The Data Center Resistance Has Arrived
canopic jug writes:
Wired has a story about the growing resistance to data center deployment. It seems that data centers have exceptionally bad track records in regards to adverse effects on the local communities upon which they are afflicted.
The new report was released by Data Center Watch, a project run by AI security company 10a Labs that tracks community opposition to data centers across the country. The company has been keeping eyes on this topic since 2023, and released its first public findings earlier this year. (While 10a Labs does offer risk analysis for AI companies, report author Miquel Vila says that the Data Center Watch project is separate from the company's main work, and is not paid for by any clients.) But this week's report finds that the tide has turned sharply in the months since the group's first public output. The second quarter of this year, the new report finds, represented "a sharp escalation" in data center opposition across the country.
Data Center Watch's first report from local residents. covered a period from May 2024 to March of 2025; in that period, it found, local opposition had blocked or delayed a total of $64 billion in data center projects (six projects were blocked entirely, while 10 were delayed). But Data Center Watch's new report found that opposition blocked or delayed $98 billion in projects from March to June of 2025 alone-eight projects, including two in Indiana and Kentucky, were blocked in those three months, while nine were delayed. One of those projects, a $17 billion development in the Atlanta suburbs, was put on hold in May after the county imposed a 180-day moratorium on data center development, following significant pushback.
Are data centers in any way useful or are they just another layer riding on top of the LLM tulipomania?
Previously:
(2025) China Submerges a Data Center in the Ocean to Conserve Water, is That Even a Good Idea?
(2025) How AI is Subsidized by Your Utility Bills and Drives Copper Prices
(2025) 'a Black Hole of Energy Use': Meta's Massive AI Data Center is Stressing Out a Louisiana Community
(2024) The True Cost of Data Centers
(2024) AI Demand Is Fueling A Data Center Development Boom In North America
(2022) Amazon and Microsoft Want to Go Big on Data Centres, but the Power Grid Can't Support Them
(2020) Private Equity Firms are Gobbling Up Data Centers
(2015) Why is Google Opening a New Data Center in a Former Coal-Fired Power Plant?
and many more ...
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