In response to my post about this data center backlash outside of Kansas City (specifically Independence, Missouri), I’ve been fielding the range of ideas people have about hyperscale AI data centers. As you’d probably expect, the vast majority of people are against them and excited to see this kind of backlash through the architecture of local government. But there’s a small but vocal group saying: no, this is all a kind of NIMBY moral panic driven by anger at Big Tech when a lot of these deals, maybe most, actually are good deals for the local communities.
The last part isn’t totally crazy. Or at least they’re certainly on to something that a big part of the punch behind the data center backlash is fueled by a broad politico-economy anger about tech platforms, AI, and nascent oligarchy which in this one set of circumstances people can actually fight back against. I discussed this in a post at the end of last month. Part of the big sour mood that seems to pervade every nook and cranny of our society today is focused on Big Tech, the central and most visible moneyed power in the U.S. today. Everyone has this sense that these guys can simply do anything and there’s no accountability — no democratic control — over any of it. It’s their world and we’re just living in it. But here you have a case where you need to build a super big data center, where finally you have to come and ask permission from some sleepy town council or county commission. And all that pent up powerlessness just comes out as, No! Or, really, Fuck no! And along with that is comment that amounts to, I don’t even care what you’re doing. The answer’s still no. Because you guys have way too much power and someone has to say no to you.
I’m not saying that’s all there is to the backlash by any means. But I’m pretty sure the potency of it draws a lot from that sentiment, as opposed to just a more mundane weighing of the pros and cons. And if a lot of it is just that, I’m not sure that’s necessarily a bad thing. Someone does have to say no to people. And the frameworks of economics and government don’t always provide the most straightforward way to do that. The general crisis of oligarchy and an increasingly freebooting, out-of-control tech sector isn’t something people are imagining. It’s real. Sometimes people need to clamp down where they can just to force big money to the table, to start renegotiating the social contract.
On all these big questions, I find myself both uncertain and agnostic. I’ve thought for a while that the issue is less with AI itself than the economic and political context in which it is being introduced into society. It matters a lot that guys calling almost all the shots are unaccustomed to and unwilling to accept almost any kind of oversight of their society-shaping work. And over the course of the last half dozen years, they’ve gravitated toward a politics that we must broadly called authoritarian and even fascistic, as well as an extreme contempt for a broad range of liberal (in the broad sense) values. I’ve seen decent arguments that a lot of these fears are overblown, that big data centers can provide a sizable economic boost for declining rural communities, that the environmental and economic externalities are manageable.
Maybe.
I think the big problem with this theory or assumption is the broader AI gold rush. Everything about the AI boom is operating in a gold rush fashion. Domestic behemoths are competing with each other. The U.S. is competing with China. Everyone wants to get there first. And these data centers are coming online with almost unimaginable demands for power on a utility grid that is already strained and creaky. Over time, with aggressive building-out of renewables, there’s probably enough energy for everyone, and clean energy at that. But when you’re trying to bring everything on line in the next two or three years, it all starts to look very different.
Here’s just one data point — illustrative rather than proving a general point — from just the last few days. There’s an AI data center about 40 miles outside of the Philadelphia, on the New Jersey side of the border in Vineland. It’s being built to service Microsoft but it’s being run by Nebius, the same firm involved in Independence, Missouri. It’s currently under construction, and there are already lots of complaints about noise and other issues. Using thermal imagery and other forms of reporting, a non-profit newsroom called Floodlight was able to determine that the facility has allegedly set up an array of 62 trailer-sized gas generators which lack any permits, either state or federal, for their use. It’s like setting up a small and seemingly illegal power plant and … assuming no one will notice, or maybe the facility has enough clout to stop anyone from doing anything about it.
This is just one facility. Nebius might eventually be able to get permits for these generators. They appear to be a stop-gap until they can get a different kind of generator up and working. But what I take away from this is just the totally Wild West atmosphere in which this is all happening. Move fast and break things and all that. You see lots of this stuff, and it’s enough to give even a city or county council that is sold on the concept of data centers to be very wary of letting one get started in their jurisdiction.
My main point in writing this is to say that I — we — are basically agnostic on these details: are they good deals for localities, how bad are they for the environment, how much are they driving a return to gas or even coal to provide the needed scale of power? What is interesting and important about this as a story is the way it captures one of the central clashes of our era: untrammeled oligarchic tech power versus local self-government, and really all self-government. It doesn’t cease to be that just because we might disagree about the longterm tax benefits for the municipality or the precise amount of noise pollution or water contamination. There’s a reason this story — the big AI data center metastory — has the whole country electrified. Because big, big, big things are happening, and about a half dozen guys in Silicon Valley are deciding how they happen. The rest of us, mostly accurately, don’t think we have any say in the matter.
