Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers

https://www.redfin.com/news/ai-data-centers-opposition-education-benefit/

by toomuchtodo • 8 hours ago

125 263 8 hours ago

mrhottakes• 7 hours ago

They're just awful to live near; the folks that are clamoring for more cheap tokens should try moving in next door to the token factory.

WarmWash4• 7 hours ago

There is a study from ASU that found they are awful to live within....1200ft of.

Aurornis4• 7 hours ago

They probably would be awful to have a house next to, but which if the hyperscale data center proposals are near residential areas?

The really large data centers have to go into areas with a lot of land and utility connections. These are usually zoned commercial or industrial already.

throw7• 6 hours ago

I heard about one in northern virginia which seems to be the front lines in this debate. It has onsite power generation which seems to be going 24/7 which is positively awful if you have to live next to that.

ipython• 4 hours ago

Here's three links to get you started.

https://virginiamercury.com/2026/06/29/virginias-romance-wit...

https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2025/0320/data-center-...

https://www.insidenova.com/news/loudoun/report-ashburn-resid...

pixelatedindex2• 7 hours ago

America is so massive, these trillion dollar companies can surely build these out in the boonies with very few people around?

ETA: I would rather no data centers be built, but my point is if we have to, let’s minimize the number of people who are affected. Offer to move them if need be.

lokar2• 7 hours ago

I wonder the same thing. It could be that getting transition grid interconnects and redundant fiber paths is much faster in more suburban areas vs rural areas.

pixelatedindex2• 7 hours ago

A lot of the big companies are massively allergic to building infrastructure, even when they get government grants to do it. Look at how badly the broadband rollout was bungled. Shot their own foot at this point.

dieselgate• 7 hours ago

Even then they can wind up in the proverbial backyard. I don't know much about data center staffing needs and zoning laws but those would seem relevant spatial constraints and considerations.

yoyohello132• 7 hours ago

I propose we build one under Sam Altman's house.

aqme28• 7 hours ago

I agree with you, but even then it's still going to be someone's backyard

qurren3• 7 hours ago

They need to hire IT, maintainence, and security to run the datacenters, and there aren't many qualified people in the boonies. Small towns are better targets, and honestly also just objectively less damaging to the environment.

None of this NIMBYism is about the datacenter itself, it's all a protest against AI making the economy really shitty for them.

teeray• 7 hours ago

Sounds like they should build the equivalent of a little mining town out in the boonies too and start working on the housing crisis simultaneously. “Move to Nowhere, USA, and get cheap, new housing and a good-paying job” would get them the talent they want.

EDIT: yes, I know mining towns had their own share of problems (I’ve heard “16 tons” too), but knowing the hazards of the past, I think we can figure out a more equitable structure with this kind of setup.

toast03• 5 hours ago

You need on the order of 15 permanent onsite employees to run a datacenter; 5 each for 24/7 coverage of security, building maintenance, and tech. You probably don't really need 24/7 onsite for building maintenance or tech. Traveling employees or (probably traveling) contractors can handle projects that exceed the local scope.

Should be able to locally source security and building maintenance, if the pay is good. These are skills that are needed everywhere. The onsite tech can likely be sourced locally too: first and foremost, they're remote hands ... knowledgeable remote hands are nicer, but the mandatory skills are: read and follow directions, notice and report unusual circumstances, lift and manipulate heavy objects. It's not rocket surgery.

If you put your datacenter in the near boonies, say 30 minutes away from the nearest suburb, you can usually still find the big lots you need, and people can commute from there: a 30 minute commute with no traffic isn't too awful. Of course, you'll have neighbors on large lots who didn't think through that living out on the boonies with no zoning meant noisy neighbors could move in. :P

duskdozer• 7 hours ago

And ruin the boonies too? American norms and laws are not conducive to making nice places to live, but they've skated by having enough land and car-first infrastructure. With the huge increase in warehouses and data centers in residential areas over the past 5-10 years, I wonder if there will be an inflection point where it finally needs to be dealt with.

win311fwg4• 6 hours ago

We could in a vacuum, but they require human labor and human labor isn't found in the boonies.

It's the age old problem. The people in the cities cry that there are no jobs and the rural businesses cry that they can't find anyone to hire, with no great resolution as the businesses cannot afford to move into the city and the people don't want to travel to the boonies.

However, in this case, these data centers are so well capitalized that they can afford to move them into the cities right beside where the workers are located.

stackskipton• 3 hours ago

It's generally more expensive for them when it comes to things like power, water and internet.

Boonies have very poor in each of those and building it up would take too long so throw another in Northern Virginia since they have expensive access to additional of that but at least it will become operational.

Diogenesian• 7 hours ago

It seems downright dishonest to focus so much on Loudon County VA, which is DC's major tech hub and has the highest median income of any county in the US. It is definitely dishonest to not mention any demographic or historical details.

chasd006• 7 hours ago

No one ever cared about DCs before now. I think there’s a lot of social media influence from nation state competitors going on to try and slow SOTA development in the US.

Ironically, There’s enough issues with the DC buildout going on that even with 100% public opinion support it would still be significantly delayed. The behind the meter power generation isn’t going well. There’s only so many gas fired turbines on the market. And connecting a DC to an established grid isn’t like clicking a button in AWS no matter how much money you have.

nixon_why69• 7 hours ago

I think its a proxy for general populist sentiment.

"These AI people are getting rich selling unicorn farts while I'm on the same pay and everything is more expensive, fuck them".

forgetfreeman• 7 hours ago

DCs have a tendency to destabilize the local grid and drive up grid rates and have ridiculous water consumption requirements, both largely externalized to the surrounding community, so it's more a matter of basic self-defense than any notional populist agenda.

linkjuice4all• 7 hours ago

It’s more than one thing. Yes there’s definitely some populism and maybe some astroturfing from outside groups - but actual electricity costs are going up and the average consumer can’t really get anymore efficient, so they’re indirectly subsidizing this stuff. Computers and related hardware have gone up in price. And then you’ve got all of the “AI layoffs” that also result in real-world pain.

Ignore at your own peril.

repelsteeltje• 6 hours ago

But that would simply result in Most Americans don't want AI Data Centers, which isn't the same as NYMBYism. I think many Americans see the benefits of having access to unicorn farts and may even support having more data centers. Just not in my backyard, thank you.

