Trump Calls It a 'Sick Conspiracy' - But Data Centre Backlash Is Deciding Elections

A year ago, a longtime US senator barely gave data centres a thought. Now, according to one of his advisers, he holds regular meetings with staff to track their impact and is drafting legislation aimed at curbing their rapid expansion across the country. This happens sometimes, the senior policy adviser to the Democratic senator told the BBC. Something starts slow and then it goes fast. The adviser spoke on condition of anonymity, as they are not permitted to speak to the press.

The 180-degree turn in that senator's attention was driven almost entirely by a growing wave of public backlash that has left politicians across the country scrambling to keep up. Public sentiment has turned against the expansion of data centres, the vast warehouses that store the processing power needed for internet activity. Packed with rows of computer chips, sometimes seven feet high, they have become more than infrastructure for the internet. They are now the physical embodiment of the explosive growth of artificial intelligence, and of the varied fears people associate with it.

I don't want to be the guinea pig for this, Indiana resident Angelita Soriano told the BBC. A new Amazon data centre is being built directly across the street from her home. When complete, the 26-building structure will take up more than a square mile in her neighbourhood and maintain 782 diesel-powered generators. Some are even larger. In Ohio, a joint effort between OpenAI, Nvidia, SB Energy and the US Department of Energy is set to build a complex stretching for roughly six square miles, the same size as most townships in the United States.

About 3,000 data centres currently operate in the country, a number that could double within a few years, according to a report by Pew Research Center. They are built through very local rules and permits, meaning federal lawmakers such as senators have little say in the process. Yet opposition has become so strong so quickly that politicians at every level are now all but required to take a stand.

This isn't just an issue on the left, there is huge pushback among conservatives to data centres, said Chloe Autio, an AI policy adviser. Whoever articulates a clear position and sticks to it, in either party, really stands to benefit. Her analysis was echoed by the adviser to the senator working on data centre legislation. There is a clear policy need here that we're looking to fill, he said. This is a major backlash across the country. Constituents are seeing the impacts of data centres and they do not like them.

That has put many on Capitol Hill, even Republicans, in direct conflict with President Donald Trump, who has championed the unrestrained growth of AI technology. Trump has dubbed the backlash a sick conspiracy and said people and towns working to keep the buildings out are backwards and poor. His ire has proved a boon to Democratic politicians looking to draw midterm votes from unhappy or undecided constituents.

The BBC spoke to residents of Indiana, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Oregon, all of whom have been organising locally against the development of data centres. They expressed concerns about many aspects of the buildings, including their size, construction and operational noise, their impact on air, water and energy resources, and the speed at which they seem to be approved by local authorities. During the first few months of this year, community groups organising against data centres more than doubled to 833, cropping up in almost every US state, according to research from Data Center Watch, a firm that collects data for AI industry stakeholders and is part of an AI startup, 10a Labs.

Stephanie Maldonado, political director of LUCHA, a community organising group based in Arizona, called the pushback a David and Goliath story that began several years ago. People have been ready to put a stop to it, she said. Now, people are angry.

New national polling shows that AI regulation and data centres are among the top issues for voters this election cycle, behind the ongoing Iran war and various aspects of the economy. Proponents of building data centres often argue the projects will create more, and better paying, local jobs. Yet recent research from the Brookings Institution, a non-partisan policy research group, found that a new data centre creates between 100 and 200 local jobs, fewer than industry advocates claim, and has essentially no impact on local wages.

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs was one such proponent, until public pressure pushed her to the other side. In July, she enacted a three-year pause on any new tax break granted to a company for a data centre project. Arizona is far from the only state to see politicians react. Abdul El Sayed, a Democrat running for Senate in Michigan, made new rules and regulations for data centres a clear part of his successful primary campaign. In the race for governor of Georgia, a Democrat calling for a pause on data centre development is in a dead heat with a Republican who disagrees.

Republican Senator John Husted of Ohio, fighting to keep his seat against Democrat Sherrod Brown, has also had to shift his position. Recent polls found that a majority of Ohio voters oppose data centres. He has softened his support, saying their arrival should be up to local citizens and elected officials. Brown, meanwhile, has stumped on his opposition to new data centres and leads Husted in recent polls. Husted's trouble in Ohio led the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the major fundraising arm for conservatives in the Senate, to write in a private memo that Republican politicians needed to reframe entirely how they spoke to voters on the subject. This has become a sleeper issue for the entire election cycle, the NRSC added.

Texas is perhaps the clearest example of how backlash has turned into an undeniable issue for even the most pro-business politician. The state currently has almost 300 operational data centres, with another 170 planned, according to Pew data. At the end of last year, Republican Governor Greg Abbott boasted of Texas as the epicentre of AI development because of the number it housed. Within months he was backtracking, citing concerns of safety and quality of life. It could play a part in the state's upcoming Senate race too. Democrat James Talarico's campaign is pushing for an end to sweetheart tax deals for Big Tech. He is now seen as a frontrunner for the historically Republican seat, where he faces the Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton. Paxton said in a late September interview that there was still plenty of open space in Texas for data centres.

Many of the actions or proposals from politicians looking to appease these voters are temporary. Most of the moratoriums, for instance, will end in one to three years. It is possible the political winds will have shifted by the time they expire, leaving Big Tech and AI firms to build as they wish. For now, feelings run strong. Balaji Tammabattula, chief executive of Barupon, is developing a roughly 700-acre data centre and technology campus in Liberty, Texas. Despite the buildings being designed to capture rain for water and supply their own energy needs, an increasingly common design for major projects, Tammabattula told the BBC that people in the community oppose the project out of hand. There's just such a high level of tension from the jump that you can't really even break through with the facts, he said. During a recent community event, he tried to speak one-on-one with a woman who was vociferously opposed. She just looked right at me and said, 'Get the hell out of my state.'