Politico reports:

The companies that build and run data centers are on the losing end of a populist backlash — and they’re struggling to respond.

Fears that the server-packed data hubs will drive up electricity prices, deplete water supplies and gobble farmland have prompted people across the country to pack meetings of zoning boards and county commissions to oppose the projects, while fueling calls from leaders in both parties for state or national moratoriums. That opposition has become a rising obstacle for an industry that is in the process of developing an estimated 1,500 data centers, in large part to support the growth of artificial intelligence.

In response, the data center companies have tried to sell their projects as a boon to tax revenues and employment — though too often, they fail to actively communicate with the public, tech industry policy advocates and executives told POLITICO. That messaging void has let their critics gain the upper hand. “The void gets filled with misinterpretations about what we do and what impacts we have,” said CleanArc Data Centers chief commercial officer John Day.

Results this month from The POLITICO Poll reveal the scope of the industry’s predicament, showing that majorities of Americans now believe key arguments from the industry’s opponents, such as the idea that the projects will make electricity more expensive. That’s a departure from just six months ago, when most Americans were either undecided or disagreed with key statements of the opposition.

Not even President Donald Trump’s vocal support for building data centers has stanched the bleeding, even in Republican-dominated states.

“I don’t think the problem is the way that we engage with communities,” said Kirk Offel, CEO of the data center operations company OVERWATCH Mission Critical. “I think we just haven’t.”

The builders’ and operators’ public relations problems mirror the larger travails of the artificial intelligence industry’s giants, including SpaceX, OpenAI and Meta, whose efforts to win the messaging and political battle over data centers and AI have faced headwinds at the ballot box and a spate of negative headlines and legal woes.

But it’s in some ways a more daunting quandary for the smaller, less visible companies that have been the data center industry’s backbone for decades. Companies in the sector have traditionally flown under the radar, given that they often handled sensitive data and rarely, if ever, got embroiled in political feuds.

“The data center industry always kept everything kind of secret because it was a bit of a risk,” said Carrie Goetz, chief technology officer of the data center IT services company StrategITcom. “It was the course of action that the industry took for a while: just be quiet, don’t let anybody know.” [Continue reading…]