(Ftr. the article doesn't have an opinion on whether Americans like AI, just my take.)

owebmaster• 5 hours ago

Are you sure that you think what you described is "populist sentiment"?

Weirdly, it sounds like populist sentiment.

bigfishrunning2• 4 hours ago

The best way to keep the AI people from getting rich selling unicorn farts is to not buy any unicorn farts.

shalmanese• 7 hours ago

I think there’s a lot of social media influence from nation state competitors going on to try and slow SOTA development in the US.

No sign of datacenter activity at the local 4-H club either. Am I so out of touch? No, it's the commie brainwashed American citizens who are wrong.

gortok• 7 hours ago

I think there’s a lot of social media influence from nation state competitors going on to try and slow SOTA development in the US.

This comes cross as unbelievable, and at worst a fantastical statement, as someone who lives in Northern Virginia and is effectively watching the Datacenter battle unfold from the front lines, and dealing with the local politics and electricity costs rising at a precipitous rate.

Our electricity bill has doubled. Loudoun County Board of Supervisors want to erect “Statue of Liberty” sized power transmission lines, and those that want data centers are doing their damndest to somehow claim that they’re not responsible for the rise in the cost of utilities and shouldn’t be held responsible for it.

Part of the reason people care about Datacenters now is that they’re starting to litter the landscape, take resources from local municipalities, and raise costs for everyone involved, whereas previously there were not enough of them to really move the needle as being a problem.

Folks care because their bottom line is impacted in a time when it’s already hard to make ends meet every month due to rising costs of food, gas, and utilities, not because of some unnamed boogeyman in the form of a “nation state competitor”.

RajT883• 7 hours ago

They're building a mass of DC's near me as well in northern IL (not quite as many as by you). I see a lot of weird stuff on social media - people inactive for years all of a sudden becoming super-activists and posting non-stop anti-DC content. Nearly identical content to what's being pushed by a bunch of faceless accounts named like "Water4All","Nature Reign" - something vaguely environmental sounding.

Talking points like:

"We should call data centers what they actually are: surveillance centers designed to put us all in a digital prison by 2030"

It's fishy. People aren't quite showing up and saying the same things at city council meetings, but the local city anti-DC group is full of people reposting this stuff. One clickbait article in particular, "there's no such thing as a closed loop system".

There's real concerns with the data centers. But, the opposition to them doesn't feel entirely organic (imo).

mindslight3• 6 hours ago

Folks care because their bottom line is impacted in a time when it’s already hard to make ends meet every month due to rising costs of food, gas, and utilities, not because of some unnamed boogeyman in the form of a “nation state competitor”

While agreeing with where you're coming from, including this, it is also worth nothing that there is truth to what you're rejecting as well. Our longstanding unsolved domestic problems are fertile ground for nation state competitors to foment discontent, gain oppositional mindshare, and ultimately harm our overall position. The elites seem to think these problems can just be ignored or swept under the rug, when in reality the frustration grows until it boils over into highly destructive self-owns. We're already seeing this actively play out on a grand scale with general politics, but it can certainly happen in more specific ways that target things like data centers.

To be industrially competitive we need to fix our longstanding domestic problems that fall on individuals, rather than merely ignoring them. In the case of data centers - lack of effective environmental regulations around air and sound pollution, complete inability for municipalities to regulate the operations of something after it's been built, and a shortage of infrastructure that's now been privatized for use by the highest bidder.

Plus that general affordability crisis you touched upon, of course. Nobody likes the feeling that an appendage of a trillion dollar company can come to their city, wave around the promise of everything-bubble money, and make it so their own individual voice is meaningless.

enraged_camel• 5 hours ago

> This comes cross as unbelievable, and at worst a fantastical statement

You can read some of the recent reporting here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/business/china-russia-ai-...

duped2• 3 hours ago

They’re not responsible for the rise in the cost of utilities and shouldn’t be held responsible for it.

One thing that has near radicalized me is the rampant dishonesty on this subject. Data center builders/users have the audacity to tell me that my rates aren't going up, but also if they are it isn't their fault, but even if it is their fault they will actually lower my rates in the long term (but somehow, never promising to pay us back for the damage in the short term).

It really, really bothers me how slimy the people doing this are.

oooyay2• 7 hours ago

No one ever cared about DCs before now.

Society hasn't felt the very real effects of data centers until recently. Power supply being short meant that residential customers have had to pick up the tab for heavy industrial users. We've started to learn just how bad all those dams we built are for the environment and many of them are tied to data center money. Elon Musk waltzed into Memphis and stood up a natural gas data center that has basically poisoned the surrounding area.

Maybe nation state actors are helping, that can always be true. It is also true that the American people are starting to realize they've been had many times over and are just starting to ask for a better deal. I think we should listen.

bigfishrunning2• 4 hours ago

Power supply being short meant that residential customers have had to pick up the tab for heavy industrial users.

Maybe some kind of progressive pricing for power would be appropriate. I'm not sure if this exists, and correct me if it does, but maybe the second MW should cost an order of magnitude more then the first, and so on.

bcrosby95• 6 hours ago

People seem pretty sour on big tech in general, maybe it's because, I don't know...

Data centers being directly tied to increases in our power bills.

Or CEOs talking about how they're going to get to fire everyone because of AI.

Or social media raising the political temperature.

Or all of them combined. Tech has never been so intolerable across the board.

jcranmer• 6 hours ago

The data center construction boom has precipitated a lot of inflation in electronics and related fields, because the data centers are buying out all of the silicon manufacturing and RAM manufacturing and etc, and all of this stuff is horribly supply-limited. And the people pushing for data center construction are proudly telling us that we need to support this so that we can put half of the population out of work, oh, and we just need a small trillion-dollar subsidy or five to pay for it all (because demand for AI isn't high enough to pay for all of it themselves).

There's no need to invent some malign foreign conspirator to generate unpopularity for this stuff. No, the AI companies are led by unpopular CEOs, who are making unpopular statements (almost cartoonishly so). And opposing a data center is the kind of action that regular people, upset about this sort of stuff, feel that they can actually meaningfully effect. So of course it was going to balloon like it has.

strictnein4• 6 hours ago

For those who are unaware of the claims of Chinese influence, a couple articles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/business/china-russia-ai-...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/husband-code-pink-founder-nevil...

