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What in the World, a free weekly newsletter from our foreign correspondents, is sent every Thursday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletter delivered to your inbox.
Washington: On a recent Tuesday morning, I observed a small rally across from one of the main convention centres in the US capital. A few dozen people had gathered to protest against the Data Centre World Conference, an annual gathering for the booming AI and data centre industry.
The crowd was mostly older, but with a smattering of youthful faces. They carried signs such as “People before Big Tech” and “Data centres = climate catastrophe”, and chanted slogans including “Pull the plug, stop the slop”.
Lo and behold, the organiser of the demonstration turned out to be an Australian: 65-year-old Linda Edwards, originally from Canberra, who has been in the US for more than 20 years.
She lives in Richmond, the capital of Virginia – the world’s unrivalled data centre hub. Northern Virginia alone is estimated to house nearly 15 per cent of worldwide data centre operating capacity.
That makes Virginia the epicentre of the global data centre backlash, too. The spread of these hulking, noisy, warehouse-like buildings is alarming many Americans, and they have fast become the focus of neighbourhood groups wherever they arise.
“These data centres are popping out around people’s homes and in their backyards, and they don’t know about it,” Edwards says as we amble down 7th Street. “It’s a bit like waking up one morning and there’s this friggin’ big data centre in your backyard and nobody knew it was going to pop up. That’s just got to stop.”
Like any construction project, data centres must go through the planning process or at least have the right zoning approval. But their proliferation in Virginia has certainly been rapid, thanks to generous tax breaks.
Ashburn, a 45-minute drive from Washington near Dulles Airport, has become known as Data Centre Alley, with more than 130 such facilities. There are dozens more throughout surrounding Loudoun County, which – partly thanks to the data centre boom – regularly ranks as the wealthiest county in the US.