{"id":72659,"date":"2026-07-18T14:42:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T18:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=72659"},"modified":"2026-07-18T14:43:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T18:43:56","slug":"72659","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=72659","title":{"rendered":"

Data centers becoming symbol of Americans’ extreme rage<\/b><\/h2>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Shira Ovide<\/p>\n

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Kyle Schmidt ticked through what makes him irate about the\u00a0massive Google data center<\/a>\u00a0slated for construction about a mile away from his home near Sand Springs, Oklahoma.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He didn\u2019t like that residents were kept in the dark about what would be built on a pristine tract of mostly forested land. He\u2019s worried about the data center\u2019s potential impact on the community\u2019s water supply and on the dream home that his family moved into last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But Schmidt said what really bothers him is the powerlessness he felt as the project advanced and elected officials, Google representatives and bigwig data center backers belittled or misled people who raised concerns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI hate bullies,\u201d said Schmidt, a 43-year-old flooring salesman and project manager who leads\u00a0a community group<\/a>\u00a0opposing the project. \u201cData center developers discovered if we can sneak in here without anyone noticing, we can pretty much take what we want.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A rare issue uniting Americans is opposition to data centers, the sprawling computer complexes that are the most visible manifestation of the artificial intelligence boom. In a recent Gallup poll, about\u00a07 of 10<\/a>\u00a0Americans said they would oppose a data center being built near them, and many express concerns about the projects operating\u00a0in secret<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0gobbling<\/a>\u00a0scarce land, water and electricity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But experts and activists say that the intensity and breadth of the data center backlash reveals something bigger: Americans\u2019 disgust with political and economic systems that feel stacked against them. Data centers, often backed by technology giants and advancing at the speed of AI, may be tangible symbols for a fed-up public to push back against powerful and unaccountable interests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Data centers are a \u201cphysical embodiment of all the anxiety that people are feeling around AI and the economy,\u201d Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) said in an interview last month. And Cox, who faced\u00a0blowback<\/a> over his support for a data center project, said people feel like \u201cthis is something that they can fight.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The groundswell against data centers is\u00a0blurring<\/a>\u00a0typical political and social divisions. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) wants to ban data centers, and Humans First, led by\u00a0former tea party movement leader Amy Kremer<\/a>, is organizing national data center\u00a0protests<\/a>\u00a0on Saturday. Hill County, Texas, where Donald Trump won\u00a082 percent<\/a>\u00a0of the vote in 2024,\u00a0banned<\/a>\u00a0data center construction this year. So did\u00a0residents of Monterey Park<\/a>, California, a predominantly Asian and Latino working-class city east of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A sign is posted in front of a 49.5-megawatt, three-level data center under construction in Vernon, California.<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It remains unclear whether this opposition will meaningfully slow the expansion of data centers fueling the AI boom,\u00a0<\/b>or limit the AI chatbots that\u00a0half of Americans use<\/a>.\u00a0<\/b>But many elected officials say they know that the tide has turned against data centers, and they\u2019re rushing to show that they\u2019re listening to residents\u2019 concerns \u2014 or facing a political price.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat\u00a0vying to flip a Senate seat<\/a>\u00a0in a closely watched race, has run\u00a0advertisements<\/a>\u00a0accusing his opponent, Sen. Jon Husted (R), of recruiting data centers to the state at Ohioans\u2019 expense. This spring, residents of Festus, Missouri,\u00a0voted out incumbent city council members<\/a> over their approval of a data center project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Scott Babwah Brennen, director of New York University\u2019s Center on Technology Policy, said he is stunned by how quickly popular outrage over data centers is shifting public policy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For 15 years, he said, local governments rolled out the red carpet for data center construction in places such as eastern Washington and\u00a0Northern Virginia<\/a>. Companies including Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft often received tax breaks for what elected officials believed would be reliable future tax revenue, some additional jobs and a minimal strain on public services \u2014 at least compared with housing developments or factories. (Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But about two years ago, Babwah Brennen said that power-hungry data centers in some parts of the country started being blamed for\u00a0driving up household electric bills<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Opposition in both red and blue regions continued to build to the point where he has tracked about 65 state data center restrictions enacted since the start of 2025, and dozens of cities that have imposed temporary halts to data center development. This week, New York became the first state in the nation to\u00a0impose a temporary pause<\/a> on large new data center projects.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere is far more partisan alignment here than there was even last year,\u201d Babwah Brennen said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Some people resisting data centers say they\u2019re not opposed to AI; Schmidt said that he\u2019s using AI to create a community information\u00a0website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But some data center activists said they\u2019re wary of politicians and powerful corporations asking people to sacrifice in exchange for economic revitalization that may never arrive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A sign in Ann Arbor, Michigan, says no to data centers. (Rebecca Cook\/Reuters)<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Shaena Crossland, a lifelong West Virginian, said she\u2019s worried that data centers will repeat the pattern of industries such as coal mining and logging that harvested resources from West Virginia, while the state remained largely poor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cHopefully this cycle of extraction and taking advantage of people will stop,\u201d Crossland said. She and another local resident, Amy Margolies, are helping spearhead\u00a0opposition<\/a>\u00a0to a\u00a0proposed data center complex<\/a> in the eastern part of the state.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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People across the country have grown skeptical of promises that data centers generate good local jobs and technological advantages, said Abre\u2019 Conner, director of the center for environmental and climate justice at the NAACP, which is among the groups\u00a0suing<\/a>\u00a0over Elon Musk\u2019s\u00a0expanding<\/a>\u00a0data center complex in the Memphis area.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Data centers are now galvanizing citizens to push back against economic and political influences, she added. \u201cThis is one of the largest expansions of people recognizing their power,\u201d Conner said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Tech giants and other data center backers have been caught off guard by the rapid rise of public opposition, arguing that the hubs are essential for modern digital services and to keep the United States ahead of China on AI.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A spokesperson for Google, which is behind the Sand Springs data center, said it \u201cstrives to always be a good neighbor through long-term partnerships and investments in our sites, our people and the communities where we are located.\u201d The company said it\u2019s working to ensure compliance with Oklahoma law and local permitting guidelines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Some data center proponents also say that concerns about the computer hubs are sometimes misinformed, stirred by\u00a0foreign propaganda<\/a> or a symptom of NIMBYism \u2014 or \u201cNot in My Backyard,\u201d shorthand for resistance to housing development and other new construction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIf NIMBYism becomes the reason we lose the AI race, for whatever reason, we\u2019re in a whole lot of trouble in this country,\u201d Constellation Energy CEO Joseph Dominguez\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in April. But while nuclear energy was once widely unpopular, Dominguez said that nuclear power complexes are now less controversial than the data centers that Constellation is hoping to attract.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Katherine Levine Einstein<\/a>, a Boston University political scientist who researches local pushback to new home construction, said that data center opposition shares traits with\u00a0<\/b>this longtime resistance but only to a point.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Since zoning and permitting decisions are typically made at the local level in the U.S., she said, \u201c20 grumpy neighbors\u201d can quash homes or data centers near them even if the new construction could benefit many others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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With new housing, though, \u201cwe like it in the aggregate but we don\u2019t want it near us,\u201d Epstein said. \u201cThe public opinion about data centers is different: We don\u2019t want them anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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