There are a lot of dumb political discourses but this is one of the dumbest in years. It's puzzling to me how water got latched onto instead of, say, energy or rare earths.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3724499
So yeah, I don't think water is a red herring but more like a canary.
> Making matters worse, many datacenters now in the pipeline in the US are slated for areas already experiencing drought, according to analysis by The Guardian newspaper.
If it's astroturfed it's only because the people complaining don't have enough water to grow natural grass on their lawn. FTFY.