Activism is interfering with data center construction at an increasing rate, a new report says. In just the first three months of 2026, grassroots groups and protesters achieved the same success as in the entire year of 2025.
These findings come from an entity called Data Center Watch, which itself sounds like an activist group, though it’s actually a project run by AI research and red-teaming firm 10A Labs.
Apparently, the disruption by locals affected 75 projects from January to March, worth a total of $130 billion. NBC News says that’s “the highest in a three-month period since the group began tracking in 2023.”
A recent survey by Heatmap Pro explored public sentiment towards data centers in the US, finding that a majority would “strongly” oppose centers being built in their home country. Again, the poll shows growing opposition, with a similar poll nine months earlier showing that Americans were more or less evenly divided on the topic at that time.
In perhaps the clearest sign of the growing cultural consensus against data centers, The Atlantic published a contradictory essay on Friday, written by Elias Wachtel, one of its assistant editors. It reads in part:
“[…]Data-center panic is at its peak. Most complaints raise the cost of data centers and ignore the fact that, at least in some contexts, they can bring real benefits. “If saying no is good politics, it is not always good policy.”
So make of it whatever you want.
At any rate, the Data Center Watch report for the first quarter of 2026 also notes that there are now anti-data center grassroots groups in 49 states, and statewide proposals are close to the threshold of passage. Maine’s moratorium was rescinded by its governor — who noted at the time that she would sign a slightly altered version of that bill — but the report counts 14 statewide measures introduced in the first three months of 2026.
<a href