A divided US is uniting over one cause. The fight here is just beginning

June 26, 2026 — 5:00am

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Up in the Blue Mountains, the locals in Katoomba are angry. Sam Altman, the founder of Open AI, thinks Australia could become the data centre capital of the world one day, and the process is already well under way. These are the buildings that house all the IT equipment needed to make AI work, and Westpac estimates there’s $155 billion worth of investment in them in the pipeline. But that pipeline got plugged in Katoomba. A proposed data centre there would have brought noise to the area. If it’s anything like most data centres, it would have been a heroic drain on electricity and water. It would have employed five people. The Blue Mountains mayor called it a “pile of crap”. Now the company is about to withdraw.

You might think that’s a pretty normal story. But in this case that’s exactly the point. It’s extremely normal. In America, where just under half the world’s data centres are, it’s become normal enough to make your head spin. Residents in Georgia complain of having undrinkable water. In Arizona, they’ve been wearing noise-cancelling headphones and earplugs because of the relentless humming, and it hasn’t been enough. In Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and Illinois, the data centres use so much electricity the price of power has spiked. Backlash is stalling new developments in Kentucky and Texas. Voters in Festus, Missouri ejected city council members who supported a new data centre.

There is probably no issue in the country that energises more local activism, and unifies a more politically diverse cohort. A Gallup poll........

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