The artificial intelligence boom in the United States is being matched by a data center building boom. There are more than 3,000 data centers in the U.S. and another 1,500 in development, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.

While President Donald Trump has promoted AI advancement, calling it crucial to economic and national security, polling shows that 7 in 10 Americans oppose the construction of AI data centers in their communities, citing higher utility bills, pollution, noise and the loss of green space. These centers, which hold computer servers that process words, images and lines of code for large language models such as ChatGPT, also use high amounts of water and electricity.
There is growing opposition to the infrastructure surrounding them, too, particularly the transmission lines needed to power them, which often must cross land belonging to private citizens.

Where private citizens refuse to sell their land, companies are turning to eminent domain, the government’s inherent power to seize private property without a landowner’s consent. But does a line built to serve a private data center qualify?
I’m a legal scholar who studies eminent domain issues, and I interpret today’s disputes over seizure of property for the benefit of AI infrastructure as the latest incarnation of a long-standing debate about the limits of taking private property for public use.

Data centers have massive power needs that can stress electrical grids and threaten their reliability. In 2024 they accounted for more than 4% of the nation’s total electricity use. Demand will grow as more are built. To meet this demand, power companies must build more transmission lines – and acquire land to put them on.
Across the U.S. – in states such as Georgia and Pennsylvania – power companies have looked to eminent domain to facilitate these goals.
What is eminent domain?
Power companies can approach landowners to purchase easements for transmission lines; if landowners refuse, the government might force a sale.
The government may take private land without consent if the seizure is for “public use” and if the landowner is given “just compensation,” according to the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

While the federal government has the power to initiate eminent domain actions – also called condemnations – most are done by state and local governments.
Governments can also delegate this power to private entities or “common carriers,” such as power and water companies, though every state has its own rules for whether and how these utilities can exercise eminent domain. In Texas, for example, the state Supreme Court has held that a project must “serve the public” and “cannot be built only for the builder’s exclusive use” in order to qualify as a common carrier.
What is the ‘public use’ standard?
While property may be taken only for “public use,” the U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted that requirement permissively. In its 2005 Kelo v. City of New London decision, the court held that economic development qualified, allowing New London, Connecticut, to seize homes for private development around a Pfizer facility. That redevelopment, however, never happened, and Pfizer eventually left New London.
In response to that decision – and the public backlash that followed – 45 states enacted eminent domain reform laws.
In addition to reform laws, some state supreme courts interpret the eminent domain provisions of their own state constitutions more restrictively. The supreme courts of Michigan, Ohio and Oklahoma have all prohibited seizing private property to give it to another private party purely for economic development.
This means private landowners may have more success challenging condemnation actions under their state constitutions than in federal court. Still, courts typically permit exercise of eminent domain by utilities such as power companies.

Suits challenging the seizure of property for transmission lines on the grounds of public use have mixed results.
For example, the supreme courts of South Dakota and Vermont have each affirmed seizures by power companies,

determining that providing at least some energy and improved power grid reliability to in-state customers were valid public uses.
But this argument changes if transmission lines, some of which cross state lines, don’t benefit anyone in the state.
In 1984, for example, the Mississippi Supreme Court rejected a power company’s condemnation action because the transmission line in question would have run from Mississippi into Louisiana without benefiting any Mississippi customers.
These decisions suggest that as data centers increase energy demand and stress current infrastructure, seizing land to improve power grid reliability will likely qualify as public use, especially if the intention is to secure reliability for in-state customers.
Still, arguments around whether additional transmission lines actually serve in-state customers may give landowners grounds for a challenge.

The answer to data centers is to mandate they only be built in existing industrial areas, build their own power plants and use a closed-loop cooling system.

The answer to data centers is to google who owns them, google the etymology of their surname and look up the early life section of their wikipedia page.

Do you want them to build the data centers only in Mexico?

>>1524430
Put them in space or fuck off.

>>1524433
Put them in Space - preferably a Black Hole.

>>1524430
I'd rather those leeches never got built at all. Sucking up the global supply of electronic hardware, electricity, and water to make, what, shitty porn? Christ.

>>1524441
All entertainment is more accurate. Right now we're in the transition phase but people often forget that despite the protests of people complaining about immigrant labor back in the 90s and 00s, all we got for all the trouble was one South Park episode painting people arguing in favor of human labor as luddite rednecks screaming 'Dey took our jerbs!'

It'll be the same with the AI argument. Its meant to replace labor, as much labor as they can get away with replacing, and it will, whether people like it or not. The purpose of the exercise is not to produce a good product, otherwise we wouldn't have given any jobs to Paco and Chang to begin with - the purpose of the exercise is to minimize the benefits and pay that they have to give to labor, and it'll go exactly the same way it did the last time they minimized the benefits and pay that they have to give to labor. Which is to say, its happening, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

pesky humans, NIMBY

>>1524442
>was one South Park episode painting people arguing in favor of human labor as luddite rednecks screaming 'Dey took our jerbs!'
You're a retarded esl shill, but I'll throw you a bone here
That wasn't the point of the South Park episode, the point was the retarded rednecks couldn't actually address the problem other than yelling 'TOOK UR JERBS' and uselessly fucking each other
Which was, and still is, MIGA in a nutshell

>>1524471
You know rightards don't understand satire, quit bullying the poor dumb faggot.

>>1524427
Socialize the costs and privatize the profit at the expense of the tax payers. It's fucking retarded that they are receiving subsidized water and electricity at the cost of residents.

