The battle in rural America against AI data centres

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0:51Hello, it's Anthony, and you're about to hear AmeriCast, and we're delighted to have you with us. And if you enjoy what you hear, please do consider subscribing to the podcast. That way, you'll never miss an episode. Now, on with today. Stan in Brighton in the UK has been in touch. I was wondering, says Stan, whether you could cover the recently approved Stratos Data Centre in Utah. As a UK listener, I find it equal parts fascinating and concerning that such a project has been approved. It would be great to hear your thoughts on it and the wider implications for the politics of the AI revolution in the US.

1:27Well, Stan, we're going to do exactly what you tell us to do, as we always do. And you are, of course, dead right. It is a massive, massive American story. And it's not actually much covered or maybe not covered as much as it should be. And it's not just in Utah, where that campus is apparently going to be 62 square miles. But it's also all around the US. So opposition is growing to these huge data centres right around the country, including New York, where a one-year moratorium on large data centres has just been passed. So is the AI revolution changing the landscape of rural America? And if it is, can people stop it?

2:04Do they, in large numbers, want to? Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. This is a big cover up and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.

2:37Hello, it's Anthony in Washington, D.C. And it's Justin at the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. And we're going to be joined later on, aren't we, Anthony, by Robert Bryce, the energy journalist, friend of the pod, who's written very extensively about data centers and AI and indeed studied them in extraordinary detail. But, Anthony, there is no doubt at all, is there, that they are worthy of being studied at the moment because again and again in state after state, they matter. They do. And it's local opposition. It's not just local opposition from the usual suspects, environmentalists, not in my backyard, activists, but from conservatives from a broad spectrum of American politics at the local level who are objecting to these massive buildings that house computers and servers and various equipment to process AI computing for these big AI companies.

3:30and it's the local people who say it's taking too much resources, it's taking up too much space, their eyesores, and they also view possibly them having adverse health consequences for those who live by them. So it's a big issue here in the United States. Is it that big in the UK? No, weirdly it's not yet because we don't have them yet of anything like the scale. But of course we are also, as is the entire Western world, We're all looking along these lines that AI not only brings with it all sorts of threats and benefits to daily life, but also has to be kept going. And, you know, the business of keeping it going does require huge amounts of energy.

4:16But of course, it's not just energy, is it, Anthony? And this is why it's such a big deal in the States. Yes, it's electricity and it affects electricity prices, etc. And some people think it keeps them artificially high and they want politicians to intervene. But it's also things like water, isn't it? I mean, it's a pretty basic threat, as a lot of local people see it, to their way of life. Right. It sucks up a lot of water to keep all of this equipment cool. But AI is the hot thing right now, right? I mean, there have been people who have said that AI investment is keeping the U.S. economy and U.S.

4:51stock market afloat, that all this money pouring in in hopes of having big payoffs is the reason why the American economy has been able to push through some of these headwinds it's been facing. Companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta, OpenAI, they're building these data centers to power their AI computing projects. And here's Sam Altman. He's the CEO of OpenAI talking in Michigan about the construction of a data center there. We know how complex of a project this is. We know what the current attitude towards data centers in the world is. And I'll come back to this, but I think we can make this a great example for the future.

5:28Sure. This could very well turn into the site where cancer gets cured. This could turn into the site where hundreds of millions of students around the world learn and get private tutoring. This could turn into the site where millions of small businesses can run their business with AI in the cloud. Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it? Because that's the push. And that's the promise that's dangled in front of people. And as you say, Anthony, it's also the promise of wealth more widely, because I think it is actually literally true that the growth in America at the moment mainly comes from AI and AI related growth and AI and AI related optimism about the future.

6:11And it's huge and it really does matter. But in rural America, in bits of Texas, in North Virginia and in kind of in parts of America where those things feel very remote. And what is fascinating to me, Anthony, is not only do those things feel remote, but actually the politics of it is quite complex because the messages that are coming across are about the threat of something that is not necessarily a left-right issue. And that's important. Right. People care about their local environment, even conservatives who may not consider themselves environmentalists care about whether the water in their homes is clean, whether the noise that these big data centers create, the buzzing sound that some people say they create because of all the energy being used, whether that disturbs their everyday life.

7:09They are concerned about the electricity prices being driven up. They're concerned about falling property prices. If one of these big things drops right next to your house, your property value is probably going to go down because of all of these other things that we've been talking about. And so you have heard conservatives talk about this, particularly at the grassroots level, and Democrats, liberals talk about this. Here's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive left-wing New York congressman. We've talked about her plenty of times in the past. She visited a town that had a data center in Georgia a few weeks ago, came back here to Washington, D.C., and spoke at a congressional hearing holding up a sample of the local water, she said.

