Power Play: How Data Centers Broke American Politics

The data center backlash of 2026 has united people

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of the political spectrum. [gentle music]

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It looks set to be the issue of the midterms.

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I've spent years reporting on energy and the environment,

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but I've never encountered anything

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like the fury that's built up against data centers.

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For decades, data centers were quietly built all over the US

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in places with both fiber connectivity

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You may have lived near one and never heard much about it,

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Tech oligarchs started arguing that we needed to build

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as many data centers as possible as quickly as possible.

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The Trump administration bought in on this vision,

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rolling back environmental regulations to help.

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Data centers magnitudes larger than their predecessors

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began popping up seemingly everywhere.

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Companies scurried to find cheap land, power, and water.

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with secret multimillion dollar deals

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and non-disclosure agreements for them,

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Polling now shows that 75% of Americans would oppose

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a data center being built in their neighborhood.

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In the last month, Republicans and Democrats

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who were previously data center friendly,

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but are facing tough reelections, have done an about-face.

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Candidates in battleground states are fighting each other

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to see who can seem tougher on the industry.

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But even as…

Original source: https://www.wired.com/