Why Everyone Suddenly Hates AI Data Centers

0:00Everyone, it appears, hates data centers. Polls show the majority of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans are opposed to them, and politicians are picking up on the anger. One writer joked that every state election is just two politicians who supported data centers five minutes ago accusing their opponent of supporting data centers. To some, this is all a consequence of the AI industry's terrible messaging. To others, it's about the negative legacy of big tech. And to some, it's just all one big China psyop. However much those things may or may not be true, conversations with the folks in these communities reveal that this is as much, if not more, about their agency in control and shaping their own future.

0:35Now, one could be forgiven for thinking it's getting gloomy out there, especially with all these politicians piling on. But I actually think that not only is there a path forward, this might be the most winnable, value-creating political battle of all time. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI.

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1:34Today's topic will not be unfamiliar for you regular listeners. Questions around the AI infrastructure build out and AI data center specifically have lured around the edges of this show for more than a year now, as this most concerted wave of AI build out has come to the fore. The issue has now officially, however, escaped containment. And today the goal is to do an entire primer kind of end to end on this issue, understanding on the other side, whether there is any room for optimism at all. So starting off, why are we talking about this right now? The answer, in short, is the midterm elections.

2:07This is an issue that certain pollsters have been paying attention to for a while now, but as it becomes more and more a part of the election discourse, more and more people are surveying about it, and the numbers are not good. In a Gallup poll from May, 71 % of respondents were already opposed to data centers in their area, and a full 48 % were strongly opposed. And things have gotten nothing but worse. Heatmap News has been conducting polling on opposition to local data centers for the past year. In their February poll, 51 % of people were opposed to data centers being built close to their home, and in this month's edition of their poll, opposition reached 75%.

2:40What's more, strong support has shrunk from 9 % in February to just 4 % now. People who work with polling are shocked at how aggressively the topic is moving. Lobbyist Justin Slaughter wrote, I've never seen this. Data center opponents are converting supporters not just to neutral, but to opposition. Ramez Nam writes, The trend here is crazy. From 24 % strong opposition to data centers to 61 % strong opposition in 12 months. When's the last time political opinions on an issue shifted this fast? And it's not just like this is one sensationalist poll. Another one that I shared on an earlier show this week from Echelon found that Americans would rather have a nuclear power plant in their backyard than a data center to power AI.

3:20At the moment, people are about twice as likely to be into coal plants being built nearby them as opposed to data centers. Now, for some, this is exhibit A in why this conversation is not just a rational argument about things like water and pollution, as quite clearly a coal plant is going to be worse on those vectors. There is, as we will discuss, a lot more going on. Now, as I said, what matters about the polling is not just the numbers, but the context of an election year. And in that environment, this is a rare bipartisan issue. In August of 2025, Republicans were net support for a data center nearby, independents were at net negative 5%, and Democrats were at negative 8%.

3:58Now, while independents and Democrats have both fallen stratospherically to negative 65 % and negative 75%, even Republicans are net 43 % against having a data center near their home. Andrew Curran wrote,

4:18This issue has become incredibly radioactive with the American public. And indeed, notice that the politicians have. The Bulwark writes, politicians suddenly notice that everybody hates data centers, pointing out that everywhere you look, politicians are suddenly sprinting away from them. The Wall Street Journal wrote, politicians who once championed data centers are now bashing them, pointing to the example of state governors, including Texas's Greg Abbott and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. So altogether, then, you have this incredibly toxic mixture of extremely negative public sentiment that becomes picked up by politicians who make the issue even louder by putting it front and center in their campaigns, who are then further amplified by media for whom not just the antagonism but also the shift among politicians is absolute red meat for their articles.

5:00Now at this point, it's worth even asking what is an AI data center, because with due respect to a lot of opponents' concerns about them, I don't necessarily think that most people could even really define what goes on inside one, or what they do, how they interact with the economy, and why they are necessary at all. A data center is basically a warehouse-sized computer that is plugged into industrial systems. Power arrives either via utility lines or dedicated generation, and that energy is used to power racks of chips and servers that, yes, can be used for things like training or serving AI, but are also essential for pretty much everything else that happens on the internet.

