The rumor is going around on X that foreign enemies of the US (especially China) are trying to influence Americans through social networks against building data centers.
“Oh, you hate the military industrial complex? What are you, a Pinko?”
X is owned by a guy who builds data centers.
Also I don't trust rumors that oh-so-conveniently support the interests of some very wealthy people doing unpopular things. Heuristics say it's probably propaganda planted by their PR operations, and they do not get the benefit of the doubt.
McCarthyism was a total overreaction in hindsight, but had roots in pervasive foreign meddling. For the past 100 years, America has been a target of influence campaigns from both foreign and domestic organizations.
Even more, I’d really doubt that is a US interest to let the public know if such campaign is happening against non-US countries, so I don’t expect Meta, X or whatever to kindly inform me about that.
There is a hard to miss tendency for the things which get the most noise to be the most useful to national adversaries.
You can't mention specific incidents here for comparison because the comments will be filled with disagreements and accusations about the specifics not the big picture.
Search yourself for things that are getting attention and not getting attention and judge for yourself how useful each would be to external powers.
When I see stories about how a hardware startup like SpinLaunch has had to move over and over because no matter where they go, locals flood the town hall meetings to declare their relatively boring technology is too scary, I'm not surprised town halls are being flooded over AI datacenters.
And guess who has been boasting about replacing workers and making everyone unemployed by 2030? Certainly not china.
Maybe they say different things domestically but I don't even recall any Chinese AI personality going around preaching about the upcoming AI doomsday while also building the doomsday device themselves, either.
I think it deliberately avoids censorship of any kind, which makes it both more open to truth (if anyone posts it there) and more susceptible to manipulation.
It’s debatable if a DC will affect local energy costs but people don’t want to risk it. Big tech has lost all their social capital. I would say at this point all of corporate America has. They have too much power over the public. People are starting to push back.
This is basically a content-free comment that only serves to rile up the community.
Information of this sort should come from journalists, not vibes on social media.