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Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers

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Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers

#201

Post by euleriancon »

MasterScrat wrote: post #121
e40 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is because the demand is so extreme for datacenters now Point to _any_ analysis that says the current building boom is anything but speculation. xAI is renting out their DC space. I think I read that Google is, too. DC buildout is purely a gold rush. A play to be the one left standing after all the weaker players die.

> xAI is renting out their DC space. I think I read that Google is, too. You’re probably thinking of Meta. Google renting GPUs is a less recent phenomenon, to say the least.

xAI is renting out compute

https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/20/anthropic-will-pay-xai-1-2...

Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers

#202

Post by strictnein »

izacus wrote: post #95
strictnein wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Russia has been doing it for decades and it would be foolish to assume China didn't learn from them. Thomas Rid's "Active Measures" covers this in detail, and it's somewhat maddening to read, because it details how much of the civil strife we've experienced that was exacerbated by their actions. https://www.amazon.com/Active-Measures-History-Disinformatio...

Blaming Russia (and China) in most cases is a cheap cop out to try to deflect, hide and minimize the actual grievances of people living in USA. Yes, there's propaganda and most of it doesn't reach the Americans. It's downright insulting to claim their hurts are something that countries on the other side of the world invented.

> "It's downright insulting to claim their hurts are something that countries on the other side of the world invented."

Not what was being claimed by anyone you're possibly responding to.

Read Active Measures to actually understand what is being discussed here, assuming it's available in your country. The author isn't from the US.

Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers

#203

Post by doron »

rconti wrote: post #169
redlewel wrote: post #30

I think this is because the demand is so extreme for datacenters now that companies are building them in a manner that disrupts the environment around them. The newer ones are using on-site generators that are insanely loud and require multiples more power than datacenters have historically needed. For a rack with traditional servers with just RAM/CPU/Drives, 5kW is sufficient in most cases. When you have racks that…

I don't think the average person actually knows anything concrete about them. They're a proxy for peoples' sense of powerlessness about what's going on around them. Skyrocketing electricity prices, the sense that elected officials aren't looking out for their interests, job losses, etc. They're a convenient proxy for many disparate concerns because they represent all of those things in one way or another.

I think AOC made this point easy to understand in a recent hearing..

"ask ... if they [Zuckerberg, Thiel etc] want one of these data centers in their own backyard"

Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers

#204

Post by oooyay »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #192
oooyay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one ever cared about DCs before now. Society hasn't felt the very real effects of data centers until recently. Power supply being short meant that residential customers have had to pick up the tab for heavy industrial users. We've started to learn just how bad all those dams we built are for the environment and many of them are tied to data center money. Elon Musk waltzed into Memphis and stood up a natural gas…

> Power supply being short meant that residential customers have had to pick up the tab for heavy industrial users. Maybe some kind of progressive pricing for power would be appropriate. I'm not sure if this exists, and correct me if it does, but maybe the second MW should cost an order of magnitude more then the first, and so on.

Oregon just passed something like this I believe. We basically charge data centers 30% more for power.

Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers

#205

Post by kranke155 »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #63
redlewel wrote: post #30

I think this is because the demand is so extreme for datacenters now that companies are building them in a manner that disrupts the environment around them. The newer ones are using on-site generators that are insanely loud and require multiples more power than datacenters have historically needed. For a rack with traditional servers with just RAM/CPU/Drives, 5kW is sufficient in most cases. When you have racks that…

Site selection also isn't very thoughtful. A lot of pre-AI datacenters were placed a good distance away from places where people live, but time to operation seems to be the overwhelming priority now which is pushing them to build right in the middle of or next to developed areas.

