Number 4. Time Magazine. Protests in 42 states threaten the future of AI—in the United States.
But not in China.
Data centers, now that I am becoming something of an armchair pseudo-expert, could be said to come in four sizes, based on their electrical energy draw: Small (roughly 1-5 megawatts), Medium (5-20 MW), Large/Hyperscale (20-200 MW), and Mega-campus (200+ MW).
For reference, 1 megawatt (1,000,000 watts, or roughly 1,000 toaster ovens) will run about 800 residential homes.
Some proposed mega-campus installations may eventually exceed a thousand megawatts, which, as you may recall from Back to the Future, is a Gigawatt.
Data centers, left unbridled, are absolute resource hogs. They require land (the proposed Helium hyperscale at Sharon KS will occupy up to 2,000 acres), electricity (the Nebius project in Independence MO will begin with 800 MW and grow to 1.2 GW), and water (The Dalles, Oregon, Google installation consumed 400 million gallons in 2024).
They also eat Mayors and City Council members, once citizens figure out how much tax rebate is offered through community incentives. At this writing, seven local electeds have now been recalled or voted out in Missouri. More to come.
The fear that we-the-people will subsidize AI through huge increases in property taxes, electricity costs and water bills incites the most mild-mannered among us.
Predictably, the DC issue has sown division. In at least three Kansas communities (Emporia, El Dorado and Edgerton), City Councils have filed suit against their own residents. The legal issues are related to keeping a city-wide data center referendum off the November ballot.
The Councils may have had little choice—balancing city budgets and long-term tax relief in the face of loud opposition, while steering through state statutes and non-disclosure agreements—but suing your own people is bad optics. I’m glad I’m not the one in the hot seat.
So the furor leaves me with nagging questions:
Despite the angst and in-fighting, are there actual solutions to real problems?
And maybe more important: With whom will I ally myself in a rush to judgment?
A few data points might make us reach for the Pause button.
In February, the Frederick County (Virginia) Planning Commission heard concerns of cyberattack risks from one Jake Tensley. Mr. Tensley was worried that the proposed Frederick County developments would be targets for hackers, and that somehow this would make citizens hackable also.
The string of logic is little unclear, but Jake Tensley is convinced that Virginia—and presumably America—should stay out of the Artificial Intelligence/Data Center business.
If there were any doubts about this, they should be put to rest when we realize he is associated with groups like “Protect Frederick County from Data Center Development,” and the PSL (Party of Socialism and Liberation), and wears an “Annihilate ICE” tee shirt in public presentations.
For its part, the PSL has bragged of their successful opposition to over $20 billion worth of data center projects. Federal lawmakers have been prompted to open investigations into multiple protest groups who seem to be united in their opposition to data centers. At least some of their efforts appear to be funded by foreign actors.
Gotta ask yourself: Why would a foreign government care if the U.S. builds data centers? And which foreign governments might those be?
Number 2. The Daily Wire. Protest network includes far left joining with homegrown complaints.
The leftist “No Kings” protests have rallied crowds against the likes of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Also in their crosshairs are Tesla, Israel and ICE.
Now it appears their opposition has expanded to include artificial intelligence, data centers, and the newest Evil Kid on the block, Flock license plate cameras.
Strange bedfellows: A small-town midwesterner concerned with preserving agricultural water and license plate freedom is now in the same movement as the self-described communist Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Code Pink.
No reasonable American on the political right (some will say I have just contradicted myself, but hear me out) can support exhausting precious water resources, and no one wants higher property taxes or electric rates. But when that conservative Christian finds himself chanting protests in agreement with someone from the anti-Israel crowd, it might be time to check what else is going on behind the scenes.
The sudden appearance of AI, for which data centers are the life blood, has caught most of us by surprise. Our adoption of AI into daily routines at home and at work has been roughly twice as fast as any previous new technology.
When moral convictions collide with advanced tech, it takes a while to sort things out.
As a final note, the name Neville Roy Singham surfaces often in the discussion of leftist groups noted above. Mr. Singham is a wealthy American citizen of Chinese extraction who is currently living in Shanghai. He has been identified as a “major funder” of Marxist and left-wing political groups.
According to the Daily Wire article, a grand jury is currently investigating his financial ties.
So those who protest the data center are—perhaps at arm’s length—keeping company with Mr. Singham.
Politics has always been gnarly, filled with seemingly unresolvable contradictions. The challenge is to hack out agreements issue-by-issue, a mountain Americans have been able to climb—awkwardly, with stumbles, yet successfully—for over 250 years.
Number 1. The Uptime Journal. Technology innovation cuts water usage in half.
Thinking through the actual objections to data centers, I find a bewildering array of accusations. Some are easy to understand: power, water, and land. But it seems every week there is some new previously unexpected accusation.
This week it’s permanent pollution from “forever chemicals” in Wyoming, found in used cooling water routed back into a local river.
Or noise: the constant low frequency hum from coolers that is said to reduce home values despite dbA commitments.
It sort of reminds me of the pre-teen who doesn’t want to do X, and comes up with interminable Y reasons to stall.
Industry actors have told me the water issue is greatly mitigated by the use of closed-loop cooling systems, both internal (cool the chips) and external (dispel the heat). Noise levels—even background hum—can be resolved with building design. These should no longer be factors in newer data centers. But of course, they will be, when someone raises the complaint.
And the Brookings Institute has gained traction with a pledge from the AI industry to control electric rates. We’ll see how it goes, but it’s a start.
There are real technical problems associated with data centers—just as there were with interstate highways, water reservoirs, cell phones, cell phone towers, oil fracking, the list goes on—but there are also probably real technological solutions to them.
Each technical issue remains a concern. But so does communist agitation. Finding a way to solve one while resisting the other might be the challenge now before us.
And thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup, Data Center Edition, for Friday, September 11, 2026. Well… look at that date. And yes, I remember perfectly where I was 25 years ago today.
Here is my most memorable sight of that day: From the windows on the 11th floor of the Southwestern Bell building in downtown Wichita (because that was where the TV lived) we saw dozens of airliners, one after another, lined up on final approach, north to south, to land at what was then an overwhelmed Mid-Continent Airport.
Have a good weekend! And: remember!