Previous coverage of Singham, who coincidentally is married to a co-founder of Code Pink:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/europe/neville-roy-...

Not saying these are correct and are proof, but this isn't some fringe concern from the MAGA crowd or something. It would also be a logical response on China's part to the US working to block them from getting GPUs, processor tech, etc.

caconym_2• 6 hours ago

No one ever cared about DCs before now.

This isn't true. People were starting to mobilize against crypto datacenters in the late 2010s and early 2020s^[1][2], long before the current AI-fueled building frenzy.

I think there’s a lot of social media influence from nation state competitors going on to try and slow SOTA development in the US.

It's fairly well documented that this is happening to some degree, but as above, foreign agents didn't conjure the anti-datacenter movement out of nothing. It's a fact that if the average crypto or AI datacenter moves in next door to you, there's a good chance it's going to crash your quality of life and the value of your property, and all in service of making a few fantastically rich guys even richer. Also, they are the same guys building a machine that they claim is going to destroy your livelihood. You don't need foreign agents to engineer a backlash here.

[1] https://e360.yale.edu/features/bitcoins-intensive-energy-dem... [2] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/10/09/texas-hood-county-cr...

TitaRusell2• 2 hours ago

My country banned all hyperscalers. Has nothing to do with China- I live in a densely populated country that doesn't need the chump change from Google and Microsoft.

Ugly giant buildings that take up valuable land and require lots of infrastructure meanwhile providing no jobs are a very bad deal.

rsoto23• 5 hours ago

Wow it's almost like modern datacenters use way more power due to GPU consumption. Emit way more pollution. Use way more land. Make way more noise. Produce slop instead of functioning products. Do yall use your brain before chiming in and misinforming everyone?

vel0city• 4 hours ago

I made this comment a little bit ago, I'll share it again:

I think the biggest change in public sentiment in datacenters is a reaction to the extreme scale they're being deployed at these days. They're really vastly unlike datacenters of the past. The power densities are so much higher, they're so much larger, and they're getting vastly more environmental waivers and tax subsidies than ever before.

A quiet, average-sized warehouse-like building in an industrial area with a big power substation next to it often didn't bother a lot of people. A giant monster of a building being built in what was previously people's backyards with howling on-site power generation that got installed without any kind of air quality reviews because they're allegedly "temporary" and starts sucking the groudwater dry is a whole different story.

This is a datacenter: https://maps.app.goo.gl/pzSsUHXPaUuLGaDa9 I doubt many people even know its a datacenter. Its pretty much any other office building.

This is also a datacenter. I imagine just about everyone living nearby knows its a datacenter. https://maps.app.goo.gl/wR4NgcWQVhJAy5Gy6

Now, don't get me wrong, I do agree there's a lot of social media frenzy in reaction to all datacenters. There are a lot of datacenters around me, and it seems like roughly nobody cared when they were built. They've been there for years, some have been operational for decades. Suddenly now, lots of people have a problem with all of them.

chasd006• 2 hours ago

I think the biggest change in public sentiment in datacenters is a reaction to the extreme scale they're being deployed at these days. They're really vastly unlike datacenters of the past. The power densities are so much higher, they're so much larger, and they're getting vastly more environmental waivers and tax subsidies than ever before.

ok now this is something i understand and haven't thought about, thank you. I've visited the stargate construction site in Abilene TX since it's not too far from me (3hrs). The scale is indeed unlike any DC i've ever seen before.

edit: "...howling on-site power generation that got installed without any kind of air quality reviews because they're allegedly "temporary" .." you're talking about XAI's data centers in Memphis right? I don't think that's a fair comparison, that was knocked together in like 100 days. Those generators are on trailers.

treis2• 11 minutes ago

This is also a datacenter. I imagine just about everyone living nearby knows its a datacenter. https://maps.app.goo.gl/wR4NgcWQVhJAy5Gy6

That's not much bigger than the two warehouses next to it.

f33d51733• 4 hours ago

The US nationalized tik tok so the chinese couldn't influence people anymore. Apparently that didn't work?

BeetleB3• 3 hours ago

No one ever cared about DCs before now.

Just because you were not looking doesn't mean it wasn't happening. Anti-DC sentiment has been high in some places before LLMs came on to the scene. Even HN has had multiple submissions of towns in rural areas fighting not to let Meta (or similar companies) build datacenters in their town.

(On the flip side, I know at least one town that welcomed them!)

Casteil3• 3 hours ago

No one ever cared about DCs before now.

Fewer people cared, sure.. but it's because until recently they weren't eclipsing power consumption of extremely energy-heavy industries, noticeably driving local residential energy prices up.

They also weren't so heavily noise polluting nor were they typically built in places where their noise pollution affected so many people.

chasd006• 2 hours ago

where does the noise pollution come from? GPU fans? What's more noisy about a DC filled with CPUs and GPUs than a DC filled with just CPUs. I can imagine generators being noisy but that wouldn't be anything different than regular data centers. Also, so few DCs for the AI buildout are actually online where are the noise measurements taken from?

I understand if people don't want a DC near them i just don't understand why they care now. I have some pretty big ones about 3miles from me and next door to both are residential areas and businesses. In fact, some of the biggest ones where i live (Dallas) are so understated you have to know it's a datacenter beforehand to even realize what you're looking at. There are some really large ones in Carrolton TX that are nestled right up to neighborhoods, i bet 95% of the people don't even know they're there and the 5% that do probably work there or host there.

the carrolton dc https://maps.app.goo.gl/mv3wo96ZTuhRBkGy5

21asdffdsa12• 7 hours ago

.. and are completely ignored. The mighty nimby seems to be very nimble as soon as economic interests are involved. Very strange.. i thought he was the mighty preventer of all things changing. Especially the plotholes.. eh potholes and buses and rail..

sabujp• 7 hours ago

most americans say not in my backyard to more housing in their backyard too, but i digress.

everdrive2• 7 hours ago

The whole world is California, and the most important thing we can do is pack more and more people into the same space. People from here, people from there. We want more crowdedness, and everyhing that comes with it: crime, noise, pollution, lack of social cohesion. Everything. Every place must be like this, and everything must grow forever.

