The Data Center Debate: Fact vs. Fiction

The digital economy runs on data centers, a vital core of modern infrastructure most people never see. But there’s a debate brewing about data centers, with plenty of misinformation aimed at slowing data center development and, in some cases, halting it altogether. The Goldwater Institute has put together the following Free-Market Guide to Data Center Infrastructure to dispel some of the data center misconceptions.

Is it just “Big Tech” that needs data centers? What is really driving their growth?

No, it’s not just about “Big Tech.” Data centers are the 21st-century version of a power plant or water tower, providing the essential “digital flow” for every sector of the modern economy.

Hospitals rely on data centers for real-time access to electronic health records; banks use them to process millions of secure transactions per second; and manufacturing plants deploy them to power smart assembly lines. Every time you back up a photo, use GPS, stream a show, or when a student accesses an online portal for homework, a data center is involved.

Since every digital action requires a physical home, data centers need immense scale to support the global economy. What looks like an oversized warehouse is a highly engineered environment housing tens of thousands of servers operating with near-zero downtime. This necessitates specialized cooling, high-capacity fiber, and massive on-site power distribution. By building on large campuses, developers can grow in phases to meet the skyrocketing demand for AI and cloud computing while maintaining a predictable, high-value footprint.

Data centers are among the most water-efficient industrial facilities ever built. Nationwide, data centers consume less than 0.05 percent of total U.S. freshwater withdrawals, a tiny fraction compared to agriculture, thermoelectric power generation, and manufacturing. Furthermore..

Liberals state various reasons for opposing data centers but the real one is they sense that building more data centers will give the United States on advantage over rivals like China. And of course we can’t have that.

It was the same deal with nuclear. They had public reasons like safety and the environment but the real reason was nuclear energy would have boosted Western economies. They knew nuclear would help the West out-compete their beloved USSR so they opposed it.

AI also weighs heavy on leftist minds because their materialism leads them to believe that a true sentient intelligence can be built with computer technology. After all, a mind is just a machine, right?

So their fearful imaginings of a brilliantly evil and self-aware AI capable of dominating humanity — after being unleashed on the world by greedy corporations — run wild and they oppose it.

"The idea that there’s all this data on me (or you) that they are trying to gather - but they don’t yet have enough computing power to handle it all is mentally retarded."

I had a conversation with AI about data centers. It's too long to post so I'll give you the highlights.

I asked AI, "Will data centers be used to monitor and control people?"

AI: "The short answer is yes, data centers enable the monitoring and control of people, but they are the infrastructure that makes it possible, not the autonomous actors doing the monitoring themselves. The intent and execution depend entirely on the organizations (governments, corporations, or criminal groups) that store and process the data within them.

Here is how data centers facilitate monitoring and control:

1. Mass Surveillance and Government Control.

Governments use data centers to store vast amounts of information.

2. Corporate Surveillance and Behavioral Control

Private companies use data centers to track consumer behavior for profit, which can translate to subtle forms of control.

3. The "Black Box" Problem

A significant concern is that the algorithms running in these data centers (AI and machine learning models) often operate as "black boxes." (ME: we won't know what they're programmed to do).

Conclusion: Data centers are the engine room of the digital age. They make large-scale monitoring and behavioral control technically feasible and economically scalable. Whether this leads to a "surveillance state" or a more efficient, safe society depends on the laws, ethics, and transparency governing the organizations that operate the software within them."

Every smart device you own in the near future will be connected to data centers. Your phone. Your car. Your refrigerator. Your washing machine. Your automatic sprinkler system. You smart meter. Your home thermostat. Anything that can contain a computer chip will feed your information to data centers.

There is no opt out.

Lots of people live in HOA theory world where these data centers will never be and if their electric bill goes up who cares. They have lots of money from investing in stuff.

Who cares about the peons who just don't get how this is actually wonderful.

That is how you get revolutions or California.

Both of those things are bad.

A good portion of the country is just normal Americans. They don't want to be rich, they just want to have enough to provide for their family and have a good life. A small business or maybe working for a small business. They want their kids to have a decent education and opportunity to be what they want. They want to own a few things and actually own them. Not have them disappear because the seller rewrote the contract so "buy" and "sell" means something else.

These are the people that are up for grabs politically and no one seems to realize it.

Listen to them, realize their concerns are valid and make a couple of small changes to give them what they need. They are the people you want. People who actually do things.

They are the center.

And if they are on your side the center will hold.

And what they want is not only not unreasonable but actually good for the country.

Goldwater Institute - not a great article, very little depth. It glosses over pretty much all of the details that local communities encounter when they are forced to deal with massive data center construction.

Article below addresses the concerns of people who will actually have to live next to data centers..

https://www.republicanherald.com/2026/07/12/worse-than-coal-data-centers-raise-new-local-concerns-during-heat-waves/

Data centers are generating new concerns after the federal government granted emergency authorization for the resource-intensive facilities to fire up their backup power to avoid residential outages and keep air conditioners running across 13 states during recent sweltering weather.

