“If these data centers are so essential to our national security and economy and have such amazing benefits they should prove it by building them in the richest zip codes in America first.”That quip from progressive activist David Hogg went viral and sounds like an extremely good point… if you know nothing about this issue at all.As the community note attached to Hogg’s post now clarifies, Loudoun County, Virginia, is both the richest county and home to the most data centers in the United States. But this tweet is just one painfully stupid example of the distorted rhetoric surrounding AI data centers that has led Americans astray — to a truly stunning extent.
Anti-data-center propaganda has misled Americans so profoundly that, per new Heatmap Pro polling, they are now more likely to support a coal power plant being built near them than an AI data center, which is literally just a warehouse full of computers. “It’s worth stepping back and thinking of how remarkable this is,” Heatmap concludes. “The American public … is more skeptical of data centers which, once built, are essentially warehouses than they are of gas-fired power plants which emit, besides the greenhouse gases, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide. They oppose data centers more than they do wind farms with their towering turbines and mechanical hums; more than they do battery storage facilities which can erupt into super-hot fires; or even nuclear power plants, long the go-to reference for ‘scary energy facility.’”This is nothing short of insane. While there are legitimate environmental concerns involving any large-scale industrial infrastructure project, and data centers are no exception, only someone hopelessly misinformed could possibly favor a coal power plant moving into their neighborhood over a data center. What’s more, this widespread ignorance isn’t just coming from Luddite progressives — it’s a bipartisan affliction. As Heatmap’s polling shows, support has plummeted over the past year among both Republicans and Democrats.
