00:00A skyscraper full of servers just got shot down in downtown Kansas City.
00:06475 residents wrote in against it, and not a single one wrote in support,
00:11from a historic first in Albany to arrests at small-town meetings.
00:17The fight over America's data centers has stopped being polite.
00:21Here's what's driving the backlash, and the staggering money still pouring in anyway.
00:27We start in Kansas City, where a plan to stack a data center 38 stories high over a historic downtown
00:35building has collapsed.
00:38This week, the City Plan Commission voted 6-0 to deny Miami Developer Revitalization Unlimited's proposal for the Quality Hill
00:48neighborhood.
00:48The numbers tell the story. 475 letters landed in opposition, and exactly zero arrived in support.
00:58Commissioners questioned why a power-hungry server tower belonged on prime downtown land,
01:03and doubted it would bring meaningful jobs or benefit to the city.
01:08Developers argued the height made efficient use of a tight footprint, but the room wasn't buying it.
01:14Residents who packed the hearing celebrated the vote, though some backers have already vowed to keep fighting for a downtown
01:22data center.
01:23That local resistance is now hardening into state law.
01:28In New York, both houses of the legislature have passed the Responsible Data Center Development Act.
01:34The Senate approving it 44-16, the Assembly 102-39, if Governor Kathy Hochul signs it.
01:44New York becomes the first state in the nation to enact a statewide moratorium on large data center.
01:51Permits.
01:52Pausing new approvals for a full year while regulators study the impact on power.
01:58Water.
01:58And rates.
02:00Sponsor State Senator Kristen Gonzalez calls it a chance to slow down and get the rules right.
02:06Before the build-out locks in.
02:09It's part of a stunning wave.
02:11More than 300 data center bills filed across 30 states this year alone.
02:16As lawmakers shift from handing out incentives to writing restrictions.
02:21But the conflict isn't only playing out in capitals and courtrooms.
02:26And that fight is increasingly ending in handcuffs.
02:30A new tally finds at least 37 people have been arrested in 2026 for
02:36protesting data centers.
02:39Most of them peaceful.
02:40Most cited for breaking what critics call petty procedural rules.
02:45Among them, an Oklahoma farmer detained for running a few seconds over his allotted speaking time at a town hall.
02:52And a Kansas physics teacher dragged out of a meeting simply for clapping after a speaker opposed a
02:59project.
03:00Organizers say the movement defies easy labels.
03:04Spanning landowning farmers and suburban parents.
03:08Boomers and Gen Z.
03:09In Nye County, Nevada.
03:12Hundreds packed an early August hearing.
03:14When a proposed ban stalled.
03:17Commissioners moved toward letting residents decide the question directly at a special election.
03:23The reason developers keep pushing this hard comes down to sheer scale.
03:29Consider what's being built.
03:31OpenAI has unveiled Project Camellia.
03:34A 3.2 gigawatt AI campus rising in Effingham County.
03:39Georgia, just outside Rinkin and about 25 miles from Savannah.
03:45The company pledges at least $20 billion in private investment across four buildings on
03:51roughly 100 acres.
03:54With power arriving in phases between 2028 and 2032.
03:59Trying to head off the backlash we've been tracking.
04:01OpenAI promises Georgia families won't subsidize the project.
04:07Commits $80 million in community benefits for schools and public safety.
04:12And says a closed-loop cooling system will keep water use minimal.
04:17County leaders say it could bring a thousand permanent jobs and rank among the largest economic
04:23development deals in coastal Georgia history.
04:27It sits inside OpenAI's broader Stargate program.
04:30But all that computing power has to come from somewhere.
04:35That demand is testing the electric grid like never before.
04:39In May, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation issued a rare Level 3 alert.
04:46Warning that massive data center loads suddenly disconnecting could destabilize the system.
04:52And ordering utilities to implement fixes targeted for this month.
04:57The financial pain is already landing on households.
05:01In Virginia, the epicenter of the boom, electricity generation costs could climb as much as 57 percent.
05:09And grid operator PJM says typical bills are ticking up across its territory.
05:15National data center demand is set to reach roughly 76 gigawatts this year for computing.
05:21And cooling alone, regulators and consumer advocates are increasingly asking the same question.
05:29Why should ordinary ratepayers foot the bill for infrastructure built to serve a handful of
05:34trillion-dollar tech companies?
05:37The pressure on the grid is only half the story.
05:40Water tells the other half.
05:43Because these facilities don't just drink electricity, they drink water.
05:49A new analysis finds that two-thirds of the 809 data centers planned across the
05:54United States are slated for land that has been gripped by drought over the past year,
06:00including water-stressed corners of Virginia and Georgia.
06:04In the Phoenix area alone, nearly 60 facilities are projected to demand around 177 million gallons of
06:12water every single day.
06:15Meanwhile, the federal government has finalized cuts requiring California, Arizona, and Nevada
06:22to slash their Colorado River usage by 16 to 20 percent through 20.
06:2728, a plan that, critics point out, never even mentions the surging thirst of data centers.
06:35For communities already rationing, the math is starting to feel impossible.
06:41Yet despite the strain on power and water, construction is pressing forward.
06:47Nowhere is that clearer than in rural Utah.
06:50In Millard County, developer Jewel Capital Partners has broken ground on a sprawling energy and
06:56data center campus spanning 4,000 acres, a project backers say could become one of the
07:04most advanced AI facilities in the nation.
07:07The county commission approved the development at an August meeting.
07:11And Jewel is taking an unusual approach to the grid concerns rippling across the country.
07:17Rather than lean on local utilities, the company plans to generate its own power on site.
07:23Developers tout the high elevation for optimal cooling efficiency and promise high-paying jobs and
07:30economic growth for a rural region hungry for investment.
07:35Power is expected to start flowing as early as this year.
07:39Positioning central Utah as an unlikely new frontier in the AI infrastructure race.
07:44And the money behind this construction is almost hard to comprehend.
07:50Which brings us to the capital fueling all of it.
07:54In one of the largest infrastructure deals ever struck in the sector.
07:58A consortium led by BlackRock's global infrastructure partners.
08:03The UAE-based firm MGX.
08:06And the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership has closed its acquisition of data.
08:12Center developer-aligned data centers.
08:15A transaction valued at roughly $40 billion.
08:19It's a signal that the world's largest investors see data centers not as a passing boom.
08:25But as the backbone of the next economy.
08:28Deal activity has surged to a five-year high.
08:32And with commitments like this stacking up alongside OpenAI's Stargate and Meta's multi-gigawatt.
08:39The total capital chasing AI infrastructure is racing toward levels that would have seemed
08:46fantastical just a year ago.
08:48From a shot-down tower in Kansas City to a $40 billion deal.
08:53The build-out is not slowing down.
08:56And the question of who pays is only getting louder.
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