Daring Fireball: AI Data Centers Are Deeply Unpopular, Across the Political Spectrum

AI Data Centers Are Deeply Unpopular, Across the Political Spectrum

Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup:

Seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed. Barely a quarter favor these projects, with 7% strongly in favor. [...]

The data center question parallels the wording Gallup uses to ask about local nuclear power plant construction. In the same March survey, 53% of Americans say they oppose building a nuclear energy plant in their area, far less than the 71% opposed to data center construction. Since Gallup first asked the nuclear power plant question in 2001, the high point in opposition has been 63%.

It’s hard to overstate how unpopular this polling paints AI data centers. It’s just an absolute messaging and marketing disaster for the entire tech industry. Tellingly, the anti-AI-data-center sentiment is bipartisan:

There are partisan differences, but only in slight degree. A savvy politician or party could grab this issue and carve out a broadly bipartisan anti-data-center, anti-AI message. US politics is so polarized in today’s era that the salience of this issue will not go unnoticed. The only thing the hyperscalars have on their side is money, but that fact is a significant factor in the general resentment toward the entire industry.

To that point, Ben Thompson suggests (in today’s subscriber-only Stratechery column) that the industry simply pay residents:

Instead, the most obvious solution is the most crass: simply start giving people money. If data centers are a resource for our AI future, then start paying people for that resource. If that data center up the road weren’t sold to my neighbors based on amorphous tax benefits that my local government may or may not spend appropriately, but rather were to result in a check in the mailbox every year, I suspect you could get a lot more people on board!

Just to put some numbers on this, the data center up the road was expected to be 1.6 GW, which could generate around $3 billion in annual operator revenue. DeForest, the village it was to be built in, has around 11,500 people. You could pay every person in DeForest $10,000 a year for 3.8% of annual revenue grossed by the data center — I bet that proposal would have been approved, and I bet that the operator could very easily pass those costs on to the actual data center users (it also highlights how relatively pathetic QTS’s $50 million commitment was).

I do get how ridiculous this sounds, but ridiculous is how we do things in America.

After mulling the idea for a bit this morning, I’d say it’s unusual, but not ridiculous. Money talks.

★ Monday, 18 May 2026