Americans prefer nuclear power plants to data centers for artificial intelligence (and one announcement for the Balkan countries).

As many as 70 percent of Americans oppose the construction of data centers in their local communities, according to the latest Gallup poll. However, for us, the most interesting finding of this spring survey is that the opposition to data centers—which are being built en masse to meet the needs of artificial intelligence (AI) for processing power—has become so intense that the average American would today rather live near a nuclear power plant than next to a data warehouse.

According to data published by The Washington Post, opposition to data centers is breaking through traditional political divides in the United States. Although both Republican and Democratic voters expressed deep discomfort, the opposition to these projects is especially aggressive and intense among supporters of the Democratic Party. Almost half of all respondents stated that they strongly oppose these facilities in their neighborhood.

And although the article does not go into detailed economic reasons, behind this phenomenon lies a clear calculation that local communities are increasingly understanding, which directly concerns the political economy of energy: data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity and water for cooling, often burdening the local grid and raising electricity prices for residents, while at the same time creating a minimal number of permanent jobs once they are built. And on the other hand, nuclear power plants are increasingly viewed as a stable source of clean energy that brings hundreds of highly skilled jobs, enormous investments in local “human infrastructure” and long-term economic stability to the community.

This paradox shows that the public is beginning to weigh more rationally what it gains and what it loses from large technological and energy projects.

But before we simply categorize this news as ones written to generate public engagement — let us remind that data centers are a serious problem, and although we have been dealing with socio-political phenomena for about a quarter of a century, we have not yet encountered a phenomenon that has managed to polarize public opinion so quickly. Let us remind that developed countries very often have a habit of exporting technologies that their public opinion resists to the parts of the world where the power of public opinion is weaker, or in which forms of governance allow these resistances to be pacified more easily. In other words, data centers will—when U.S. residents no longer oppose them—also come to the Balkans.

And indeed – announcements like this are increasing and becoming more serious; in recent days we almost daily have some important news about data centers, and they have become a central topic in energy forums, as well as, for example, at the Balkan Energy Forum just a few days ago.

Therefore we once again announce that the topic of data centers, their energy consumption, and their ecological footprint will very soon become a central socio-political issue.