Data Center Backlash Unites Right and Left Against AI
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- A Gallup poll found 70% of Americans somewhat or strongly oppose data center construction in their area, a level of opposition the article's reporter says is unlike anything she has covered in years of energy and environment reporting.
- Steve Bannon led a MAGA coalition that blocked the Trump administration's attempt to re-up a ban on state-level AI regulation at the end of 2025, with Joe Allen serving as his key tech correspondent and traveling to churches, Tea Party meetings, and MAGA events to build the case.
- Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie were among the first national politicians to publicly criticize data center development, with Greene tweeting in June 2025 that "forcing eminent domain on people's private properties to link the future Skynet is not very Republican."
- Data center moratoriums have been introduced in at least a dozen states including Georgia and passed in one (New York), with local bans also emerging in deep-red areas like Hill County, Texas, and arrests or detentions of protesters reported at public meetings in New Jersey, California, Wisconsin, and Indiana.
- Joe Allen rose to prominence as an anti-tech voice on War Room and authored "Dark Aeon: Transhumanism and the War Against Humanity," touring the country to lecture on what he calls the "inverse singularity" — a collapse of human intellect as reliance on AI grows.
- Recent violent incidents include an attack on Indianapolis council member Ron Gibson, a data center supporter, and an attack on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, escalating tensions beyond protest into physical confrontation.
- Small-sample research cited in the article indicates most Americans opposed to data centers do not live near one and are also skeptical of AI, undercutting the conventional framing of data center anger as simple environmental NIMBYism.
Why it matters: Data center siting decisions are made at the state and local level, and a dozen states are now moving to pause the AI buildout — including in deep-red counties that normally side with developers. The Trump administration's deregulatory push faces an unusual obstacle: its own populist base, organized through Bannon's War Room network, is now treating the AI infrastructure boom as a Republican betrayal tied to eminent domain and corporate overreach.
