Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/americans-are-angry-about-data-centers-politicians-are-feeling-pressure-2026-07-16/

by baranul • 3 days ago

97 67 3 days ago

ares623• 3 days ago

Who cares about pressure when you can now receive enough compensation to never worry about getting re-elected ever again. You can even fuck off to some safe haven country to live the rest of your life in peace and comfort.

lardosaurusrex• 3 days ago

still isn't gonna stop people from releasing the massive built-up stress and obliterating anything these morons have attempted to build.

if they weren't concerned then "hawaiian bunkers" wouldnt even be in society's vernacular.

if any rich people get caught in the crossfire at this point then that's on them but society has made it pretty clear that this is not an "if" situation and more a "when" one.

deepsun• 3 days ago

What I see today public will reelect anyway. So no worries about that either.

fleventynine2• 3 days ago

I think there's room for win-win solutions here; the cost of placating the locals is a rounding error compared to the cost of these data centers.

1. Local governments can require that if the data center peak load is 1.0GW, they must provision transmission and generation capacity for the local region of 1.2GW; the extra power can be given to the neighbors at substantial discount.

2. Construct a public swimming complex nearby, heated with waste data center heat.

3. Local governments can enforce strict limits on environmental noise at the property boundary. I've personally stood right next to a 150MW-class datacenter and experienced sound levels less than traffic from a typical suburban 4-lane street; making the datacenter quieter than any other industrial use is a choice the builder can make if they have the right incentives.

Setup directional microphones around the perimeter, and fine them $25,000 per minute per dB above the agreed threshold. Distribute the fines to the neighbors. Failure to pay promptly means the sheriff shuts down the power.

All of these options are far cheaper than launching the data center into space...

dozerly• 3 days ago

All of these options require “extra” money to be spent, which even if it logically makes sense, will not happen when it’s shown companies can buy local politicians and continue anyway

adriand• 3 days ago

None of these mitigations (although they’re good ideas) address what I think is the real issue here, which is that people don’t like AI. And why would they, when the dish being served by AI CEOs is job loss with a side of extinction risk.

I think many data centre opponents understand that being opposed to AI is not sufficient to halt a local project, so it is noise, water use and power consumption that they latch onto - although, in jurisdictions without plentiful water and clean power, those two reasons are quite valid.

In my own local community, there’s vocal opposition to a proposed data centre that is next to Lake Ontario, 500 metres from the nearest residential neighbourhood, on a brownfield site with 500 megawatts of clean power capacity. None of that makes a difference to those opposed.

antonymoose• 3 days ago

In my area (South Carolina) - the opposition seems hyper fixated on “water use” with little or no conversation around electrical usage or even equitable utility rates. AI itself largely absent from the discourse.

0xy• 3 days ago

AI is not leading to job losses.

galaxyLogic• 3 days ago

with a side of extinction risk.

My proposal would be to require data-centers to provide enough clean energy to power themselves for years to come. That would help humanity survive. Plus it would lower energy costs when there is more power-generaion available. Lowering your power-bill would make people love AI.

Jordan-117• 3 days ago

Maybe it's semantics, but I feel like local QoL concerns (mainly noise and electric bills, plus an overblown focus on water) are the primary driver for in-community resistance. Shoving AI into everything is annoying, and there's real ideological opposition amongst a lot of online tastemakers, but not enough to motivate John Q. Public to show up to county zoning meetings. If hyperscalers were tactful enough to limit impacts on their neighbors, I think opposition would be a much more niche issue.

rileymat2• 3 days ago

With low pitched data center noise does the decibel level tell the whole story? I thought it carried better and penetrated better than the db level would indicate.

phil216• 3 days ago

What about fan noise is low pitched?

I generally agree that I would not like to live across the street from a datacenter. Having worked inside of dozens of them, I could not care less if I lived half a mile from one. Most people who live within such a distance currently do not have a clue. At that point I would not even worry about the noise from the backup generators.

sm-silversight• 3 days ago

Politics in the US reliably fail to arrive at reasonable conclusions like this. I don't know why.

kylehotchkiss• 3 days ago

The engineer style snap to solution with no interest in the actual reasons many Americans are opposed to AI is one of the reasons Americans are opposed to AI

jmclnx• 3 days ago

All the data centers do is:

1. use all the water

2. Increase electric costs but a large amount

3. Increase noise in the neighborhood

If the above was false, no one would care. Plus these data centers provides almost no jobs, so there is no benefit to the community. Granted there is more tax revenue, but the people paying taxes do not see their tax burden go down.

So the wonder why ??

consensus12• 3 days ago

All of the above are false, except for 3 which has actually happened in a few cases, though is definitely the outlier as I have been near data centers and couldn't hear a thing. And they provide a lot more jobs than the 0 jobs that were provided by the undeveloped land they are built on.

ninkendo2• 3 days ago

I wonder what fallacy you’re going to use to justify GPU-heavy data centers using zero water: are you going to take the “they’re closed loop” path, and conveniently ignore that they need to be continually topped off, and that effectively makes them open loop anyway (or that they heat exchange with a separate loop that is evaporated?) Or maybe you’ll just say “sure the water evaporates, but it’ll rain down somewhere so it’s still zero” ignoring that the water is taken from a place it’s needed (a municipality) to a place it’s not (the ocean)? Or maybe you’ll point to some extremely rare designs that don’t continually consume water, and pretend they’re representative of all of them (when the number of truly closed loop data centers effectively rounds to zero.)