7:53Families in the area are starting to see not only their water pressure decrease, to your point about water availability, but their appliances have all stopped working because it is decimating their water quality. They now rely on bottled water to drink and prepare meals, and nearby residents' water bills are expected to increase by 33%. In fact, I have a jar right here. This is the current drinking water. in Morgan County, Georgia, right after a data center was constructed. The only difference between the clean water and this was that data center. I have another one as well. So this wasn't just one well.

8:39This wasn't just one family's situation. This is what the drinking water now looks like next to that data center. And that's Georgia. The big one though, Anthony, is Utah, are isn't it which is so big that i mean it boggles the mind 62 square miles i can't we always measure things in in britain anthony and the size of a football pitch or how many football pitches a thing is i don't know what 62 miles is in football pitches but it's a lot of football pitches it is a lot it is more than twice the size of manhattan island in new york if that puts it in perspective obviously things there's a lot of open space out west but that is a massive construction project, and it will include dozens of data centers, research facilities, probably some housing.

9:28This project was approved by county commissioners, but there was local backlash to it. People were complaining about, as we talked about, the stress it could put on the local resources, what all this construction would mean for the environment. And it was more than double Utah's current electricity usage, the entire state of Utah. That is insane. That is amazing, isn't it? Also that it's going to use a lot of water. And they don't have a lot of water in Utah and quite regularly have droughts, don't they? It's a hyperscale data center, isn't it, Anthony? And that word is important, isn't it? Because it's the hyperscale.

10:10It's to go back to the economics of all of this. If you're looking for organizations, companies that have done really well on the stock market and powering actually not in a way, not just the US economy, but to an extent, the world's at least stock market buzz. It comes from hyperscalers, these companies that are pushing out huge investments in the hope that eventually there'll be a return. So if, for instance, in Utah, it doesn't happen because people object, it's not just, oh, well, we're just going to do something else. I mean, this is a real challenge, isn't it, to an entire kind of industry model that is massively, massively funded at the moment.

10:55But you could see the funds just going away. Right. And AI, beyond just the impact of these data centers, there is a pushback against the whole idea of AI, of what it is doing to global societies, what it could do to the job market for people who are being replaced by this technology. And so all of this is part and parcel of this kind of objection to it. The data centers on the ground, but also if the data centers were doing something great that people believed in, like curing cancer the way Sam Altman promised, then maybe people would be willing to make those sacrifices. But when these data centers are being used to advance something that is generally unpopular and not trusted by the American public, that makes it all much harder.

11:41Let's listen to this town hall meeting in Utah where they tried to explain what this data center was doing and the level of public concern that came up because of it.

12:06Right. Well, it's not going entirely smoothly, is it? And it's worth pointing out, Anthony, that the three commissioners actually had to leave the meeting, didn't they? They had to carry on online. And I suppose it's this classic thing, isn't it? There's always the case with planning disputes. But my goodness is the case massively now and all around America. If the person who benefits from the cure for cancer that Sam Altman was talking about is at the moment a notional person. It's at some point in the future. The people who are the losers are not at all notional. They're real and they turn up to meetings.

12:40And that's the problem that the industry has, isn't it? I mean, and it is a real problem for them. There's no doubt at all that as much as they rail against it and as much as they try to persuade people about future benefits, that they are really being challenged. challenged and as you were saying as well Anthony not just challenged from the left we heard AOC who is very much of the progressive left talking about that one in Georgia but here's Tucker Carlson Tucker Carlson from the right some would say the far right grilling Kevin O 'Leary who is a venture capitalist who's actually backing that Utah project.

13:14My job is to create a data center create 2 ,000 jobs for long term and 10 ,000 manufacturing at the beginning or construction and I'm obviously looking at multiple sites. And this won't be the last one I build. May I ask 2 ,000 jobs? Okay. So relative to the size, the physical size of the project, which as you noted is multiple times the size of Manhattan and the power draw at peak, this data center, your projections will consume about as much energy as New York City does. But New York City provides almost 5 million jobs. And this project by your own description, would provide about 2 ,000 jobs.

13:58I don't see the trade here. You definitely got that calculation wrong. By building a data center that trains AI, that provides productivity to the entire nation, we create millions of jobs, high-paying jobs. So AI is going to create jobs? Yes. I thought it was going to eliminate jobs, Nat. Just think about the new technologies we don't even know yet that are going to be built off AI. Everybody thinks when television came, everybody would lose their job in radio. That was complete BS. And the same thing is going to happen here. OK, well, that's quite a wide variation of job predictions, isn't it, Anthony?

