I don’t know how much to believe. China wants the US to not have data centres, so it can leap ahead of the United States. So, it’s funding these opposition groups to run interference.
Having said that, we should be doing what we can to not interrupt lives to have these things.
China spends less than 1/20th on data centers compared to the US. I doubt that this is something of great concern to them. Since the vast majority of funds spent by the US on data centers is an obscene waste of effort and money with no realistic ROI... they are more likely to celebrate this stupidity.
The person who spread this nonsense is Kevin O’Leary who claimed without releasing any believable evidence that local opposition to his monstrosity was funded by the CCP. And of course many people naturally accept this type of nonsense as gospel.
The size and breadth of the United States means we can build data centers in many diverse places without ruining the view...
And using too much water and electricity can be controlled through data center attached power plants on major riverways.
To simply deny them is Luddite behavior.
China is heavily invested in all our companies that are making AI. They WANT us to have the data centers, because they’ll get all the benefits and none of the problems.