The rebellion against data centers is growing | The Spectator
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Robert Bryce
The rebellion against data centers is growing
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There’s an old saw in politics that says, “If you are explaining, you’re losing.” Over the past few months, Big Tech and its allies in the legacy media have been doing a lot of explaining about data centers, including why they are needed and why more communities should welcome the projects. But Big Tech’s public relations challenge got a lot harder last month, when country music legend Willie Nelson declared people need to “fight against data centers invading our land.” Nelson, who owns a house and farm in his hometown of Abbott, Texas, also said, “The last thing we need is a loud, water-thieving, light-polluting data center anywhere near our town (or any others for that matter).”
Nelson, who’s still kicking at age 93, may be the most famous man in America, and his comments reflect an unprecedented backlash against Big Tech, AI and data centers that’s happening all across the US. A recent poll by Fox News found that “by a 40-point margin, voters opposed data centers in their area to support artificial intelligence.”
When you have AOC and Tea Party types lining up together, you are seeing a populist revolt
I’ve been a reporter for four decades. And over the past 16 years, I have been closely tracking the global backlash against Big Solar and Big Wind. I have documented that opposition in the Renewable Rejection Database, which now includes more than 1,300 entries from around the world.
But I’ve never seen anything like the raging rebellion against data centers and AI.
The numbers are gobsmacking. In the first seven months of 2026, I have documented 274 bans, rejections, restrictions or moratoriums on data centers in the US, all listed in the Data Center Rejection Database. In June alone, I documented 74 rejections. For comparison, there were 49 such rejections in all of 2025 and just nine in 2024.
Indeed, the rejections are happening so fast it’s hard to keep track of them all. Here are a few examples: in May, the tiny town of Spring Hope, North Carolina, passed a one-year ban on new data centers. In June, the San Marcos, Texas, city council voted to ban all data centers permanently. In July, commissioners in Palm Beach County, Florida, nixed a large data center proposed to be built about 20 miles west of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago swankienda. Also in July, New York became the first state to stop all data center construction when Governor Kathy Hochul issued an executive order placing a one-year permitting moratorium on the facilities.
Why is this happening? And why is it happening now?
After reviewing hundreds of rejections and numerous polls, I believe the biggest issues are voters’ concerns about water and power, distrust (or outright hatred) of Big Tech, fear of what AI might mean for jobs and rage at Silicon Valley oligarchs and their enormous fortunes. As a friend of mine put it recently, regular folks can’t fight Google, Facebook and Amazon online, but they can fight them at the local zoning board. And that’s exactly what they are doing.
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The opposition reflects a cultural backlash that cuts across party lines. In June, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from the Bronx, one of the most liberal members of Congress and a possible presidential contender in 2028, introduced a bill that will prohibit construction of new data centers until “Congress passes comprehensive legislation to address the economic, environmental and safety impacts of artificial intelligence.”
On July 18, a right-wing group called Humans First – it claims that “Big AI globalists seek to hijack our government to get Washington, DC to put Big AI before American people” – coordinated 142 protests in 42 states. Humans First is chaired by Amy Kremer, a stalwart Trump supporter who identifies herself as a “founder of the modern day Tea Party.”
When you have AOC and Tea Party types lining up on the same side of an issue, you aren’t looking at a normal political fight. You are seeing a populist revolt.
Opposition to data centers is surging as US residents are seeing steep increases in their power bills and, fair or not, many people are blaming data centers for the price hikes. Big Tech has commissioned several studies to try to debunk those claims, including one by the Data Center Coalition that found “no historical evidence of cost shifting from data centers to...