{"id":9338,"date":"2026-10-25T15:37:03","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T15:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=9338"},"modified":"2026-10-25T15:37:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T15:37:03","slug":"what-the-us-anti-data-center-movement-can-learn-from-everywhere-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=9338","title":{"rendered":"What the US Movement Against Data Centers Can Learn From Abroad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><span class=\"lead-in-text-callout\">Paris Marx\u2019s new<\/span> book couldn\u2019t have landed at a better time. The longtime critic of Big Tech and host of the <em>Tech Won\u2019t Save Us<\/em> podcast has been thinking about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/tag\/data-centers\/\" class=\"text link\">data centers<\/a> for years, and <em>Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech&#8217;s Data Empires<\/em> comes out right as opposition hits a fever pitch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cI certainly didn&#8217;t predict that it was all going to kind of come to a head as my book was coming out,\u201d he says with a laugh.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">While data centers are playing a role in shaping US elections\u2014they\u2019re one of the issues that could decide <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/midterm-races-decide-data-centers-political-fate\/\" class=\"text link\">key midterm races<\/a> in less than two weeks\u2014there\u2019s a history of struggle around the world. Marx\u2019s book takes the reader on a tour of the tech industry\u2019s quest for power and its opposition, from antiwar protests targeting American computers during the Vietnam War, to more recent resistance in Ireland and Chile, and an alternative vision for the future of data centers in New Zealand.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">I caught up with him this week to talk about what he\u2019s seen, and what could happen if the AI bubble pops.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><em>This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><strong>MOLLY TAFT: When did you decide to write a book about data centers?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><strong>PARIS MARX:<\/strong> In the Netherlands and Singapore, they had moratoriums going back to 2019. But in 2022, there was a growing recognition of the demands of data centers in Ireland, on the energy grid in particular. There were huge quantities of electricity that data centers were starting to consume over there.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">The other story that really got on my radar was what happened with Google in The Dalles, Oregon. Google was really trying to hide its water use figures, to the degree that it got the city council to try to keep its water use figures secret. They kept that going for the better part of a year before the community finally got the actual numbers and found out that Google was using 29 percent of the water in the community.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">ChatGPT came out at the end of 2022. It became apparent that there&#8217;s going to need to be a lot more data centers for generative AI. These places were already feeling the effects of significant data center construction, and it felt like that was going to start coming to a lot more communities very soon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/what-the-us-anti-data-center-movement-can-learn-from-everywhere-else\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paris Marx\u2019s new book couldn\u2019t have landed at a better time. The longtime critic of Big Tech and host of the Tech Won\u2019t Save Us podcast has been thinking about data centers for years, and Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech&#8217;s Data Empires comes out right as opposition hits a fever pitch. \u201cI [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[83,100,419,129,905,1359,388,378],"class_list":["post-9338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-books","tag-data-centers","tag-elections","tag-history","tag-power-play","tag-protests","tag-qa"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What the US Movement Against Data Centers Can Learn From Abroad - Silvybrand Lifestyle Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Paris Marx, author of Hyperscale, has been tracking global data center development for years. 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