“The most compelling reason for reforming our system is that the system is in no one’s interest. It is a suicide machine.” -Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
The fight against data centers is heating up across the United States. Americans, frustrated by skyrocketing electricity bills and the growing sense that Artificial Intelligence poses a tremendous threat to humanity and the planet, are packing city and county council meetings and voicing their opposition. This resistance, by most accounts, is largely organic. In other words, the protests against data centers haven’t been coordinated by a central organization, political party (the efforts and targets have been bipartisan), or a national association of anti-data center groups. Nor have left-wing or far-right organizations led the fight.
This emerging context provides fertile ground for organizing efforts. Indeed, the battle against data centers brings together a wide range of fundamental issues facing both the U.S. and the rest of the world: the power of tech oligarchs, ecological degradation, the affordability crisis, and the democratic deficit of existing political institutions. A wide variety of Americans, as seen in the videos and pictures of citizens packing government buildings across the country, are engaged in this struggle. And many more who reject the data centers remain at home, unorganized, yet sympathetic to those protesting. The latest trend taking place across the country is college students booing commencement speakers whenever the speaker mentions A.I.
People are fed up. That’s the good news. In fact, recent polls show that 7 out of 10 Americans now oppose the construction of data centers. Here, we can see the positive impact of social media and independent news outlets. Americans are sharing information, critical analyses, and video clips of local communities packing municipal and county buildings and expressing their anger at such projects. However, that’s not enough. The real question is: how can organizers and activists use this opportunity to organize movements and institutions that will outlive the current battle against data centers? How can organizers and activists broaden and deepen the struggle? Big questions, no doubt, yet questions worth asking and addressing. Each context, of course, will determine the answers to those questions.
Three Important Dynamics
In this piece, I would like to address a few dynamics that apply to virtually any organizing effort: democratizing knowledge, expanding democracy, and building coalitions. The democratization of knowledge is a key component of organizing efforts, especially those engaged in combatting an industry that relies on expert knowledge and complicated terminologies. Oftentimes, poor and working-class people feel intimidated by technical expertise and fancy language. I’ve seen this play out in local, national, and international struggles. As Michael Hardt points out in his book, Subversive Seventies, anti-nuclear activists in the 1970s and 1980s who faced similar challenges did this quite well. By doing so, the anti-nuclear activists were able to cut through the corporate and government lingo that was employed to justify nuclear weapons testing and the construction of nuclear power plants. Expanding and democratizing knowledge requires distilling ideas, making sure everyone engaged in the fight understands the main concepts involved, and perhaps most importantly, can explain and teach that knowledge to others. By creating a situation where everyone involved in the struggle feels comfortable sharing what was previously expert knowledge, ordinary people become empowered, which is always a primary challenge and task of organizing efforts. And that empowerment can spread to other members of the community who feel intimidated by the experts or who don’t see the utility in becoming involved in the struggle.
The fight against data centers also allows citizens to experiment with democratic ideals. Not only does the government’s unwillingness to listen to its citizens’ wishes (70% of whom don’t want more data centers) highlight the democratic deficit inherent in our political system, but it also allows people and organizations to develop democratic norms and practices when deciding on vision, targets, objectives, strategies, and tactics. Additionally, good organizers are perpetually looking for ways to increase their organizational capacity, develop leaders, and expand their existing networks to create robust, diverse, and committed coalitions. The fight against data centers allows us to do all of the above.
The Democratization of Knowledge
When it comes to seemingly complex issues such as emergent technologies, climate change, or the financial sector, many Americans often feel intimidated by government and corporate experts who employ terminology alien to most poor and working-class people. Here, the elites use language and expert knowledge as weapons to confuse unorganized citizens and dampen organized opposition. Right now, this dynamic is playing out in real-time as extremely wealthy companies and investors, along with ideologically reactionary, ignorant, or corrupt politicians (sometimes all three), force-feed data centers down the throats of the American people.
