Residents across the US are reporting concerns about AI data centers appearing with little notice. Within a month of a public call for reports, 3,862 residents submitted stories about facilities built secretly. The single most common concern across all 49 states is transparency, with residents describing back-door deals, NDAs, and decisions made before public meetings.

The scale of construction is massive. Meta is building a 4-million-square-foot AI campus called Hyperion in Louisiana that will consume more electricity than New Orleans. Google has started construction on what Arkansas officials call the largest private investment in state history. Musk converted an Electrolux factory into his Colossus supercomputer in just 122 days. Microsoft invested more than $7 billion in Wisconsin data centers.

As residents push back, they face a counter-effort from NetChoice, a trade association backed by Amazon, Google, Meta and others. The group runs campaigns emphasizing economic benefits while downplaying environmental impacts. U.S. data centers consumed more than 4% of total electricity in 2023, a figure projected to double by 2030. The industry lobby leads with benefits and buries the costs.