5:35Your Gmail, your Netflix streaming. All of that does have a physical component, and it runs through the data centers. Investor Nick Carter wrote, I think a non-negligible component of the data center backlash comes from people having imagined that the internet was a weightless thing that lived in the cloud. They are now learning that the internet requires physical infrastructure, cooling, and power, and they are upset about it. And that cooling is, of course, a big part of where the controversy comes in. Some combination of air, evaporative towers, or liquid loops remove heat from the ecosystem and push it outside, and then the data leaves once again.

6:06The point is, these are big empty rooms with many, many small computers connected to make one big computer. That's it. That's what a data center is. And they are critical and absolutely essential to the entire infrastructure of the world that we live in. So why are people so angry about data centers? The short answer is it's everything. And untangling all of those various reasons for the animosity is unfortunately, I think, important for figuring out how to move forward. Puck News recently asked voters how they believe data centers burden their community, asking whether they thought the following statements about data centers were true or false.

6:42And you can see here two of the biggest concerns right up at top. When asked if they believed that data centers placed too much strain on the local power grid, 45 % said definitely true and 33 % said probably true, a total of 78%. When asked if data centers consume excessive amounts of the local water supply, definitely true was at 44 % and probably true was at 31%. When asked whether they believed that data centers would decrease property values in the surrounding community, 27 % said definitely, 32 % said probably. When asked if data centers generate constant disruptive noise, 25 % said definitely true, with 34 % adding probably.

7:17When asked if they do not create enough local jobs to justify their construction, 24 % said definitely true, 30 % said probably true. And when asked if data centers increase local taxes, which it isn't even exactly clear by what mechanism that would happen, still 48 % overall said it was either definitely or probably true. So with that poll, you see a big cross-section of reasons for data center antipathy that are about actual quality of life for people near them. But of course, that is not the whole story. Now, when it comes to who is to blame for all of this anger, for some, the rampant factual inaccuracies in a lot of the critiques points to specific deliberate attempts to sow strife and controversy.

7:58A.G. Hamilton on X writes, The anti-data center stuff is insane and clear evidence that we have entered a post-truth era where many people can be convinced, often by malicious actors, to abandon reality and allow conspiracies and falsehoods to drive policy preferences. Frank Fleming asked a question that is coming up increasingly. Is China behind all the anti-data center hysteria or are we shooting ourselves in the foot over completely homegrown stupidity? Anderil co-founder and Founders Fund investor Trey Stevens retweeted a post of President Trump talking about how if he were the mayor of a town or governor or a state and had a chance to get a big plant in an AI plant or a data center, he would absolutely want it.

8:32Trey also pointed towards China saying, That's weird. It's almost like not banning TikTok has had real world consequences as the U.S. population continues being poisoned by CCP propaganda. Who would have guessed? Piling on, Rob LeCourke writes, We spent the last 30 years whining about how we lost all our good paying manufacturing jobs. We finally have an opportunity to start building again. Tech companies are willing to spend trillions on capex and labor. And now both parties are saying no because of a fake Chinese psyop that data centers use 30 ,000x more water than they really do. This accusation that China is behind this has even made it into the courts, as Shark Tank's Kevin O 'Leary loudly proclaimed that it was in fact China behind local activists who opposed the data center that he was working on in Utah.

9:10My general take is that the PSYOP argument probably has at least some truth in the sense that sowing social media discord is just now an intentional strategy of all America's adversaries around everything. And so even if there's not some giant campaign specifically about data centers, by virtue of the fact that it is a hot button topic on social media, it is almost absolutely the case that bot farms from somewhere are contributing. But I also think it's way too convenient as an excuse. And treating it like it's all that will absolutely halt us from actually dealing with the real issues that could cause many more problems if they're not addressed.

9:45Responding to someone accusing the whole thing of being a psyop, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy got at another reason that people have gotten angry, which is about the way that the AI industry talks about its likely impact on their lives. Murphy wrote, I don't know, the AI industry has been basically promising to destroy jobs at scale and poison our kids with addictive products, and it feels like people are just believing them. Now, the poison our kids with addictive products part, feels like he's conflating anti-AI with anti-social media, which, by the way, I think is actually a big part of this.

