Data centers after the vote: 41 ballot measures and a protest in Amsterdam
Follow-up to Thursday Nov 5: After the midterms: data centers lose, AI rules look more likelyOn Thursday, we saw that data centers lost the US midterms. Now we have numbers. TechCrunch says voters faced 41 data center ballot measures on Tuesday. In all but one, the majority chose more restrictions on building.
The fight is not only American. Reuters reports that around 100 protesters from the group Geef Tegengas got into the construction site of a new Microsoft data center near Amsterdam. The project plans three 85-meter towers.
The business side moves too. Crusoe sold its troubled Wyoming data center project to Google, TechCrunch reports. Bloomberg, via Reuters, says Microsoft is winding down a deal to rent AI cloud capacity from Oracle. Transformer asks whether Democrats will now split on how hard to push on AI.
Data centers are where AI meets its neighbours: power bills, land, water and noise. More of these decisions are now made by local voters. Builders and communities will both be watching the next steps closely.
