Loudoun County cut property taxes 30%. Its neighbours are still fighting the data centres
Two-thirds of Americans now say no to a data centre near their home — even the ones who use AI at work every day. NPR spent weeks in the hot spots, and the picture that comes back is stranger than a simple protest story.
In Sterling, Virginia, there is a building called Vantage VA2. It sits next to homes and runs on eight natural-gas-fired turbines. Residents say the turbines make a constant low rumble with a high whine on top, and it has become a major source of noise complaints in the surrounding neighbourhoods. One neighbour, Kasey Hatch, builds IT infrastructure for a bank and uses AI in her job. She also built a dashboard so people could see the measured noise levels near the site.
That detail is the whole story in miniature. NPR's Scott Neuman travelled to data centre hot spots and spoke with dozens of activists, politicians, developers and ordinary people. A poll by The Economist and YouGov of nearly 1,600 adults found about two-thirds of Americans oppose new data centre construction in their communities. And nearly everyone NPR interviewed who opposes them admitted they use AI in daily life anyway.
Here is the part that does not fit the usual protest story. Loudoun County is not losing from data centres. They generated about $1.2 billion in property tax revenue in fiscal 2026 — roughly 39% of the county's entire budget. The county confirms it has cut the real property tax rate by about 30% over the past decade because of that money, and vehicle taxes are down too. People are objecting to construction in a place where the industry has been measurably making their tax bill smaller.
So money alone is not buying peace, and that is the finding worth carrying around. Darrell West of the Brookings Institution says data centres have "upended politics as we know it" — it goes past the usual "not near my house" reflex into a fear that the technology itself is out of anyone's control. Add the secrecy: NPR reports a proliferation of deals where elected officials sign nondisclosure agreements. A cheque you can see plus a contract you cannot read equals distrust.
A lower tax bill does not compensate for a sound you cannot turn off, in a deal you were not allowed to read.
The political mechanics are what make this spread. Chris Borick, a political scientist at Lehigh University, puts it bluntly: "If you're in power right now and you are dealing with this issue, you have a target on your back." The coalitions do not follow party lines — Hatch found herself agreeing with her staunchly Republican cousin about data centres after years of never seeing eye to eye. When an issue splits both parties internally, incumbents cannot triangulate their way out of it. They have to pick a side locally, and someone will run against them for it.
Anyone who lives within earshot of a site already approved — noise, electricity demand and, in dry or fast-growing areas, water use are the complaints NPR heard. And the twenty- and thirty-somethings who type into a chatbot all day at work: Hatch does it at a bank, Nusheen Farahani says she "begrudgingly" uses chatbots to make things easier while trying not to let it micromanage her life. The machines they use for work are the machines being built at the edge of town, and the bill for that — in taxes, in power, in noise — is being decided at county meetings most people have never attended.
One concrete thing to watch: Juli Briskman, the Loudoun County supervisor who has led efforts to slow data centre development, is running to unseat board chair Phyllis Randall — a fellow Democrat who defends the centres for the tax revenue — in next year's primary. That race is a clean test of whether the backlash converts into votes. Randall did not respond to NPR's request for comment. Beyond that primary, no timeline was given.
The Data Center Opposition Report counts about 640,000 people active in the movement, with 220 new groups formed in just three months, June through August. Almost none of them are anti-technology — they use the same AI everyone else does. They are objecting to where it is built and to being kept out of the decision. Those are two very different fights, and only one of them can be settled with a tax cut.
Sources: NPR, "The data center backlash is reshaping American politics — one community at a time," by Scott Neuman, September 21, 2026; poll cited: The Economist/YouGov survey of nearly 1,600 adults; Data Center Opposition Report.
Дата-центры перестали быть темой для инженеров: две трети американцев против стройки рядом с домом, 640 тысяч человек уже в движении сопротивления, и это ломает привычные политические расклады перед выборами.
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