The Backlash to the Boom - HeatMap Guest Post

\ heatmapdaily_logo ROBINSON MEYER • JUNE 5, 2026 A few times a year, Heatmap News surveys a few thousand Americans on the biggest questions driving the world of energy, environment, and climate change. We’ve spent the past few days writing up the results of our latest poll, which was in the field in late May and which I thought was particularly striking. It’s worth taking a step back to look at the biggest results together, because the American view of data centers is essentially in free fall: As I wrote on Tuesday, Americans have swung en masse against local data center development. As recently as August, Americans were split on whether they would support a new data center built where they live; now, 70% would be against it. My colleague Emily Pontecorvo followed up by highlighting that the share of Americans blaming data centers for rising electricity costs has almost doubled since last August. Some 28% of Americans said new data centers helped drive up power prices back then; now, it’s 53%. Nor are Americans optimistic about the technology that data centers represent. My colleague Jeva Lange revealed that 45% of Americans are “pessimistic” about AI’s effect on their lives — and 55% are downbeat about its effects on “society as a whole.” Young people are particularly downcast. In virtually all of our polls, American adults younger than 34 stood out for being opposed to data centers and AI. Meanwhile, the only group that’s outright optimistic about AI’s effect on their lives? Men older than 65. These feelings are driving policy: As my colleague Jael Holzman wrote today, an outright majority of Americans told us they would support a nationwide data center moratorium in some form. Fully 40% said they would “strongly support” a temporary pause. The upshot of these findings: The public‘s turn against artificial intelligence and AI infrastructure is real, widespread, and cross-partisan. It doesn't matter whether Americans started out tolerating data centers or having no opinion about them; they now seem to resent them en masse.