If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?

https://www.thebrockovichreport.com/p/if-data-centers-are-so-great-why

by thisislife2 • 2 months ago

90 125 2 months ago

thebrockovichreport.com

Our_Benefactors4• 2 months ago

This is the top comment:

“ And ask if AI is so great why hasn’t it designed resource efficient data centers?

And ask what the data centers are actually doing. Bitcoin mining, anyone?”

Says all you need to know about the competency level of this position, which is ideological and not fact-based

tw04• 2 months ago

But it’s not just ideological. The facts are, even with great strides in efficiency, datacenters use a TON of water and electricity. And without fail that results in increased prices for the local communities who see almost no benefit from these datacenters.

Ironically the very same people profiting most off of them are the ones saying they’re going to leave the country if they’re forced to pay anything resembling a fair tax rate. They’re always all about socializing costs and privatizing profits and the common folks are finally waking up to it.

jeffbee4• 2 months ago

Data centers use very little water, right down to none if they want. And state-of-the-art hyperscale data centers really are operated by AIs.

Our_Benefactors4• 2 months ago

datacenters use a TON of water and electricity

We have a shortage of neither.

cucumber37328423• 2 months ago

They're being built in as much secret as possible because everything is. Everything about land development is adversarial and the people who keep their mouths shut wind up taking fewer 4-7 figure screwings along the way than the honest people.

It sucks that this how it is but even just the most casual familiarity with all the rules and processes makes it obvious why this is the way it is.

You could find more than enough data points to write this same story about grocery stores or anything else.

metalliqaz2• 2 months ago

grocery stores? They are not comparable to data centers.

TulliusCicero3• 2 months ago

They aren't, and yet somehow you still find various groups who will fight them.

Seattle is currently dealing with this for a new WinCo -- which is low-priced and employee-owned, making it particularly unobjectionable -- on a site that used to be a Sam's Club, so it's not even really a new development: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/winco-plan...

North Seattle shoppers may need to wait even longer for a grocery store to fill a former Sam’s Club location left vacant since 2018
Two years ago, discount grocery chain WinCo filed plans to remodel the building and reconfigure the parking lot on Aurora Avenue North. But the plans encountered opposition from a neighborhood group for their possible environmental impact.
Last week, a hearing examiner overturned the city’s determination that the project would have no significant environmental impacts, casting doubts on the future of the project.
...
For a while, everything seemed on track. The city conducted a State Environmental Policy Act process and found WinCo’s plans would have no significant environmental impact.
Then, last fall, a coalition called Lake Washington Working Families appealed the decision. The group, which tried and failed to disrupt plans for a WinCo coming to Renton last spring, has no website and is not registered with the state — leading to online speculation about who exactly is behind the group. But Karl Anuta, a Portland-based lawyer representing the coalition, said it’s made up of King County residents.
The coalition claimed the city’s environmental analysis of WinCo’s plans for the North Seattle site was inadequate and required further review. WinCo would have major traffic impacts, the appeal said, releasing pollutants into local bodies of water.
In an interview Monday, Anuta, who primarily handles cases involving environmental law, said the group is not against having a WinCo store at the location but wants the city to seriously analyze the environmental impacts of such a large business.
“The real issue for the Lake Washington Working Families was you’re going from eight years of nothing there to a larger facility with many impacts,” he said.
“You can’t just permit stuff and expect the neighbors to deal with the consequences.”

This is why environmental regulations and processes are getting pushback -- not because people hate the environment, but because NIMBYs learned to weaponize these rules against almost any kind of development, even the kind of thing that the overwhelming majority of people in an area support.

RobRivera2• 2 months ago

You are not being curious or good faith here.

fastball• 2 months ago

Is "keeping your mouth shut" dishonesty?

jtbigwoo2• 2 months ago

We, as a society, set up rules to allow the people to have a voice in decisions via various means including public meetings and various review procedures. There is a cost to these rules, but the alternative you're describing is a system where rules and laws don't matter and anyone with the ear of a few influential people can do whatever they want.

Just as an example, there's a data center in the early stages about 10 miles from my house. The land developer spent a year shopping for a city council that would skip the hearings required by state law and finally found a small exurb willing to break the law. Now the developer is racing to break ground before the lawsuits and restraining orders hit. This isn't the way that a logical society should work.

cucumber37328423• 2 months ago

Just as an example, there's a data center in the early stages about 10 miles from my house. The land developer spent a year shopping for a city council that would skip the hearings required by state law and finally found a small exurb willing to break the law. No

Oh no. God forbid an out of towner be given the kind of treatment you usually need the "right" last name or business partners for. <clutches pearls>

The developer is probably well practiced at this because even for mundane developments beyond about an acre you basically have to have a legal team and basically have to drag it through a court even if you have local support because the other developers will pull their strings in government to try and stall and drive up the cost of your thing.