10:13But he is far from alone in thinking that the AI industry bears some of the responsibility here for the way that its leaders have talked about job loss. Because make no mistake, while people don't like data centers in general, they very specifically don't like AI data centers. And in polls that differentiate between the two, you can see that it is AI data centers specifically that have the most opposition. Brendan Steinhauser wrote, Yes, data centers have become politically toxic. It's clear when you review the polling or meet with regular Americans about this. And it's not just concerns about energy costs, water usage, aesthetics, or noise.

10:46The people are worried about AI replacing human beings. They don't want the companies to build superintelligence. Zarathustra writes, I'm generally pro data center, but if you're a normie, here's the story you've been hearing from Silicon Valley over the last decade. AI is probably going to take your job. It might kill you. You will probably become part of the permanent underclass. The very big tech billionaires and companies who have been more hostile and malicious to conservatives than any other business block in the world over the last decade will become unimaginably rich, while you and everyone you love will lose your job and become poor.

11:15The main spokesmen or faces in charge, Dario and Scam Altman, are openly hostile to you, your values, your politics, your way of life, and everything you stand for. The tasteless Philistines in tech are going to plant an utterly hideous industrial monstrosity in your backyard and probably pay you nothing. And for all this, you in return, you get... Question mark, question mark, question mark. It's not remotely difficult, they conclude, to understand why normies have reservations. Investor Shamath Palahapitiya writes, The collective leadership of frontier AI has failed miserably in doing the basics, like painting a positive picture of what is possible with AI.

11:45Instead of spilling the ink on the glass half full, stories abound of pearl-clutching, catastrophizing, or arcane technological jargon that together breed mistrust, fear, and skepticism. But for some, the anti-AI sentiment goes a lot deeper than marketing and about a lack of demonstrated value. T. Greer writes,

12:30not the messaging. Another point along these lines that I've seen some make is that even the things that AI does really well, i.e. increasing productivity, aren't necessarily things that the average person wants. In a recent podcast appearance, writer Ben Thompson said that every 10 years, Silicon Valley relearns that consumers do not want to pay for software and that consumers do not care about being productive. I think when it comes to AI, it's not just that consumers don't care about being more productive, it's that when you combine it with the entire AI industry saying that AI is going to come for your jobs and tons of CEOs using it as an excuse for layoffs that they were going to make anyway, productivity is just another way of saying, you're going to make me give away more of my labor that I don't own.

13:11Still, if it were just as like of AI, even that would be different than what it actually is. AI is the inheritor to the mantle of a 15-year decline of people's perception of tech in general. Gavin Purcell writes, my feeling is that at least 75 % of this negativity against AI is about big tech at large. Over the last 10 years, big tech has had the following very bad stories and many more. Election manipulation, screen time worries amongst kids, directional content rabbit holes that radicalize people, killing the media business like TV movies and news, polarizing communities against one another, massive profits versus local communities getting poorer, woke companies making cultural choices, and on and on and on.

13:48I think AI and data centers specifically has finally let a long simmering anger have real world in data centers, literal real world, targets. In the same post I was reading from before, Chamath again writes, data centers have unfortunately become the symbolic representation of the asymmetric upside for a very narrow tech elite and a class that are untrustworthy. Now, keep in mind, Americans' trust of elites and institutions right now is at an all-time low. According to a recent Gallup poll, the average percentage of U.S. adults that express a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in nine major U.S.

14:22institutions, including the church, the military, the Supreme Court, banks, public schools, newspapers, Congress, organized labor, and big business is down to its lowest point ever at 27%. Just one in four adults express confidence in the major institutions of American life. The number when it comes to big business is just 17%. And when you're already mistrustful of institutions, the way that data centers have done business, i.e. behind closed doors, outside the eye of the public, using tools like non-disclosure agreements, is almost tailor-made to increase that mistrust. NBC recently published a piece called How NDAs Keep AI Data Center Details Hidden from Americans, and this I think is a massive, massive, hard-to-overstate part of this problem right now.

