Datacenter Industry Uses Propaganda to Silence Opposition, Study Finds

The datacenter industry is using propaganda, disinformation and information control to undermine community opposition to its facilities, according to new research by Samuel Woolley, Dean Jackson and Maia Woluchem published this week. The study lands as residents across the country push back against the physical footprint of the AI buildout — higher electric costs, water depletion, noise and air pollution — and as tech leaders and even the president dismiss that resistance as a "documented psyop" or a "Chinese PR thing".

The stakes are considerable. Datacenters are the industrial backbone of the AI economy, and decisions about where they go, how much water and power they consume, and what they owe local communities are being made right now, often with minimal public information. The researchers argue that the information environment around those decisions is being deliberately shaped by the industry itself.

How did the industry's pitch start?

Big tech's opening pitch was simple. Companies told Americans that datacenters brought jobs and tax revenue, and they spread that message through mailers, text messages, TV spots and targeted digital ads. That's standard corporate persuasion. What's less standard, the researchers found, is where the money came from: much of the spending flowed through opaque non-profits and dark money groups with ties to the tech industry, hiding the source of the campaigns. The report names "Elevate New Mexico" as a group that passed itself off as a local initiative while obscuring its connections to corporate entities in the datacenter space.

The pattern echoes long-standing fights over industrial siting, from polluting plants to highways. But the researchers argue this round comes with a new layer of digital-age tactics and a new class of extremely well-funded backers.

What's wrong with the jobs numbers?

The industry's headline figures often crumble under scrutiny, the researchers write. An ad by Build American AI — an industry advocacy group connected to Lead the Future, an industry PAC funded by OpenAI and Andreessen Horowitz — boasts that datacenters have created 57,785 jobs in Texas. The number sounds precise. It isn't informative, according to the report.

The researchers raise a series of questions the ad doesn't answer:

• Of the promised jobs, how many are permanent positions remaining after construction ends?
• How many are cafeteria workers, landscapers and custodial staff, who often work for subcontractors without benefits?
• Are those subcontractor workers included when the industry reports average salaries for the jobs it creates?

Tax revenue claims get similar treatment. When companies tout the tax dollars they bring to communities, they rarely mention the exemptions and abatements they received to get there. Those incentives are often unnecessary to attract projects in the first place, the researchers write, and they eat directly into budgets for schools and social services. Some jurisdictions track the precise number of dollars they forgo through such abatements. Even when agreements allow communities to claw back money from underperforming projects, local leaders hesitate, because they don't want to admit a project has failed. Accountability, the researchers conclude, is rare.

What about the water and power jargon?

As environmental concerns mounted, the industry turned to misdirection and technical vocabulary. Developers use terms such as "closed-loop cooling" and "behind-the-meter power" to deflect concerns about water and power consumption, the report finds. Both approaches can mitigate consumption. But the effect is smaller than often implied: closed-loop systems may simply shift water demand up the supply chain to power plants, while behind-the-meter generators still rely on the grid for backup and stability — and compete with it for components.

The researchers also document active fights against disclosure. In The Dalles, Oregon, Google paid the city's legal fees after the city withheld records about a datacenter's water use; the city agreed to release the information in a settlement with the Oregonian newspaper. Most datacenters do not report their water consumption at all, the report states, which hamstrings policymaking. Public visibility is further limited by non-disclosure agreements, sometimes with the cooperation of local authorities.

Who is being smeared, and by whom?

The sharpest finding concerns the industry's rhetorical escalation. Activists and organizers told the researchers they face accusations online that they are "Antifa", "commies" or "Chinese bots". These theories have traction at the top: in May, Kevin O'Leary — the millionaire Shark Tank investor who is developing one of the world's largest datacenters — called two activists "proxies for the Chinese government". He later admitted he had "no evidence". Even so, the researchers write, similar theories have gained ground among tech executives and Washington policymakers, and they have percolated down to the local level, where organizers encounter the invective — and worse — online.

The irony, the researchers note, is that datacenter proponents are frequently the ones relying on disinformation and coordinated manipulation tactics to make their case. Government decision-makers, they argue, should not give credence to top-down claims from Silicon Valley or the broader datacenter industry suggesting community opposition is propelled by China.

Why does the fight matter now?

Local and state officials, operating in a low-information environment and starved of resources by anti-tax policies, initially welcomed datacenter projects. The public was more skeptical from the start, and over time some officials have joined the skeptics. Local organizers and activists told the researchers they now see decisions about their economic future as pre-determined by big business and opaque governments. They criticized the lack of transparency, the late stage at which the public was consulted, and community benefits agreements they felt were inadequate compared with the burdens they were asked to bear: higher electric costs, air pollution, noise, water depletion and a change in the character of their communities.

The authors situate the conflict in a long history: industrial tycoons have always manipulated leaders, laws and regulations to their advantage. This time, though, resistance has been fierce — which, they suggest, may explain why the industry has stooped to smearing opponents as useful stooges of foreign propaganda.

What do the researchers recommend?

The report's prescription is transparency, applied broadly. The authors call on policymakers to create and enforce mandatory transparency requirements and other provisions that force datacenters to keep their promises and provide critical data on resource consumption, job creation and other matters of public concern. Those requirements, they write, should extend to the permissive environment for advertising and campaign finance in which disinformation and coordinated astroturf movements thrive.

"As usual, sunlight is the best disinfectant," the authors conclude.

The researchers bring institutional weight to the argument. Samuel Woolley is the Dietrich chair of disinformation studies and directs the Communication Technology Research Lab (CTRL) at the University of Pittsburgh. Dean Jackson is a senior fellow at CTRL and a contributing editor at Tech Policy Press. Maia Woluchem directs Data & Society's Trustworthy Infrastructures Program and is a research fellow at CTRL.

Their findings arrive as the AI infrastructure boom accelerates, with billions in capital flowing into new facilities and industry PACs — including one backed by OpenAI and Andreessen Horowitz — shaping the public narrative around them. Whether state and local governments respond with the disclosure mandates the researchers propose will help determine whether communities weighing the costs of the AI buildout get hard numbers or more jargon.