The Data-Center Debate Is Divorced From the Facts

I think the data center backlash is mostly about data centers

It’s probably not your ideological thing, or mine. It’s about object-level claims about how data centers impact the communities where they’re built, many of which are wrong.

I think the data center backlash is mostly about data centers

It’s probably not your ideological thing, or mine. It’s about object-level claims about how data centers impact the communities where they’re built, many of which are wrong.

Data centers contain 90% crap data

We need to talk about the data. Crap data. We’re destroying our environment to create and store trillions of blurred images, half-baked videos, rip-off AI ‘songs’, rip-off AI animations, videos and images, emails with mega attachments, never-to-be-watched-again presentations, never-to-be-read-again reports, files and drawings from cancelled projects, drafts of drafts of drafts, out of date, inaccurate and plain wrong information, and gigabytes and gigabytes of poorly written, meandering content.

The American People Really Hate Data Centers

There are at least five different core questions around data centers and their politics.

How statistics lost their power – and why we should fear what comes next | William Davies

The Long Read: The ability of statistics to accurately represent the world is declining. In its wake, a new age of big data controlled by private companies is taking over – and putting democracy in peril

People Hate Datacenters, Survey Finds

The data drops as Sen. Bernie Sanders calls for a moratorium on datacenter construction. 'We need to take a deep breath. We need to make sure that AI and robotics work for all of us, not just a handful of billionaires.'

‘The Most Bipartisan Issue Since Beer’: Opposition to Data Centers

Americans have soured on data centers, polls show, and the sentiment is profoundly bipartisan. How will that change our politics?

Thinking about other industries like we think about data centers shows how impoverished the debate is

Clumsy, arbitrary environmental ideas ignore the incredible complexity of the systems modern society depends on

Data Center Watch

Free weekly updates on the political risks facing American data center projects

You’re Thinking About AI and Water All Wrong

Fears about AI data centers’ water use have exploded. Experts say the reality is far more complicated than people think.

Dave Troy on Twitter / X

Fears over datacenters are distorted along a few important axes:1) anxiety over AI, future employment, and control; they symbolize what people fear they are losing,2) compute centralization, which is actually probably not going to actually occur, because of financial…— Dave Troy (@davetroy) August 21, 2026

Is the Left Making a ‘Massive Strategic Blunder’ on Data Centers?

A conversation with Holly Jean Buck, author of a buzzy story about Bernie Sanders’ proposal for a national data center moratorium.

Where Republicans and Democrats stand on AI data centers

Five charts exploring how Republicans and Democrats feel about AI data centers and what that might mean for the road ahead

Exclusive: Americans Now Overwhelmingly Oppose New Data Centers Near Them

A new Heatmap Pro poll shows a rapid shift in public opinion since last fall.

Data centers are now a midterm issue, even in Brooklyn | TechCrunch

At a Brooklyn midterm party five days before Election Day, every conversation, from a council member’s fireside chat to a debate about the Democratic Party, kept circling back to AI and data centers.

US views of how data centers affect the environment, energy costs, jobs and more

A broad majority of Americans have heard about data centers – the often-sprawling computing facilities that are popping up nationwide. But the public has mixed opinions about data centers’ impact…