WarmWash4• 7 hours ago

Negatives acknowledged, there are huge efficiency upsides to dense human living. Everything becomes smoother, faster, less wasteful. You get a society that leverages economies of scale for everything.

izacus2• 5 hours ago

What kind of reason would you possibly have to write the sentence you did?

Why did you?

I-M-S2• 3 hours ago

It could be argued that the article tendentiously paints this as a "not in my backyard" issue in order to normalize NIMBY outlook, conflating building AI data centres with building housing.

alright2565• 3 hours ago

I don't want a data center in my back yard because I do want housing in my back yard.

Once a data center shows up, that plot of land is locked out of more productive development for decades.

freeone30002• 3 hours ago

The article puts that percentage at 39%, which falls a bit short of “most” but is frighteningly high.

gegtik• 7 hours ago

Unbelievable. What's next, NIMBYs for sewage and effluent? Where does it end exactly?

whatever1• 7 hours ago

You definitely do not want a sewage treatment plant in your backyard. But hey, you got a cheaper home price so that the rich guys can pump their crap to your backyard from miles away.

Aurornis4• 7 hours ago

I agree that I don’t want a data center in my backyard either.

What’s missing from this strange conversation is discussion about how many data center proposals are near residential areas.

I tried to look for one in my state and a few surrounding areas and couldn’t find any. There was an amusing story about how data center protestors had to organize expensive bus trips to get the protesters out to the data center site because it was so remote.

There was another story about a small town without any major electricity or communication infrastructure coming together to impose a moratorium on data center construction. There were no plans to build data centers in their small town and no reason to consider it at all, but they felt so threatened that they needed to convene and put on a big show about banning it.

The social phenomenon of the data center construction protest movement is really fascinating. My assumption is that it will run its course and then be mostly dropped when the next current thing comes along.

There are some actual concerns about using natural gas instead of trying to utilize the optimal power sources or locations, but they’re mostly overshadowed by bogeyman complaints like thinking that a data center is going to end up in your backyard or water consumption that is negligible compared to golf courses and swimming pools.

yoyohello132• 7 hours ago

My take is that people feel powerless to really do anything against these massive tech companies. This is the only tangible way they can fight back.

ryandrake2• 6 hours ago

Yea, there's probably not one single issue that people are fed up with, but datacenters have become lightning rods that represent big tech's disproportionate power over us, job-displacing AI, and are a visible example of how municipalities that we elect--serve and prioritize companies from out of town over their voters.

Aurornis4• 5 hours ago

I might believe that if the protests weren't being organized on Facebook and then posted to YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

It's more like garbage dumps. People don't want to moderate their production of garbage, they just don't want any consequences of it to be too close to their house.

epolanski2• 5 hours ago

I wouldn't want a GPU datacenter close to my house either.

They should buy land in middle of nowhere, many miles from any closest town, no less than 5. And they should build and provide their own electricity.

I don't see any other solution to make everyone coexist in peace.

Imagine it was your house a mile from such a monster. Eyesore, noisy.

datakan• 6 hours ago

There were no plans to build data centers in their small town and no reason to consider it at all

You have to be fair on this though. The time to ban something is before they start talking about doing it, not after. Being ahead of the game is never a bad thing, especially when small towns are so easily exploited due to income and infrastructure. They just can't afford long legal battles.

xoa• 6 hours ago

I'd like to add some extra strong emphasis/support to your post:

Being ahead of the game is never a bad thing, especially when small towns are so easily exploited due to income and infrastructure. They just can't afford long legal battles.

It's not merely "never a bad thing", for certain tools like zoning it is, at least in the jurisdictions I know of, required to be well ahead and consistently enforced. It's not something towns are allowed to do retroactively, if you have no proper legal town plan/zoning setup in place as well as various ordinances like noise then by default the only controls are the relatively weak state ones. There are many things a government is allowed to do if it's part of an overall plan that applies to all equally, but not if it's "we just don't like those guys specifically", and the best way to demonstrate that is to be making no special moves around a given arrival at all but rather to have it all setup.

Of course, there are as you suggest lots of other good reasons to be ahead too. It's a lot easier to consider things thoroughly and get community agreement when there isn't massive time pressure or lobbying going on and emotions aren't running high. It's easier to get some expert consultation at reasonable prices (in some cases there may even be community members with the skills and willingness to volunteer if it's not a time crush), to enact longer term infrastructure plans, to get any state approval if needed, etc etc. But there are legally serious hard lines as well and if towns are caught napping they may just not be able to use them at all.

Aurornis4• 5 hours ago

The interesting thing about the anecdote wasn't the timing. It was that there was no reason to build a data center there but they felt compelled to make it their top priority.

especially when small towns are so easily exploited due to income and infrastructure.

Small, remote towns without electricity or data connections are not easily exploited for data centers.

dv_dt• 6 hours ago

Does a data center need to be an immediate neighbor to raise electricity rates or consume water capacity?

dylan6046• 5 hours ago

This is such an obvious concern that it's hard to understand how the GP didn't think of it as well. Clearly, people don't always consider all the things and get focused in so they can't see the forest for the trees.

watwut3• 5 hours ago

There was an amusing story about how data center protestors had to organize expensive bus trips to get the protesters out to the data center site because it was so remote.

How did they get in?

tsunamifury3• 5 hours ago

If you look at Elk Grove Village, Illinois as their budget there after declaring they would become the AI Datacenter Capital of the World -- there is an obvious answer:

Suburbs cannot continue to pay for their infrastructure without drastically increasing taxes or finding new sources of income.

alistairSH• 5 hours ago

And on the flip side, I live in Fairfax County, VA and there are data centers EVERYWHERE. Especially if I cross into Ashburn (home of AOL and stuff) - literally mixed in with large townhome developments.

And the current plan - building a data center in Canaan Valley - is a whopper... 785 MW natural gas power plant on site with diesel generator backups (solely for the data center, not sold back to grid), 500+ acres of land, 2 million sqft initial building space, air quality impact assessment by the state is heavily redacted, $4 billion price tag.