15:06Technology moving ahead represents change you can't control. Change you can't control makes people feel less agency in their lives. And so the fact that already people are feeling less agency, and then they don't even have a chance to see what's going on and how these decisions are being made, that's not something that anyone, but particularly Americans, is going to take kindly to. Jasmine Sun has done some great reporting around this recently, and in a recent long form piece that has got her featured on numerous major news outlets and podcasts, she argued that this is actually a huge part of the problem.

15:40In what I think is the most important part of that entire 6 ,000-word tome, she writes, My conversations made me wonder if the technical content of data center deals is mostly besides the point. Closed-loop cooling systems? I don't believe them. Paying millions in taxes? I don't believe them. Creating a thousand jobs? I don't believe them. I hear a reflexive skepticism of every claim. Rather, the way that AI companies engage with communities, forcing NDAs, dangling billion-dollar promises, pushing environmental externalities far away from AI's wealthy user base, resembles a classic story about dark money and politics.

16:14Your politicians are being bought by billionaires and gigantic corporations to screw you over. It's not Skynet, it's the oligarchy. Writes Jonathan Kieperman, data centers are a proxy for largely inarticulable concerns over tech and the emerging likelihood that AI is going to radically change our way of life, much in the same way the internet has, and driven at least in part by two populist intuitions. One is that the further human value is abstracted out from the production of tangible things, the worse it is, and also that if the value of that thing isn't easily explained, if its mechanics are opaque or even unknowable, then I, the average guy, am probably somehow getting screwed.

16:50This doesn't mean that the concerns are fake or unjustified, only that they are often misdirected. As you can probably tell, while there are entire sections of the critiques and concerns that I either disagree with, or that I think are just based on total misinformation, I think that the only realistic starting point for finding a way forward is understanding the real concerns that exist and trying to find solutions for those specific problems. Unfortunately, the solutions that have come up so far are largely in the form of moratoriums. Interconnected Capital has a digital map that tracks moratoriums following 97 county bans, 93 city bans, and 28 town bans.

17:25Recently, my state of New York became the first state to officially impose a data center moratorium, but now the tide is moving quickly. In the last couple of weeks, we've had great examples of formerly extremely data center bullish governors reversing their opinions and basically competing to have the strictest rules in the country. I'm referring, of course, to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Texas Governor Greg Abbott. And a recent memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee about the liability of data centers, specifically in Ohio, but in other parts of the country as well, seems to have gotten the entire Republican Party on board with being anti-data center in one fell swoop.

17:58Michigan Republican Tom Barrett is running an ad decrying, in his words, politicians cozying up with big tech billionaires to force data centers on our communities, despite his voting record in favor of data centers before. Republican candidate for Wisconsin governor Tom Tiffany is going out of his way to paint his Democratic counterpart, David Crowley, as the great champion of data centers. Interestingly, Tiffany seems to be trying to combine the culture war, anti-data center sentiment, and anti-environmentalism all in one fell swoop. Posting on X this week, David Crowley's data center plan would destroy at least 100 ,000 acres of Wisconsin land.

18:31His Beyonce approach calls for data centers powered by 100 % solar, wind, and battery storage. You get a data center and thousands of acres of solar panels in your backyard. Heatmap's Matthew Zeitlin perfectly sums it up. Every statewide election now is two people who supported data centers five minutes ago saying that their opponent supports data centers.

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21:55So where do we go from here? Firstly, there is work to be done and good work being done on trying to combat the misinformation. A lot of the memes about water usage, for example, are somewhere between out of context, i.e. understanding what these big numbers of gallons of water used actually mean relative to all other uses, or just straight-up factual inaccuracies that become memes. For example, in Karen Howe's book Empire of AI, she miscalculated the amount of water used by a factor of 1 ,000. And while she has admitted the error, the misprint remains in circulation and contributing to people's takes on this.

22:32A similar process is happening around the concern that, as Bloomberg put it in an article last year, AI data centers are sending power bills soaring. But when people actually dig in, it appears like there's actually no real statistical correlation between where electricity prices are going up the most and where data centers are located, which of course doesn't mean that it's a non-issue, but it's a question of specific data center design and the environmental design around it, not some rule of nature that data centers are going to jack up your electricity prices. Unfortunately, that baseline trust gap that we discussed limits the ability for these rational arguments to find purchase.