Land development is a revolving door club between government and the prevailing developer and related business interests in the jurisdiction so you can't really blame the external interest for showing up with everything ready to go and steamrolling everyone.

bediger4000• 2 months ago

But why shouldn't the possible neighbors of some unpleasant installation protest as much as allowed, and file lawsuits? Neighbors interests have value too, plus we in the USA have a constitutional right to free speech and petition for redress of grievances. The US also has an adversarial legal system. It pays off to file lawsuits if you can afford it.

My conclusion is that "NIMBY" isn't the problem, it's economic incentives and adversarial systems.

RobRivera2• 2 months ago

I enjoy reminding people the land acquisition history behind building Disney World.

zeafoamrun2• 2 months ago

To stop assholes from bombing them

metalliqaz2• 2 months ago

The secrets are kept prior to breaking ground. After that everyone knows what it is.

amarcheschi• 2 months ago

We didn't have known datacenters bombed till now

I mean yes, Amazon servers in the middle east aren't doing great, but I guess it's not what you're talking about

zeafoamrun2• 2 months ago

It was included in what I was talking about. Why would you publicise something that just paints a big target.

klodolph• 2 months ago

When I’ve visited the big data centers, they had gates and security relatively far out from the buildings. How would you get close enough? It’s not like the World Trade Center in 1993 where you can just drive up next to the building. (It’s also not like the World Trade Center in 2026 where there is an anti-terrorism perimeter of steel-reinforced concrete bollards, but somewhere in the middle.)

Of course there are also data centers in the middle of cities but these are smaller.

nancyminusone2• 2 months ago

Trebuchet

Ancapistani• 2 months ago

Rather than going into detail, getting myself on yet another watchlist, and possibly inspiring someone to do something both criminal and counter-productive, I'll just quote Patton:

    Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.

cute_boi2• 2 months ago

Give me example where datacenter is bombed in the US?

axus• 2 months ago

Wish I could save comments like I can favorite threads.

razakel• 2 months ago

There was a guy who planned to bomb us-east-1. Someone reported it and the feds gave him a fake device.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56719618

aaroninsf• 2 months ago

The conflation of concerns and synechdochal arguments are a wonder to behold.

SKILNER• 2 months ago

So many people flailing around to justify their feelings rather than thinking rationally.

expedition322• 2 months ago

Goes both sides. Anyone who works in tech is immediately circumspect when they defend AI data centers.

Hell I will always side with locals WHO ACTUALLY LIVE THERE than IT workers in their Google cubicles lmao. Ofcourse America in it's dystopian wisdom is now making corporations vote...

nodesocket3• 2 months ago

One reason is that politicians have vilified them for their own political means. Creating false narratives like they use huge amounts of water, when in fact the cooling is a closed loop system and use less water than a single busy restaurant. They are being used as yet another pawn piece to push inequity and climate change agendas. It’s been quite a successful strategy.

homeonthemtn2• 2 months ago

So successful that data centers are everywhere? I'm not following the logic here.

nodesocket3• 2 months ago

25 data center projects were canceled in 2025, up sharply from only 6 in 2024. 2026 numbers gonna be dramatically higher. 69 jurisdictions have enacted some form of moratorium, ban, or restriction on new data center construction. The friendly states such as Texas are just going to have all the data centers and thus reap all the financial and job benefits.

cute_boi2• 2 months ago

Data Center, right now, have more negative impact. So, lets not dismiss that.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/13/elon-mus...

mrexroad2• 2 months ago

Creating false narratives like they use huge amounts of water, when in fact the cooling is a closed loop system and use less water than a single busy restaurant

My understanding was that often multiple cooling methods are employed and the ratio of use shifts seasonally; however, that evaporative cooling was still primary method, especially in hotter climates like CA and AZ.

Can you help me understand what type of data center (size, location, etc) uses less water than a busy restaurant?

nodesocket3• 2 months ago

Microsoft CEO Nadella just recently said their Fairwater (315-acre facility in Wisconsin) only uses around the same amount of water as a single restaurant over the course of an entire year.

njovin• 2 months ago

Not covered in the article are two critical reasons:

1. They're breaking environmental laws in order to meet power demands. xAI has already been busted on this [1], but they keep finding willing accomplices in rural parts of the country to bypass public opposition or speedrun through regulatory exceptions [2].

