Data centres are a nightmare of political economy. Voters see them as ugly, dirty, noisy and power-hungry bastions of arrogant Silicon Valley companies. And—thanks to ChatGPT—it has never been easier to pen a letter to the planning department saying so. Yet the public has an awful lot riding on these windowless sheds, for the stock market is a one-way bet on them being built. Data centres are particularly disorientating for Democrats, since unions tend to support the projects. If artificial intelligence is a class war, it pits a coalition of billionaires and electricians against the office droids both despise.
Wildcatters like Mr O’Leary are a soft target for politicians who want to be seen as tough on data centres but still want them to be built. On August 18th Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, derided the developers “scaring our communities” and signed an executive order he said would squash “speculative proposals” that had little chance of being built in the first place. Of the more than 100 projects announced in the state, less than a fifth had applied for the permits needed to develop them, he said.
Imaginary scalps are easy to claim. Silicon Valley giants are the biggest backers of data centres. But beside them is a long line of property developers, private-capital firms, “neo-cloud” operators and crypto-miners, followed by international chancers, national rogues and local spivs. Most of their plans were destined to remain press releases. Analysts at Bernstein, a broker, attempted to quantify the credibility of each watt of announced capacity. Plans by Google and Amazon are taken at their word. Those by CoreWeave and Nebius, two large neo-clouds, are discounted by around half. Mr O’Leary is ignored.
According to their model, another fantasist is Vermaland, a land bank that announced a gargantuan 3GW facility in Arizona last year. In May the project was reportedly cut by four-fifths after facing local opposition—a shadow-boxing knockout. Little information is available about a 1GW project in south Florida that was supposedly shelved in February, except that the land had been bought for $15m in 2024 by an obscure investment firm. When a data-centre plan that would never have materialised is cut down, it often makes a very large sound.
[...]
It is often said that China has an advantage in the AI race because it can build big things by force. Yet America has the power of willing things into existence by exaggeration. The grand plans of developers will be watered down. Politicians will also overstate their opposition. Often they will cancel each other out. Meanwhile, the searing pace of construction will continue.
https://archive.is/0tDCq
From the article:
[...]