14:38Do we know, does anyone who's properly looked at this stuff and done so dispassionately, can anyone tell us what the truth is? Well, Brookings did a study specifically about data centers and the jobs that data centers create. And they found that roughly 2 ,000 to 4 ,000 additional jobs after six years comes from these institutions, these facilities. Counties usually, once they get their first data center, they see total private employment go up by about 4 % to 5 % over five to six years. Wages, they do go up about 3 % to 4%, not just for the new hires, but also for existing workers in those counties.

15:17But there's not a significant increase in home prices in counties that get data centers. So when you look at it, narrowly focused to where these data centers are going in, a small economic benefit. But then when you were listening to O 'Leary there, he was talking about the millions of jobs that this could create. Yeah, and that exactly, because his focus is completely different, isn't it? His focus is America writ large and indeed the whole world writ large and what potentially AI can do in terms of improving productivity and thus wealth for everyone. And, you know, we just don't know whether that's true or not.

15:55And nobody can know whether it's true or not. But from the perspective of a local person who has a data center coming to them, that stuff just feels very nebulous, doesn't it? It feels a long way in the future and a long way away from where they live anyway. We should turn to the politics of it then, Anthony. And we've got this bill, haven't we, in the Senate, a bill that is actually from the left. And it's a bill that would pause the new construction of data centers right away. Right. And I think you might see an impact on local races before we see it filter up to the national races. But but it's heading that way, I think.

16:38And I think there is concern among people like Steve Bannon that if Republicans don't get on the right side of this issue, if they're they seem to be too closely tied to these giant corporations that are building these giant data centers that are creating AI programs that are going to replace many working class Americans, that they are going to take it on the chin when it comes to national elections. And if they're not the ones out there taking a stand against it, if the Democrats are, then they're going to be on the wrong side of this. Let's hear from someone who is potentially then changing their minds.

17:13In fact, they are changing their minds and changing it in an interesting way. So this is a Republican voter living near a data center in Texas talking to MS Now, the left wing news channel, about how this issue is actually going to shape her vote in the midterm elections in November. You're willing at this point to forego basically every conservative issue and let the Senate fall into the hands of Democrats if that's what it takes to kill data centers. Yep. My entire community is going to break rank. Everybody. All of us. We've had enough. I mean, that's big news, Anthony, if it's a widespread feeling.

17:52Yep, as she put it. It would be big news. And it does show the power that this issue has in American politics. And one of the reasons why, even as high up as the White House and the Trump administration, they are struggling with trying to figure out how to handle the AI issue. There was talk about Donald Trump releasing some new regulations on AI models and new regulations on AI companies. And then that got shot down behind the scenes by some of Donald Trump's senior advisors and people who are connected to the AI industry. He just released the White House, released an executive order that was relying more heavily on AI companies to kind of police themselves and share their models with the government to make sure that they're OK and that they don't do damage to the American economy.

18:45But relying on an industry to police itself may not satisfy people like that woman that we just heard in Texas. And it's worth saying it does cut across not only in terms of those objectors and not only on the left, they're also often on the right, but actually the people having to deal with the objections. Particularly think of governors of states that are very tempted by the money and the jobs, if there are jobs to be had, who may not be Republicans and may also be Democrats. And they've also got to deal with this. So it's one of those things that really kind of roils up U.S. politics, isn't it?

19:19Yeah. You know, when you go out west and you talk to conservatives, they often do take positions that could kind of be viewed as environmentalists. They like land rights. They like property rights. They don't like meddling big government. But they also go out in the great outdoors a lot. They hunt and they fish and they hike and they take advantage of the natural resources. So that is that's an area where Democrats could make inroads and peel away some of these conservative voters who would focus on this issue maybe more than some of the other ones. And actually, you're seeing some Republicans like Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.

20:01His state just filed a suit against OpenAI saying that their AI model was damaging the livelihoods of residents of that state, that it was harming Florida citizens. So we'll see where that lawsuit goes. But I think there are a lot of politicians on both sides of the aisle that are hearing from their constituents. And there are a lot of politicians who see this as a potential source of political advantage if they can harness this frustration, this anger. OK, Anthony, I know you've got to go now, but you are being replaced, replaced by Robert Bryce, who is a friend of the party, someone who's hugely, hugely knowledgeable about all manner of energy issues.

