The AI industry has been pouring untold resources into building out enormous data centers across the world.
The plants are immensely resource-hungry, sucking up huge amounts of fresh water to cool ripping-hot computer hardware. They’re turning into a massive strain on the electric grid, forcing some utility operators to enact rolling blackouts during heat waves and cold weather.
The issue reached a fever pitch after the Washington Post reported that a recent rise in customer energy bills was attributable to the enormous and growing power demands of AI data centers.
In short, it’s no wonder that small towns across the nation are coordinating efforts to keep data centers out — a PR disaster tarnishing a major push by AI companies to scale up their expansive operations.
And it seems like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which has committed to spend $600 billion on AI data centers, is painfully aware of the pushback. As the New York Times reports, the company has already spent $6 million on TV ads to convince Americans that data centers aren’t that bad. As one “folksy” ad showing off a new data center in Altoona, Iowa, argued, “we’re bringing jobs here.”
And it’s not just Meta trying to distract the public from all of the glaring downsides of data centers propping up across the country. Amazon is running its own similar ad campaign in Virginia, for instance, admonishing viewers that the facilities help “connect us to the entire world.”
According to the Financial Times, data center operators are “planning to go on the offensive with a lobbying blitz” as well, trying to get ahead of the growing public backlash. One data center executive told the FT that lobbying spending is a flash in the pan compared to the tens of billions being spent on infrastructure.
“If we’re going to spend tens of billions of dollars this year on capital projects, we probably should spend tens of millions of dollars on messaging,” they argued.
Yet the growing backlash is already hampering construction efforts. Over two dozen projects have already been blocked or delayed this month alone, according to research firm MacroEdge, compared to just 25 total in 2025.
In short, it’s not surprising to see tech giants trying to control the narrative by pouring millions of dollars into changing the public’s opinion about the facilities.
As marketing analysts told the NYT, Meta’s efforts are likely not just aimed at residents. They’re intended to influence lawmakers and policymakers, ensuring that the aggressive nationwide push to build out AI infrastructure won’t become an issue in Washington, DC.
Rising energy bills have already turned out to be a contentious topic, particularly in the greater context of rising costs of living, with senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MA) introducing a bill earlier this month to regulate data center energy use.
Even president Donald Trump, who has been a major proponent of AI, argued that Big Tech must “pay their own way,” in a recent post on Truth Social, suggesting the topic isn’t entirely divided by party lines. Republican lawmakers have also called for more AI regulation and a more careful approach to data center buildouts, as NPR reports.
Other politicians worry about overindexing on AI infrastructure buildouts, which could end badly in the long term if the AI sector were to crash, as many experts have warned it could.
“What I very much worry about with this ad campaign is localities committing to this industry and then saying in ten years, ‘What have we done to ourselves,’” Diane Papan, a Democratic state assemblywoman in California, told NYT.
More on data centers: Trump’s Huge AI Project Is Running Into a Major Financial Problem
The post You Will Laugh Out Loud When You Hear What the Tech Industry Is Spending a Swimming Pool’s Worth of Money to Convince the Public appeared first on Futurism.
