In his recent encyclical Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo XIV stated that humanity is at a critical turning point, facing a pivotal choice regarding the impacts of artificial intelligence and digital technologies on our societies. In the US, more Americans of all political stripes are growing anxious over the acceleration of AI, and a popular backlash is brewing.

At university graduations, commencement speakers who have cited the alleged benefits of AI have been met with resounding boos by graduates, who find themselves being shut out of entry-level jobs by AI. With no federal law regulating AI, state and local governments across the ideological spectrum, from California to Florida, are introducing their own AI regulations. All 50 states have proposed measures covering issues from employment algorithms to deepfakes and child safety.

The strongest protest has recently emerged in the heartland of America, with one particular issue firing up local opposition: the rapid proliferation of the massive data centers used for cloud storage and artificial intelligence computations. Increasing numbers of people are realizing that the surge in construction is the result of a “strange bedfellows alliance” between US President Donald Trump and more liberal Silicon Valley. Together, they are trying to rapidly construct large-scale data centers in communities all across the country. Robust opposition has emerged fairly quickly in the last few months, with a recent poll finding nearly two-thirds of voters in the US opposed to the centers being built in their communities.

Resistance from both right and left

Now dozens of those communities are mobilizing to halt the spread in their geographic area. And not just in the usual progressive enclaves where one might expect such opposition. One type of resistance has been a push by local organizers for moratoriums against data center development in their local town, city or state. In Luther, Oklahoma, once the word leaked out that the mayor was in secret backroom negotiations with the company Beltline to strike a deal, the townspeople showed up by the dozens to their city council meetings in June. Bending to the local pressure, the city council passed a six-month moratorium on data centers.

In Monterey Park, California, residents voted in June 2026 to permanently ban data centers, becoming the first US city to do so at the ballot box. Over 100 U.S. towns and cities have passed temporary moratoriums or outright bans on data centers. Numerous cities and counties, from New Orleans to Tulsa to Seattle, Oklahoma City, Orange County, North Carolina, Prince George's County, Maryland and other parts of the country, have paused new developments to evaluate local impacts. In the state of New York, Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul imposed a one-year construction moratorium on data centers using 50 megawatts or more of power, making New York the first US state to enact a full moratorium. Right wing MAGA Republican Governor Greg Abbott of Texas recently announced a pause on new data centers until the state can conduct a thorough review of their impact on the state's resources; this followed a report from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the state's electrical grid, that it is considering connection requests for electricity equal to 474 gigawatts, which is five times Texas’s peak electric demand. Thirteen other states have introduced moratorium bills to pause data center construction.

Part of what is fueling the anger is that the elected officials are often negotiating in secret with the corporate owners of the data centers. When word leaks out about an impending deal, members of the public get suspicious, reacting strongly with unified opposition. Public anger over fast-tracked zoning, massive water and electricity demands, and the use of secretive non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) between local governments and the AI contractors, has led to accusations of political corruption. Lawmakers in Ohio and other states have faced ethics investigations over undisclosed industry ties or energy committee leadership while handling massive tech-sector utility legislation. The attorney general of Michigan, the state’s top law enforcement officer, is suing Michigan’s own public service commission for working behind closed doors to quickly rubberstamp a massive data center without public input.

Deals made in secret

With public anger rising, dozens of US communities have initiated recall petitions to oust local officials over their support for large-scale data centers. In Festus, Missouri, which is bright red MAGA country where Donald Trump won 67 percent of the presidential vote in 2024, residents have filed a petition to recall the mayor and three council members over their approval of a $6 billion datacenter. Lyon Township, Michigan, Fort Meade, Florida, Box Elder County, Utah, Temple and San Angelo, Texas and other conservative towns are also mounting recalls. There are at least 33 distinct recall efforts targeting as many as 58 local officials across seven states who are facing recall petitions as a result of their decisions over data center permits. Voters in the states of California, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas have launched efforts to recall elected officials over their handling of data center proposals. Said one activist, “People feel like this technology is being shoved down our throats.”

The protest actions have become widespread enough to start impacting the ability of Big Tech to build data centers as fast as they want. Wall Street investors are increasingly treating local and political resistance as a concrete financial variable when deciding whether to underwrite loans for AI data centers. Major financial institutions like Bank of America now evaluate local community backing and permitting status alongside traditional credit and financial checks before committing billions of dollars. In the first quarter of 2026, local resistance blocked or delayed at least 75 projects worth about $130 billion, according to research firm Data Center Watch. Data center operator QTS, owned by private equity firm Blackstone, decided not to seek ⁠bank financing for its now-terminated Prince William Digital Gateway data center project in Virginia after the project faced significant local opposition.

