Data center supporters face bullets as politicians try to pin rising costs on big tech – but there’s a gaping hole in the narrative

While an Indiana councilman and his 8-year-old son slept, a gunman fired 13 bullets at his home and left a note scrawled with the words “no data centers” just after midnight April 6, according to multiple reports.

Elsewhere, an arson suspect launched a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s San Francisco home early Friday morning, according to multiple reports, before it “self-extinguished.” The man accused of throwing it reportedly opposed artificial intelligence (AI) and had a list of other tech leaders to target, according to the Associated Press.

Altman’s home reportedly appeared to be targeted again Sunday morning before two suspects were arrested and booked for negligent discharge of a firearm. No injuries were reported in either incident, according to the San Francisco Standard.

These attacks occurred as local communities across the nation protest data center growth, and members of Congress and corporate media outlets link Big Tech to rising electricity costs.

In the Indiana case, City Councilor Ron Gibson supported the Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Commission’s rezoning petition for a project by a data center developer the week prior. An anti-data center campaign involving left-leaning groups such as the Sierra Club and Indivisible reportedly targeted Gibson just weeks before the gunman attacked his home, according to the Daily Wire. 

Several politicians have also linked rising electricity costs to data centers as the November midterms approach, though the link is disputed by experts. A recent analysis by the Institute for Energy Research, for example, suggests there is no statistically significant correlation between the concentration of data centers and rapidly rising electricity rates.

Data centers don’t hike residential power costs

The Institute for Energy Research notes in the analysis that the expansion of data centers hiking household costs is an “intuitive” narrative, as electricity demand climbs – in large part due to Big Tech’s ambitions – while supply is struggling to match the pace of growth.

When comparing the concentration of data centers in a state with electricity cost increases over the last decade, “it appears that other factors, such as those policies preferred by Democrat-led states and those by Republican-led states, lead to the discrepancy in electricity rates, not data centers,” the institute stated in the analysis. The institute has previously noted the correlation between green energy mandates and high electricity costs in blue states.

“States that had rising demand for electricity actually have lower prices,” the institute’s manager of policy and communications, Alex Stevens, told The Lion. “Electricity systems have really high fixed costs. … When demand grows, those costs are spread over more consumers.”

Across all 50 states, costs declined where electricity sales grew faster from 2015 to 2025, according to the institute. Electricity prices in the top 10 data center-populated states are “virtually identical” to the average in every other state, the institute concluded, noting that the currently available data “firmly rejects the narrative that data centers drive up electricity prices.”

Despite the data, many communities are rejecting data centers over concerns about rising electricity costs.

Communities also tend to raise concerns about data centers’ water usage and potentially limited economic growth in exchange for large facilities encroaching on residential spaces.

‘Fighting back in the physical world’: Restrictions and backlash

Just within the last week:

• A Missouri town ousted some of its city council members after they greenlighted a local artificial intelligence data center;  

• A Wisconsin city voted to redistrict data centers; and 

• Maine advanced the first statewide moratorium on data centers. 

Author and journalist Robert Bryce, who has written on energy issues for more than three decades, noted Saturday on his Substack, “I’ve documented nearly 1,200 rejections or restrictions of solar, wind and battery projects. But I’ve never seen anything like the raging backlash against data centers.”

Bryce documented 70 communities across the U.S. that have rejected or restricted data centers since Jan. 1. Bryce described his findings as a “remarkable number,” noting that the global rejections and restrictions of wind projects in all of 2025 totaled 74.

“The evidence is clear: Big Tech is facing an unprecedented cultural backlash, and it’s happening all over the country,” Bryce wrote. “Opponents of these projects come from across the political spectrum. Regular citizens know they can’t fight Big Tech in the virtual world, so they are fighting back in the physical world.”

Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York introduced legislation March 25 to halt data center development “to give democracy a chance to catch up” and to ensure AI does not increase electricity prices. Other Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill are also considering the idea of a data center moratorium, Politico reported in March.

Notably, a September 2025 Gallup survey found that 80% of the public prefers slowing AI development rather than accelerating it.