GoKawiilOn a gray, humid Saturday morning in central Florida, a little under a dozen people gathered outside the Spring Hill Branch Library to protest the construction of a hyperscale data center in their community. There was no immediate threat — the Hernando County commission had unanimously approved a one-year moratorium on such developments in June — but the organizers weren’t satisfied. A temporary pause wouldn’t be enough. They wanted a ban.
“We are going to fight, fight, fight,” said a 71-year-old woman named Carol, who was manning a table with flyers and a petition the group, No Data Centers Hernando County, planned on presenting to the local government. Carol, a retired country music radio host, is a staunch conservative and a proud Floridian. The American flag on her red T-shirt was made up of little sea turtles. A white visor, bedazzled with red and blue rhinestones, shielded her face from the late-morning sun. “How would you like to have one by you? If you live within 15 minutes of a data center, night and day you’re going to hear: EEEEENNNNNNHHHHHHHHHHHH.”
Beyond the noise pollution and environmental destruction — the frequencies emitted by data centers, she told me, hurt bees and other pollinators — Carol was concerned about the social cost of mass AI adoption. She told me about a woman she knows who cut off all her friends because “ChatGPT told her to.”
“She consults with ChatGPT what time she should wake up in the morning, what time she should go to bed, who should be her friends,” she said.
The small rally in this Tampa exurb was one of nearly 150 protests affiliated with Humans First, which describes itself as a “conservative social movement that is dedicated to ensuring that the future of AI is in the hands of everyday people.”
Carol recited a litany of harms caused by data centers, some of them more dubious than others. Cows raised on ranches near data centers, she claimed, were giving birth to stillborn calves. Hyperscale facilities source their parts from China, an American adversary, threatening national security. “We’re setting ourselves up,” Carol told me. “Do you know what’s in those chips?” I told her I do not. “We’re blindly trusting the Chinese?” she continued, incredulous. “To give us chips?” (Conservative proponents of data centers, meanwhile, claim China is funding anti-AI campaigns in the United States.)
Communities across the country are pushing back on data center construction. A recent Gallup poll found that seven in 10 Americans oppose construction of data centers in their area. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans and 75 percent of Democrats surveyed said they objected to local data center construction. Americans may be more polarized than ever, but the backlash to data centers is bipartisan — and it may cement new, surprising political alliances. The concerns animating the conservative backlash are similar to those motivating liberals: the environmental costs of data center construction and maintenance; the ethical problems of AI, ranging from its use for mass government surveillance to its effects on users’ mental health; and fears that having a data center nearby will hurt their quality of life. But there are also some partisan anxieties behind the right-wing data center backlash, namely the threat of Chinese infiltration of US technology.
Humans First, a once-bipartisan offshoot of the Center for AI Safety, is helmed by Amy Kremer, a longtime conservative organizer who is arguably one of the people most responsible for the Republican Party’s populist turn. Kremer was an early leader of the Tea Party and a cofounder of both Women for Trump and Women for America First, the latter of which hosted the Stop the Steal rally in Washington, DC, that devolved into the January 6th riots. (Kremer was not among those who stormed the Capitol.)
Despite Humans First’s partisan bent and Kremer’s political bona fides, the concerns at the Humans First-affiliated rally in Hernando County were decidedly local. A firefighter running for agricultural commissioner dropped off signs; a Republican candidate for county commissioner stopped by. The gathering ended with a lecture from a land use expert who explained how to change zoning codes to prevent the construction of hyperscale data centers — those that occupy at least 10,000 square feet and have a minimum energy draw of 100 megawatts. Before the lecture, No Data Center Hernando County member Kim Belanger, who works in IT, pulled up an article on data centers from the progressive website More Perfect Union. Even though the room skewed conservative, the article, she said, was “very informative.”
Patti Zirhut, the organizer, told me that she found out about Humans First on Facebook. Participating in the national day of action was a no-brainer, since Zirhut and her friends had already started No Data Center Hernando County to thwart data center construction in their community.
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