I don’t understand why they’re doing this? Is extending the grid to their shiny new DC so expensive they’d rather build on top or right next to housing? Is it the water supply ? I don’t understand why someone would do something so clearly self defeating

Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers

#206

Post by saturn8601 »

mrngld wrote: post #143
rsoto2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the AI Datacenters are much worse for the environment. xAI is using methane-turbines to power theirs, and they are allowed to pollute your communities because they bribed the Trump admin. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/16/elon-musk... https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/data-centers/elon-musk-... https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1014655584252361

I have some degree of sympathy for data centers, and anyone else that needs power, only because of how broken our regulatory state is on approving new transmission. To be clear, it's not just data centers that have this problem. Journalists have been spilling digital ink on this topic as it relates to solar and wind farms as well. It's also part of the thing that'd hold back rapid deployment of nuclear. If there's a…

The country first and foremost should serve all its citizens. Not just wealthy people and not just people of the dominant ethnic background. The xAI data centers sits right next to a poor african american community and Musk used emergency turbines that were not designed for continuous daily use. He utilized a loophole to get past those restrictions. Those turbines are burning gasses inefficiently and producing a lot of pollution that is directly harming those residents who likely don't even materially benefit from all this effort.

These people likely had nothing to do with the delay in solar installs, or decades of nuclear NIMBYism yet now because Musk cannot fall behind, they now have to suffer with no one in government caring about them.

Its a real life hell, they cannot physically resist or cause any trouble or else the government will come and kill them where they stand, they cannot afford to move away because who would buy their houses (and why should they abandon their life's community for something they had no part in?) so they sit and suffer day after day with declining health for their family. Framed like this, Musk is like a locust who has come to devour whatever good there was and then move onto the next prey.

Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers

#207

Post by I-M-S »

izacus wrote: post #102
sabujp wrote: post #10

most americans say not in my backyard to more housing in their backyard too, but i digress.

What kind of reason would you possibly have to write the sentence you did? Why did you?

It could be argued that the article tendentiously paints this as a "not in my backyard" issue in order to normalize NIMBY outlook, conflating building AI data centres with building housing.

Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers

#208

Post by BeetleB »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #65

IMO NIMB should be illegal, so long as the builder meets standards. Maybe those standards should rise to include ambient noise requirements, heat dissipation, capital contributions to water/electricity supply, additional tax burden points (for land use without, maybe?). But I also feel there needs to be an assertion that if you own the land it's your property and you're free to do most things with it, safely and poli…

> IMO NIMB should be illegal, so long as the builder meets standards.

NIMB is part of setting those standards.

In a nearby town, the city was planning on putting a moratorium on new data centers, and so a lot of companies rushed their application in before the moratorium start date. They all got approved. The local citizens got really mad that they were approved, and the city simply said "Look: We legally cannot deny them permits if they're conforming to current requirements."

So yes, you're right. And yes, your statement is mostly irrelevant. NIMBYism is always about the future requirements. It's not as if enacting a rule disallowing high density residences will force existing ones to be torn down.

Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers

#209

Post by watwut »

RajT88 wrote: post #131
watwut wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should call data centers what they actually are: surveillance centers designed to put us all in a digital prison by 2030 I mean, isnt that what Karp, Thiel are openly saying and one of the things Antropic doom trolls about?

Yeah, but the thing is - those guys aren't using the majority of data center capacity out there. The Anti-DC crowd doesn't appreciate that the surveillance state is coming with our without all these DC's being built. That is going to get hosted some where, some way. The fix is regulatory and political.

They cant make regulations. They have only limited political power, Karp and Thiel certainly have more.

So, what you say amounts to "it is true, but do nothing at all". What they do is "do the thing we can do".

You, CEOs and this crowd all agree. It ia just that some think it is a good thing (CEOs), anything except impossible is pointless (you).

Re: Most Americans say "not in my backyard" to AI data centers

#210

Post by unethical_ban »

ransom1538 wrote: post #62
redlewel wrote: post #30

I think this is because the demand is so extreme for datacenters now that companies are building them in a manner that disrupts the environment around them. The newer ones are using on-site generators that are insanely loud and require multiples more power than datacenters have historically needed. For a rack with traditional servers with just RAM/CPU/Drives, 5kW is sufficient in most cases. When you have racks that…

Lol. A data center is no more than a industrial bread bakery (oddly specific i know). The entire anti-data US center is ran by China. EG. You can run a rack of servers in your closet. China is doing a great job.

Adversaries are happy to rule up democracies in any way possible, and it is foolish to think that there are zero concerns about placement of AI datacenters.
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