, we wouldn’t be where we are.

Comment by palmotea 14 hours ago

> It's sad. For all the lamenting that the US is losing industrial capacity (or lost it long ago), we can't even handle some of the lightest industry possible. A big building that hums and releases slightly warm water, and the only sector in which we could still be called a world leader.

No. Data centers have very, very few positive externalities for the people who live around them. They employ very few people, use a lot of infrastructure and resource, to provide services for people far from the community.

And on top of that the technologies they enable are loudly marketed as things that could destroy us all, or at least take most of the well-paying jobs.

If they're so great to live by, build them in Atherton.

Comment by inigyou 12 hours ago

Most industry doesn't bring positive externalities for those nearby. What does a paper mill bring?

Comment by acdha 11 hours ago

They used to bring lots of jobs which didn’t require specialization. That’s not saying they didn’t have real negative impacts but that people were more willing to accept that as a tradeoff when it was a middle-class living for an entire neighborhood. Data centers are getting resistance now because anyone who lives nearby is getting pollution and higher prices with no compensation: they’re not going to work there and it won’t employ enough people to even boost home values.

Comment by inigyou 11 hours ago

They should pay high taxes or something. Or come with a swimming pool powered by waste heat.

Comment by acdha 5 hours ago

Sadly we’re at the point where it’s a controversial position to argue that they shouldn’t receive tax cuts. It’s impressive how successfully faux-libertarian propaganda has been at breaking support for the idea that companies should pay for their impacts on others.

Comment by bofadeez 11 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by threatofrain 14 hours ago

Or why not build then in China? Isn't that the better solution? Are you okay with that backyard?

Comment by bpodgursky 14 hours ago

The point of industrial capacity is a positive externality for the country not that it makes someone's backyard prettier.

Comment by palmotea 12 hours ago

> The point of industrial capacity is a positive externality for the country not that it makes someone's backyard prettier.

Yeah, that' true. What's the problem with building them in Atherton, then? The nation will get the same positive externalities if they're built there.

Hell, build ones ringing the houses of Sam Altman and Dario Amodei. Larry Ellison has a whole island that could be filled with data centers. Seems like those are the best places for them.

Everyone wins, right?

I'm tired of the "some of you may suffer, but that's a price I'm willing to pay" BS.

Comment by bpodgursky 11 hours ago

Technologists would be thrilled to build them in California? This is such a weird and fake criticism, California has driven manufacturing and industry out of the state, SF tech companies don't want to build in Nevada, they are forced to by regulations.

Like, none of the things you proposed doing are legal in the jurisdictions mentioned. It is NOT LEGAL for Sam Altman to build a hyperscale data center in his backyard. It is NOT LEGAL for Larry Ellison to build a hyperscale data center on his island.

It's bad to criticize people for not doing things the legal system prohibits them from doing

Comment by gamblor956 6 hours ago

CA has one of the largest manufacturing sectors in the world. 4th biggest economy, and still in the top 10 without tech.

And that's after a decade of companies "abandoning" the state.

Comment by palmotea 10 hours ago

> Technologists would be thrilled to build them in California?

I'm certain none of the people actually ordering these things would be thrilled to have them anywhere near where they actually live. If they could build them in California, they'd find some rural area or poor neighborhood to drop them in.

> Like, none of the things you proposed doing are legal in the jurisdictions mentioned. It is NOT LEGAL for Sam Altman to build a hyperscale data center in his backyard. It is NOT LEGAL for Larry Ellison to build a hyperscale data center on his island.

Oh, how very convenient for them.

How about they sic their lawyers on California to make it legal, instead of some rural county government? Get an initiative on the ballot rezoning a billionaires' actual places of residence and adjacent land for datacenter construction, and flood the airwaves supporting it. Make some campaign contributions!

Comment by ransom1538 14 hours ago

You are a voice a reason.

Comment by chermi 14 hours ago

I for one am not surprised.

Comment by BoggleOhYeah 14 hours ago

It may have been the AI CEOs bragging that they’re going to take everyone’s job away.

Maybe one day, Silicon Valley will learn that their insufferable arrogance is not a virtue for everyone outside of their bubble.

Comment by threatofrain 14 hours ago

You can see this as an American thing if you want... but you might look at the rest of the world to ask whether you're trying to convince the world to un-invent gunpowder.

If China gave superior paid offerings we might just start transferring all our data over to them instead. Anyways, have we considered building our compute infrastructure in China's backyard instead?

Comment by BoggleOhYeah 12 hours ago

I’m not asking anyone to do anything.

I’m saying the AI industry created their own problems by thinking the general population would eat their shit with a smile like their sycophants do.

For a bunch of people that considered themselves smarter and better than the general populous, they don’t understand people very well.

Comment by inigyou 11 hours ago

All your comments are just China China China China China.

AI as envisioned by billionaires is pretty stupid. I think we'd be better off if we tricked China into building it.

Comment by bofadeez 11 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by inigyou 10 hours ago

I see the China China China China China account is an alt of the Fable Fable Fable Fable Fable account.

Comment by bofadeez 8 hours ago

Have you tried Fable yet? It's amazing!

Comment by 0xbadcafebee 14 hours ago

Interesting video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bbe-Ev-Yns) explains how water consumption is a nearly fixed unit per DC and will be the major limiting factor in DC growth. The physics of heat removal requires water at one stage or another (evaporative cooling at the DC, or cooling the power plant to generate power to dry-chill at the DC) and we have a finite amount of water.

Even if people weren't protesting DCs, we would hit peak DC when we run out of water, which isn't far off. A major drought will likely disable large amounts of the economy that depends on AI that depends on water.