00:00For the first time in American history, an entire state has ordered the data center industry to
00:06stop and wait. New York's freeze lands the same week 200 Texans beat back a $34 billion tax
00:13break. Four local governments slam the door in a single night, and a nationwide day of protest
00:20gears up for Saturday. The backlash isn't coming anymore. It's here. We begin in Albany,
00:28where Governor Kathy Hochul just did something no governor has done before.
00:34She signed an executive order making New York the first state in the nation to halt new data centers.
00:40The order pauses state environmental permits for up to one year for any new or expanded facility,
00:47drawing 50 megawatts or more, carefully exempting the smaller server rooms that hospitals,
00:54schools and banks depend on. While freezing an estimated $10 billion of hyperscale development,
01:02Hochul was blunt about her reasoning, saying data centers drive up costs for local rate payers,
01:08and she refuses to let those costs get passed down to New Yorkers.
01:13The state will now write a statewide environmental review framework covering energy demand,
01:18water use and air quality. And until that framework is finished, the biggest projects in New York simply
01:26wait. New York acted from the governor's mansion. In rural Texas, the pushback came from folding
01:35chairs in a county annex. More than 200 residents packed Leon County's Annex 2 building as commissioners
01:42took up a tax abatement request from Crusoe Technologies. The company behind a proposed
01:49$34 billion data center campus planned to be operational by 2028. Commissioners rejected the
01:58initial application, citing an incomplete submission, a procedural answer, but the room treated it like a
02:05victory. Resident Kat Wall told the court it was unfair for a heavily funded company to chase a special
02:12tax. Deal ordinary citizens could never get. While neighbors James McCausland and Donna Hull said the
02:19community broadly opposes the project and the reinvestment zone carved out of farmland, Crusoe is
02:27expected to refile. Residents aren't waiting. They've called their own public hearing for July 27 in Marquez
02:35and invited the commissioners to attend. That kind of local anger is about to get a national stage.
02:43This Saturday, July 18, a group called Humans First has organized a nationwide day of protest against
02:51what it calls the unchecked and unwanted expansion of AI data centers. More than 50 demonstrations across 22
03:00states, Texas, which now leads the country in data center development, hosts 11 rallies on its own, with more
03:09planned in Georgia, California, Florida and Virginia. Notably, this movement is organized from the political right,
03:18pitching itself as a voice for grassroots Americans against backroom deals. And it points to a Gallup poll showing
03:2570% of Americans don't want a data center in their community. Researchers tracking the backlash say active
03:33opposition groups have more than doubled this year, from under 400 to more than 800 across 49 states.
03:42Saturday will test just how big this movement has become. And even before the first protest sign goes up,
03:50local governments are racing ahead of their own voters. In roughly 24 hours, four of them froze data center
03:58development. St. Charles County, Missouri passed a six-month moratorium unanimously after residents
04:06packed the council chamber. One speaker warning that the digital world cannot come at the expense of the
04:12physical one. In Lawrence, Kansas, commissioners were asked for a 12-month pause and doubled it to 24.
04:21With opponents spilling out of the commission room, Marietta, Georgia tabled a contested rezoning at
04:28Powers Ferry Place to cheers from the gallery. Then froze all new data center projects through December 31st and
04:36in Herring Township. Michigan. Trustees approved a six-month pause even after attorneys warned that state law
04:44forbids an outright ban. Add St. Joseph, Missouri and Valparaiso, Indiana taking their own first steps the
04:53same night. And the pattern is unmistakable. The reason for all this resistance shows up in one place.
05:01The power bill, PJM Interconnection, the grid operator serving 67 million people across 13 states and
05:10Washington, D.C., announced the results of its latest capacity auction. And for the second straight year,
05:18costs tied a record $16.4 billion. The independent market monitor says data centers alone account for
05:26roughly $6.3 billion. Of that, about 40% of the total. Prices slammed into the $325 per megawatt daycap
05:36yet again.
05:37Meaning only a government-imposed ceiling kept the number from climbing higher.
05:42And here's the most alarming part. Even at record prices, the auction came up 6,831 megawatts short of PJM's
05:521 in 10-year reliability standard. America's biggest grid paid record money and still couldn't buy enough
06:00power to meet its own target. Electricity is only half the fight. In South Florida, it's water and noise.
06:09Palm Beach County commissioners take a final vote this week on Project Tango, a proposed AI data center
06:17in Loxahatchee that developers want to expand from 1 million to 1 and a half million square feet.
06:24The county's zoning board has already recommended denial. Unanimously, developer PBA Holdings insists
06:32the fears are overblown. Project manager Ernie Cox says the buildings and cooling equipment have been
06:38moved half a mile from Saddleview Elementary School in the Arden community. And that a closed-loop
06:45cooling system would sip just 5,000 gallons of water a day. A fraction of the 500,000 gallons Arden's
06:53homes use. Residents aren't convinced. And officials are preparing overflow rooms for the crowds.
07:00If commissioners approve it anyway. Ground breaks in early 2027. With completion not expected until 2033.
07:10Yet despite all of that resistance, the building boom keeps reaching deeper into rural America.
07:17QTS and power developer Lanceum announced a data center campus in Hall County, Texas expected to bring
07:25more than $10 billion in capital investment to a panhandle county of fewer than 3,000 people.
07:32The site, known as Lanceum's Turkey Clean Campus, is designed around dedicated renewable heavy power.
07:41Part of Lanceum's plan for 5-gigawatt-scale campuses across West Texas by 2028.
07:48QTS, owned by Blackstone, is one of the largest data center developers in the country.
07:54And Blackstone has separately pumped half a billion dollars into Lanceum itself.
08:01For a county whose seat, Memphis, Texas, counts barely 2,000 residents.
08:08The announcement is staggering.
08:09And it lands in the very state bracing for 11 separate data center protests this Saturday.
08:17And the money fueling all of this keeps flowing.
08:20Our kicker.
08:21AI startup Reflection just signed a compute deal worth more than $1 billion with Nebius.
08:28The cloud provider building out AI capacity across the United States.
08:33The agreement runs through 2029 and gives Reflection access to clusters built on.
08:40NVIDIA's newest GB300 chips.
08:43Reflection was founded by two former Google DeepMind researchers and develops open-source models.
08:50Positioned as alternatives to open AI and Anthropic.
08:54And this is its second major infrastructure grab in weeks.
08:58Following a June computing agreement with SpaceX.
09:02Nebius shares jumped on the announcement.
09:05Think about that.
09:06A billion dollars for chips and power.
09:08From a startup most Americans have never heard of.
09:12That's the scale of demand crashing into the resistance you've seen tonight.
09:17The money isn't slowing down.
09:19And neither are the communities standing in its way.
09:42The pressure across the Nicholus because it's building in.
09:43But as the malaise is Europa-N totalmente.
09:43If you guys were tensed off you, on the right hand.
09:43The Japanese community has only built two cameras.
09:43If you'resomething in this region.
09:44The state of understands that we're
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