2. Companies seem to be fudging their numbers when it comes to GPU capacity & current workloads [3], likely to inflate their IPO valuations. I know Ed Zitron is a divisive figure but I've not seen any journalist on the other side of the argument provide the volume of data that he has.

[1] https://www.selc.org/news/xai-built-an-illegal-power-plant-t...

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/10/musks-xai-draws-more-opposit...

[3] https://www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/

pmdr• 2 months ago

I know Ed Zitron is a divisive figure

The main counterarguments to his claims are "but Sam/Dario/Satya/Jensen said X" and that we should treat them as gospel.

atleastoptimal3• 2 months ago

What is the advantage to not keeping them a secret? The populist movement against AI is growing rapidly, and is supported by bunk science which affirms people's pre-existing biases (like the idea that data centers suck up all the water in a community, or raise the ambient temperature by a single-double digit number of degrees F).

AI is a genuine source of economic growth. I can understand wanting to curtail it, but in return you are getting fewer jobs, less economic growth, more money to other countries who don't allow protesting or even complaining about data centers, etc.

everdrive• 2 months ago

but in return you are getting fewer jobs,

Certainly not in any meaningful way.

iijaachok• 2 months ago

You're conflating AI and AI Data centres. What kind of "jobs" does AI data centre creates? More jobs for factory workers who assemble video cards to be shipped and installed in a rack?

legitster4• 2 months ago

I think OP is talking about the downstream implications of productivity growth. Which is still yet hypothetical.

redox99• 2 months ago

Data centers don't grow on trees.

chickenpotpie2• 2 months ago

Data centers require lots of technicians to install, maintain, and decommission servers. Who do you think installs those video cards?

Karrot_Kream2• 2 months ago

The US has deindustrialized and since the rise of NIMBY politics hasn't built new industry in any scale at all. The first freeway revolts happened in 1959. In the meantime, basically everyone has agreed that industrial growth and manufacturing as an abstract concept is Good (TM) but definitely not in my backyard. For a long time these kinds of things were just being built in neighborhoods where the residents were too poor/politically disconnected to organize, but eventually that too became difficult.

Since automation became big in industrial processes, most industrial development has been labor-poor (few workers) but continues to be land intensive. That means while industry might generate tax revenue, it doesn't have a coalition of labor advocates willing to champion the capacity because not many jobs are created. So we find ourselves in 2026 with an inability to actually build new industrial capacity in any form. The anti-tech crowd is angry at the data centers, but the same exact thing is happening when it comes to permitting new power generation and transmission lines. In fact many of the concerns related to data center power usage could be allayed if we had more power generation but nobody wants power generation in their backyard.

For decades now the US has been dancing around the idea that there is no by-right way to build anything anymore, so building any new large structure becomes a collective action problem that just ends up failing. Even when things get built, costs are massive. This has even affected things that the US is ostensibly really good at making such as highways, as evident in the recent Texas highway expansions ongoing.

nonethewiser6• 2 months ago

This is an excellent analysis. The NIMBYism is pretty self-evident I think but I never thought about the disconnect automation may have caused between industry and advocates for industry.

legitster4• 2 months ago

I think it's good to remind people that the industrial revolution was very close to never happening.

This is from Dud Dudley writing in 1665, whose own ventures to manufacture steel en masse before Abraham Darby succeeded.

"I have been opposed by many adversaries, as by wood colliers, mine owners, and others who, being poor men, did, by misguided advice, throw down and destroy two of my furnaces and my works, and caused much of my pigs and bar iron to be carried away."

There were plenty of examples through history of "near-misses" where establishment land/wealth holders suppressed nascent steel industries. It was almost an accidental series of coincidences that the industrial revolution happened - the Glorious Revolution in England and Abraham Darby's secret financing network.

cucumber37328423• 2 months ago

basically everyone has agreed that industrial growth and manufacturing as an abstract concept is Good (TM) but definitely not in my backyard. For a long time these kinds of things were just being built in neighborhoods where the residents were too poor/politically disconnected to organize, but eventually that too became difficult.

These NIMBY jerks have redefined the entire country to be their back yard

The NIMBYs were pissy that the poors were allowing industrial development said "those poor people are stupid and wrong for accepting the industry" and the legislated hoops so that they essentially have a "say" in what these poorer communities can allow.