What’s most interesting is that even in communities lacking seasoned activists and organizations, opposition to data centers continues to rise. In other words, this process is unfolding in a rather organic fashion. Rural and suburban communities are mobilizing against the tech oligarchs and unresponsive state officials without, in many cases, the aid of left-wing activists. Here, NIMBYism is very useful. However, the growing opposition to data centers in the U.S. doesn’t negate the need for more disciplined, long-term opposition to Big Tech. After all, most communities in the U.S. remain unorganized, especially in the regions and localities where data centers are being constructed.
Currently, the democratization of knowledge is taking place, but largely online: people sharing videos, memes, and thoughts on social media platforms, YouTube, Discord, and so on. While this is a positive development, it’s also, in some ways, a result of the enormous amount of time people spend in the digital world. Ideally, this process of democratizing knowledge would take place in face-to-face interactions, among collective bodies of citizens who are members of organizations, associations, assemblies, or committees. Popular education is an important element of any organizing effort. When groups of people engage in popular education, they learn from their peers, share stories and information, and develop a shared understanding of existing political, economic, and ecological challenges and how to respond.
In the fast-paced world of digital information, where yesterday’s headline becomes tomorrow’s back page, Americans remain fragmented, confused, and alienated. Yes, social media and independent news outlets and analysts can highlight injustices, cultivate anger, and identify bad actors, but those entities are incapable of generating the sort of social bonds necessary for people to develop genuine solidarity, build organizational capacity, a shared vision for the future, and the strategies and tactics necessary to achieve that vision of an alternative society. In short, the democratization of anger, resentment, and outrage is no substitute for the democratization of knowledge and deep organizing. In order to achieve the latter, citizens acting collectively must democratically develop a popular education curriculum. For example, a loosely affiliated group of citizens forms to combat a data center project. Excellent. The next step is to develop assemblies, committees, affinity groups, and organizations (and organizational capacity). That’s not necessarily a natural process. People must do so through intentional efforts. Once those entities are formed, people must then decide which pieces of information, which resources, analyses, ideas, and data should be used to help their fellow citizens better understand the situation. Through this process, organizers should look to identify organic leaders (trusted members of the community who have the ability to get people engaged who aren’t currently engaged).
Through this process, the people engaged in the protest movement against data centers can collectively develop an understanding of the forces driving the construction of the data centers, the ecological, economic, and social threats they pose, and the multitude of ways citizens can fight back. By doing so, people become empowered, committed, and capable of not only expanding and continuing the fight against data centers but also future political battles. Moreover, this allows the local community to connect with sympathetic university professors and students who might be willing and able to break down expert knowledge and language. That knowledge and language, once broken down, will need to be disseminated. That requires designing, printing, and passing out educational materials to the local population. Those tasks provide an opportunity to connect with local shop owners, web designers, artists, and folks who might only be willing to pass out flyers. Everything involved with the organizing process provides opportunities for engagement.
Expanding the Concept of Democracy & Undermining State Authority
Another fundamental problem in the fight against data centers is the lack of democratic decision-making mechanisms. While it’s true that 70% of Americans are now opposed to the building of new data centers, more than 4,000 have already been built in the U.S. The issue of data centers provides another example of the disconnect between those in power, on the one hand, and the majority of Americans, on the other hand. Of course, there’s nothing new about this dynamic: from healthcare to U.S. foreign policy, and countless other issues, those in power refuse to enact policies that the overwhelming majority of Americans want.
With regard to the underlying assumption that the state acts in the interests of its collective citizens, Americans are more than aware of the absurdity of such a claim. In fact, in the U.S., activists face the opposite challenge: namely, cynicism. Many Americans remain disengaged from politics precisely because they fully understand that their elected officials and the bureaucrats who run the state apparatus very rarely enact policies aimed at benefiting the collective good. Cynicism and nihilism, not rosy assumptions about the priorities of the state, pose challenges for Americans attempting to organize their fellow citizens. Perhaps in previous decades the opposite was true, but things have radically changed over the course of the past several decades, particularly since 9/11, which marked a rapid decline in public trust, and rightly so.
