AI has supercharged data center growth and sparked power, resource, and noise concerns, turning it into one massive hot-button topic for consumers
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The growth and expansion of generative AI is unprecedented, surpassed only, perhaps, by the rapid expansion and impact of the data centers that support it. While anti-data center sentiment is on the rise, US President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social social media platform on Monday to urge people to support rapid data center growth, warning those who oppose that "the only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is that they want to end up being backwards and poor."
Before we dive into the rest of Trump's post, it's worth stepping back to look at data center construction growth and the more recent and somewhat remarkable backlash.
Data centers are not just an artificial intelligence phenomenon. These large buildings packed with servers and connected to the Internet have been around for decades and initially marked their greatest expansion during the rise of the World Wide Web. As the Internet grew in the 1990s and the number of websites skyrocketed, data centers that could keep copies of these sites and their data and then serve them to whoever wanted to access them around the world popped up around the world. Modern-day cloud systems like Amazon Web Services (AWS) serve millions of websites with a reported 900 data centers.
The recent rapid rise of AI usage around the globe in the form of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini has supercharged a new kind of data center growth. While traditional cloud servers relied on relatively efficient CPUs, generative AI demands more powerful and power-hungry GPUs, primarily from Nvidia.
According to the World Resources Institute, a single AI data center can eat as much energy as 100,000 homes. When you consume that kind of energy, you also generate a lot of heat, and one of the other earmarks of modern AI data centers is their use of water for cooling. The WRI reports that a large AI data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of water a day.
Finally, these large data centers can be loud, producing a constant hum that can be heard in nearby communities.
These issues are being amplified by the stunning growth of these data centers. Cleanview reports roughly 3,400 US data centers, with another 2,059 planned. Many of these massive buildings are planned along the eastern seaboard of the US and in Texas, where the governor recently instituted a moratorium.
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Perhaps more concerning are the AI data centers planned for Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, where a lengthy drought and the shrinking Colorado River are leading to water shortages that may result in far more stringent water conservation measures. It's unclear how AI data center plans sync with that.
In the meantime, public opinion on data centers has shifted. A May 2026 Gallup poll found that 7 in 10 Americans oppose local construction of AI data centers, basically a "not in my town" sentiment. As expected, chief concerns revolve around the environment and quality of life. Many are also worried about resources.
In the midst of all this, we have the US leadership trying to encourage people to just let AI data center companies build. Here's Trump's full post:
"The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is that they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign. The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them. If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame. China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can't believe it is happening!"
Trump is right that data centers can result in an economic boom, including investment and new jobs, but it can also be short-lived after construction is done. Basically, the workforce is needed for the build and setup, and then automation tends to take on the majority of the day-to-day workload.