They usually leverage environmental laws to do this stuff because the richer areas are already developed and paved to high heaven. They aren't doing greenfield development and the laws are construed to basically punish/prevent greenfield development and allow brownfield development and re-development. Of course, residential gets exemptions to all sorts of stuff so their ADUs and the kind of development they do are mostly unaffected but the industrial stuff out in the sticks is all but prevented.

I see this in my own city that's over an hour drive from the rich places. We want to allow manufacturing but the state will take our grant money if we don't have and enforce a ton of rules and process that make that prohibitive so basically no industry can afford to create a facility except the biggest of BigCos.

TulliusCicero3• 2 months ago

A very good, 100% true comment.

Now obviously sometimes new developments really are bad, or they're being targeted at terrible spots -- you don't want a very polluting factory right next to a residential neighborhood.

But we've overcorrected drastically. The rules should be sensible and out in the open; planning committees should only be checking whether companies and governments have followed the law as written, not listening to every single possible objection from neighborhood residents about a new apartment complex affecting street parking or creating shadows.

As I pointed out in another comment in this thread, a "neighborhood group" that's using environmental rules to block a low-cost, employee-owned grocery store being added to a site that was already basically a grocery store (Sam's Club) before, is an insane weaponization of the rules. Nobody who was writing these laws ever intended environmental protections to be misused like this.

blanched2• 2 months ago

Why are they bunk science? I’m not an environmental expert, but the research papers and policies I’ve read don’t seem to be egregiously wrong.

I’m asking genuinely, I’m open to changing my mind here.

Karrot_Kream2• 2 months ago

Andy Massey writes about this stuff and is generally heavily disliked by the anti-data-center folks

* https://blog.andymasley.com/p/data-center-land-use-issues-ar...

* https://blog.andymasley.com/p/i-might-have-found-the-specifi...

atleastoptimal3• 2 months ago

Regarding water usage, in general data centers do not use more water than other types of heavy manufacturing

The Georgia data center is only using ~2% of the county’s water. For comparison, a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant is using ~4% of the county’s water. A construction plant for Rivian cars is using about the same amount of water as Meta’s data center. The data center is functioning like any other normal industry in the county.

https://blog.andymasley.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake

Regarding data centers increasing ambient temp, the paper is simply measuring the surface temperature of the buildings, going against the claim that a data center, merely by its presence in a community, raises the ambient temperature by a few degrees or more

https://andymasley.com/writing/data-centers-heat-exhaust-is-...

I know both sources are from the same guy, but he cites many primary sources in his articles

esafak• 2 months ago

Since electricity demand has outpaced supply they are increasing prices: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-elec...

expedition322• 2 months ago

more money to other countries who don't allow protesting or even complaining about data centers,

The point of living in a rich country is that you don't lower your standards to shit holes with corrupt governments...

insane_dreamer3• 2 months ago

I can understand wanting to curtail it, but in return you are getting fewer jobs,

since AI -- as designed to be deployed -- is taking away jobs, then by enabling data centers you are in fact getting fewer jobs

yours is the same perverse argument that was used to build Walmart Supercenters (lower prices! they'll create jobs!) which literally destroyed the economy of many small towns and communities, and paved the way for every other big box retailer to do the same

so don't be surprised that people aren't eager to enable something that is designed to destroy their livelihood

doom2• 2 months ago

AI is a genuine source of economic growth.

If only they could spur even more economic growth with the planning and construction of more fabs for all the RAM it will need (assuming the level of growth that their S-1s are claiming)

Sol-• 2 months ago

The less NIMBYs are involved or aware of any infrastructure project, the better. Is that even a question? They ruined enough opportunities and wealth in the last decades.

fedreg• 2 months ago

some of these projects impact surrounding homes and businesses. NIMBYs should definitely be aware and involved

nancyminusone2• 2 months ago

I don't recall anyone in my town being overly angry when fiber internet dug up their front yards.

But the datacenter they couldn't stop has made national news multiple times.

Also, what wealth? "Please allow me to exploit your land for little benefit to you" isn't a great selling point.

dieselgate• 2 months ago

Yes, it is a question. Obviously a balance must be struck but where the line is drawn will depend. The point about "ruining wealth opportunities" will likely rub a lot of people the wrong way even on a place like YCombinator forum

btian• 2 months ago

When I grew up in Singapore, the locations of all data centers are secret by default to prevent terrorist attacks.

jstummbillig3• 2 months ago

I mean the framing is so silly.