1524471
1524473
Are you responding to yourself in every thread or is this you and your ESL non white bf coordinating in discord?

look at esl shill projecting again. i could truly set my clock to it

>>1524493
its delicious frustration, truly a good harvest

>>1524471
>>1524473
Imagine complaining that nothing is being done while constantly advocating against the improvements.
That's how we know you're ideals are fed to you by corporate interests via LGBTQ NGOs, and the paid corporate media.

>>1524497
Imagine having no concept of causal relationships, and thinking things objectively measurably hurting the country are good because you're a racist. Imagine screeching about corporate interests with the cock of the pedo-daddy who keeps accepting/demanding kickbacks and giving tax cuts to corporate interests in your mouth.

>>1524551
Well, as we learned trickle down works because taxes are passed to consumers.
At least we aren't taxing consumers to pay billionaire's trillions via government contracts, and calling anyone who gets in the way racist like fucking children.
Maybe take the dick out ya own butt, faggot?

>>1524580
how did you end up with such a humiliating job

Virginia has more data centers than any other state
Virginia has a Democrat Governor

coincidence?

>>1524593
This post is wrong
ESL is wrong about everything they post

inevitability?

>>1524551
Can you try to add more buzzwords to your shitposting? Some people might not realize you're retarded and just think you're a schizo

>>1524597
can you invest in this rupee i'm allowing you to cherish

>>1524599
God you're esl

Esl shill quoted me again, lol

What happened to owning guns?

>>1524593
ESL trying to deflect from trump giving AI slop companies half a trillion dollars and blocking all regulation.

>>1524605
It died with privacy rights and freedom of association.

but /pol/ told me that Americans own their property unlike the COMMUNIST CHINESE who only rent it from the government

>>1524605
Who can afford a gun with gas prices this high?

>>1524430
That's a really stupid question.

Not new, local governments have a nasty trick of seizing land "for the public good" to make a park or something, then mismanaging the construction badly enough that they can legally give up and sell the land to the developer who wanted it in the first place.

>>1524433
>Put them in space
Data Centers create a lot of heat, and the normal way things cool down is by radiating it into the air. If you put something hot into a vaccum, it stays hot way longer.

>>1524634
Make one.

>>1524634
Then grab a knife. A shovel. A fucking rock.
They're taking your home. Fight. If not for this then for what?

>>1524738
How about I just vote for Democrats who are demonstrably worse when it comes to the economy and gas prices?
I'm super smort.

>>1524428
>use a closed-loop cooling system.
Even closed loop cooling systems have to be cleaned and maintained which means chemicals being used to flush the pipes out, which inevitably means pollution and contamination to deal with, which they currently are not. Even a closed loop water cooling system has evaporation to deal with as well, and generally systems max out at ~85% efficiency or so, meaning new water must be constantly pumped in.

I used to work at a government fish hatchery which used similar "water retention" techniques, but those facilities used unfiltered salt water and had a huge number of regulations they had to follow.

The fact that the US government is subsidizing the water and electric these facilities are using should make it abundantly clear that they operate at a loss for taxpayers benefit.

They completely depend on cheap access to water and electricity to barely edge out the least productive workers in our society, and then it's supposed to provide for said laid off workers somehow?

>>1524423
It looks like nobody can’t ask that simple question concerning the matter at hand.

Why it is necessary now to build 10-20 thousand fast data centers around the world ?
And why near the urban areas?
The focus is firstly in industrialized and economically well done countries like in Europe, N-America, China etc.
All behind the need is Orwellian like Society where everybody and everything are under the control. This has been in preparation already for decades, step by step, and this ongoing latest step has to be done before 6G is activated ( the plan is 2030).
6G is needed for Industrialized IoT (IIoT) system, where every man made gadget and human is wanted to tract around the clock.
Centers create the base for governments to build system where everybody is dependent in digital IDs , permissions to use something e.g. health service, net, to buy, to sell etc.
The project has already tested to chip people with vaccines, almost every manufactured gadgets have assembled with IoT ready chips ( robot vacuum cleaner, freezers, cars etc).
After there are enough fast data centers at work it’s necessary to remove legal tender (cash money) and start digital. Then everything else happens smoothly and quickly. Welcome to new society!

>>1524739
>How about I just vote for Democrats who are demonstrably worse when it comes to the economy and gas prices?
You've literally never looked at economic data, huh?

The real problem with eminent domain (in other cases) is that the people who are displaced receive benefits that others do not. They get their house bought off, or the apartments get torn down, so the state gives them cash to move elsewhere and that affects people who have already bought homes or are renting apartments. Everyone is negatively affected.

With data centers, everyone's utilities get jacked up and everyone pays for it in taxes as well, yet only a handful of people see any benefit from it. It's just another way to transfer money and property from everyone else to the very wealthy. Only the worst trolls or shills would support it.

>>1524750
No, they've seen economic data. It's just you might as well ask a dog to look at a spreadsheet.

>>1524749
Its simpler than that
>world is fucking ending
>legit shit will become inhospitable in a few generations
>massive famine, starvation, disasters, wars, riots, societal collapse
>the fucking billionaires are all in a race to make goddamn rocket ships to get away before all hell breaks loose
>the less rich but still stupidly rich are building bunkers, private islands, storing warehouses worth of goods and weapons and hiring private guards.
>before the general masses freak the fuck out we better put eyes on EVERYONE, track who they are and what they do and have algorithms to decide who might do a WRONGTHINK, just like they beta tested all last decade in china (why did you go out the back door today? what are you planning?)

Its easier to slip a noose on a sleeping giant than one on fire. None of this AI bullshit is about anything but control before the real fighting starts