20:43But particularly this one, he's been tracking data centres, he's been tracking opposition to them for some time. Perhaps it is fair to say before it became such a big news story. So, Robert, pleasure to have you back. Hello again to you. Glad to be with you, Justin. Last time we talked, it was about oil. This time it's about data centres. It really is. Both of these have a political side to them, don't they? But before we get to that political side, let's talk about what we are actually talking about now when it comes to infrastructure and the physical existence of them. We've been mentioning, Anthony and I have just been talking about this incredible plan for a 62-mile campus in Utah.

21:26But it's not just Utah, is it? They are huge around the country. And in many cases, they're already there. That's all correct. Kevin O 'Leary's project in Utah is one example of these projects in development. They're a long way from being built and even a longer way from having computers actually up and running. But all across the U.S., what we've seen is local communities fighting back. And it's because so many of these projects are being proposed. But yes, it's about water. It's about electricity. It's about the character of local neighborhoods. And I've been a reporter for a long time, Justin.

22:03I've never, you know, close to 40 years. I've never had a real job. I've never seen anything like the backlash that we're seeing in the United States against data centers. Really? Because, again, we were mentioning earlier on, yes, there's been environmental backlashes against all sorts of corporate misdemeanors, haven't there, in the past? And some of them have been turned into very successful films and all the rest of it. But you're saying this is an order of magnitude different? It's a cultural backlash, Justin, and to just a little bit of context. So I've been tracking land use conflicts around wind and solar and more lately batteries now for 16 years.

22:41And I created what's called the Renewable Rejection Database. And I've now documented over 1 ,200 rejections or restrictions of wind and solar over the last 16 years, most of those in the last 10 or so. That led me to create the data center rejection database. Already in the United States this year, Justin, I've documented 107 rejections or restrictions of data centers in the United States. In all of 2025, there were 49. In all of 2024, there were nine. And so we're seeing local communities across the country, whether it's in Utah or in New Jersey or you name it, local communities looking at these big projects.

23:20And I've got no dog in this fight. I use AI. I use it regularly, but I've never seen anything like this. It's a combination of political factors and anger at big tech, and it really is unprecedented. And is it the physical presence of them, or is it the stuff that they're leaching, the water and the electricity that they're using? What is it, or is it a combination of those things that people are objecting to? I've thought about this quite a lot, and I've written about it a lot. I started covering it in depth now seven or eight months ago, really. at the urging of my son, Jacob, who lives in Berlin.

23:56And he said, Dad, you've been following the renewable rejections. Let's track data center rejections. But I think that the simplest way to think about it on the surface is that local communities are looking at these projects, you know, huge buildings that take a lot of electricity, the water use is controversial, may be overstated by the opponents. But local communities are looking at them and saying, there's not enough benefit for us. And that's very similar to what we've seen with solar and wind. The other is that there's an anger in the U.S. and I think around the world at big tech, the loss of privacy, the algorithms, the scale of the fortunes of the oligarchs like Bezos and Zuckerberg and the rest of them.

24:37So I think people are seeing the way I would boil it down, Justin, is people can't fight big tech online. They can't go to, you know, fight Google online, but they can fight them at the local zoning board. And that's what they're doing. How can the AI companies fight back? So if you think of renewables and the objections that have been to renewables, to some extent, people are bought off locally, aren't they? Because they're provided with power then at a reduced rate or sometimes a very reduced rate, aren't they? To, in a sense, sort of buy them in to the idea. Can the AI companies come up with their version of that, do you think?

25:12Are they even thinking about it? Oh, well, they're definitely thinking about this. I mean, there's no doubt about it. You look at some of the PR tactics that have been used, and I see the same thing happen with solar and wind, where now, for instance, you know, some of the tech companies are saying, oh, the opposition, they're funded by the Chinese. Chinese, you know, with solar and wind, they said, Oh, the opposition is being funded by big oil. Well, that certainly wasn't true with big wind and big solar. That's just not mean, you know, with the opposition to wind and solar, and the Chinese money, I think it's a canard.

25:44I just think it's not simply doesn't account for the scale of the opposition. But I think it's important, Justin, too. And I'm a reporter, I pride myself on my numbers, to put this into perspective. So yes, there is a backlash. And it's a cultural backlash, as I said, unlike anything I've seen. Yes, there have been 107 rejections or restrictions so far this year in the US. But according to Atario, there are now 769 data centers in the US under construction. So is this backlash having an effect? Sure. Is it stopping AI and the development of data centers more broadly? I could argue it's an issue, but it is a long way from stopping the business from growing.