Data Centers Are the Enemy We’ve All Been Waiting For
It also shows that many of us rise to the occasion when we are given something to do. One ubiquitous complaint about climate change is that it can be hard to know, as an individual, what to do about such a global, diffuse problem. And similarly, it’s hard to know what an individual can do about the other abstract and distant problems that a data center represents: a destructive tech mogul class unaccountable to the masses, the surveillance state, a possible tech bubble, the affordability crisis, a far-right leadership class that doesn’t get off its phone long enough to even notice the great outdoors it is destroying. Most of us can’t give up our work and family responsibilities to protest every day in Washington, D.C., or Silicon Valley. But an individual data center brings the entire constellation of problems to your town—and many Americans are showing that they know what to do when it shows up.
As one of the few national leaders to understand mass public anger, Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a national moratorium on data centers. That the reactionaries at The Washington Post think this is “Bernie Sanders’ Worst Idea Yet” shows that it’s hit a nerve, and reflects a grassroots momentum that the Bezos class fears. Congressional Democrats, with their usual genius for the zeitgeist, are not getting on board with his measure, probably because far too many are beholden to tech industry donors. Fortunately, not everyone in this party is a fully owned subsidiary of Anthropic or Google; Democratic politicians in New Jersey and Virginia ran against data centers last November and won their elections, as did data center skeptics on the Georgia Public Service Commission.
Of course, in many cases, local officials are getting steamrolled by Big Tech operators. Far too many of these data centers are under construction as I write this. But the resistance is growing, and is plainly shaping local and state policy. It’s possible that soon, the big civilizational battle will be less between Democrats and Republicans, and more between Big Tech—and similar industries like Big Oil and Big Pesticide—and its opponents. The future of humanity, the natural environment—and local democracy itself—may depend on the grassroots fights that are underway now.