Moving along, previously disengaged Americans who are opposed to data center projects could make the connection between the construction of data centers and the limitations of representative government. In other words, if the majority of citizens oppose new data centers, yet government institutions continue to approve them, what does this tell us about the nature of our so-called democratic institutions? Further, it’s clear why social movements are necessary: elections take place every two to four years. Are citizens supposed to wait for the next election in the hope that casting a vote for a politician will protect their communities from the construction of new data centers? Of course not. Moreover, simply voting for better candidates does absolutely nothing to expand the concept of democracy.
If people are told that showing up to a voting booth and casting a vote every two or four years is the epitome of democratic participation, sustained political engagement will continue to decrease. Social movements, as opposed to electoral activism, provide opportunities for citizens to invent, expand, and refine various approaches to political engagement. In short, social movements allow for more dynamic creativity and experimentation than electoral politics. In the absence of existing political structures, activists in the U.S. enjoy a wide-open environment of potential alternatives. The traditional union movement, with a few exceptions, remains locked in what labor activists and scholars call business unionism. In most cases, unions provide no vision, remain isolated from non-labor struggles, and offer little assistance. NGOs are a dead-end. And existing left-wing organizations, to the degree such organizations exist, have yet to articulate a vision or organize a movement that captures the attention and support of substantial majorities of Americans.
Previous social movements and revolutionary organizations have experimented with numerous modes of engagement: community assemblies, federations of workers, committees of workers operating both within and outside of traditional union structures, affinity groups, loosely affiliated organizations, direct action cadres, decentralized entities, horizontal cells, and the list goes on. In each example, activists have experimented with prefigurative politics: developing organizations and institutions that reflect the democratic values and structures people seek to implement on a larger scale. In other cases, organizers and activists have used rather common and loosely constructed models for their resistance efforts. All of this will depend on the context in which the struggle takes place.
Encouraging people to engage in participatory democratic methods empowers poor and working-class people to not only fight back against the construction of data centers, but hopefully to imagine and create alternative democratic structures and ways of doing politics. Those alternative structures and practices have the potential to motivate and inspire people. Of course, some people will argue that there’s no skirting around the issue of state power. One way or another, they would argue, individuals will continue to be in positions of power within the state. They will cast votes and make decisions within the existing parliamentary and legal structures. And those decisions will impact all of us. To be fair, over the short term, I agree. However, I believe that people are capable of doing two things at once. We can both participate, to a greater or lesser degree, within the existing system (electoral politics) while also operating outside of the system (social movements). Ideally, the two approaches would work together, learn together, and benefit from each other.
Opportunities to Forge New and Lasting Coalitions
The ongoing fight against data centers also provides an opportunity to build multiracial coalitions that bring together urban, suburban, and rural citizens, including disillusioned MAGA voters and non-politicized citizens who’ve never engaged in a protest movement. Since every element of society is impacted by data centers, opposing them allows virtually everyone to engage on relatively even terrain. That said, most of the regions and towns where data centers have been constructed, and where future data center construction is proposed, lack existing organizational infrastructure and experience in direct actions, civil disobedience, sabotage, and various other methods of resistance. Outside actors, participating in solidarity with local communities, could greatly benefit opposition efforts. Students, militant trade unionists, radical environmentalists, and seasoned activists who have experience halting or stopping destructive development projects could provide an arsenal of tools, methods, and approaches to local communities.
Simultaneously, those entities (urban radicals) could learn from local suburban and rural communities, build long-lasting bonds, and together, potentially develop new, creative approaches and models for rejecting data centers. In some circumstances, existing organizations can enter the fold and bolster their membership (if done so in an organic and non-abrasive manner). In other words, if an organization exists and that organization wants to increase its membership and keep people engaged in political struggles, it must do so in a way that people don’t find off-putting or undemocratic. Perhaps more importantly, in my view, the fight against data centers must result in the creation of new organizations, associations, and coalitions that continue to organize and fight long after defeating the construction of new data centers.
