America's Data Center Build-Out Is Falling Way Behind Schedule

"Falling behind schedule" doesn't really seem like the right term, for a sector of the economy that has been accelerating for the past few years.

You could easily describe this trend positively rather than negatively, like:

"Google has built an incredible amount of datacenters in the past few years, which makes sense since Google Cloud revenue has tripled since 2021. But they are trying to grow even faster and add more revenue."

There are few large scale US projects that don’t fall behind schedule so that’s not notable. It is notable that the demand-responsive pricing is so useful you can get 100 MW out of it by paying people for power in critical periods. And it is notable that a wind and solar company is Google’s other way out of this. How interesting.

Sooner or later the need for energy will become crucial. If it comes to war, then the US can build but if it comes to anything short of that, environmental concerns will dominate and probably make things unlikely.

It’s no wonder they want to put datacenters in space, calculating that it’s easier to solve the problems there than to solve the problems here. Though I’m surprised: are there no allied nations where we could put these things? The Trump admin has only been here since 2025 but opposition to these projects has existed locally for years. But universally? I imagine Japan or Korea, countries with less superstition around nuclear reactors, would have been happy to have done this.

If these data centers are going to be so profitable, then it should be simple to make guarantees about clean self-power, closed loop cooling, and noise and light pollution mitigation. There definitely shouldn't be deals to avoid taxes while lying about job creation.

Maybe if they did those things, there would be fewer permitting fights.

People aren't stupid. They have very valid concerns about what AI will mean for their jobs over the next 5-10 years. Since AI companies (and companies in general) refuse to offer any real solution to being permanently unable to use your skills to create value that enables your survival, people are shoving back.