Hostility and opposition to data centers was palpable four months ago. It has gotten much worse since then. Americans’ increasing aversion to new data centers borders on mass hysteria. A recent Gallup survey found that Americans would rather have a nuclear power plant built near them than an AI data center — by over 20 percentage points! 

This animus toward new data centers, however, mostly rests on misinformation and social panic. After all, the biggest concentration of data centers pre-AI boom was in one of the wealthiest counties in the country (Loudoun). Northern Virginia, long dubbed “Data Center Alley,” has had a significant number of data centers for decades, without any noticeable harm to standards of living, quality of life, or electricity and water availability. Ironically, the demonization of new data center construction flies in the face of the fact that newer data centers are both more efficient and more valuable than older ones.