The backlash about data centers might really just be about electricity

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As voters went to the polls across the US last week, I was in Ashburn, Virginia, part of what’s known as Data Center Alley—the world’s largest data center hub. It’s also where the backlash now sweeping the country arguably first began taking shape.

Driving through it is surreal. Concrete monolithic buildings loom along every major road, with names like Skybox and CloudHQ.

It’s accepted wisdom in Big Tech that the war against data centers must be about something bigger than just data centers themselves. Two days after the midterms, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, wrote that data centers “have become a proxy for public unease about affordability, corporate power, and people losing control over their futures.” It’s a culture war, in other words.

But spending a few days in Data Center Alley left me …