00:00A public meeting about one of America's biggest data center projects just ended with three people
00:05in handcuffs. From New Mexico to Kentucky, the fight over the AI build-out is boiling over
00:13into courtrooms, county chambers, and onto the power grid itself. And behind it all,
00:21a $100 billion megacampus is rising on a Cold War uranium site.
00:27In Doña Ana County, New Mexico, a public meeting on Project Jupiter, the Oracle-backed data center
00:35campus, erupted into chaos on Tuesday. An overflow crowd packed the commissioner's chambers.
00:43Supporters touting construction jobs on one side, opponents warning about water and power on the
00:49other. When public comment began, two attendees were escorted out. A confrontation broke out
00:56between protesters, security, and sheriff's deputies. And by the end, three people had been arrested and
01:04booked without bond. Of 30 residents signed up to speak. Only a fraction ever reached the microphone.
01:11Project representatives told commissioners the campus has already generated nearly $80 million
01:17dollars in state and county tax revenue and employs almost 700 residents. But its crucial air
01:25permit is still pending in October hearing. And without it, they admitted, the structure is just a big
01:32warehouse. That kind of anger is increasingly aimed at what communities can't see. The secret deals.
01:40In Arkansas, a judge has dismissed the Arkansas Democrat Gazette's lawsuit seeking details of the
01:47confidential rate contract between Google and Entergy Arkansas for the tech giant's $4 billion West
01:55Memphis data center. Circuit judge Tim Fox ruled the records fight belongs before the state public
02:02service commission. The same commission that approved the contract in December and has been withholding
02:08documents as trade secrets ever since. The newspaper wanted to know what Google pays the utility and how
02:17much it's contributing to a $1.6 billion solar and battery project near Pine Bluff. The commission has now
02:25stopped answering the paper's questions entirely. Executive editor Lee Wolverton called that a refusal to
02:32communicate with the public itself. And the paper says it will take the fight directly to the
02:38commission. And if you want to measure the public mood, look at Harrison County, Kentucky, a county with no
02:47data center proposal at all. Leaders held a standing room only forum ahead of a moratorium vote. And when
02:55Judge Executive Jason Marshall asked everyone opposed to data centers to raise their hands, every hand in the
03:02room went up. That matched the county's own survey, where 80% of 1,500 respondents said no. Resident Deanna
03:11Rourke told officials the community shouldn't be pressured into accepting facilities. That pushed people out of
03:18their communities for profit. Others asked a harder question. What happens to these giant windowless
03:24buildings if the company behind them ever decides to leave? The fiscal court votes on the moratorium
03:31August 11th, a preemptive strike against an industry that hasn't even knocked on the county's door yet.
03:39The reason communities are this nervous comes down to one thing. The grid, PJM Interconnection,
03:46the largest power grid in America, serving 65 million people across 13 states, is now warning that
03:54data centers may face involuntary power cuts to prevent blackouts. Under the plan, facilities that
04:02haven't secured enough of their own generation could be temporarily dropped from the grid during peak
04:08demand as soon as mid-2027, shielding households from outages and price spikes. The operator is also
04:17launching an emergency capacity auction to procure power for the AI boom. And the system's fragility is
04:24already showing. When a single power line fell outside Washington, D.C., data centers dropped more than
04:323 gigawatts of load almost simultaneously. And it took the grid more than 10 minutes to recover. The machines,
04:40it turns out, can shake the grid just by letting go of it. The pressure on the grid is only
04:47half the story.
04:48Water tells the other half. In Laredo, Texas, so many residents signed up to speak about data center
04:56development that the city council meeting hit its 11 p.m. cutoff before dozens of them ever got the
05:04chance. 64 people had registered to comment. The clock beat many of them to the podium. Those who did
05:12speak kept returning to one number. Stage 3. That's Laredo's current drought status. In a border city whose
05:20only source of water is the Rio Grande. Residents asked how a water-hungry computing campus can make
05:27sense in a place already rationing. What flows from a shrinking river? The council will have to take the
05:34issue up again. And next time, the line at the microphone may be even longer. County lawmakers are
05:42caught in the middle of all this. And in Arkansas, they just made their choice. The Pulaski County Quorum
05:50Court voted down a proposed 12-month data center moratorium 10-2. 3. After critics said the measure
05:58was written to give AVAIO Digital's rightsful project a free pass, the ordinance would have
06:04exempted AVAIO's first phase. Two facilities drawing 150 megawatts of power and up to 4 million gallons of
06:13water. A day, while pausing everyone else, an amendment to close that carve-out failed too. 8-6. The meeting
06:23itself showed how raw this fight has become. County Judge Barry Hyde enforced strict decorum and had
06:30one spectator removed just for clapping. AVAIO's full build-out could eventually reach a full gigawatt
06:37of power draw. And for now, nothing in Pulaski County stands in its way. Yet despite that regulatory wave,
06:47construction is pressing forward at a scale that's hard to comprehend.
06:51NextEra Energy and Brookfield have announced a partnership to develop a $100 billion
06:57AI data center campus at the Department of Energy's Paducah site in Kentucky,
07:04a former Cold War uranium enrichment complex.
07:08The campus is expected to support up to 1.8 gigawatts of utility capacity,
07:14transforming a shuttered federal nuclear facility into one of the largest computing hubs on Earth.
07:20It's part of a deliberate industry strategy, hunting for retired federal sites with massive
07:27existing power infrastructure, transmission lines already in the ground, and land no neighbor can
07:34easily contest for Western Kentucky. It's a stunning reversal of history, a site built to enrich uranium
07:41for the atomic age. Reborn to feed the intelligence age.
07:46And the financial firepower behind this build-out keeps escalating.
07:51Meta and BlackRock are teaming up on a $14 billion,
07:551 gigawatt AI data center campus in El Paso, Texas.
08:00Under the deal, BlackRock managed funds will own the venture while Meta signs lease agreements as the
08:07initial sole tenant. Locking in computing capacity without carrying the full cost on its own balance
08:14sheet. The facility is slated to come online in 2028. It's part of a much bigger pattern.
08:21Hyperscalers spent roughly $350 billion on data centers and supporting
08:27infrastructure last year, and plan around $650 billion this year,
08:33increasingly through joint ventures with the world's largest asset managers.
08:38Wall Street doesn't just finance the AI boom anymore.
08:42It co-owns it, one gigawatt campus at a time.
Comments