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This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first,sign up here. As voters went to the polls across the US last week, I was in Ashburn, Virginia, part of what’s known as Data Center Alley—the world’s largest data center hub. It’s also where the backlash now sweeping the country arguably first began taking shape. Driving through it is surreal. Concrete monolithic buildings loom along every major road, with names like Skybox and CloudHQ. It’s accepted wisdom in Big Tech that the war against data centers must be about something bigger than just data centers themselves. Two days after the midterms, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane,wrotethat data centers “have become a proxy for public unease about affordability, corporate power, and people losing control over their futures.” It’s a culture war, in other words. But spending a few days in Data Center Alley left me wondering if it’s really the proxy that Lehane describes. I came away convinced that the data center backlash is more about electricity than Big Tech admits. The industry can improve its image, but it can’t escape the physical consequences of its enormous appetite for electricity. Here’s why. There are two ways to power the sort of data center that AI companies want: connecting to the grid, or generating electricity onsite. In Virginia’s Loudoun County, where data centers are ubiquitous but have been built at a steadier pace than the breakneck expansion now underway elsewhere in the country, most are connected to the existing grid. One facility I went inside, operated by Equinix, has massive diesel generators onsite for backup but gets its power from the local utility, Dominion Energy. Much of Dominion’s electricity is generated by natural gas (which is cleaner than coal or oil, but worse than renewables). The average data center operating in this part of Virginia today has a power capacity of 54 megawatts. That’s more than the power draw of theDenver International Airport. Elena Schlossberg, a prominent activist against data centers in Virginia, told me she’s “always banging my head against the wall” when the industry paints the fight as a culture war. “It was always about power,” she says—that is, electricity. Some Virginia protesters appearmoreanimatedby a broader anti-tech populism than Schlossberg, to be fair. But it’s the particular consequences of drawing so much power from the grid that have done the most to shape how the backlash has played out. Recent protests have led tonew rulesfrom the state that data centers must pay fully for the cost of new transmission lines to the grid and make sure they’re not spread among everyone else. Data center developers told me they’re preparing for new rules that would cut them off from grid power during peak demand. Schlossberg also worries about the downstream effects of a strained grid—for example, that data centers will run more diesel generators or that Dominion Energy will expand fossil fuel inputs rather than renewables to meet demand. The overwhelming majority of AI data centers being built elsewhere in the country are not designed this way. The scale desired is so massive that companies are setting up in rural areas where there is virtually no grid infrastructure to connect to. Building there means bringing your own power (so-called “behind the meter” power), in the form of natural-gas-powered turbines. Companies also build diesel generators for backup. Anthropic, for example, hasreportedly agreedto pay 3.4billionforgasturbinesinwhat’sdescribedasthelargestpowergenerationpurchasebyanAIcompany.Evenifgridswerenearby,they’dbeunlikelytoservetheamountofpowerdemanded.ThesmallestdatacentersattractiveforAItrainingare300megawatts.It’salotofpowerforoneindustrialsite,butnotunprecedented:Onedatacenterdevelopertoldmehe’seyeingaformersteelmillalreadyequippedtodrawthatmuchelectricityfromthegrid.Buttheidealfacilitiesaremorelike6,000megawatts.That’stheestimateddrawofthecityofChicago,whichispoweredbymorethan20powerplantswithinthecityalone(anddozensfartherout).Thenotionofdatacentercompanies’bringingtheirownpowermightseemattractiveatfirst,becausetheywouldn’tbestrainingthegrid.Butgeneratingelectricityatthisscaleinevitablyaffectssurroundingcommunities,andwhenpublicutilitiesbuildinfrastructureofthismagnitude,communitieshavetraditionallyexpectedasayinwhereitgoes.Now,privatecompaniesareundertakingprojectsonasimilarscale.Natural−gasturbinesofanyscalereleaseairpollutants.Whendieselgeneratorsareused,it’sevenworse.Andintheunprecedentedrushtogetthesefacilitiesoperating,companieshavebecomehorribleneighbors(recallthatElonMuskviolatedairqualitylawswhenhesetupdozensofturbinestopoweradatacenterinMemphis,accordingtotheEnvironmentalProtectionAgency).BigTech’stendencytochalkthebacklashuptoaculturewarobfuscatesonesimplefact:There’sonlysopleasantyoucanmakeasmallcityofcomputerstolivearound.Sure,companiescanpursuebetterdealsthatraisetaxrevenues,hirelocalworkers,andgetmorecommunityinvolvement,