In my experience, rarely does an issue resonate so deeply with such a broad swath of the American population. Young people, old people, students, blue-collar workers, conservationists, democratic socialists, libertarians, traditional conservatives, middle-class suburbanites, liberals, and a decent portion of the MAGA movement all oppose the construction of new data centers. If local communities, regional and national organizations take a thoughtful, strategic, and nuanced approach to the fight, everyone could walk away from the multitude of struggles against data centers empowered and ready to engage in future struggles. This is a very important opportunity at a time when so many segments of our society are fragmented (urban vs. rural, old vs. young, white vs. black, women vs. men). Breaking down those barriers and creating new forms of solidarity is a worthwhile and necessary task.
Every Struggle Is An Opportunity
Whatever lessons are learned through the fight against data centers, both good and bad, should be examined, documented, and applied (or not applied) to future struggles. Hopefully, new organizations and coalitions will arise. More specifically, the fight against data centers allows us opportunities to democratize knowledge, a key component to any successful political campaign, movement, or resistance effort. Poor and working-class people, who are often intimidated by corporate experts and government bureaucrats, have the ability to understand the issues we collectively face. Anti-nuclear activists in the 1970s and 1980s provide a real-world example of how activists and communities disseminated technical knowledge.
Activists and organizers in the U.S. face a very different set of challenges when it comes to undermining the state apparatus than activists from previous generations. Today, most Americans vehemently distrust the state at historic levels. Of course, unforeseen events (national emergency, terrorist attacks) could shift opinions, but a significant decline in trust among citizens for a number of major institutions, including the press, government agencies, corporations, educational, and cultural institutions, has only accelerated in recent years. As a result, it’s quite easy to make the case that the government isn’t looking out for the collective well-being of ordinary Americans.
On the other hand, this dynamic brings about other obstacles. While it’s not difficult to undermine state authority, it is a difficult task to empower people to create new structures and modes of political participation. Our collective challenge has always been and continues to be developing organizations and institutions that ordinary Americans can not only trust but also collective associations that empower poor and working-class people with the knowledge, tools, commitment, skills, and discipline necessary to create new and innovative ways to fight back against the undemocratic state and the corporate entities that often dictate government policies.
Ordinary people, without question, have the capacity to alter our current destructive trajectory and develop viable alternatives. Our collective future is not predetermined. There’s nothing natural about so-called technological progress. If we treat every battle, every campaign, struggle, action, and protest as an opportunity to learn from our mistakes and improve upon our successes, expand our objectives and visions, we will quickly build movements and organizations capable of addressing the seemingly never-ending challenges we collectively face on a national and international scale. My hope is that the battle against data centers will transform into a larger struggle against A.I. advancements, the suffocating proliferation of digital technology, and the cult of so-called progress. One can certainly hope.
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4 Comments
AI can be understood as essentially a second Industrial Revolution, arguably in some regards perhaps even more consequential than the first. If we situate this revolution within a historical materialist framework it has a certain inevitability. Bounded by the constraints of a given socioeconomic system it is subject to varying degrees of social control, such that not all of its transformational aspects are ineluctable or invariable.
The second point is more of a question. Heretofore, we’ve been able to do pretty much everything we’ve done, stream movies, use the internet, use everything that’s digital, and so forth, without recourse to the sudden rush to construct new, massive data centers. So now, what’s different?
Has the demand grown that rapidly and tremendously of late? Would this demand be due to the widespread advent and use of new technology in recent years, such as cell phones, that require dramatic increases in resource inputs and storage capacity? What, exactly? Or, given the comparatively recent rise of the hypercapitalist “billionaire class” is this intensification due to the demand of capital for new forms of investment, of new forms of accumulation and/or disaccumulation?
f a mix of two out of the three I’ve enumerated, or maybe all three, how do we break this down, portion it out? Some believe AI will lead us to an ecologically sound future. In that regard, it is acknowledged there are trade-offs involved, and that energy and environmental trade-offs must be regulated.