I eagerly await your response.

JimsonYang2• 3 days ago

I mean Michigan really loves it when something gives jobs, so as long as the data center actually enacts on it then I suspect opposition will go away

That said, we've seen data center projects often employ much less jobs than expected. I know Core Scientific when they did a data center in like Texas they employed like 10 people not 200

JimsonYang2• 3 days ago

*upate I just realized this is Saline, next to Ann Arbor and had a lot of student activism to push back against the data centre project like last year

So imo I dont think the article truly represents the opinions and thoughts of most michiganders

everdrive6• 3 days ago

Populism is on the rise, and nearly everyone is discontent. The discontent has gotten so out of hand that much of it is quite ridiculous, but it's serious enough that it must be dealt with. Given the past 20 years, I expect politicians to completely fumble this easy layup and find ways to force data centers anyhow.

jrowen9• 3 days ago

Everyone may be discontent (which might be a baseline feature of the human experience for many), but is anyone actually willing to do anything about it?

Compared to the activism of the 60s and 70s, where so many people seemed willing to put their entire lives on hold for the cause, the fact that there is no major populist uprising against the dismantling of the institution of the presidency leads me to believe there is a threshold of contentment afforded by modern technology and QoL.

In either case it is about populism though. Hopping on a bus to California to protest was a cool thing to do. Somehow this data center thing happened to catch on and become a lever people felt they could move with mere outrage, even if it does seem pretty misguided.

sseagull• 3 days ago

but is anyone actually willing to do anything about it?

They did. They elected Trump.

no major populist uprising against the dismantling of the institution of the presidency

Some people view the president as the only directly-elected person powerful enough to fight for them in dismantling the rest of a government that isn't working (or even actively working against them). So they implicitly want a strong president.

This only goes as far as the president agrees with them of course.

everdrive6• 3 days ago

Everyone may be discontent (which might be a baseline feature of the human experience for many), but is anyone actually willing to do anything about it?

Talking to people on HN, the answer is a resounding "NO." If I point out that smart phones are contributing to mental illness and have enabled mass-scale surveillance larger than ever previously thought possible, the response has been "but I might have trouble paying for parking and some restaurants don't have menus."

protocolture• 3 days ago

dehrmann• 3 days ago

People are actually angry about inflation and a sense of a stagnant labor market. Data centers and AI play into both those fears.

jrowen9• 3 days ago

Sadly if they were smart they would push for UBI rather than jobs or stopping data centers.

Zero-sum scarcity mentality needs to end. Don't push back on prosperity. Push to have those gains distributed more evenly.

Push for a ridiculous tax on data centers that goes directly to the local economy. If they don't buy it then it's the same result as blocking them on vibes.

happytoexplain2• 2 days ago

UBI is a distraction. Of course it would help, but it's not a solution. Nobody is going to accept "here's how you filthy masses can be miserable instead of very miserable" as an acceptable compromise.

Calling people stupid for not accepting it is telling, and disconnected. Americans in particular will accept violence first (demonstrably), and this is in fact one of the defining virtues of Americans (yes, violence in the face of the imposition of misery by the wealthy is a virtue - not all cultures exhibit this virtue).

duxup• 3 days ago

We’ve been visiting data centers for decades… now it appears to be a hot potato. It’s a bit surreal.

kingstnap• 3 days ago

I really don't think it has anything to do with the datacenters as a building. It's more that AI has been kinda poison pilled in the minds of the people in terms of the negative emotions they feel regarding:

* Billionaires

* Job Loss

* AI slop floods

Ultimately they feel the need to be activists and they do so by being NIMBYs because you can have a ton of influence in municipal politics.

TheAceOfHearts• 3 days ago

There is a weird sense of entitlement that AI data centers should be allowed to get built anywhere, but I don't think the positive case has been made that it's actually that much of a net positive in many locations. The US is massive and if AI data centers are such a positive boon then it should be easy to find a place where they're actually welcome. Unlike traditional data centers where latency might be relevant, most AI data centers aren't latency sensitive so the default plan should be to build them far from major population centers. Just buy up a massive chunk of empty land in the middle of nowhere and drop all the data centers there.

There is some misinformation around resource usage, but most data center constructions aren't being fully candid and transparent with their expected resource usage either. I think the key issue is that many major constructions haven't built any trust with local communities nor have they listened to people's concerns, but they feel entitled to force through their projects anyway.

If you think that these AI data centers are great and incredibly beneficial, go advocate for your local government to bring construction to wherever it is that you live. Let people sort themselves out based on their interests.

Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure

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