Up until a few years ago, you could be forgiven for never having heard much about data centers. When we connected to the many digital services we’ve come to depend on, and executives took to the stage to show off the latest improvements to their products, there wasn’t much talk of the physical infrastructure that made it all possible. But behind the Uber rides, the Amazon shopping, and the countless searches on Google, unremarkable buildings in industrial parks, stuffed full of hard drives and servers, were keeping it all running.
It’s almost staggering to see how quickly data centers have become central to the national discourse. As the number and size of data centers exploded over the past few years, a once seemingly invisible infrastructure rapidly found itself at the center of a political and technological debate. The largest facilities, known as “hyperscale” data centers, can have hundreds of thousands of servers beneath a single roof, and they demand hundreds of megawatts of electricity from the grid—similar to a medium-size city. That scale brings a raft of challenges including pressure on electrical grids, high demands on the water system, and noise and light pollution for people living in their vicinity.
If only a few data centers operated, they might not have become such a significant political issue. But that’s the thing: Since the release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, the tech industry has been on a building spree. In turn, the public has woken up to the presence of data centers—and people are not happy about them. A poll in August found that 75 percent of Americans opposed the development of any such projects near where they lived. In a short span of time, these once-overlooked facilities have become the core of a whole new political battleground. Data centers are set to be a key topic in the upcoming midterms, as well as the 2028 presidential elections.
In December of last year, Senator Bernie Sanders called for a national moratorium on data-center construction. “This process is moving very, very quickly,” he said in a video laying out his plan, “and we need to slow it down.” Sanders argued that data centers were part of a wider set of challenges that AI presented for workers’ livelihoods and for people’s personal relationships. In his view, AI was being driven by billionaires such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg, who were enhancing their power while openly pushing for technologies that could take people’s jobs and erode human connection, and that did not seem like a healthy path forward. “This moratorium will give democracy a chance to catch up with the transformative changes that we are witnessing,” Sanders said.
This wasn’t just a progressive issue. Donald Trump may regularly praise the AI industry and the data centers that power it, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans from opposing them too. The same month that Sanders proposed a moratorium, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis launched his own broadside against the AI industry. He wanted to empower local governments to reject data-center construction in the state and bring forward a set of standards to limit the risks caused by AI. He assured voters that his campaign had nothing to do with “woke” ideology but was about protecting workers from job loss, communities from data-center encroachment, and society from the “mindless slop” and falsified content generated with AI that could pose “a potential existential crisis for self‑government.”
By the time 2026 rolled around, soaring electricity prices had become a national concern as tech companies drove up energy costs in their pursuit of generative AI. Hundreds of local moratoriums were being passed across the country; in July, New York adopted the first statewide pause on hyperscale data-center projects. As public anger grew, communities were finding that they had some prominent allies. Such sentiments did not end at the U.S. border.
Restrictions on data-center development have been part of the conversation in certain parts of the world since the late 2010s. Singapore and the Dutch municipalities of Amsterdam and Haarlemmermeer both issued moratoriums on new projects in 2019, and by 2021, Ireland had introduced bans in certain areas because energy demands were outstripping supply. Some of these moratoriums were later lifted after stricter rules came into place, and over fear of missing out on the investment pouring into AI. Even still, these efforts have only grown since the data-center boom that was spurred by the dash to win the generative-AI race.
In recent weeks, Denmark downgraded data centers to the lowest priority for grid connections, and Thailand placed a pause on further data-center construction—suspending 49 projects where shovels had already broken ground. These moves demonstrate the tension that many governments are facing: trying to balance a desire to push the adoption of generative AI with the reality that the public is not on board with the massive data centers needed to power them.
In Europe, there’s also been a growing discussion about reducing dependence on U.S. tech companies. In the weeks after Sam Altman unveiled his Stargate plans at the White House, European governments shot back with billions of euros in planned data-center investment of their own. The social and environmental costs were not up for debate; politicians just wanted to keep up. But now many are being forced to reckon with the costs that come with this infrastructure.
Those fights are also playing out in the home of the major tech companies. For all the support that Trump gives the data-center industry—he has said that communities opposing such projects want to be “backwards and poor”—the reality is that politicians in states where the most data centers are clustered are being forced to change their positions as they feel the political winds shifting. Higher power bills and stories about what it’s like to live next to one of these hyperscale data centers have incensed voters. Meanwhile, the industry pours millions of dollars into electoral races to try to avert stricter regulations. The outcome of the November midterms will determine more than just what the next two years will hold for Trump; they could also decide the fate of the data-center boom across the U.S.
This article has been adapted from Paris Marx’s new book, Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires.
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