Data centers have gone from invisible infrastructure to the center of a heated national battle. Over the past year, 142 activist groups across 24 states have mobilized against the explosive growth of server farms, driven by spiraling electricity costs and environmental concerns as tech giants pour billions into AI infrastructure. The backlash is working - $64 billion in projects have already been blocked or delayed.
What was once the invisible backbone of the internet has become impossible to ignore. Data centers are no longer the preserve of tech insiders - they're now showing up in community town halls, state capitols, and political campaigns across America.
The shift is dramatic and sudden. Over the past 12 months, regional activists have launched what amounts to a grassroots uprising against the data center boom. According to Data Center Watch, an organization tracking anti-data center activism, there are currently 142 different activist groups across 24 states organizing resistance to these projects. That's not scattered opposition - that's a coordinated movement.
The numbers behind the growth are staggering. According to recent U.S. Census Bureau data, construction spending on data centers has skyrocketed 331% since 2021, with spending totaling in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Experts now believe that most of the data centers currently proposed won't actually get built - the pipeline is simply disconnected from reality.
But the buildout isn't slowing. Major tech giants including Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon have all announced significant capital expenditure increases for 2026, with the majority directed at data center projects. The Stargate Project, announced by OpenAI in January, positioned this compute expansion as America's "re-industrialization," backed by the Trump administration's push to make AI a central pillar of economic policy.
What's driving the backlash is intensely personal. Activists aren't just concerned with abstract environmental impacts or theoretical health risks. They're angry about electricity bills. "The whole connection to everybody's energy bills going up - I think that's what's really made this an issue that is so stark for people," Danny Candejas, an activist with the nonprofit MediaJustice, told TechCrunch. He's been involved in multiple protests, including one in Memphis, Tennessee, against Elon Musk's xAI Colossus project. "So many of us are struggling month to month. Meanwhile, there's this huge expansion of data centers. People are wondering: Where is all that money coming from? How are our local governments giving away subsidies and public funds to incentivize these projects, when there's so much need in our communities?"
