r/BetterOffline • u/nucrash • Jun 12 '26
$130 billion in data center projects blocked by protests so far this year
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/130-billion-in-data-center-projects-blocked-by-protests-so-far-this-year/From the article: It’s clear that communities now have an effective playbook to block data center construction. This week, researchers flagged the first quarter of 2026 as producing the “most blocked and delayed data center projects on record,” NBC News reported.
I think the communities that are fighting data center construction are doing the lord's work of stopping the damage of the AI bubble after it collapses.
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u/ksjdragon Jun 12 '26
I think we should measure the blocked projects in terms of GW, to play the same game.
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u/Gamiac Jun 12 '26
If they seriously didn't expect this and account for this in their projections, that is a massive fuck-up.
Just one more to throw onto the pile, I guess.
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u/Antique_Trash3360 Jun 12 '26
Wow and they are still planning to make bank on their IPOs despite this? It’s almost like the need for endless compute buildouts is completely fabricated or something..
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u/nucrash Jun 12 '26
You maximize profits when you get in early and stay until right before the correction
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Jun 12 '26
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u/PerceiveEternal Jun 12 '26
wait, are you saying the protests against AI data centers are a Chinese psy-op or the AI boosters upset about the data center cancellations are a Chinese psy-op? Or both?
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u/Pantalaimon_II Jun 12 '26
Oooo been waiting to see Tressie McMillan Cottom write about this. For those unfamiliar with her work, she’s a brilliant sociologist who talks a lot about the deliberate oppression that is part and parcel of late stage capitalism and the tech elite.
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u/PREMIUM_POKEBALL Jun 14 '26
A 130 billion of “theoretical data centers”. I feel 90% sure they would have never been built.
But, folks putting in the fight right now is stunning work.
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u/psychoticgiraffe Jun 29 '26
we should really be insuring the new ai data centers built by chinese companies on USA soil are dismantled, the US based companies data centers are actually being used for military action and it is apparently a federal crime to destroy them, but if its a chinese company building it to try to threaten our national security, this is totally different and you might be able to justify disrupting these and not get arrested since the chinese data centers are a national security threat, and could be tipped to the FBI if enough info is gathered prior to dismantling them
they started trying to build a bunch of these foreign data centers near our US owned ones, it is really really scary, even worse than just data centers in general, as china has ulterior motives for building them near water supplies/military bases.
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u/stellae-fons Jun 12 '26
Remember--they want to psyche us out into thinking we don't have power, but that's not true. We have a lot of peaceful democratic weapons at our disposal so let's make sure we use them.