Europe To Big Tech: We Don’t Want You, Either
Two months ago, one of my favorite writers, Ted Gioia, wrote about the growing opposition to Big Tech and data centers, and the surging skepticism about AI, citing a Gallup poll that found 80 percent of the public wants to slow down AI development
“Tech backlash might just be the biggest issue of 2026,” he wrote. “Silicon Valley has never faced antagonism of this sort in its entire history. I doubt they’re prepared for it.”
Gioia’s article was prescient.
Blanchard, who was speaking against the project, reportedly exceeded his allotted time in front of the Claremore City Council by about 30 seconds.
For that infraction, he was arrested by Claremore police and charged with trespassing.
Blanchard and other Claremore residents are fighting a data center being pushed by Beale Infrastructure, a company that is backed by Blue Owl Capital, an asset management firm that recently financed a Meta data center project in Louisiana.
(I wrote about the Blue Owl/Meta project last November because the financing deal reeks of Enron. Blue Owl recently restricted redemptions in one of its private funds, and its stock price has plummeted.)
There’s more. On Monday, the city and county of Denver announced a moratorium on all new data centers.
Denver’s mayor, Mike Johnston, said the move will allow the city to create “clear and consistent” regulations while protecting “resources and preserving our quality of life.” Also on Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the socialist octegenarian from Vermont, called for a “federal moratorium on AI data centers.”
If you think these are isolated examples, think again. The backlash against data centers is real, it’s growing, and it’s global.
On February 3, local officials in the German town of Groß-Gerau near Frankfurt, voted to reject a 174-megawatt MW data center proposed by a US company. The 2.5 billion euro project was rejected after opponents claimed the buildings were too big and would dominate the town’s skyline.
A day later, in Scotland, the City of Edinburgh Council unanimously rejected plans for a large data center because, according to a local press report, “it didn’t meet the criteria to be considered ‘green.’”
In December, we published the Data Center Rejection Database, which documented more than two dozen rejections or restrictions of data centers here in the US. As I explained in that article:
The reasons for opposition to AI data centers are similar to the concerns people have raised in opposition to Big Wind and Big Solar. They include concerns about the quality of their neighborhoods, property values, water usage, electricity costs, and deep distrust of big business in general and Big Tech in particular.
As a member of the Indianapolis council who led the opposition to Google’s project explained, his constituents were concerned about “quality-of-life impacts.”
Those same concerns are evident in the backlash against Big Tech in Europe.
Over the past two months, we have updated and re-formatted the US database. We have added more than a dozen new entries, including six rejections that have happened in the US since January 1.
Now, with the help of my Berlin-based correspondent, we are launching the European Data Center Rejection Database.
Our results show that the backlash in Europe is just as fierce as the one underway here in the US.
See more here substack.com
Header image: Getty Images
Bold emphasis added
Tom
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For sure…screw A/i and big tech.
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