• The numbers nobody expected
• The bipartisan surprise
• What a data center actually is
• The jobs promise
• What this means for AI
• The collision ahead

$64 billion. That’s how much data center investment has been blocked or delayed in the last two years by people who don’t write code, don’t follow AI policy, and until recently, didn’t care about artificial intelligence at all.

They care about noise. They care about water. They care about electricity bills. And they are winning.

§The numbers nobody expected

Data Center Watch, which tracks opposition nationwide, puts the blocked investment at $18 billion outright, with another $46 billion delayed indefinitely. In Arizona, a $14 billion project in Goodyear simply withdrew. In Missouri, the town of Peculiar rewrote its zoning ordinance to eliminate data centers entirely. In Indiana, a $1.3 billion development was canceled after community pushback. In Oregon, voters recalled the Port Authority officials who had approved a $100 million facility.

This isn’t fringe activism. 142 organized groups across 24 states are now actively opposing data center construction. Virginia, which hosts roughly 13% of the world’s data center capacity, has 42 opposition groups alone. More than 31,000 people have signed petitions since 2022.

In 2023, two data center projects were canceled nationwide. In 2025, that number was 25. In a single quarter — Q2 2025 — $98 billion in potential investment was shelved across 20 projects.

§The bipartisan surprise

Here’s what nobody predicted: 55% of politicians publicly opposing data centers are Republicans.

This scrambles every assumption about the politics of AI. The standard narrative has tech skepticism coded as progressive — unions worried about automation, activists worried about bias. The data center revolt is something different. Conservative opposition centers on tax abatements, utility rate increases, and what an Indiana activist called “the Gilded Age, part two.”

In Republican-led Indiana, household utility bills climbed 17.5% in 2025. The state’s first major data center incentive filing still leaves ratepayers covering nearly 40% of infrastructure costs. “Folks realize they’re getting duped,” said Kerwin Olson of the Citizens Action Coalition.

In Prince William County, Virginia, a proposed 2,000-acre “Digital Gateway” near the Manassas Civil War battlefield unified preservationists, fiscal conservatives, and environmentalists into a single coalition. The project would consume power equivalent to a midsized city. Elena Schlossberg, who leads Save Prince William County, described the reality: “If you live near a data center that’s being powered by these gas turbines, you simply cannot imagine living there.”

§What a data center actually is

Most people have no mental model for what these facilities mean in physical terms. Christopher Russo of Charles River Associates offered the clearest description: “It’s a giant box where electricity comes in and AI comes out.”

A planned facility in Bessemer, Alabama, spans 4.5 million square feet — equivalent to 18 Walmarts. It would consume 1,200 megawatts of power and 2 million gallons of water daily. The planned Homer City Campus near Philadelphia would require 4.4 gigawatts — roughly the output of four nuclear plants.

The average new data center being planned requires 450 megawatts. The average existing facility uses 45. The industry is planning to build facilities ten times larger than what currently exists, in communities that didn’t sign up for them.

And data center power demand is projected to rise five-fold over the next decade, reaching 176 gigawatts — equivalent to the combined power grids of Australia and the United Kingdom.

§The jobs promise

The economic pitch for data centers follows a familiar script: investment, jobs, tax revenue. The numbers tell a different story.

The Stargate facility in Abilene, Texas, was built by 1,500 construction workers. When completed, it will employ 100 people full-time. A $15 billion OpenAI/Oracle project in Port Washington, Wisconsin, promises a similar ratio.

Michael Hicks, an economist at Ball State University, put it directly: “You’re not providing any benefits, just negative externalities.” The promise of a $3 billion investment that creates 30 permanent jobs while consuming a city’s worth of electricity is, as one opponent described it, “huge giveaways — tax abatements, zoning variances — all to build a $3 billion box.”

Elk Grove, Illinois, is sometimes cited as a success story for data center tax revenue. But for most communities, the math doesn’t work. Virginia’s utility regulator estimates that data center expansion will add $37 per month to every household’s energy bill by 2040. Across the PJM interconnection, customers face $23 billion in additional costs. The most recent PJM electricity auction revealed a 7,000-megawatt capacity shortage — enough to power several million homes.

§What this means for AI

The AI industry’s theory of growth requires physical infrastructure at a scale no technology sector has ever attempted. Every parameter increase in every foundation model requires more compute, more power, more cooling, more water. The standard plan was to build that capacity faster than demand grew.

Nobody planned for the possibility that communities would simply say no.

At least 16 local governments have enacted bans on data center construction in 2026 alone. New York state has proposed a three-year moratorium. New Orleans has already passed one. Madison, Wisconsin passed its own after street protests. Denver is considering a similar measure.

These aren’t regulatory disputes that can be resolved with better permitting processes. They’re democratic vetoes. Town councils and county boards are discovering that they have the power to stop projects that the federal government enthusiastically supports, and they’re using it.

Nicole Fenton, a land use attorney at HSF Kramer, described how the opposition spreads: “One horror story takes off and creates a narrative.” The horror stories are proliferating faster than the industry can respond.

§The collision ahead

The federal government wants AI infrastructure built as fast as possible. President Trump has framed it as a matter of national competitiveness. Billions in subsidies have been allocated.

Local communities want none of it in their backyards.

These two positions are heading for a direct collision. The AI industry’s growth assumptions — embedded in stock valuations, capital expenditure plans, and national security strategy — all assume the physical infrastructure gets built. If it doesn’t, the constraints aren’t technical or financial. They’re political. And political constraints, unlike engineering constraints, don’t respond to more money.

The rebellion is concrete, in both senses of the word. It’s about actual infrastructure in actual places, opposed by actual voters who show up at actual town council meetings. And it’s already reshaping where — and whether — the AI boom’s physical foundations get built.

Every claim in this article is sourced from named reporting. Data Center Watch tracks project opposition at datacenterwatch.org. Utility cost projections from PJM Interconnection. Employment figures from facility announcements and local reporting.

Originally published at https://noahaust2.github.io/strategist-dashboard/blog/the-concrete-rebellion.html