Posted on 07/20/2026 9:32:56 AM PDT by WhiteHatBobby0701
Fox Business anchor Dagen McDowell explains local opposition to data centres is rooted in public backlash against Google and Amazon, which profit off user data, which causes the frustration.
McDowell points out the significant increase in data centre restrictions across the U.S., including New York's moratorium, reflecting concerns over energy, water, and job displacement.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxbusiness.com ...
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Google is leading the charge to replace all white collar workers in the USA with millions of Indians who are given defacto American citizenship. And to make sure the media does not to report on this. It is working spectacularly.
I used to build data centers. As long as they are self contained and they only tribute excess water and power back to the community I’m cool with it.
Big tech said we needed to import h1b scammers from India to defeat China so it’s going to be hard for them to convince people with the same line when it comes to data centers.
Practical thoughtful reply
Do they really hum loud?
The other part is that people do not like their electric bills going up. So, if you want to put in a data center you must build a power plant that will produce twice as much power as you consume.
This will cause the electric bills to go down, strengthen the grid and deal with somewhere around sixty percent of your problem.
Putting your data centers in cities rather then on currently being used farm land that you want taken by eminent domain would remove about another twenty percent.
But this is only if you actually want to solve the issue.
I wonder where all these anti-data center people were when the first Internet data center build out occurred?
Have Amazon and Google analyze their own data and built these pos’s where their get most of the traffic and business from: large, nasty, cities.
McDowell gets on my last nerve. No thx
We should be fighting whatever wrong practices are being committed by Google and Amazon, but not broadly waging war on efficient computing.
I’ve heard some people claim that China is funding the opposition to these data centers because they, China, want to dominate in AI.
Whether those claims are true, I do not know.
McDowell gets on my last nerve. No thx
Same here
This is all primarily about NIMBY stuff, very little about data collection.
People don’t like the crazy high electric bills caused by these electricity guzzling behemoths. People don’t like the noise they make. People don’t like the light pollution at night. There’s also some land use issues in the mix.(the data centers are often times built on top of highly productive farmland for example)
It is also rooted in some anti-capitalist sentiments, mirroring opposition to nuclear power plants, oil refineries, pipelines, desalination plants, and other things of the sort.
But more than anything, its the high electricity bills. That’s #1. People can’t afford the building of new data centers and the repercussions on the monthly power bill.
Frank Zappa wrote a song about a girl,
Dynamo Humm. She was a wagering type of gal. I'd put up a link but don't need to get suspended again.
Seriously though, any trend/emerging industry that chews through resources faster than they can be provided or replenished is more detrimental than enriching - unless you're the one sitting atop that setup.
Mankind's tendency to run with the newest and shiniest toys without proper forethought too often finds him stumbling and impaling himself on them. Given time I'm sure data centers could be efficient and good neighbors, but that's not happening while we're waging technological war with ideological enemies like China.
There are practical solutions most of the problems but Big Data has a PR problem that is only going to get worse the more they push.
It is not a data center issue per se but Sony just told a bunch of people that the stuff they "sold" them is going away because it was not really theirs to sell, Amazon doing the same thing with e-books and any number of companies deciding they can change the "terms of service" so the stuff you paid for will not work anymore is not making people love Big Data.
And when you open your electric bill to find out it has doubled because of the new data center you are not going to be happy.
Yep.
I have made the very reasonable suggestion that if every data center would build a power plant that produced twice what the center draws, which would result in electric bills going down and stabilize the grid most of the opposition would vanish.
We keep on building things that are putting a strain on a grid that is already a bit fragile.
Not a great plan.
If an internet data center polluted your water table and jacked up your electricity rates by 100%, would you be quiet?
Yes but that didn’t happen where I lived in the 1990s. Where the first Internet buildout for data centers occurred. I’ve lived in other places where such things occurred with local manufacturers, industry and power plants. In all cases it was fixed! The problem is not in anyway confined to AI data centers.
The electricity rates increasing issue is actually completely separate from data centers. We have spent a decade plus cutting back on reliable means of general electrical power. We replaced it with green dreams of wind\solar and other unicorn farts.
We must do everything possible to enable the communist Chinese to surpass the USA, further compromise the government and facilitate the enslavement of the people.
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