"If bank vaults are so great, why would you not advertise their locations". It's a mystery, is what it is.

ndsipa_pomu2• 2 months ago

Well, banks aren't kept secret and the vaults are usually inside.

manyatoms• 2 months ago

There's a ton of expensive hardware that thieves might want. Why wouldn't you keep that quiet.

duped2• 2 months ago

I'm as big of a skeptic on these AI companies and question deeply the long term value of data center buildout as a land use policy in the communities where they're being built. But:

So let me ask the question directly: if AI data centers are such a tremendous benefit to communities, why are so many of them being built without meaningful community input?

Because of this (emphasis mine):

They’re watching their utility bills climb, finding sick animals they can’t explain, and worrying about the long-term impacts on their health and property values

How are you supposed to have reasonable discussion about land use, economic impacts, zoning, etc when you're getting flooded with input from crockpots?

dekhn2• 2 months ago

Can you say with absolute certainty that sick animals and long term impacts on their health are not caused by data centers? Certainly we have long list of examples where industrial activity contaminated areas with little oversight and it did kill animals and cause long-term impacts on health. I think you're saying that data centers do not pollute in a way that would cause sick animals or long-term impacts on health, but I don't think that can be stated confidently.

duped2• 2 months ago

So this might be controversial and I'm unable to phrase it better, but you can't always engage in good faith to address claims when the claimant themselves are incapable of engaging in good faith to make them.

I could be convinced on negative environmental impact of data centers in a few ways. I could believe there's additional strain on water purification infrastructure if the open loop cooling systems are using additives and creating additional volume of water that existing treatment plants weren't designed to handle. I could believe that additional power demand and on-site generators using fossil fuels could create pollution where it didn't exist before. I could believe that in a rush to build quicker, construction crews take shortcuts.

Basically all industrial activity on this planet creates waste that can harm people. That's why we create zones for it away from residences, and why land closer to it is cheaper.

This is all stuff you can engage with good faith. The problem is these are not the claims that the crazy people are making, and not the ones it sounds like the author of TFA is bothering to investigate. There's a large group of people that will believe "thing bad, thing hurt" with zero evidence besides vibes, and you can't meet with psychosis on shared ground.

legitster4• 2 months ago

People's bewilderment about this stuff speaks more to how removed they are from their local civics.

Nearly everything in your town is built like this. The amount of people who come out of the woodwork to oppose coffee shops, housing development, new hospitals, bus stops, etc would astound you. Try attending a local city council meeting. Part of the reason civic infrastructure takes so long and costs so much is because of the enormous burdens of transparency.

Or the sheer number of things that can go wrong during zoning, development, etc. The best time to announce a new business is when construction is nearly done. And the cities themselves want the development to be secret because they don't want to be underbid by the town next door (did anybody actually like the transparency of Amazon's HQ2 process?)

swatcoder• 2 months ago

Modern data centers are effectively mines, but without even the upside of supporting a local economy.

They extract local resources (land, power, grid capacity, water, etc) and sell that as compute. As a rule, the mine operators are national or multi-national firms that have no presence with which to invest the extraction profits back into the community. The local resources are harvested, processed, and sold, and then the proceeds disperse into the books of these gargantuan, far-off operators.

The only way to recover some of the profits on those local resources where they're being harvested would be with taxes or similar ongoing development obligations, but the firms specifically predate on communities too politically weak to levy those against them.

If AI isn't just an speculative bubble with gross overinvestment, they may have important value as a national economic or security interest, but they're pretty terrible and lop-sided deal for existing communities. That's why they're kept quiet.

chasd00• 2 months ago

They’re not built in secret, it’s just no one cared until now. How come no one cared when AWS and the other big cloud providers were building out all that infrastructure? Some one should put together a map of all data centers (not just “ai” datacenters), current and planned, complete with power and water consumption. oh the humanity!

yegle• 2 months ago

Uh, no? It was not built in secret before the AI hype.

In fact as late as Jan 2026 Google was proudly presenting their new data centers in Bangkok: https://www.googlecloudpresscorner.com/2026-01-21-Google-Clo...

Disclaimer: Google Cloud employee

ChrisArchitect• 2 months ago

Post is from last week, and is just an intro to the map project, discussed here at length:

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48287952

dosisking• 2 months ago

And what happened to Climate Change? Seems that they don't care about it anymore, they rather have their data centers which give them more control over society

insane_dreamer3• 2 months ago

Looks like we're all so starry-eyed with the wonder of this shiny new tech that we don't gaf about global warming anymore (or the other impacts on society)

vx_r• 2 months ago

dito

sublinear• 2 months ago

Project Stargate

xnx• 2 months ago

Secret like this announcement by Google? https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/infrastructure-and-clo...

If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?

Related Stories