Business Insider
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2025–2026
31:10 · 8.2M views · Sep 12, 2025
A Business Insider investigation into the US boom in AI data centers, mapping where they are, who owns them, and how much power and water they consume. It looks at the costs borne by communities, with a focus on Virginia.
Cited in threads on AI infrastructure as evidence of the water, power and community costs of data centers.
9 comments from Hacker News
What? A 5 minute drive is miles, and that's plenty far enough. They are currently being built within 100 meters of homes. It's absolutely insane. EDIT: this video Just watch that and not get hoppin' mad.
> People will claim real harms but the connections are spotty at best. This is a wild claim because it's trivially provable. There's been tons of reporting around the effect they have on the immediate vicinity, and that's without even getting into the unknown long-term effects. Here's a decent piece, but there's plenty more out there if you look at all: this video Is every single mad person doing investigative reporting and / or living next to a data center? No. But something doesn't have to personally affect me to know it's harmful.
Watch these [LINK] this video [LINK] Then, tell me if you want to live anywhere near those. Then, tell me of a nuclear power plant that has that bad a repo.
These firms can do what they like if and only if they pay for every $7B reactor, the 30k year waste stewardship, and disconnect from community resources people paid for with taxes. However, currently the unethical burden cities with the endless bill for resources, contribute no actual value, and one may spot the data center waste heat signatures and industrial run-off from space. Consider most "AI" firms lost on average $4.50 for every new user, rely on overt piracy, and delusional boards sand-bagging for time... these LLM businesses are simply unsustainable fictions. Many problems don't have simple answers, but one may merely profit by their predictable nature. I would recommend volunteering with a local pet rescue society if you find yourself getting upset about trivia. Have a great day. =3 [LINK] [LINK] this video [LINK] [LINK]
Drinking water does not magically appears in the water cycle the next day. [0] - "And what we found is is that up to 43% of data centers, and this is our largest data centers, are located in areas of high or extremely high water stress. And that's really shocking because data centers require huge amount of drinking water to be able to cool their servers." [0]- Business Insider | Exposing The Dark Side of America's AI Data Center Explosion - this video