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What about locals who worry about themselves suffering if the datacenter generates noise, increases electricity, etc.? Even when the company makes promises, what would their small town do if they’re ignored?
Sure, many people are upset because of the vague threat of AI dystopia or ingroup alignment, and use the above concerns as a more practical excuse, but still they seem like serious concerns.
On the very local level it's a matter of case by case decisions. The NDAs were a bad decision from the beginning and it sounds like basically everyone recognizes that now. Obviously if they're venting diesel exhaust on your home then I'm not going to defend that, but these problems are no different than any conceivable industrial buildout of any sort and they have mundane solutions. The promises ought to be in enforceable contracts.
None of these concerns can account for the super majority of people who oppose construction of datacenters anywhere and statewide moratoriums.
I think one of the big problems here is, ostensibly they might be, but people saw how these companies will threaten lawfare against small towns to effectively either a) force them to build it with effectively 0 restrictions and major tax abatements or b) drown them in legal fees and then do the first bit anyway. If you don't trust that the legal system is gonna work in your favor even if you are completely in the right, better to not get in that situation in the first place.
And if you're in a historically industrial area, there is probably still the memory of things like '08 where the companies just left for good, leaving the community to clean up the mess.
It's a very low trust system, and at least in my opinion, that distrust is more than earned.
The small town is the legal system. I'm sure you can marshal some individual situations from the past but seriously, you think the kind of society that is willing to vote for data center moratoriums is going to have judges and juries who will just allow corporations to bully small towns? Anything unreasonably would be national news and have many millions of dollars in legal funds even if it was half misinformation. You can't get screwed over by a lego reseller without being able to raise millions in a go fund me.
I'm sure I've read the same articles you have. The biggest example of this is where the prospective Datacenter is the only entity since this event willing to fund the clean up after almost twenty years. Is your argument seriously that small towns should just give up economically and die rather than ever taking a gamble at industry again? Seriously, what possible investment opportunity passes this test? How is this view different from degrowth?
Distrust can't be cumulative and global. Someone somewhere is always going to be being betrayed. There's eight billion of us. Yes, investments have failed in the past, it used to be that whole mining towns found nothing and died. That rate of failure has been decreasing over time but we'll still have failures. You can't just cancel all progress forever because it's not a sure thing. We'd never do anything. It's just safetyism. The logical end is everyone being locked in a padded cell as until the last of us dies out because any risk might lead to a tragedy.
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