All right next to one of DC's most popular outdoor/skiing recreation areas. The DC would loom over the two towns that support the entire region.

cucumber37328425• 2 hours ago

not sold back to grid)

They'd probably love to sell spare capacity back to the grid but the way interconnection is handled they'd likely be on the hook for a bunch of other upgrades to facilitate that hence why they're not.

You can't "just" add generation to the capacity to the grid without $5-15mil (could be way more but that'll usually torpedo a project) of cost.

SoftTalker2• 5 hours ago

It's easy for politicians to support a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Nobody will really oppose it, and it's a safe way to appear to be "fighting for the community."

dec0dedab0de• 5 hours ago

Most of it is anti-AI sentiment, there are already a ton of people who have lost jobs, or clients to AI.

What bothers me is clearing forests, sometimes even protected forests with the idea that they'll ask for forgiveness instead of permission.

judemelancon• 3 hours ago

I don't think they have an interest in forgiveness. I'm not sure it's a concept in their worldview.

neutronicus3• 4 hours ago

Data centers are conflated with rising energy costs.

It's partly about people's nominal objections, but mostly an attempt to hold them hostage to extract some energy bill subsidies (and general cost of living relief).

jancsika• 4 hours ago

What’s missing from this strange conversation is discussion about how many data center proposals are near residential areas.

What's strange is that you didn't once mention the layperson's fear of data center projects in their county/state potentially raising the cost of consumer electricity. I've never heard a layperson mention data centers without mentioning that fear.

Have you really heard zero occurrences of that fear in your view-from-Mars survey of this issue?

BeetleB3• 3 hours ago

I can't speak for elsewhere, but a town near me has a few data centers, and the anti-datacenter sentiment precedes their use for LLMs.

They simply take a lot of space, and the city gave sweet tax deals, and they employ almost no one. The locals aren't happy with that type of land use.

redlewel3• 7 hours ago

I think this is because the demand is so extreme for datacenters now that companies are building them in a manner that disrupts the environment around them. The newer ones are using on-site generators that are insanely loud and require multiples more power than datacenters have historically needed. For a rack with traditional servers with just RAM/CPU/Drives, 5kW is sufficient in most cases.

When you have racks that are full of 4U GPU systems that pull 3-6kW each, the power requirements per rack shoot up to 60kW+(with whole rack setups blowing past 100kW). So an AI datacenter requires over 20x the power compared to what they needed in the past. This either strains the power grid near the DC or they need to create on-site power to fulfill demand, which has noise and other concerns.

I work near a datacenter and you can't hear significant noise from the outside, maybe a slight humming sound but quieter than traffic. This is a DC that has been around for over a decade and uses power from the grid since most of the loads are non-GPU based.

ransom1538• 6 hours ago

Lol. A data center is no more than a industrial bread bakery (oddly specific i know). The entire anti-data US center is ran by China. EG. You can run a rack of servers in your closet. China is doing a great job.

trollbridge• 6 hours ago

Are you sure about that? I can't think of any bread bakeries pulling 2.2 gigawatts, which is us-east-1 pulls.

rsoto23• 5 hours ago

Lol the entire pro-data US center is ran by elon musk and the other cronies that bribed the Trump admin to let them violate the clean air act. They use gullible losers that will swallow their propaganda whole and promise them "AGI."

Natfan• 5 hours ago

https://youtu.be/_bP80DEAbuo

unethical_ban• 3 hours ago

Adversaries are happy to rule up democracies in any way possible, and it is foolish to think that there are zero concerns about placement of AI datacenters.

redlewel3• 3 hours ago

You need cooling, power, and at the data center I used to work at they literally ran out of power and couldn't get any more from the city. They actually built a new building in the parking lot so they had cause to request more power

cosmic_cheese• 6 hours ago

Site selection also isn't very thoughtful. A lot of pre-AI datacenters were placed a good distance away from places where people live, but time to operation seems to be the overwhelming priority now which is pushing them to build right in the middle of or next to developed areas.

kranke155• 3 hours ago

I don’t understand why they’re doing this? Is extending the grid to their shiny new DC so expensive they’d rather build on top or right next to housing? Is it the water supply ? I don’t understand why someone would do something so clearly self defeating

chasd006• 2 hours ago

idk, at least in DFW the biggest datacenters from the late 90s and early/mid 2000s are in the suburbs where everyone lives. There's some in and near downtown but there's not enough space or it's too expensive. The big datacenters were built where the giant neighborhood were built, places with lots of land for relatively low cost.

rsoto23• 5 hours ago

Yes, the AI Datacenters are much worse for the environment. xAI is using methane-turbines to power theirs, and they are allowed to pollute your communities because they bribed the Trump admin.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/16/elon-musk... https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/data-centers/elon-musk-... https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1014655584252361

mrngld• 4 hours ago

I have some degree of sympathy for data centers, and anyone else that needs power, only because of how broken our regulatory state is on approving new transmission.

To be clear, it's not just data centers that have this problem. Journalists have been spilling digital ink on this topic as it relates to solar and wind farms as well. It's also part of the thing that'd hold back rapid deployment of nuclear.

If there's a strong enough economic incentive then yeah people are going to try to optimize around broken government.

redlewel3• 3 hours ago

Yes, this is exactly what I was talking about. The datacenter I used to work at ran off the grid and was essentially quiet.

e40• 5 hours ago

I think this is because the demand is so extreme for datacenters now

Point to _any_ analysis that says the current building boom is anything but speculation.

xAI is renting out their DC space. I think I read that Google is, too.

DC buildout is purely a gold rush. A play to be the one left standing after all the weaker players die.

catlover76• 5 hours ago

You are trying to pick a fight with a post that isn't making the point you assume it is. All that guy is saying is that there is a rush to build them, which is objectively true.

Whether or not the datacenters return on the investment is a different question.

jquery• 5 hours ago

Speculative demand is still demand.

MasterScrat• 5 hours ago

xAI is renting out their DC space. I think I read that Google is, too.

You’re probably thinking of Meta. Google renting GPUs is a less recent phenomenon, to say the least.

s1artibartfast• 5 hours ago

Speculation isn't a dirty word and both can be true.