Why such passionate opposition?

Whether the town is conservative or liberal, Democratic or Republican, the reasons for such heated opposition to the data centers boil down to the same factors: the centers use too much water and too much electricity, threatening to drive up prices for everyone else. They consume huge amounts of land, and also emit too much air and water pollution, as well as a constant hum from the facility’s cooling systems. I reported previously on some of these factors for Mitbestimmungsportal (see “The high stakes of the global AI infrastructure race”), but now over a half a year later, this fast moving train is speeding faster down the track. All of these downsides are being forced upon towns and neighborhoods before residents have a chance to weigh the environmental and social costs. And with hundreds of billions of dollars being invested, everyone knows there’s a lot of money to be made. A growing sentiment believes that the needs of local communities are being shoved aside, treated as collateral damage as President Donald Trump and his Big Tech allies try to command and control the unfolding gold rush.

Across America there are currently more than 4400 data centers, and a University of Michigan report found that just one center can consume as much electricity as 2,000 homes. They also need large amounts of water for cooling, with a typical data center using 300,000 gallons of water each day (about the same as 1,000 households). But very large data centers can use an estimated 5 million gallons of water each day, which is similar to the daily usage of a town with 10,000 to 50,000 residents. That level of consumption can overload a local water supply, especially in arid areas, as well as the electric grid capacity. Utilities then will need to invest in infrastructure upgrades, and will try to pass that cost onto consumers, resulting in both higher power and water bills.

Opposition to data centers slowly rising in Europe and Germany too

The backlash to data centers also seems to be building, albeit more slowly, in Europe. In Ireland, after a massive buildout that reportedly consumed 22 percent of the nation's electricity, new data centers in the Dublin region have been halted. The government now mandates that all new facilities must “bring their own power” by building their own utility stations. In the Netherlands, strong local environmental protests halted construction on several mega-data centers in North Holland, and Amsterdam has barred new data centers or expansions in the municipality until at least 2030. In Denmark, where the power grid has come under strain from a surge in electricity demand, much of it from large data centers, the government has introduced a parliamentary bill that would give new data centers the lowest priority for power grid connections. The proposed law, backed ⁠by a broad cross-party agreement representing 80% of the parliament, would prioritize households, healthcare, industry, transport and renewable energy projects over data centers.

In Germany, opposition is also growing. Many data centers in Germany are located near Frankfurt, and new investments worth billions are proceeding forward. Local residents protested when an American company, Edgeconnex, planned to build a data center in the rural Main-Kinzig district of Hesse, since the vast amounts of electricity would be supplied by the construction of its own additional gas-fired power plant. The multi-billion-euro project has been put on hold. The city council of Groß-Gerau voted against the construction of what would have been one of the largest data center in the Rhine-Main region. Opposition appears to be spreading, with a meeting in Berlin in April titled the “Cables of Resistance,” which was attended by hundreds of AI critics.

Julian Bothe from AlgorithmWatch says public resistance is building against data centers in Berlin-Brandenburg and Köln;  in Mainburg, where a gas-fired power plant is also planned to supply a new data center, opposition also has emerged. AlgorithmWatch, based in Berlin, has been a catalyst for the opposition, publishing a guide for how local citizen activists can organize to stop data centers. Many of these anxious citizens fear that the German government has fallen prey to a wrong-headed policy agenda, in which data centers are viewed as generating national wealth and international positioning in the global race for AI capacity. But at what price?

These battles in the US, Germany and the EU will not be settled any time soon. While citizen opposition has delayed and even stopped some construction, the intense push for massive investment in data centers is continuing. In the US, planned expenditures on data centers over the next five years are projected to reach $2.4 trillion. Europe’s projected 5 year investment is $208 billion and Germany’s is $20.2 billion.  Accelerating advances in AI technology seem destined to cause major disruptions to our society, economy, environment and workforce. The question is, whether citizen opposition can push their governments to put some badly needed guardrails around this still-emerging new infrastructure, so that the harms are greatly reduced and the benefits can be enjoyed.