Big tech has had a rough few days. Microsoft Outlook, a mainstay of business email, suddenly went down on Thursday. The next day, the FAA grounded flights nationwide, apparently after technical upgrades ran into trouble.
The outages came as data centers are facing growing opposition across the country, especially in local communities. People cite environmental impacts and higher energy costs, but there is also a broader unease about how much of daily life now depends on the tech industry.
In Maryland, community activist Taylor Frazier-McCollum drew attention after helping stop a proposed $5 billion data center at the site of a vacant mall. Some on the left praised her for taking on a major project; critics on the right made fun of her suggestion that the site could become a trampoline park.
She may not be the most polished spokesperson, but her point seems easy enough to understand. Many people can picture what a trampoline park or a Topgolf venue might offer a community. The benefits of a data center are less obvious to residents who live nearby.
That skepticism frustrates many technology advocates. They see the economic and technological gains as clear, including the chance to compete with China in artificial intelligence. From that perspective, local objections can look shortsighted.
Some supporters also argue that China is backing efforts to discourage data-center growth in the United States. China is indeed trying to influence the debate, even as it builds data centers of its own. But the foreign influence campaigns didn’t create the controversy; they are taking advantage of concerns that were already there.
Until roughly six months ago, data centers rarely made national headlines. They were more likely to come up on local radio in small towns, where residents may be more focused on county decisions than on politics in Washington.
Those local concerns can sound modest beside calls to win a new technological race against China or unlock AI’s full potential. Still, for people living near a proposed site, questions about water rights, power and access routes can matter more than geopolitical competition.
This week’s tech disruptions may give the industry a chance to explain, in practical terms, why so many data centers are needed. Advocates sometimes respond to critics by pointing out that people use data-center-dependent devices to complain about data centers. Fair enough, but the dismissive tone doesn’t make the argument more persuasive.
Politicians have also benefited from the resentment people feel when tech companies seem to talk down to them, particularly in rural areas that have traditionally leaned Republican. Yet a blanket rejection of data centers is difficult to sustain for anyone hoping to govern. They are becoming essential to the services people rely on.
No one is eager to return to typewriters and fax machines, or to spend hours waiting on a plane stuck on the tarmac. Calls for moratoriums may play well in campaigns, but elected officials will eventually have to reckon with the infrastructure those everyday conveniences require.
Much of the debate is already being settled through local politics and the courts. Some communities may reject these projects altogether and forgo the potential investment. Others are likely to reach agreements after developers make concessions.
For now, data-center supporters could point to the Outlook outage and the flight groundings as examples of how dependent people have become on digital infrastructure—without treating local critics as foolish. The case for data centers is stronger when it explains how they affect people’s lives.
With the midterms over and the country’s tech infrastructure showing its vulnerabilities, advocates have an opportunity to make that case. One way or another, data centers are likely to be part of what comes next.
