Opposition to data centers is a “grasstop” effort funded by some company that doesn’t want to pay for something

“Grasstopping” is when a hidden actor funds a campaign designed to appear like a real “grassroots” campaign.

Don’t get me wrong, there is no shortage of reasons to oppose data centers and AI more generally. But I just don’t think people are that motivated.

If you want to know who is behind something, you usually just have to follow the money. Right now, John Q. Public is getting a bunch of free (albeit often crappy) computing resources.

On the other hand, there are a bunch of companies who made contractual commitments at a time when they thought there would be spending that just isn’t there.

So let’s see:

Build a $5 billion data center for a company that’s about to go bankrupt because it has no customers?

Or pay $50 million to a “consulting” firm to do a little dirty work? Which would you choose if you were a sociopathic corporate executive?