The context you need, when you need it

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

The data centers are winning

Why the AI buildout (probably) can’t be stopped.

In the United States, building a data center now polls roughly as well as abolishing the police. If current trends continue, server warehouses may soon be less popular with Americans than pizza topped with pineapple and shattered glass.

In an August survey from Heatmap Pro and Embold Research, just 15 percent of Americans said they would support a data center being built in their area, while 75 percent expressed opposition. One year earlier, 43 percent of respondents in the same poll had approved of nearby data center development, while just 42 percent opposed it.

Data center projects are increasingly unpopular and vulnerable to local opposition.

Nevertheless, the AI infrastructure buildout remains massive.

The economic forces driving the data center boom are extremely strong.

Since AI data centers can be located almost anywhere, it’s difficult to stop them from being built somewhere.

This soaring backlash is visible in other surveys — and in the actions of elected officials. In recent weeks, Wisconsin’s gubernatorial candidates sparred over who hates data centers more, Pennsylvania’s center-left Gov. Josh Shapiro enacted new restrictions on AI infrastructure projects (after previously championing such investment), and even Texas’s staunchly pro-business Republican government announced a temporary moratorium on new approvals.

Meanwhile, data center projects are being canceled at a record rate, as local opposition mounts.

This has led some in the pro-tech minority to worry that the data center buildout is about to collapse — and take the US economy down with it. Anti-AI commentators, for their part, are cheering the industry’s impending crisis.

But such panic and celebration are both premature.

In truth, despite exploding opposition, the data center boom is still going strong. Interviews with industry experts and recent construction data suggest that the economic forces driving the buildout remain more powerful than the political winds blowing against it. And unless Congress enacts a national moratorium, AI companies will almost certainly be able to continue finding jurisdictions willing to tolerate hyperscale campuses, in exchange for sufficient revenue and incentives.

America’s data center boom can be slowed and geographically shifted. But it probably can’t be killed, absent a collapse in demand for computing power or a much bigger revolution in American politics.

The strange politics of the AI backlash

The boom is bigger than the backlash

There are two fundamental facts about today’s data center boom: 1) The backlash against it is huge, and 2) the buildout is even bigger.

The climate news outlet Heatmap has kept a tracker of new data center........

© Vox