Pushback of the Week, April 5, 2026

A Powerful “No” to Data Centers

As Mr. Global’s Big Tech arm continues to try to bribe and bully its way into rural and urban communities to build hyperscale AI data centers, local pushback is gaining steam. This has alarmed leading global tech platforms to such an extent that a boutique research firm called Data Center Watch (a spinoff of 10a Labs, which collects intelligence “to stay ahead of evolving threats” to AI) is now tracking grassroots opposition.

Reporting that “local activism threatens to derail the U.S. data center boom,” Data Center Watch says that residents have blocked or delayed $64 billion in data center projects over the last two years, describing the centers as “the new NIMBY [Not In My Back Yard] flashpoint.” The research firm adds, “From noise and water usage to power demands and property values, server farms have become a new target in the broader backlash against large-scale development. The landscape of local resistance is shifting—and data centers are squarely in the crosshairs.”

Reflecting this sea change, data centers are also “becoming an important issue in local politics.” Residents opposing a data center in Hobart, Indiana (see image above) have criticized officials’ fast-tracking of approvals, evasion of transparency, and sabotaging of due process and public participation. In some localities, this type of behavior has gotten officials recalled or voted out of office.

Data Center Watch’s focus is on 142 organized activist groups across 24 states, but individual families are also making a difference. In northern Kentucky’s Mason County, two sets of local landowners have made headlines for rejecting outsized offers for their farmland by an anonymous AI company. Mother Ida Huddleston and daughter Delsia Bare declined a combined $26.5 million for roughly half of their 1,200-acre property (the company offered $48K to $60K per acre), and father and son Timothy and Andy Grosser turned down $8 million ($35K/acre) for 200-plus acres where they raise cattle.

Both families emphasize the intangible value of the land, which they say “means everything” to them. In the case of the mother-daughter duo, the land has belonged to their family for generations. Bare said, “My grandfather and great-grandfather and a whole bunch of family have all lived here for years, paid taxes on it, fed a nation off of it. Even raised wheat through the Depression.”

Huddleston cannily questions why the company won’t reveal its identity and suggests that its rosy promises of jobs and economic growth are highly exaggerated: “I say they’re a liar, and the truth isn’t in them…. It’s a scam.” As Data Center Watch neutrally observes, local residents are proving savvy enough to “challeng[e] the prevailing narrative that tech development is always a local economic win.”

Unfortunately, because some other Mason County landowners have agreed to sell, the final outcome there is still in play. However, local news reports about Huddleston and Bare clearly resonated with readers, who have thanked the women for refusing the money and praised them as the heroes they are.