Demand is very high today and exceeds capacity. Builders think demand will continue to grow. This seems plainly correct. Firms may differ in how high demand will go, but it is still more than today.

treis2• 45 minutes ago

Inference is profitable and demand can't be met. They might eventually overshoot the mark but it hasn't happened yet and doesn't appear to be on the horizon.

itsrobreally• 5 hours ago

In Nashville they messed up by trying to build one next to the zoo, a beloved and popular attraction (higher attendance than our NFL franchise). The public outcry was swift and effective, new zoning rules were passed last night. https://nashvillebanner.com/2026/07/21/nashville-data-center...

dylan6046• 5 hours ago

That's great for future sites, but how is that going to improve the zoo's situation?

ecommerceguy• 5 hours ago

Is there really demand for 4000 plus data centers? I have a feeling that's shooting a bit above the mark (10x).

oceanplexian2• 3 hours ago

If all the talk is true that something approximating human intelligence can be scaled simply by building more datacenters, absolutely, it will be the most desired commodity in the world surpassing all others.

AnthonyMouse5• 2 hours ago

The whole thing is a motte and bailey game. The largest of cloud companies might build a data center which is 1GW. There won't be 4000 of those and it won't be next to your house. A huge number of commercial office buildings already have a 100kW data center in them, and have for decades, without anyone having any reason to know or care. For those 4000 is certainly an underestimate.

giancarlostoro2• 5 hours ago

I wonder how long till they start scooping up old abandoned towns?

SoftTalker2• 5 hours ago

That's what they should do. Datacenters don't need to be in anyone's backyard. The US has vast amounts of unused land as well as urban brownfields that are sitting empty. Put them there.

fnordsensei• 4 hours ago

They could build them somewhere where people don't care. But you can't co-opt 70 years of public infrastructure investments out in the middle of nowhere.

rconti• 4 hours ago

I don't think the average person actually knows anything concrete about them.

They're a proxy for peoples' sense of powerlessness about what's going on around them.

Skyrocketing electricity prices, the sense that elected officials aren't looking out for their interests, job losses, etc. They're a convenient proxy for many disparate concerns because they represent all of those things in one way or another.

srmatto• 4 hours ago

I think there's truth to what you're saying but I also think there's truth to what people are experiencing and perceiving.

A highly power and/or water consumptive data center being installed in a town or city is pretty much a perfect embodiment of people's frustrations. It consumes tons of power and/or water and therefore drives up utility costs for the locals or pollutes the air with diesel exhaust. And it doesn't create jobs so it's just frankly some rich cabal of capitalists getting richer while people's lives continue to feel materially worse. I can't think of a better embodiment of the sort of confluence of crumminess that seems to be underway.

98codes• 4 hours ago

I don't think the average person actually knows anything concrete about them.

The average person around them knows quite a bit about the noise level, and how far it carries. They're starting to learn about the effect consistent noise at that level has on their mental & physical well-being as well.

duped2• 3 hours ago

I don't think the average person actually knows anything concrete about them.

A new class of oligarchs are trying to obsolete every profession and human endeavor for the sole purpose of enriching themselves. You don't need a PhD in environmental policy or domain expertise in construction to listen to what AI advocates are saying and realize their success comes at the expense of society, and say "no thank you."

Data center construction is not a proxy for powerlessness, but the vanguard of the powerful.

doron• 3 hours ago

I think AOC made this point easy to understand in a recent hearing..

"ask ... if they [Zuckerberg, Thiel etc] want one of these data centers in their own backyard"

moduspol• 3 hours ago

It's that, but it's also that AI is not visibly providing any tangible benefit for most people. It'd be one thing if you had to tolerate a datacenter at the edge of town, but at least now you have a robot to fold your clean clothes. Instead, you get the threat of losing your job, the privilege of dealing with AI customer service chatbots, and higher energy costs.

I think most datacenter criticisms are actually coming from people who were going to oppose them anyway. Though a lot of their criticisms are valid, too.

AnthonyMouse5• 3 hours ago

I think this is because the demand is so extreme for datacenters now that companies are building them in a manner that disrupts the environment around them.

This would make sense if the ones being targeted are the ones that do this, but that isn't the case. Moreover, those would be simple to address, e.g. pass an ordinance that prohibits long-term operation of fossil fuel generators, defined as operating them for more than 40 days out of each 700. Or impose a reasonable decibel limit as measured at the property line.

Meanwhile people are proposing "data center moratoriums" and so on, even if the data center would be built in a non-residential area with a closed-loop cooling system and generate its power from a completely silent and non-polluting solar+battery system. Which makes it pretty obvious that the motivation is something else.

grim_io2• 7 hours ago

Your dad's data centers are very different to the new GPU focused beasts.

The AI data centers consume a lot more power, and thus generate a lot more heat(equals cooling noise) per square meter.

This is the reason why it's a new problem right now.

Edit: autocorrect used breasts instead of beasts.

add-sub-mul-div• 6 hours ago

There's also a lot of people lashing out without knowing anything about data centers because they think AI is loser shit, and data centers have become a rallying point.

maerF0x07• 6 hours ago

I hear and understand those, but why isn't it a regulation or requirements issue?

Ambient noise must be contained, excess heat must be mitigated, free hot water must be provided to nearby buildings. etc. Also this is a city's opportunity to do something like assess penalty tax points. (ie, datacenter usage tax, just like we do to hotels)

christina97• 5 hours ago

Because the people in charge of site picking also shop for low regulation environments.

zardo2• 5 hours ago

I hear and understand those, but why isn't it a regulation or requirements issue?

It's a waste of time and money for each town and county to come up with those requirements. If your community puts any limits on the datacenter builder they'll just build it somewhere else, so you might as well save the effort and just say they can't do it.

GhastBartender• 5 hours ago

but why isn't it a regulation or requirements issue?

It's America. They don't do regulations there.

The more serious answer is that this political movement is leading to more strict regulation being enacted, it just wasn't in place because of reason #1 and the problems being much less severe.

