America Turned on Data Centers

A podcast episode in which Tim Murphy and host Garrison Hayes lay out how the AI-driven building boom in hyperscale data centers has become a rare bipartisan political liability. Murphy argues these facilities have transformed into visible signs of concentrated tech wealth - “oligarchy made into a place” - and that grassroots anger now unites unlikely coalitions against them. Voter opposition runs about three-to-one, and politicians who once courted data center investment are retreating or facing brutal attack ads; Texas governor Greg Abbott’s abrupt shift toward a de facto moratorium is offered as a leading example of the political fallout ahead of the midterms.

The episode catalogs concrete grievances driving the backlash: enormous water use, new gas-fired or diesel backup power plants, rising utility bills, local pollution, relentless noise that neighbors liken to aircraft engines, and projects pushed through with little public notice. Murphy traces the rapid scale-up - from warehouse-sized facilities to complexes measured in “multiples of Manhattan” - and points to high-profile projects such as the Stargate site in Abilene (linked to Sam Altman and Larry Ellison) and Elon Musk-adjacent Colossus II in Memphis. He also connects data centers to broader anxieties about surveillance tech like Flock cameras and the political consolidation of AI power.