What I learned in Data Center Alley: the backlash against data centers is more about electricity than culture war

By James O'Donnell (The Algorithm, MIT Technology Review) · Monday, November 9, 2026.

O'Donnell writes from Ashburn, Virginia, part of what is known as Data Center Alley, the world's largest hub of data centers. He visited during the week of the US midterm elections. He argues that it was there that the backlash against these facilities, now spreading across the country, began to take shape. He describes the landscape as surreal: monolithic concrete buildings along every major road, with names like Skybox and CloudHQ.

The prevailing view in Big Tech is that the fight over data centers is about something broader than the data centers themselves. Two days after the elections, Chris Lehane, OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, wrote that data centers "have become a proxy for public unease about affordability, corporate power and people's loss of control over their future." In other words, a culture war. O'Donnell came back convinced that the backlash has more to do with electricity than the industry admits. In his view, the industry can improve its image, but it cannot escape the physical consequences of its enormous appetite for power.

There are two ways to power the kind of data center AI companies want: connect to the grid or generate electricity on site. In Loudoun County, Virginia, where data centers are everywhere but have been built at a steadier pace than elsewhere in the country, most are connected to the existing grid. One Equinix facility he visited has large backup diesel generators but gets its power from the local utility, Dominion Energy. Much of Dominion's electricity comes from natural gas, which is cleaner than coal or oil but worse than renewables. The average data center in that part of Virginia has a capacity of 54 megawatts, more than the consumption of Denver International Airport.

Elena Schlossberg, a prominent anti-data-center activist in Virginia, says she is "always banging her head against the wall" when the industry frames the fight as a culture war: "It was always about the power." The author acknowledges that some Virginia protesters seem driven by a broader anti-tech populism than Schlossberg's. Even so, he says it is the concrete consequences of drawing so much power from the grid that have most shaped the backlash.

Recent protests have led the state to impose new rules: data centers must pay the full cost of new transmission lines to the grid, rather than spreading it among other users. Data center developers told the author they are preparing for rules that would disconnect them from the grid during demand peaks. Schlossberg also fears the effects of a strained grid: that data centers will use more diesel generators, or that Dominion will expand fossil fuels rather than renewables to meet demand.

The vast majority of AI data centers being built elsewhere in the country do not follow this model. The desired scale is so large that companies are setting up in rural areas with almost no grid infrastructure, which means bringing their own power ("behind the meter") with natural gas turbines, plus building backup diesel generators. The article notes that Anthropic has reportedly agreed to pay $3.4 billion for gas turbines, described as the largest purchase of power generation by an AI company.

Even if grids were nearby, they could hardly supply the required power. The smallest data centers attractive for AI training are 300 megawatts. That is a lot of power for a single industrial site, but not unprecedented: one developer told him he is looking at a former steel mill already equipped to draw that much power from the grid. The ideal centers, however, are around 6,000 megawatts, the estimated demand of the city of Chicago, which is powered by more than 20 plants within the city itself and dozens more outside it.

Companies bringing their own power may seem appealing because they do not strain the grid, but generating electricity at this scale inevitably affects neighboring communities. When public utilities build infrastructure of this magnitude, communities expect a say in where it goes, and now it is private companies undertaking projects of similar scale. Gas turbines of any size emit air pollutants, and diesel generators make the picture worse. In the rush to get these facilities running, companies have become "horrible neighbors." The article recalls that Elon Musk violated air quality laws by installing dozens of turbines to power a data center in Memphis, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

For O'Donnell, attributing the backlash to a culture war obscures a simple fact: there is a limit to how pleasant a small city of computers can be made for those who live next to it. Companies can offer better deals that boost tax revenue, hire local workers and increase community engagement, as the protests are pushing them to do. But asking a small town to host a Walt Disney World, an international airport, a steel mill and the power plants to run them should come as no surprise when it breeds suspicion.

The author clarifies that electricity is not the only reason for the opposition. Fear of job losses, existential risks, the concentration of corporate power and misinformation (most facilities use far less water than is believed) also play a role. Nor does he consider consuming enormous amounts of electricity bad in itself, since many advances of modern life have required it. But, as one developer told him, industry insiders see their ambitions constrained less by public opposition than by the lack of electricity, and that, according to O'Donnell, should tell us something.

What happens next? The actual positions of newly elected politicians on data centers may not be as negative as their campaigns suggested. But if new centers need to generate their own power on site, they will go where fewer people are able to resist. That could mean the Permian Basin, where a network of gas pipelines is easy for developers to tap into and the population is sparse. Companies could also try their luck abroad: the article mentions that Google announced the day after the elections that it will invest $15 billion in data center projects in Malaysia.