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When you have racks that are full of 4U GPU systems that pull 3-6kW each, the power requirements per rack shoot up to 60kW+(with whole rack setups blowing past 100kW). So an AI datacenter requires over 20x the power compared to what they needed in the past. This either strains the power grid near the DC or they need to create on-site power to fulfill demand, which has noise and other concerns.
I work near a datacenter and you can't hear significant noise from the outside, maybe a slight humming sound but quieter than traffic. This is a DC that has been around for over a decade and uses power from the grid since most of the loads are non-GPU based.
The AI data centers consume a lot more power, and thus generate a lot more heat(equals cooling noise) per square meter.
This is the reason why it's a new problem right now.
Edit: autocorrect used breasts instead of beasts.
What’s missing from this strange conversation is discussion about how many data center proposals are near residential areas.
I tried to look for one in my state and a few surrounding areas and couldn’t find any. There was an amusing story about how data center protestors had to organize expensive bus trips to get the protesters out to the data center site because it was so remote.
There was another story about a small town without any major electricity or communication infrastructure coming together to impose a moratorium on data center construction. There were no plans to build data centers in their small town and no reason to consider it at all, but they felt so threatened that they needed to convene and put on a big show about banning it.
The social phenomenon of the data center construction protest movement is really fascinating. My assumption is that it will run its course and then be mostly dropped when the next current thing comes along.
There are some actual concerns about using natural gas instead of trying to utilize the optimal power sources or locations, but they’re mostly overshadowed by bogeyman complaints like thinking that a data center is going to end up in your backyard or water consumption that is negligible compared to golf courses and swimming pools.
You have to be fair on this though. The time to ban something is before they start talking about doing it, not after. Being ahead of the game is never a bad thing, especially when small towns are so easily exploited due to income and infrastructure. They just can't afford long legal battles.
>Being ahead of the game is never a bad thing, especially when small towns are so easily exploited due to income and infrastructure. They just can't afford long legal battles.
It's not merely "never a bad thing", for certain tools like zoning it is, at least in the jurisdictions I know of, required to be well ahead and consistently enforced. It's not something towns are allowed to do retroactively, if you have no proper legal town plan/zoning setup in place as well as various ordinances like noise then by default the only controls are the relatively weak state ones. There are many things a government is allowed to do if it's part of an overall plan that applies to all equally, but not if it's "we just don't like those guys specifically", and the best way to demonstrate that is to be making no special moves around a given arrival at all but rather to have it all setup.
Of course, there are as you suggest lots of other good reasons to be ahead too. It's a lot easier to consider things thoroughly and get community agreement when there isn't massive time pressure or lobbying going on and emotions aren't running high. It's easier to get some expert consultation at reasonable prices (in some cases there may even be community members with the skills and willingness to volunteer if it's not a time crush), to enact longer term infrastructure plans, to get any state approval if needed, etc etc. But there are legally serious hard lines as well and if towns are caught napping they may just not be able to use them at all.
The really large data centers have to go into areas with a lot of land and utility connections. These are usually zoned commercial or industrial already.
Ironically, There’s enough issues with the DC buildout going on that even with 100% public opinion support it would still be significantly delayed. The behind the meter power generation isn’t going well. There’s only so many gas fired turbines on the market. And connecting a DC to an established grid isn’t like clicking a button in AWS no matter how much money you have.
This isn't true. People were starting to mobilize against crypto datacenters in the late 2010s and early 2020s^[1][2], long before the current AI-fueled building frenzy.
> I think there’s a lot of social media influence from nation state competitors going on to try and slow SOTA development in the US.
It's fairly well documented that this is happening to some degree, but as above, foreign agents didn't conjure the anti-datacenter movement out of nothing. It's a fact that if the average crypto or AI datacenter moves in next door to you, there's a good chance it's going to crash your quality of life and the value of your property, and all in service of making a few fantastically rich guys even richer. Also, they are the same guys building a machine that they claim is going to destroy your livelihood. You don't need foreign agents to engineer a backlash here.
[1] https://e360.yale.edu/features/bitcoins-intensive-energy-dem... [2] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/10/09/texas-hood-county-cr...
This comes cross as unbelievable, and at worst a fantastical statement, as someone who lives in Northern Virginia and is effectively watching the Datacenter battle unfold from the front lines, and dealing with the local politics and electricity costs rising at a precipitous rate.
Our electricity bill has doubled. Loudoun County Board of Supervisors want to erect “Statue of Liberty” sized power transmission lines, and those that want data centers are doing their damndest to somehow claim that they’re not responsible for the rise in the cost of utilities and shouldn’t be held responsible for it.
Part of the reason people care about Datacenters now is that they’re starting to litter the landscape, take resources from local municipalities, and raise costs for everyone involved, whereas previously there were not enough of them to really move the needle as being a problem.
Folks care because their bottom line is impacted in a time when it’s already hard to make ends meet every month due to rising costs of food, gas, and utilities, not because of some unnamed boogeyman in the form of a “nation state competitor”.
Talking points like:
"We should call data centers what they actually are: surveillance centers designed to put us all in a digital prison by 2030"
It's fishy. People aren't quite showing up and saying the same things at city council meetings, but the local city anti-DC group is full of people reposting this stuff. One clickbait article in particular, "there's no such thing as a closed loop system".
There's real concerns with the data centers. But, the opposition to them doesn't feel entirely organic (imo).