astheprotestsareleadingthemtodo.ButifasmalltownisaskedtowelcomeaWaltDisneyWorld,aninternationalairport,asteelplant,andthepowerplantstorunthemall,shouldwebesurprisedbyitstrepidation?Again,that’snottosaythisisthesolereasonforoppositiontodatacenters.Fearsofjoblosses,existentialrisks,andconcentratedcorporatepowerallfuelthebacklash,asdoesmisinformation(mostfacilitiesusefarlesswaterthanmanypeoplethink).Norisconsumingenormousamountsofelectricityinherentlybad:Manyoftheadvancesthathaveimprovedmodernlifehaverequiredjustthat.Butasonedeveloperrecentlytoldme,industryinsidersseetheirambitionsasconstrainedlessbypublicoppositionthanbyalackofelectricity.Thatshouldtellussomething.Sowhathappensnext?It’spossiblethatnewlyelectedpoliticians’actualstancesondatacenterswon’tbeasnegativeastheonestheycampaignedon.Butwhatseemstrueregardlessisthatifnewdatacentersneedtheirownpowergeneratedonsite,they’llgowheretherearethefewestpeopleabletoresistthem.ThatmightmeanthePermianBasin,whereanetworkofnatural−gaslinescanbeeasyfordeveloperstoconnecttoandpopulationsaresparse.Companiesmightalsotrytheirchancesabroad;Google,infact,announcedthedayaftertheelectionsthatitwillspend3.4 billion for gas turbines in what’s described as the largest power generation purchase by an AI company. Even if grids were nearby, they’d be unlikely to serve the amount of power demanded. The smallest data centers attractive for AI training are 300 megawatts. It’s a lot of power for one industrial site, but not unprecedented: One data center developer told me he’s eyeing a former steel mill already equipped to draw that much electricity from the grid. But the ideal facilities are more like 6,000 megawatts. That’s the estimated draw of the city of Chicago, which is powered by more than 20 power plants within the city alone (and dozens farther out). The notion of data center companies’ bringing their own power might seem attractive at first, because they wouldn’t be straining the grid. But generating electricity at this scale inevitably affects surrounding communities, and when public utilities build infrastructure of this magnitude, communities have traditionally expected a say in where it goes. Now, private companies are undertaking projects on a similar scale. Natural-gas turbines of any scale release air pollutants. When diesel generators are used, it’s even worse. And in the unprecedented rush to get these facilities operating, companies have become horrible neighbors (recall that Elon Musk violated air quality laws when he set up dozens of turbines to power a data center in Memphis,accordingto the Environmental Protection Agency). Big Tech’s tendency to chalk the backlash up to a culture war obfuscates one simple fact: There’s only so pleasant you can make a small city of computers to live around. Sure, companies can pursue better deals that raise tax revenues, hire local workers, and get more community involvement, as the protests areleading them to do. But if a small town is asked to welcome a Walt Disney World, an international airport, a steel plant, and the power plants to run them all, should we be surprised by its trepidation? Again, that’s not to say this is the sole reason for opposition to data centers. Fears of job losses, existential risks, and concentrated corporate power all fuel the backlash, as does misinformation (most facilities use far less water than many people think). Nor is consuming enormous amounts of electricity inherently bad: Many of the advances that have improved modern life have required just that. But as one developer recently told me, industry insiders see their ambitions as constrained less by public opposition than by a lack of electricity. That should tell us something. So what happens next? It’s possible that newly elected politicians’ actual stances on data centers won’t be as negative as the ones they campaigned on. But what seems true regardless is that if new data centers need their own power generated onsite, they’ll go where there are the fewest people able to resist them. That might mean thePermian Basin, where a network of natural-gas lines can be easy for developers to connect to and populations are sparse. Companies might also try their chances abroad; Google, in fact, announced the day after the elections that it willspend15 billion on data center projects in Malaysia. But there’s one place where Big Tech may find virtually no limits at all, as Elon Muskpostedjust hours after the midterms results came rolling in: “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.” Ten years after AlphaGo’s match against Go champion Lee Sedol, today’s AI still isn’t tapping into the machinery that made that win possible. An exclusive interview with Nick Cammarata, the researcher whose 26,000-word viral blog post has AI safety folks celebrating. Breathless claims about AGI and new capabilities fall apart pretty quickly under scrutiny. With the rise of personal AI assistants, the internet isn't just for humans anymore. Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.