Certainly in the struggle to confront climate change there are advantages in analysis, along with enhanced speed, strengthened processing and storage capacity in data management.* What other advantages will AI provide in this struggle; in terms of cost benefit analysis, how will the benefits outweigh the costs?
* I’ve seen a recent report that NOAA is now on the cusp of being able to forecast flooding at least days in advance, such that disasters such as the recent deadly Mystic River flooding consequences in Texas might be avoided or mitigated. To what extent would this, or similar results, be attributable to AI? What other advantages can or does AI afford, and, does the cost have to include massive data centers?
Again, I disagree with the notion that the advancement of AI is “inevitable.” Individuals and, more importantly, institutions and structures (economic, political, educational) shape the design, implementation, and dissemination of such technologies. Right now, as those working in AI have warned for years, the very limited regulatory framework surrounding AI is part of the problem. So far, tech oligarchs and the industries they own are the only entities driving AI research, development, implementation, and expansion. The state has had very little input. The people, virtually none.
To answer some of your excellent questions in the second and third paragraphs of your response, I’ll add some notes from a recent article I read on NPR:
“The explosive growth in data center construction is primarily driven by the boom in generative artificial intelligence (AI). Training and running modern AI models require vast computing power and massive amounts of specialized hardware, forcing technology giants to build hyper-sized facilities to meet the rapidly expanding digital demand.”
The massive shift toward new infrastructure is fueled by several specific drivers:
“The AI Compute Boom: Modern Large Language Models (LLMs) parse through billions of data points daily. These processors generate unprecedented amounts of heat and require specialized liquid cooling systems that older, traditional server rooms cannot accommodate.
Everyday Cloud & Digital Traffic: Aside from AI, consumers and businesses are relying on the cloud more than ever. Everything from streaming entertainment and online shopping to remote work and global banking requires centralized servers to process and store information smoothly.
National & Corporate Competition: Tech leaders and governments are pouring billions into infrastructure to compete in a global AI race.
Economic Incentives: Many state and local governments actively compete to attract data centers by offering tax breaks and expedited permitting, viewing them as long-term drivers of local revenue and construction jobs.”
I guess the quickest way for me to answer your question about AI technology as a tool to mitigate and cope with the effects of climate change is to say: I don’t believe that any of the existing or emerging technologies available will help us deal with the issue of climate change or broader ecological issues under the current economic and political structures, nor do I believe, with or without AI technology, that we can adequately address any of our collective challenges under the current systems.
That said, I do agree that parsing out which technology is used, where, how, and for whom, requiring what, exactly, is useful knowledge. Democratically, people can decide how they would like to implement such technology. If that technology is forced upon the masses by an elite group of tech oligarchs, as has been the case since the mass distribution and access to the internet, bad things will ensue.
Your point below is an interesting one, but I disagree. The technology could inform people and institutions of potential risks (flooding, to use your example), but human beings still make the important decisions: how many resources should be sent to the area, whether rescue operations are fully funded and properly equipped, whether communities are properly informed, evacuated, etc. Human beings decide whether or not to undertake mitigation processes that could potentially help such at-risk communities.
I can see, in some ways, how the potential predictive qualities of AI are attractive, but those predictive qualities are limited insofar as they can only predict, provide analyses, offer suggestions, and so forth. In the end, human beings will still make the most important decisions about how state and corporate resources are used. Additionally, many experts in the AI field still raise fundamental questions about its projected uses, efficacy, etc. Right now, there seems to be an assumption that AI technology is not only inevitable, but that it will be capable of doing anything and everything. That remains to be seen. More importantly, is that what we want? Is that a desirable outcome? No one is being asked these questions because the people and entities implementing such technology couldn’t care less about the wishes, needs, or aspirations of the masses.
