I think it can't be categorized as NIMBYism because the underlying sentiment is not just no data centers in my backyard, but anyones backyard. It's about the AI project itself, even if it expresses itself differently for a local context.
I’m fine with datacenters being built as long as we have some rules: they have to be quiet enough to not be audible beyond the border of the land owned by the datacenter. They have to pay for new electrical capacity so that they don’t burden locals with that externality. Really, that’s it. I think most people could get behind that.
Theres always going to be some negative externality effecting people that live near anything getting built. Even if the operational data center isn't loud enough to be heard beyond its property lines, the construction process will be louder. I'll also negatively effect peoples views and cause generally increased activity in the area.
But that all seems fine as long as not egregious. But for anything to get built, housing or data centers or what not, we have to accept that those right next to any building project will experience some negative externalities.
Does anyone have any numbers on what percentage of recent datacenters don't follow those rules? Those are completely reasonable requirements. But, the high-pitched online discussion tends to imply building a datacenter requires doing everything the worst possible way every time.
I know there are problematic data centers. I just want to know what the stats are vs. the rhetoric.
I don't have all the numbers but as someone who lives in VA and has had their power bill _double_ over the last year, I'd be hard-pressed to think DCs are commonly paying their fair share when tariffs like this need to be passed: https://virginiamercury.com/2026/08/05/scc-orders-dominion-t...
They also cover acres of ground with impermeable surface so if they are in an area where rain runoff is an issue they should have to mitigate that also. Maybe they could collect the water to use for their cooling needs.
No. If they still draw an enormous amount of water, that's the finite resource that's getting wasted no amount of money could immediately retrieve. Paying for electricity doesn't mean the resources are not shared.
My understanding is that the water argument is the weakest one - the water is given back to the city, it's not like it's used up. And using water for cooling is one of the "cleanest" uses of water, it's not like toilets or showers.
Personally I am much more concerned about datacenters that take it upon themselves to burn natural gas. And noise. Noise pollution can actually be detrimental to your health, and there's basically no mitigation that exists. So we really have to look at noise.
NIMBY may be the incorrect term, but objecting to building something that raises your electricity bill extends how far your “back yard” goes. Objecting because it raises your ram prices extends that to a global scale.
My 2 cents is that it’s more about market manipulation (by proxy) than anything. What happens if you convince consumers AI is bad and they shouldn’t approve small datacenters, is the next step regulations? Businesses (primary target) will still use it, people probably will too despite calling datacenters and AI bad. Then model regulations are the next logical target. And who will be regulated? The effect is exactly what OpenAI and Anthropic have been looking for.
How many of X/Amazon/Google/Anthropic/OpenAI data centers have been blocked? I’m going to bet that number is close to zero for any important projects they were planning, likely because they were approved before the real regulation pushes started.
Both sides are getting played with the same song that ends in AI regulations, which is bad for people and good for profits.
It’s all strategy and theater so people can find alternative cause to latch onto that can be steered so it doesn’t really hurt the big players but will ultimately lead to more regulations (and thus more profits).
> What happens if you convince consumers AI is bad
I get this isn't your primary point, but this line suggests people would have otherwise thought AI was good if it wasn't for some devious party convincing them otherwise. This is definitely not my read on the current environment. People think AI is bad because of its badness. The slop, the automated responses, the help bots, the being replaced at your job, and so on are just not popular.
I can speak from a relative perspective, at least for my state;
- The major Electrical provider has a terrible track record for improving overall reliability of service to local homes. The average outage time is 3x the normal average, and the percentages for rate increases always favor corporate customers vs residential. Yes, Residential often has more 'long tail' cost in outage scenarios but it should be better balanced IMO. but also our grid seems to be a bit stressed and adding that additional stress is a big concern.
- The water usage for these data centers is an unknown, and sure they can do a closed or mostly closed loop but we aren't getting any promises on that. My state is lucky enough to have a LOT of water around it, but we also have awareness about what industrialization has done to those waterways and the ecosystems that live in them. We don't need more problems.
- In fact we actually have an issue where communities have newish data centers, that frankly have ggravating shrill sound at all hours. [0] [1]
I think the level of mania that has been in the AI data center bubble in the last few years has come at the cost of permanent damage to the future of the industry. The public is in revolt.
China must be laughing themselves breathless. "We actually convinced those idiots to self-sabotage their own tech infrastructure, they're literally #resisting and refusing to allow their tech industry to advance". Destroying the country piece by piece without having to fire a single bullet.
I feel like that is besides the point. I think the fact that ended up this way is an illustration how hardened the public has become. There's no niceties, procedure. The public has been pushed well past that point. This is not a negotiation.
This is more a harbinger of what is about to happen all over the country. So the specifics matter less than it marking the political ascendancy of the backlash to AI / data centers / big tech / billionaires...
Eminent domain is like the the Thanos snap version of state power in a democratic / capitalist country. The ultimate representation of the peoples will over the individuals desire.
Eminent domain is almost always used to make corporations richer. In other parts of the country, eminent domain is being used to seize people's homes to build AI DCs.
~45% of people work for companies of less than 500 people, ~12% for the govrnment (federal, state, local), ~6% are self employed. That leaves less than a half for all the companies >500, and only a tiny minority of them have an outsized influence on politics.
EDIT: Also, if there were no big corporations, people would still work and pay taxes. No sane statesman would purposefully build their countries economy on non-state-controlled megacorps.
No, this is more like checks and balances: the state, the public, and corporations are kept in check when two of them join together to oppose the third.
It's kind of strange how the state ("of, by, and for the people") and corporations (comprised of people) are such distinct entities with their own interests. The fact that the state and corporations can and do collude in opposition to the public good is at the heart of so many enormous problems.
It feels like this is the first time I've seen the political system move in tune with the public mood in regards to AI and this is public anger finding expression in public policy.
Even billionaires really don't operate as individuals, they are a monster that we've let grow to have unchecked power across the entire federal government.
(note, I may be agreeing with what you're saying I just don't agree with the framing of the "individual") Most of the pushback belongs against the entities that are more powerful than even the federal government at times.)
Backlash is just a natural consequence in a democratic society to the absolute accelerationist mindset that AI development has taken since 2022. Actions meet consequences. I mean it wasn't so long ago they were talking about wiping out all white collar work and consigning most the country to the permanent underclass. If you look at how the rest of the economy has been starved of capital to fund all this and how its contributed to inflation and job insecurity, it doesn't really take a foreign actor to spark a massive backlash.
For example, Google ridiculously overpaid for SpaceX AI data center capacity, by something like more than an order of magnitude, both directly and via Anthropic.
An inquisitively suspicious, not to say cynical, person might believe this was manipulation to keep SPCX from cratering completely before their lock ups expire.
