Frontier AI labs are betting trillions on new data center construction as the path to better AI, but public sentiment is turning sharply against it. More than 60% of Americans favor limiting new data centers, especially locally, and opposition is growing. In Q2 2026 alone, $68 billion in data center projects were disrupted by local opponents, according to Data Center Watch. A new report from the nonprofit Data & Society, based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Pennsylvania with 44 interviews between 2024 and 2026, digs into what actually drives this resistance.

The report’s authors, including Livia Garofalo and Maia Woluchem, are critical of how AI has been pitched and don’t focus on measuring empirical impacts. Instead, they study how people experience the debate over data center construction. They found that the industry’s “inevitable” narrative lands poorly in Pennsylvania, a state with a deep history of coal mining, oil, steel, and fracking—industrial experiences that left residents wary of utopian promises. Governor Josh Shapiro initially celebrated $90 billion in data center and AI infrastructure investment at a July 2025 summit, but a year later signed an order imposing new requirements and removing projects from a regulatory fast track.

Surprisingly, trade unions are among the strongest supporters, seeing data centers as a way to rebuild ranks despite acknowledging the projects won’t create many long-term jobs. Meanwhile, the researchers describe AI boosters’ efforts as a propaganda campaign, citing the Data Center Coalition’s websites like “Pennsylvania Connects” and at least $19,000 in state lobbying. Yet resistance has grown in unlikely ways, described as “post-partisan.” Opposition draws from classic NIMBYs, people who distrust AI and corporate interests, environmental groups worried about water and emissions, and those with vague public health concerns.

Material interests often dominate: concern about higher power bills, falling property values, and the developer playbook of pressuring local officials with NDAs. Woluchem notes that residents notice when Amazon, Meta, or Microsoft representatives show up at town meetings, and their usually responsive council members suddenly won’t talk. This patchwork of motivations makes it hard for the industry to address. The core issue is trust, as Garofalo explains: an intimate, relational trust is being inserted into people’s lives by industries that extract value, while people simultaneously feel cared for by chatbots they know are commodities.