Most of the AI debate, currently, surrounds the concept of global economic and geopolitical competition: “We’d better develop this technology faster than China!” Or, those on the left who uncritically praise China’s development of AI technology and its broader proliferation of digital technology: “Look at how amazing China looks, with their self-driving cars, automated corner stores, holographic skyscrapers, and neon drone lights!” I’m not impressed with any of those things, nor do I want the eastern seaboard of the U.S. to look like downtown Las Vegas or Times Square. That’s not to say we shouldn’t admire and analyze the good things China has done over the past several decades. But even there, we should debate what’s good, what’s not good, and what our criteria are for both.
This article, as well as my response, resides somewhere. To be precise, it resides in a data center. So do all the movies you pick from Netflix to watch in the evening. In fact, nearly everything digital that is not on your own or someone else’s CD, hard drive, or USB drive resides on servers and drives in data centers. Your thought that they reside ‘in the cloud’ is only a metaphor. Their location is very much on the ground and in buildings containing such devices.
We have come to see the rapid expansion of such locations due to the ongoing, now accelerated, information revolution. Moreover, there will be no stopping it. We can shape the environmental and energy impacts of such centers, and we certainly should, just as we have regulated highways, trains, and airline traffic over the years. But we are not going to stop storing data any more than we are going to stop traffic, nor should we want to.
Why? Because there will be no new socialist order where the working days shirk toward zero, in an economy of ecologically sound abundance, where the amount of living labor time in any commodity also shrinks toward zero. It is that transitional order that makes a classless society of communism possible, where all classes wither away, including the working class. As Marx noted, that’s also when human history begins.
Our capitalists, naturally, have other ends in mind for the ongoing information revolution. So we will fight it out over our way and theirs. But if we simply try to stop it, we will fail. In fact, we will fail at any kind of ecologically sound future, because it is precisely AI and its embedded know-how that will enable us to design and deploy such a future.
It’s presumptuous to assume that I don’t understand the physical components and material infrastructure that facilitate digital communications, entertainment, etc. It’s also silly, in my view, to point out such realities. I no longer own a vehicle, not for moral or political reasons (I live in a walkable area of the city and want to save money), but when I did own a car, I would fill up that vehicle with gasoline from Exxon gas stations. That doesn’t mean Exxon Mobil should exist, nor does it mean that our nation’s infrastructure, which facilitates the car industry, should remain.
The so-called ‘information revolution’ isn’t an act of God, or an organic process or phenomenon, like the sun rising, for instance. The so-called ‘information revolution’ came about as a result of decisions, policies, and economic structures that were intentionally designed and facilitated in a way to support such technology. Practically speaking, at a time when 70% of Americans are opposed to such projects, I don’t think telling people “there will be no stopping it” is a wise, strategic, or reasonable position. Furthermore, I vehemently disagree that we should embrace such technology. The data centers, for instance, are ecological monstrosities. That alone is reason enough to fight them. Equally important is the human cost of our digital world: hyper-alienation, mental health issues, social and cultural fragmentation, and so on.
Again, I fundamentally disagree that existing (or enhanced) digital technology is a prerequisite for a new society. Quite the opposite: it could be our undoing.
People should be allowed to democratically determine how such technology is developed, how it’s implemented, and whether those potential benefits are worth the ecological cost of doing so. Under our current system, that process isn’t possible. And so, the majority of people, rightly so, have determined that they would rather stop the projects altogether rather than allow the current system and the tech oligarchs who run it to make those choices, leaving the masses to respond. The AI’s so-called ’embedded know-how’ is the know-how of human beings, whom the AI learns from. Again, I fundamentally disagree that AI will allow us to live a more ecologically sustainable life on this planet. The components required to build, develop, employ, and maintain (let alone dispose of) such technology are inherently destructive ecological processes.