The push to build more data centers to rapidly boost America's AI capacity is meeting opposition in cities across the country. In Sand Springs, Oklahoma, residents packed meetings and built a Christmas parade float casting a proposed data center as a hulking villain looming over a tiny house, the Washington Post reports. The city quietly annexed 827 acres of farmland and entered confidential talks with an unnamed tech company about building a large facility there, triggering a local backlash over secrecy, land use, and who pays the energy bill. "Where are the people we elected who promised to protect us?" asked Kyle Schmidt, who leads the new Protect Sand Springs Alliance.
"I don't care how much chocolate icing you put on a dog turd, it don't make it chocolate cake," Rick Plummer, who raises horses on his property next to the proposed data center. tells the Post. "They are trying to fluff this data center thing up and say, 'Man, eat this birthday cake.' But it isn't birthday cake."
- Similar scenes are playing out from Pennsylvania to Arizona as tech giants race to build the infrastructure needed for artificial intelligence. These massive complexes can consume more power than small cities and require large volumes of water, often in places never zoned for heavy industry.
- The pushback is ideologically mixed: Trump voters in deep-red Oklahoma, environmental groups, the NAACP, and Democratic Socialists all find common cause in opposing projects they say strain grids, raise utility rates, and industrialize rural landscapes.
- Senate Democrats have opened an inquiry into how data centers affect electricity prices. Sen. Bernie Sanders has urged a construction pause, arguing that the AI boom is depleting resources while threatening jobs. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has sided with local opponents of data centers.
- The White House touts big investments and manufacturing gains but says siting decisions belong to states and localities. Industry groups counter that opponents are misinformed and that projects create jobs, lower power prices, and fund schools—claims that many residents and advocates dispute.
- "This is part of an experience that America and the world is having around tech billionaires who are seizing power and widening the gap between those have much too much ... and the working and middle classes," Yousef Rabhi, a former Democratic state legislative leader in Michigan, told the Guardian last month. "That's what these data centers are symbolic of, and they're the vehicle for ... the furtherance of this divide."
- What's clear is that local officials are increasingly wary. One tracker found more data center projects were blocked or delayed between April and June than in the previous two years combined, shelving an estimated $98 billion in plans. City councils in Chandler and Tucson, Arizona, have unanimously rejected major proposals amid anger over long-running nondisclosure agreements with companies such as Amazon. In Sand Springs, where the project could become the city's biggest taxpayer, leaders insist residents will get answers before any rezoning vote.
- More than 60% of the world's data centers are outside the US and projects are facing opposition in many countries, including Ireland, the Netherlands, and Mexico, where water shortages near a Microsoft site were blamed for a hepatitis outbreak last summer, the New York Times reported.
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