Additionally, the tech industry is notoriously hostile to any kind of regulation. Especially now with AI. Just look at how many people in this thread will insist that it's "Chinese Propaganda", despite clear evidence that this is just a response to the actual problems datacenters cause. One news crew interviewing people with jet turbine noise will do more than a million of Beijing's finest trolls.

kdheiwns• 5 hours ago

Your edit really illustrates what's wrong with all of this. We can't even get computers to reasonably assume what we're trying to say. But somehow the ultra rich have decided to devote all global resources to doing bad autocorrect for everything everywhere and calling it AI.

quickthrowman3• 5 hours ago

Why is that a problem? It might raise the temp within a few hundred feet of the chillers by 0.5-1F which is substantially less than an urban heat island temp delta vs surrounding rural land.

A sane municipality will require sound mitigation on generators, chillers, and other loud equipment. Sure, there are shitty places that don’t take care of their citizens that will let you run natural gas turbines to generate power, but it’s possible to contain the bad effects of data centers with local and state regulations.

I’ll take a data center that evaporates water to replace the iron casting foundry in my neighborhood any day.

grim_io2• 5 hours ago

It's not about the heat radiating from the data center, it's about the noise generated trying to cool the beast.

The power usage is massive, and that's still a very much limited resource for which everyone competes for.

Adding to your edit: Would you feel the same about adding an AI data center on top of the iron casting foundry you already have to deal with?

everyone• 6 hours ago

Not on my planet, burn them all down!

1970-01-016• 4 hours ago

Ok, then how about above? Elon and friends want to launch them all into orbit.

xnx• 6 hours ago

Also: Most Americans wouldn't know if an AI datacenter was already in their backyard

mindcandy• 6 hours ago

I find what people want from the data center build-out is pretty reasonable:

1. Don't build loud machines across the street from someone's house. 2. Don't drive up water/electricity bills by pulling from the municipal grid. 3. Don't burn the earth with CO2. 4. Don't facilitate techno-fascist surveillance. 5. Pay a lot of taxes.

But, when I see people complain about data centers, I usually see a spiral of rage-bait based on mis-framing, conjecture and repeating stuff others simply made up to get everyone mad. The online discussion tone is reaching a shrieking pink-froth level.

What I'm finding in my lazy research on the subject is that recent and planned datacenters

1. Are exceedingly rarely built where anyone can hear them. But, occasionally are. Thus ragebait articles. 2. Pull from muni grids for small scale centers. But, the hyperscalers are independent. 3. Hyperscalers are burning way too much natural gas. That's bad. But, not using nearly as much water as people think. That's good. 4. Techno-fascist surveillance doesn't need 1000s of datacenters. Just a handful off in the corner is plenty. 5. Datacenters usually are paying a lot of taxes. I think this drives the majority of the push from politicians. And, there's a minority from corruption.

Frankly, the biggest issue folks should be pushing for is to require hyperscalers build out solar power instead of natural gas. That will be a hard fight because it requires more up-front time and investment. From there, ensuring small scale centers don't affect people's bills is a good fight. But, passing laws to ban datacenters seems performative compared to passing laws to regulate their power and water impact.

nemomarx2• 6 hours ago

Just require them to also pay for a new local power plant with the capacity to cover them before they get building permits, honestly. Maybe say they can't qualify for tax breaks too?

tsunamifury3• 5 hours ago

That would slow the expansion, its cheaper and easier and faster to just steal power from the local communities and then gaslight them.

loudmax• 4 hours ago

Absolutely this. If you think about different types of objections to nearby data centers and do some pretty minimal research, you come up with a reasonable set of solutions that most people would agree on.

That's not what people are doing though. People are genuinely afraid for the future, and much of the data center backlash is driven by emotion. You can see this reflected in populist political movements. People have a (well-founded) sense that those in power don't have their interests in mind and they're lashing out without much thought.

titanomachy3• 3 hours ago

I did some analysis on this, although I’m not a finance expert. If you put $100M of GPUs in a Virginia datacenter then you might pay $2M per year in local taxes over the 5 year life of the equipment. (I don’t think tech companies tend to pay much corporate income tax.) If you took the same money and put up an office with 150 people making $150k/year, you’d pay less property tax but like $7M in income taxes, not to mention the other taxes those people pay as they go about their lives nearby, and the fact that their incomes are re-invested in the community. So companies shifting their spending from employees to GPUs seems to massively reduce their tax burden, and datacenters are a vastly worse deal than offices for whatever community ends up stuck with them.

It does seem like civil society could hold out for a better deal here, and not lose what little tax base we are currently getting from these tech giants.

maerF0x07• 6 hours ago

IMO NIMB should be illegal, so long as the builder meets standards. Maybe those standards should rise to include ambient noise requirements, heat dissipation, capital contributions to water/electricity supply, additional tax burden points (for land use without, maybe?).

But I also feel there needs to be an assertion that if you own the land it's your property and you're free to do most things with it, safely and politely. This is about property rights and freedoms.

mikestew2• 5 hours ago

This is about property rights and freedoms.

Your property rights stop where my ears are. Or I have the freedom to not listen to your gas turbine. Or however one wishes to flip that on its head. Whether you own the property or not, that property isn’t in a vacuum.

paulzack• 5 hours ago

Your property rights end when corporations, who get sick of your obstinance, simply place some strategic election donations and soon enough you’re up against eminent domain.

maerF0x07• 5 hours ago

That is all covered by my point about regulations rising to the task. Did you read the whole comment?

The point is you should be allowed to have a gas turbine (or whatever generator meets the requirements), if it meets emissions, noise, and heat regulations.

artisinal• 5 hours ago

Good luck upgrading your home’s electrical service to charge an EV, only to be told it’s impossible because the nearby data center has already consumed all the available grid capacity.

Happened to family of mine. Not in the US though. They charge their EV with a 3kW charger now.

maerF0x07• 5 hours ago

That is an invested capital issue. If it's not worth building a plant, they wont. The supply will fall until the prices rise enough to incentivize new plants. If the elec prices rise enough the datacenters will find alternate solutions .

It seems like people are some how railing against basic economics?

Like if we dont like it we have a marketplace of alternatives, the opportunity to invest in new supply, and the choice to not consume said energy if the price is too high...

f33d51733• 4 hours ago

Rather than making everyone comply with the strictest noise and other restrictions of residential areas, it's much easier for everyone if you put industrial things in an industrial area and residences in a residential area.

BeetleB3• 3 hours ago

IMO NIMB should be illegal, so long as the builder meets standards.

