The EU already has several hyperscaler data centers and many more colo-style data centers. Plenty of compute power exists in EU; this new generation is about purely inference capacity.

In the US, the political backlash against data centers is also about the inability of government to be transparent about these buildouts (eg. City councils signing NDAs and building commissions quietly approving development plans without community input), the inability for utilities/regulators to actually hold data center developers to promises made (usually regarding resource/ utility usage), more complaints about affordability (cost of utility bills rising), additional hate against the unlikable tech CEOs (who aren't charismatic and whom have a long list of previous violations), fear of what AI will bring (the promised white collar revolution, promises of "infinite AI immigrants" in an age where immigration has been demonized), etc.

Only a few of these are about the "factory" itself. Lots of them are about the people trying to retain some control of their communities. Some of them are about the speed of the buildout (eg. compromises in water use / plumbing and noise / pollution created by the ad hoc on site electrical generation).

The data center CEOs are starting to admit that their NDA-blitzscale strategy may have backfired because communities are pissed and the NDAs prevented anyone from making a positive case for the buildouts while the rage was boiling over.

Love this framing, most industrial warehouses easily use 500kw in power (the EU level for self reporting water consumption), but nobody is drumming up a water war on them.

For whatever reason people have clung onto this idea that the "Gotcha" to slow down AI is to worry about water consumption, and it's an idiotic gotcha.