While agreeing with where you're coming from, including this, it is also worth nothing that there is truth to what you're rejecting as well. Our longstanding unsolved domestic problems are fertile ground for nation state competitors to foment discontent, gain oppositional mindshare, and ultimately harm our overall position. The elites seem to think these problems can just be ignored or swept under the rug, when in reality the frustration grows until it boils over into highly destructive self-owns. We're already seeing this play out on a grand scale with general politics, but it can certainly happen in more specific ways that target things like data centers.
In short, we need to fix our longstanding domestic problems rather than merely ignoring them. In the case of data centers - lack of effective environmental regulations around air and sound pollution, complete inability for municipalities to regulate the operations of something after it's been built, and a shortage of infrastructure that's been allowed to be sold to the highest bidder.
https://www.amazon.com/Active-Measures-History-Disinformatio...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/business/china-russia-ai-...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/husband-code-pink-founder-nevil...
Previous coverage of Singham, who coincidentally is married to a co-founder of Code Pink:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/europe/neville-roy-...
Not saying these are correct and are proof, but this isn't some fringe concern from the MAGA crowd or something. It would also be a logical response on China's part to the US working to block them from getting GPUs, processor tech, etc.
Data centers being directly tied to increases in our power bills.
Or CEOs talking about how they're going to get to fire everyone because of AI.
Or social media raising the political temperature.
Or all of them combined. Tech has never been so intolerable across the board.
"These AI people are getting rich selling unicorn farts while I'm on the same pay and everything is more expensive, fuck them".
Ignore at your own peril.
(Ftr. the article doesn't have an opinion on whether Americans like AI, just my take.)
Society hasn't felt the very real effects of data centers until recently. Power supply being short meant that residential customers have had to pick up the tab for heavy industrial users. We've started to learn just how bad all those dams we built are for the environment and many of them are tied to data center money. Elon Musk waltzed into Memphis and stood up a natural gas data center that has basically poisoned the surrounding area.
Maybe nation state actors are helping, that can always be true. It is also true that the American people are starting to realize they've been had many times over and are just starting to ask for a better deal. I think we should listen.
There's no need to invent some malign foreign conspirator to generate unpopularity for this stuff. No, the AI companies are led by unpopular CEOs, who are making unpopular statements (almost cartoonishly so). And opposing a data center is the kind of action that regular people, upset about this sort of stuff, feel that they can actually meaningfully effect. So of course it was going to balloon like it has.
No sign of datacenter activity at the local 4-H club either. Am I so out of touch? No, it's the commie brainwashed American citizens who are wrong.
1. Don't build loud machines across the street from someone's house. 2. Don't drive up water/electricity bills by pulling from the municipal grid. 3. Don't burn the earth with CO2. 4. Don't facilitate techno-fascist surveillance. 5. Pay a lot of taxes.
But, when I see people complain about data centers, I usually see a spiral of rage-bait based on mis-framing, conjecture and repeating stuff others simply made up to get everyone mad. The online discussion tone is reaching a shrieking pink-froth level.
What I'm finding in my lazy research on the subject is that recent and planned datacenters
1. Are exceedingly rarely built where anyone can hear them. But, occasionally are. Thus ragebait articles. 2. Pull from muni grids for small scale centers. But, the hyperscalers are independent. 3. Hyperscalers are burning way too much natural gas. That's bad. But, not using nearly as much water as people think. That's good. 4. Techno-fascist surveillance doesn't need 1000s of datacenters. Just a handful off in the corner is plenty. 5. Datacenters usually are paying a lot of taxes. I think this drives the majority of the push from politicians. And, there's a minority from corruption.
Frankly, the biggest issue folks should be pushing for is to require hyperscalers build out solar power instead of natural gas. That will be a hard fight because it requires more up-front time and investment. From there, ensuring small scale centers don't affect people's bills is a good fight. But, passing laws to ban datacenters seems performative compared to passing laws to regulate their power and water impact.
ETA: I would rather no data centers be built, but my point is if we have to, let’s minimize the number of people who are affected. Offer to move them if need be.
None of this NIMBYism is about the datacenter itself, it's all a protest against AI making the economy really shitty for them.
EDIT: yes, I know mining towns had their own share of problems (I’ve heard “16 tons” too), but knowing the hazards of the past, I think we can figure out a more equitable structure with this kind of setup.
In modern times, both parents often have career ambitions, and the modern capitalist economy and housing pricing has greedily recalibrated to every family needing two incomes. So you're not going to have many families willing to move to the boonies unless you (at the bare minimum) hand out doubly-high salaries.
Very likely that's not enough though, as it's also a massive financial risk to them if you can just lay them off after the next earnings report with no pension to continue supporting them. Most modern families would rather stay where jobs are slightly more likely to exist.
These types of opportunities already exist but are rarely taken up upon. More of them means more jobs unfilled.
When those mining towns were the way of the world people moved around a lot more. It was no big deal to pack your bags and move there. While census data only started being collected from the 1950s onward, it is estimated that ~40% of the population would move in a given year at the hight of the mining booms. Even in the 1950s, when we started collecting concrete data, around 30% of the population would move in a given year. Now only around 8% of the population will move in a given year.
Nowadays there is an expectation that you can stay put. For example, if you watch housing affordability discussions closely you'll notice the theme is always "I cannot afford a house where I am currently located", not "I cannot afford a house anywhere in the world". Attitudes about living arrangements have changed as compared to the past and the AI companies are not about to change it back any time soon. They have to work with people they want to hire, and that means putting the work where the people are already found.
It's the age old problem. The people in the cities cry that there are no jobs and the rural businesses cry that they can't find anyone to hire, with no great resolution as the businesses cannot afford to move into the city and the people don't want to travel to the boonies.
However, in this case, these data centers are so well capitalized that they can afford to move them into the cities right beside where the workers are located.