One reason is that politicians have vilified them for their own political means. Creating false narratives like they use huge amounts of water, when in fact the cooling is a closed loop system and use less water than a single busy restaurant. They are being used as yet another pawn piece to push inequity and climate change agendas. It’s been quite a successful strategy.
If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
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Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#12Not covered in the article are two critical reasons:
1. They're breaking environmental laws in order to meet power demands. xAI has already been busted on this [1], but they keep finding willing accomplices in rural parts of the country to bypass public opposition or speedrun through regulatory exceptions [2].
2. Companies seem to be fudging their numbers when it comes to GPU capacity & current workloads [3], likely to inflate their IPO valuations. I know Ed Zitron is a divisive figure but I've not seen any journalist on the other side of the argument provide the volume of data that he has.
[1] https://www.selc.org/news/xai-built-an-illegal-power-plant-t...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/10/musks-xai-draws-more-opposit...
[3] https://www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#13To stop assholes from bombing them
We didn't have known datacenters bombed till now
I mean yes, Amazon servers in the middle east aren't doing great, but I guess it's not what you're talking about
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#14This is the top comment: “ And ask if AI is so great why hasn’t it designed resource efficient data centers? And ask what the data centers are actually doing. Bitcoin mining, anyone?” Says all you need to know about the competency level of this position, which is ideological and not fact-based
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Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it’s not just ideological. The facts are, even with great strides in efficiency, datacenters use a TON of water and electricity. And without fail that results in increased prices for the local communities who see almost no benefit from these datacenters. Ironically the very same people profiting most off of them are the ones saying they’re going to leave the country if they’re forced to pay anything resembling a…
Data centers use very little water, right down to none if they want. And state-of-the-art hyperscale data centers really are operated by AIs.
Source on that water claim? Everything I've seen suggests the opposite.
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#16What is the advantage to not keeping them a secret? The populist movement against AI is growing rapidly, and is supported by bunk science which affirms people's pre-existing biases (like the idea that data centers suck up all the water in a community, or raise the ambient temperature by a single-double digit number of degrees F).
AI is a genuine source of economic growth. I can understand wanting to curtail it, but in return you are getting fewer jobs, less economic growth, more money to other countries who don't allow protesting or even complaining about data centers, etc.
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#17[dead]
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#18One reason is that politicians have vilified them for their own political means. Creating false narratives like they use huge amounts of water, when in fact the cooling is a closed loop system and use less water than a single busy restaurant. They are being used as yet another pawn piece to push inequity and climate change agendas. It’s been quite a successful strategy.
So successful that data centers are everywhere? I'm not following the logic here.
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it’s not just ideological. The facts are, even with great strides in efficiency, datacenters use a TON of water and electricity. And without fail that results in increased prices for the local communities who see almost no benefit from these datacenters. Ironically the very same people profiting most off of them are the ones saying they’re going to leave the country if they’re forced to pay anything resembling a…
> datacenters use a TON of water and electricity We have a shortage of neither.
Things would go over better with communities if they had assurances with regard to local impact and if those were violated they’d have recourse. Also would help if they provided some token compensation (like the Alaska fund). It wouldn’t be much but it’d be something and most people would probably take that.
Re: If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?
#20They're being built in as much secret as possible because everything is. Everything about land development is adversarial and the people who keep their mouths shut wind up taking fewer 4-7 figure screwings along the way than the honest people. It sucks that this how it is but even just the most casual familiarity with all the rules and processes makes it obvious why this is the way it is. You could find more than eno…
grocery stores? They are not comparable to data centers.
They aren't, and yet somehow you still find various groups who will fight them.
Seattle is currently dealing with this for a new WinCo -- which is low-priced and employee-owned, making it particularly unobjectionable -- on a site that used to be a Sam's Club, so it's not even really a new development: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/winco-plan...
> North Seattle shoppers may need to wait even longer for a grocery store to fill a former Sam’s Club location left vacant since 2018
> Two years ago, discount grocery chain WinCo filed plans to remodel the building and reconfigure the parking lot on Aurora Avenue North. But the plans encountered opposition from a neighborhood group for their possible environmental impact.
> Last week, a hearing examiner overturned the city’s determination that the project would have no significant environmental impacts, casting doubts on the future of the project.
> ...
> For a while, everything seemed on track. The city conducted a State Environmental Policy Act process and found WinCo’s plans would have no significant environmental impact.
> Then, last fall, a coalition called Lake Washington Working Families appealed the decision. The group, which tried and failed to disrupt plans for a WinCo coming to Renton last spring, has no website and is not registered with the state — leading to online speculation about who exactly is behind the group. But Karl Anuta, a Portland-based lawyer representing the coalition, said it’s made up of King County residents.
> The coalition claimed the city’s environmental analysis of WinCo’s plans for the North Seattle site was inadequate and required further review. WinCo would have major traffic impacts, the appeal said, releasing pollutants into local bodies of water.
> In an interview Monday, Anuta, who primarily handles cases involving environmental law, said the group is not against having a WinCo store at the location but wants the city to seriously analyze the environmental impacts of such a large business.
> “The real issue for the Lake Washington Working Families was you’re going from eight years of nothing there to a larger facility with many impacts,” he said.
> “You can’t just permit stuff and expect the neighbors to deal with the consequences.”
This is why environmental regulations and processes are getting pushback -- not because people hate the environment, but because NIMBYs learned to weaponize these rules against almost any kind of development, even the kind of thing that the overwhelming majority of people in an area support.