President Trump told working-class communities resisting Big Tech’s data center expansion that they just want to be “backwards and poor,” dismissing legitimate concerns from Americans who are watching their utility bills skyrocket to power the AI boom.
The push to build the infrastructure for artificial intelligence is pitting Washington’s global competitiveness rhetoric against Main Street’s bottom line. While the president and Big Tech insist these facilities are economic saviors, the data shows they suck up cheap electricity and water, extract massive tax subsidies, and create almost no permanent local jobs. The public picks up the tab; tech billionaires get the panopticon.
Trump took to Truth Social Monday to attack the growing bipartisan backlash against data center construction. “The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” he wrote. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.” He warned that killing the “Golden Goose” would make China happy, floating an unproven claim that Chinese influence operations are fueling the domestic opposition.
The American people aren’t buying it. A Gallup poll found seven in 10 Americans oppose having data centers in their area, with respondents saying they’d rather live next to a nuclear power plant. Another poll found three-quarters of Americans oppose a data center next to their home.
They have good economic reasons. Follow the money: a typical 250,000-square-foot data center employs roughly 50 full-time workers, and half of those are outside contractors, according to a Virginia Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission report. Good Jobs First found that state subsidies extended to these projects far outweigh the permanent jobs created, and increased tax revenue “fails to materialize.” Sales-tax breaks cost states more than the data centers return in revenue. As economist Greg Wright noted, many of the permanent jobs “are filled by outside contractors rather than local workers.”
Meanwhile, the energy drain is staggering. Data centers currently use about 4.4% of U.S. electricity, projected to hit 12% by 2030. Residents in the DC area reported winter energy bills topping $1,000 as northern Virginia was flooded with AI infrastructure. Even Vice President JD Vance admitted the backlash is rooted in economics, telling reporters that “99% of the backlash to datacenters has come in areas where building a datacenter means higher utility and higher electricity for the people on the ground.” Vance argued companies must put power back into the grid, not take it out.
Grassroots organizers are successfully fighting back regardless. The research group Data Center Watch found that local groups blocked or delayed at least 75 data center projects worth $130 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone. As one Truth Social user told the president: “Mr. President: Think about farm land and about water resources, and a man as intelligent as you will see that the absolute position you are taking is flawed.”
If data centers are the golden goose, the eggs are going to Big Tech executives and state lobbyists, while local ratepayers are left footing the power bill for the surveillance economy.
