The Expansion of AI Data Centers Ushers in a New World of Surveillance, Eminent Domain, and Utility Costs
As the United States prepares for the boom in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, we are now starting to see how it impacts American citizens and how the federal government (as well as corporations) can utilize these systems for sinister purposes. We may celebrate this technology as the next great achievement in human development, but what is the cost of contracting out our thinking and creativity skills to robots? Moreover, many of the new data centers that are beginning to pop up all over the country are causing issues with eminent domain, utility costs, and privacy; and despite large-scale disapproval by the people as a whole, these projects continue to push themselves into our lives.
Currently, there are an additional 700 AI and Cloud-computing data centers being enacted (3,000 already exist in the United States, and some estimates put this at 4,184), and some state and local governments, at the direction of citizens, have put up moratoriums to block or delay further development on this front (it is currently sixty-nine jurisdictions). In addition, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin have attempted to place restrictions on these new facilities (this is as of April 27). Between 2023 and 2025, eighteen projects were delayed and seventeen were cancelled, showing that local opposition and grassroots movements can have an impact on what occurs within communities. Citizens of Reno, Nevada were able to push back enough to get a thirty-day moratorium on new data center projects, and Ohio residents sued over a proposed $4 billion facility.
Kevin O’Leary (from Shark Tank) is pushing back against residents’ concerns to build a 40,000-acre data center in Box Elder County, Utah that would consume more power than the entire state is currently using (the ten data centers currently constructed in Utah eat up 80% of the entire power capacity). Efforts by a local Georgian woman (Ansley), who has travelled across Coweta County and beyond to save her mom’s house from being taken by Georgia Power’s expansion of utility lines for these data centers, have spread around online, as these state-partnered corporations have no regard for the people living in the area. In Kenilworth, New Jersey, people are rallying around trying to halt a project near the Garden State Parkway.
On the east side of Lake Tahoe in Nevada (on the border with California), people are having 75% of their electricity diverted from them in order to feed the data center, and they have one year to find an alternative source of power before they are cut off completely. In other words, the government-granted monopoly of NV Energy will leave people in the dark to serve the interests of Google, Apple, and Microsoft; and currently, 22% of Nevada’s entire electricity is consumed by these AI structures (remember that Nevada is home to Las Vegas). In Fayetteville, Georgia, people are noticing that their water pressure has decreased as a result of having to supply nearby data centers.
Positively, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law that would prevent utility companies from passing the power costs of AI onto the citizens, but with the advantage of bringing in huge property tax revenue to local governments, how long will they be able to hold out before caving? Utility companies pushing the costs incurred for powering the data centers is an issue in many states, including in New York, Maryland, and Virginia, where the government-granted monopolies are arguing that they absolutely need to charge taxpayers more money to build the electrical infrastructure for these AI facilities (the increased costs, or in the case of Lake Tahoe residents, having their power cut off completely, are forcing people onto solar panels and batteries, and you wonder if this is being done intentionally to manipulate the average household away from traditional sources of power). Though Arizona, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania are attempting to prevent rate hikes from data centers, it is an uphill battle, since state governments grant utility companies exclusive profits and investment opportunities and protection from competition (arrangements that are not free market capitalism).
It is not just electricity consumption and the need for large amounts of water to be supplied that are causing alarm to people living near these massive structures and complexes. Data centers are causing a lot of noise, and many unfortunate neighbors to these facilities complain of constant humming sounds produced from the cooling mechanisms that prevent the servers from overheating. These noises can lead to headaches, vertigo, nausea, sleep disturbances, ear pain, and hypertension, as there is no escape from the constant disruptions.
As California Governor Gavin Newsome celebrates the AI boom entering his state because of the opportunities to bring the cash-strapped government additional revenue in tax dollars, we must consider what these data centers are being constructed for. Interestingly, one theory (by The Unraveling - yersocialistdad) suggests that because of the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” (H.R.1 - 119th Congress), new facilities must be constructed by 2030 in order to qualify for bonus depreciation advantages, and therefore, because of President Donald Trump’s legislation, data centers are being forced down our throats and against the public’s will.
Even if speeding up timeframes to meet deadlines is a contributing factor, we must also consider that AI is being incorporated into everything, including government surveillance and military technology. As I have written about previously (here and here), President Trump and Vice President JD Vance are very much intertwined into the world of AI technology (especially with Palantir, Oracle, Google, OpenAI, SpaceX, Nvidia, Reflection AI, Microsoft, and Amazon), and they are pushing this to new heights. We are entering a new era in society where there is no privacy, and although we were already being monitored through the Patriot Act, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Flock cameras, PRISM, and many other avenues (more on Section 702 here and here); this new technology will be unlike anything that we have seen. It is almost certainly the case that the federal government is encouraging the expansion of these data centers for the purposes of keeping tabs on the populace, and when combined with Fusion Centers, where federal and local law enforcement share information in collaborative projects that keep us under police control at all times, data centers will have the ability to share information obtained locally with federal agencies for the purposes of spying on us.
The Fourth Amendment is constantly violated already, but with new surveillance technology, it will likely be eroded further until it exists only on paper and not in practice. There will be nothing that can be kept private, and moreover, with AI’s new capabilities to mimic people and produce fake evidence, dissenters can be charged with crimes that they did not commit and eliminated from society (or their bank accounts can be shut down partially or completely). Plus, if the federal government is constantly watching and threatening us, the First Amendment will mean virtually nothing, as people will be afraid to speak for fear of the consequences.
This is building the scene for the new totalitarian future, and all of this is being ushered in by the Trump administration. Both Republican and Democratic administrations will utilize this new technology for their own sinister purposes, and at the end of the day, there will be little that can be done to stop it. This is why we must resist now while the infrastructure is in its infancy. The harder it is for the government to have free access to spy on us, the better off we will be in the end. Ultimately, the choice is ours whether we want to live in a surveillance and police state that disregards the Constitution, and it is up to us to inform our fellow citizens of the danger of the new AI technology and data centers.
Thank you for reading, and please check out my book, The Global Bully, and website.