For years, public unease about artificial intelligence lived mostly in opinion polls and the occasional op-ed. In recent weeks it has hardened into something measured in cancelled projects, ousted officials and police reports. A Wall Street Journal report this month captured the shift in a single scene: former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt was booed during a University of Arizona commencement address, and a real estate executive met the same reaction giving a graduation speech in Florida. "I don't think I've ever seen something intensify this quickly," said Gregory Ferenstein, a researcher who has been polling public attitudes at Stanford and Berkeley.
The numbers behind the mood are striking. Local opposition blocked or delayed at least 48 data center projects worth $156 billion last year, and a record 20 were cancelled in the first quarter of 2026 alone. In Festus, Missouri, voters removed four city council members a week after they approved a $6 billion data center. Facebook groups organised against data centers have grown from roughly 90,000 members in December to 360,000 today. The anger has also turned violent: in April a man allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman's home, and days earlier someone fired 13 shots at the door of an Indianapolis councilman who had approved a data center.
What turned a diffuse worry into an organised movement is, more than anything, the electricity bill. A study published last week in the journal Environmental Research Letters projected that data center expansion could push average wholesale power costs up between 6 and 29 percent by 2030, with some regions hit far harder. In Virginia, the heart of the data center economy, generation costs could rise as much as 57 percent. Households are already feeling it: U.S. electricity prices have climbed faster than inflation for most of the past year.
The starkest version of the new arithmetic comes from Nevada, where NV Energy told a utility serving 49,000 customers near Lake Tahoe that it would cut their power supply by 75 percent starting in 2027 and redirect that electricity to an AI data center. For nearly a century, American utility regulation rested on the principle that reliable, affordable power was a public good owed to everyone. That principle is now visibly negotiable, and ordinary customers are noticing exactly who is being asked to give way.
None of this is only about power prices. Workers fear layoffs that executives have openly attributed to AI; parents worry about the technology's effect on children; rural communities resent the strain on land, water and grids. But the utility bill is the grievance that unifies the rest, because it arrives every month with a number on it. The industry sees the danger. AI companies are reportedly spending hundreds of millions of dollars to counter the backlash, and OpenAI policy chief Chris Lehane has blamed "doomers," social media and negative coverage for the souring mood. Even executives concede it is not only a messaging problem. "There's a disconnect between what we're saying and what is happening out there," admitted one data center chief executive.
The political consequences are arriving fast. Officials in at least six states are moving to block utility rate increases tied to data centers, and congressional candidates in both parties are now campaigning on the issue, finding rare common ground. AI's defenders have spent two years arguing the technology is too important to slow down. The public has started arguing back, and for the first time it has a number on its side: the one at the bottom of the power bill.