For large proposals like the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus in Archbald, which plans to use 1.6 gigawatts, or 1,600 megawatts, to power 14 data centers, the 588 diesel generators that would keep it online during an outage would need to collectively produce more electricity than Lackawanna County’s largest power plant. The Lackawanna Energy Center natural gas-fired power plant in Jessup produces 1,485 megawatts.

Despite fleets of generators producing large amounts of power, they are governed with more lax pollution rules compared to power plants, said Schuster

Generators have emerged as one of the most contentious issues surrounding developments, especially in Archbald where developers propose 51 data centers across six projects, with 30 of the buildings confined to a roughly 1-mile stretch. Opponents often raise concerns about pollution, noise and the large volumes of diesel fuel stored on site to sustain generators.

By potentially using backup generators to combat grid strain during heat waves, it opens the door for generators to run for longer periods than municipalities previously considered. Discussions so far have focused on mandatory quarterly testing and maintenance schedules when data center operators run their generators, in addition to generator use during power outages. Local governments also typically exempt data centers from noise limits when they have to rely on their backup generators.

The article addresses the harmful health effects of air pollution on local communities, and the attendant noise pollution. When the backup generators kick on, normal air and noise pollution restrictions are waived. Heat waves that already impact air quality necessitate the use of generators which double down on pollution. That's a BIG lose-lose for those communities.

Residents should not have to sacrifice their health and quality of life for data centers.

To study those impacts, Gaughan is working toward implementing a countywide cumulative health and environmental impact assessment. There are more than a dozen proposed campuses in Lackawanna County, amounting to over 90 individual data centers, plus four power plants. If those projects materialize, running their generators simultaneously is a disaster waiting to happen, Gaughan said.

“Before another acre of land is committed, or any permit is issued, or anything is approved, the public deserves an honest accounting of the cumulative consequences of these,” he said. “These developers and corporations are asking our county to accept unprecedented demands on our electric grid, unprecedented industrial development throughout the county.”

The burden should be on developers to prove their projects are actually safe, not placed on residents to prove they’re unsafe, he said.

Data center infrastructure is financed by huge amounts of debt. Those chickens will come home to roost one day. When that day comes, it is the taxpayers who will be on the hook for bailing them out. Because we can't have the likes of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle - - to actually bear the brunt of bad business decisions. There's too much at stake - like the stock market and 401(k)'s.

An argument will also be made that these companies are part of critical U.S. infrastructure - so we will have to bail them out.

Data centers are being overbuilt intentionally - to break the bank. To eventually engage the theft of more billions - or trillions from the U.S. Treasury. That's how the system is gamed...that's how the taxpayer always loses.

Those rationales for opposing data centers would have applied to the development of modern databases and other modern computer technologies going back decades. You don't block the development or expansion of technology on such grounds.

I'm old enough to recall back in the 70's when Democrat Congressmen were blocking the acquisition of new computers by the FBI, based on that kind of thinking.

The disputed project involves the use of the bureau's existing computer as a central message switching center for local and state police agencies when they make inquiries and responses to each other about wanted and missing persons and stolen property in F.B.I. records.

Such inquiries are now handled by mail, telephone and a consortium operated by the states. Critics have maintained—and the F.B.I. has denied—that the messageswitching ability will ultimately permit the bureau to keep track of all messages going between all state and local police agencies.

In a letter June 8 to Attorney General Griffin B. Bell, Mr. Moss contended that the Administration'Administration action in approving the F.B.I. project “poses a threat to the civil liberties and privacy of every citizen” and was “the beginning of the creation of a national police force.”

What you want goes way beyond that episode. They were just trying to prevent the FBI from implementing something (which never seems to have created this big civil liberties threat). Your idea would have been like blocking the development of technology itself, in order to prevent the FBI from having a "national police force", which is preposterous.

The idea of blocking the advance of computing power to prevent companies from "influencing" consumers is particularly absurd. Maybe they should block advertising!

I don't know what your point is about "sounding like" Kevin O'Leary. That article actually says that there is foreign interference. It says that Interior Secretary Burghum and others agree that there's foreign interference.

Says O'Leary:

We uncovered something far bigger than I ever expected. After seeing coordinated false attacks against the Utah data center project, we brought in an advanced data science team to trace where the content was coming from and the results were shocking. What we found led back to organized networks, political activist groups, and funding trails tied to massive international entities. We dug through IRS 990 filings, tracked IP data from around the world, and uncovered what appears to be a coordinated campaign targeting energy and data center projects across multiple regions.

I shared 90 pages of evidence with federal law enforcement and raised concerns directly with contacts at the White House. This isn’t speculation. The filings, funding records, dates, and connections are documented. There’s a coordinated PR war happening around energy infrastructure and data centers, and we’re not going to ignore it.

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