Data centres draw ire from voters across the U.S. ahead of midterms

Open this photo in gallery:Greg Sussman, President of the South Whitehall Civic Alliance, during a special meeting with the South Whitehall Township Planning Commission in Pennsylvania, on Sept. 23. The commission heard concerns from community members about a proposed data centre.Joe Lamberti/The Globe and MailOn a cool weekday evening, hundreds of people file into the cavernous auditorium of Parkland High School in South Whitehall Township, a suburban stretch of Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. For an hour and a half, they exhort a meeting of the local planning commission to reject an application to build a data centre across the street.Danica Reznick recounts how, several times last winter, the trade school her son attends had to turn down the heat because the local electricity supply couldn’t keep up with demand. If a power-guzzling data centre moves in, she warns, the problem could be even worse.“Why do our kids have to have the temperature turned down on them so that those people can make money?” she says to thunderous applause.Another resident pulls out her phone to play audio of the low-frequency hum common to data centres, which sounds like a cross between an airplane taking off and an electric drill.A student at the school says a data centre would be a persistent reminder that artificial intelligence is steadily killing her future job prospects.Jarrett Coleman, the Republican state senator for the area, directly admonishes several representatives of the proposed project, who are sitting stone-faced in the first row. “No one wants you here!” he says as the hall erupts into sustained cheers.Open this photo in gallery:Representatives for the proposed data centre listen to community members speak.Joe Lamberti/The Globe and MailThis pile-on is emblematic of the popular revolt against data centres sweeping the United States. A flood of proposed projects, meant to power the AI boom, has drawn furious community opposition everywhere from Michigan to Texas and from California to Georgia. The fear is that the centres will overwhelm electrical grids and deplete water supplies, driving up the cost of both while causing noise, light and air pollution.The fight intersects with the broader backlash against AI, which is facing mounting calls for regulation amid dire warnings from industry insiders that the technology could perpetrate mass cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and eventually exterminate humanity.The issue has become central to November’s midterm congressional and gubernatorial elections, as President Donald Trump fights any effort to put guardrails on the technology while politicians from both parties scramble to present themselves as tough on Big Tech.Major AI firms agree to Ottawa’s new data-centre framework as public opposition growsIt is all setting up a fight over the frontier of American tech innovation, stretching from Silicon Valley to Washington – and running through this place of low hills and deciduous forests in one of the country’s perennial swing states.Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is one of many politicians to pull an abrupt U-turn on the issue. Last year, he declared his state “all-in on AI” and personally welcomed two Amazon data centres. Now, he vows to stop “predatory developers” who are “infecting” the state with the proposed facilities.Mr. Shapiro, up for re-election in November and a potential 2028 presidential contender, imposed a string of new rules on prospective data centres last month. Such projects will now have to pay to upgrade electrical infrastructure, meet water conservation standards and secure local permits to be approved by the state.Opponents of the proposed data centre in South Whitehall Township, however, argue that the rules aren’t tough enough to ensure the facilities’ owners follow through on the mitigation measures they have promised.Open this photo in gallery:Signage opposing Project Atlas, a proposed data centre that would be built on what is now farmland.Joe Lamberti/The Globe and Mail“Data centre developers will say anything they can to placate or disenfranchise the residents to get this thing built,” said Greg Sussman, head of the South Whitehall Civic Alliance, a group opposing the project. “The question is whether they can be trusted to carry any of these things through.”Project Atlas, as the proposed centre has been dubbed, would consist of three buildings totalling 1.5 million square feet, about the size of 88 hockey rinks. It would sit on what is now farmland.Edge U.S., the company proposing it, is vowing to dampen the noise with walls nearly five metres high, install a closed-loop cooling system to avoid drawing local water, pay to build a new electrical substation and contribute US$16.2-million annually in local taxes.Mr. Sussman, himself a business manager in the technology sector, worries that the company could renege on its promises once the centre is built, pay a nominal fine and keep going. He also pointed out that Atlas will have hundreds of backup generators that are exempt from local noise limits.The proposed data centre would be located between Mr. Sussman’s house and the high school, which he said his two young children will attend in a few years. “If this does go in, my kids would never be out of the noise plume. They would go to school in the noise, they would live in the noise,” he said.His group has mounted an extensive campaign with petitions, yard signs, a court challenge and appearances at every meeting where the project is discussed.Marcie Kaplan, Edge U.S.’s head of marketing, turned down The Globe and Mail’s request to speak with someone from the company.Part of the problem facing governments across the country is the gap between the swift development of AI and the plodding pace of government regulations.Ron Beitler, a member of Lehigh County’s local council, says this puts officials in the position of having to potentially approve data centres under regulations that were never drafted to account for them. The state, he says, should impose a moratorium while new rules are written.“Communities need time to understand the impacts on power, water, noise, pollution and infrastructure,” he told The Globe. “Developers have every advantage under the current system.”Open this photo in gallery:Hundreds of people showed up to the South Whitehall Township meeting to express their concerns about the proposed Atlas project.Joe Lamberti/The Globe and MailFederally, proponents of AI regulation are calling for an independent body that would vet new models before they are released publicly − and for the government to have the power to shut down anything it deems dangerous.The push has gathered momentum this month amid a string of disclosures about AI agents deceiving their human masters and hacking private companies and government agencies.“There’s now universal acknowledgment these models are very powerful and there’s a risk they could go rogue,” said Riki Parikh, policy director at the Alliance for Secure AI. “That seems like something that is now table stakes, which wasn’t the case several weeks ago.”Most immediately, those stakes are driving the midterms. Democrats have pounced on Mr. Trump’s full-throated support for AI, while Republicans are running swiftly away from the President. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” Mr. Trump wrote this month on Truth Social.Mark Pinsley, the Democratic nominee trying to unseat Mr. Coleman in the state senate, takes aim at the White House for authorizing U.S. tech giant Nvidia to sell advanced AI chips to companies in China. “Trump talks about how he wants to go faster than everyone else, and yet he’s allowing the chips to be sold internationally. Stop doing that,” Mr. Pinsley said.Mr. Coleman, in an interview, said he is not opposed to data centres in general, but they belong in sparsely populated regions of the country, such as the deserts of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico – and not in his constituents’ neighbourhoods.He had a blunt message for Mr. Trump: “Maybe sit this one out.”