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A battle over a data center complex in rural Western New York may seem like a purely local affair. But an analysis of the project’s owner reveals ties that include the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, the government’s crackdown on U.S. campuses, and the imposition of neocolonial rule over Gaza.

Over the past year, residents of Genesee County, New York — located between Buffalo and Rochester — have strongly opposed a proposed data center that is being pushed by county officials and backed by Stream Data Centers, a Texas-based developer of hyperscale data centers. Community members say the data center will bring noise, pollution, and higher electric bills, while endangering nearby wetlands and wildlife and threatening the sovereign territory of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation.

But opponents of the data center are up against a much bigger force than Stream Data Centers.

Community members say the data center will bring noise, pollution, and higher electric bills, while endangering nearby wetlands and wildlife and threatening the sovereign territory of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation.

Community members say the data center will bring noise, pollution, and higher electric bills, while endangering nearby wetlands and wildlife and threatening the sovereign territory of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation.

The parent company of Stream is Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s biggest private equity firms. The Wall Street giant has faced controversy over ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Moreover, the CEO and public face of Apollo, mega-billionaire Marc Rowan, is a powerful insider who’s shaped the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against universities and is helping oversee the new “Board of Peace” in Gaza.

The entry of a massive Wall Street firm’s portfolio company into a rural and thinly populated area is jarring to local residents in Western New York, who are facing an enormous power structure with arms extending to the heights of government and across the world.

“It feels like this insatiably hungry machine that’s just steamrolling whatever’s in its path,” Adrienne Yocina, who lives a few miles from the site of the proposed data center, told Truthout. “But this place is too beautiful to be another victim of that.”

The proposed data center complex is being backed by the Genesee County Economic Development Center (GCEDC), a public agency that offers tax breaks and other economic incentives to attract private business.

STAMP (Science, Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park) is a mega-industrial site that was proposed and developed by GCEDC. It’s existed for about two decades — with little to show, many argue. Around a year ago, the GCEDC turned to a new hope for STAMP — data centers — and selected Stream Data Centers as a future tenant.

“It feels like this insatiably hungry machine that’s just steamrolling whatever’s in its path.”

“It feels like this insatiably hungry machine that’s just steamrolling whatever’s in its path.”

The proposed data center has been mired in controversy. Facing opposition and litigation, Stream withdrew its initial $6.3 billion proposal made in early 2025, only to come back with a bigger, more expensive $11.2 billion proposal, which has now grown to $19.5 billion. Stream says it’s developing the data center “in direct collaboration” with an undisclosed but “prominent” Fortune 50 company.

Community members have staunchly opposed the data center, worrying it will bring noise and pollution and drive up electricity costs. The Sierra Club and the Tonawanda Seneca Nation — a sovereign Indigenous Nation in Western New York, whose reservation shares a border with the STAMP site, itself located in the Seneca Nation’s unceded territory — have opposed the project, arguing it could harm nearby wetlands and wildlife.

Critics have also raised concerns over conflicts of interest in the environmental review of the data center and lambasted the huge public subsidies the project could receive, reported the Buffalo-based watchdog news outlet Investigative Post.

Yocina, who is disabled, has lived in Indian Falls, a hamlet a few miles from STAMP, for 15 years. She’s active with local groups opposing the data center, including the ReThink STAMP campaign.

Yocina said her electric bill recently shot up, and she worries the data center will make it worse. “They’re going to jack up my electric bill even more,” she told Truthout. “That’s really motivated a lot of people around here.”

She’s also upset about the public........

© Truthout