NIMB is part of setting those standards.

In a nearby town, the city was planning on putting a moratorium on new data centers, and so a lot of companies rushed their application in before the moratorium start date. They all got approved. The local citizens got really mad that they were approved, and the city simply said "Look: We legally cannot deny them permits if they're conforming to current requirements."

So yes, you're right. And yes, your statement is mostly irrelevant. NIMBYism is always about the future requirements. It's not as if enacting a rule disallowing high density residences will force existing ones to be torn down.

adamrezich5• 5 hours ago

The other day I was talking with two friends—one programmer, one musician, both of fairly conservative political persuasion—and the topic of “AI data centers” came up. I said something to the effect of, “y'know, all that talk about how they just use all up all the water from wherever they're built is total propaganda nonsense, right?” and both were genuinely taken aback by this statement. As far as they were concerned, “AI data centers” were something a Captain Planet villain would build, just absolute ecological disasters, inherently. I'm relatively neutral when it comes to this stuff but man, the propaganda against “AI data centers” really works!

1970-01-016• 5 hours ago

Your two friends are factually correct. You somehow misinterpret how much water they consume.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-water-usage

adamrezich5• 5 hours ago

The energy grid use seems far more worrisome than water use. Why would anyone build an AI data center in a specifically “water-stressed region”?

saratogacx• 2 hours ago

You don't need to put in a lot of effort to convince people that creepy, deceitful, generally unlikable, rich folks are doing things you won't like and are lying to get away with it.

steveBK123• 5 hours ago

TBF, Americans say "NIMBY" to everything

allknowingfrog• 5 hours ago

It's a long-standing tradition. Our forefathers famously said "NIMBY" to taxation without representation.

epolanski2• 5 hours ago

Another issue is that they bring very low to no jobs to locals besides some initial construction work.

dfee• 5 hours ago

As Covered in the Hit TV Series Pied Piper, Season 1 (2014): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNi0p7YtmyY

BoggleOhYeah• 5 hours ago

And the owner class has already trotted out the old Red Scare “If you don’t like datacenters, you’re just doing what China wants” bullshit has a defense.

concraper• 5 hours ago

dual use them into super low latency esports stadiums and let's see how principled people really are

whalesalad2• 5 hours ago

I would flip my bitch switch if a datacenter was stood up near me, where I could hear it. I am on 5 acres in rural Michigan surrounded by peace and quiet. I specifically came here for this reason. At the same time, I understand that we need datacenters. And tbh, Michigan is under-served in this space (ex, most of my queries thru the Cloudflare network have to go to Chicago first), and I wish we had more. But not close to residential areas. Not on top of valuable farmland.

My wacky idea was that datacenters should be built on EPA superfund sites. It becomes a win-win. Datacenter gets land that humans cannot occupy, helps/funds partial cleanup, slaps a big ass concrete building down on top of the rest of the mess and kills two birds with one stone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites

Also thoughts of mine recently: why are we not doing subterranean datacenters, why are we not doing tall/skinny skyscraper like datacenters (versus enormous sprawling warehouse-style).

inkcapmushroom• 4 hours ago

Also thoughts of mine recently: why are we not doing subterranean datacenters, why are we not doing tall/skinny skyscraper like datacenters (versus enormous sprawling warehouse-style).

It's cheaper this way.

f33d51733• 4 hours ago

Oh yeah right, underground data centers. What are you going to say next, data centers in space? Be real.

whalesalad2• 3 hours ago

Geothermal heating/cooling exists because deep down in the soil temperatures are fairly constant. And the earth is a fantastic insulator both in temperature and sound. Aside from the cost of digging a giant hole, there really is no reason not to be doing this.

NohatCoder3• 4 hours ago

First thing missing from this "article" is a number indicating how many people don't want AI datacentres anywhere. You can't claim that someone is a NIMBY if their stance is that the damned thing shouldn't be built anywhere.

socalgal2• 4 hours ago

Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to everything

I'm not saying they should want a data center in their backyard but headline wise "not in my backyard" is true of almost everything.

aschla• 4 hours ago

The datacenter outrage is mislabeled. It's actually zoning outrage, caused by local governments that aren't taking their citizen's concerns seriously. It just so happens that datacenters are the hottest (no pun intended) industrial construction option right now.

Casteil3• 3 hours ago

There's more to it than that. They're not just obnoxious to exist in the vicinity of, they also drive up local energy prices.

caruasdo• 4 hours ago

They have to put up with noise in their homes, that's very bad.

mattertoast• 4 hours ago

Simple, make it legally required that all new datacenters being built by <LLM_COMPANY> is built in the literal backyard of the primary residence of the children of the Csuites of said <LLM_COMPANY>.

Everyone should be in support of this idea.

Everyone else gets to be free from datacenter pollution, and the Csuites get their datacenters.

Win win.

hirpslop• 4 hours ago

ChatGPT estimates for $300,000 I can build a 10x12 datacenter in my backyard with an operating breakeven at 29% utilization and 489 year capital payback. No thanks, not in my back yard.

sourcecodeplz• 4 hours ago

but what thing would most Americans say "yes! build this in my backyard"?>

titanomachy3• 3 hours ago

A park, a public recreation centre, an elementary school, a cute coffee shop…

You know, human stuff.

I-M-S2• 3 hours ago

All these things have been vehemently opposed by NIMBYs:

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapleRidge/comments/1ewgim0/maple_r...

2. https://nationalpost.com/life/the-important-questions-is-it-...

3. https://jeremyl.substack.com/p/nimbytales-stop-the-sound-of-...

4. https://torontolife.com/city/this-corner-store-owner-spent-y...

CodeWriter23• 3 hours ago

Musk has is it right. Terafab and orbital data center pods.

semiinfinitely• 3 hours ago

I guess we'll just have to put them in space then

sharts• 2 hours ago

And companies grease the levers of power to not care what most Americans say. It is the American way.

duxup• 39 minutes ago

We built data centers for decades without issue.

One I used to service frequently is actually surrounded by a large area of green-space, trees, marsh area, wildlife. The houses that border it are highly desirable as you effectively have an extension of a massive yard and great views relative to the suburban area surrounding it.

Somehow things changed and it's a bit surreal.

Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers

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