Americans are turning against data centres, which are crucial for the development of artificial intelligence. The infrastructure needed to train frontier AI models is arriving on people's doorsteps, and it looks like something out of a war zone. Residents across America are standing up in council meetings begging for projects to be axed in the hope of slowing the technology's progress.
The issue has surged in salience, with gubernatorial candidates facing voters in November being routinely quizzed on where they stand. Already, local activists have claimed scalps, with at least 20 data-centre projects worth $42bn being cancelled in the first three months of 2026 after local pushback.
The resistance is more than simple NIMBYism, with Americans who have merely heard of data centres being just as opposed to them as those who live within five miles of one. Philosophers have long worried that a rogue AI would doom humanity by hoovering up all its resources, paving the earth with servers, and rendering the planet uninhabitable.
The Department of Energy expects that by 2030 the country will need to add 50GW of generation to support AI and another 50GW for the manufacturing renaissance the administration anticipates. The Department of Energy is sceptical of wind and solar projects that produce only intermittent energy and is favouring restarting nuclear plants and building more gas-fired ones.
Ohio has been savvier than most states in its approach, passing a requirement that each month data-centre operators above a certain size pay for at least 85% of the power capacity they have asked to be made available, even if they do not use it. However, even this innovation has done little to soothe the state's residents, with some three-quarters of Democrats and two-thirds of Republicans in Ohio still opposing local data-centre development.
