Gas Turbines and Cargo Hijackings Fuel North American Data Center Wars
August 15, 2026
From inefficient Texas gas plants and violent California server heists to Ottawa's funding of Meta's Alberta facilities, the physical buildout of artificial intelligence is colliding with municipal resistance and grid strain. As provincial leaders lean on geopolitical urgency to sideline environmental reviews, communities and green parties are mobilizing against the unbridled resource extraction powering the tech oligarchy.
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The Real Reason Data Center Gas Power Plants Are So Dirty
A massive new gas plant in Texas will be built with much less efficient technology than regular gas plants. It’s far from the only data center power project to rely on dirty turbines.
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‘The Worst I’ve Ever Seen’: Cargo Thefts Have Turned Violent in Pursuit of AI Hardware
Experts allege that two recent incidents in California show the extreme lengths that criminal organizations are willing to go to to steal servers and other gear meant for data centers.
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Australia and Canada diverge on plans to power AI
Australia wants renewable energy to power its future AI data centres. That's a sharp contrast to Ottawa’s up to $200 million backing for Meta’s gas-powered facility in Alberta.
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Ford to municipalities opposing data centres: 'Either we do it, or Donald Trump's going to do it'
Ontario's premier was in Guelph at a provincial data centre to announce the province’s framework for its Data Centre Playbook, which is open for public comment for 30 days.
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'You can't sacrifice our community's health': People fighting data centres demand oversight
With some environmental assessments side-stepped and public health impact assessments absent, Canadians' fears of community impacts from AI data centres come to the fore in protests and city council meetings across the country.
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Ontario Greens call for data centre moratorium
The Greens say municipalities are having to regulate the industry without guidelines.
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Canada's data centre boom is feeding conspiracy theories
The claims, which have proliferated on social media, are the latest iteration of a widespread right-wing conspiracy positing that a cabal of global elites are trying to control people through various novel technological means.
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Who were the Luddites? Their legacy ripples through politics, cultural commentary and literature
Image from 'Through the Fray: a tale of the Luddite Riots, etc.,' by George Alfred Henty, published in 1897. (British Library/Flickr) American filmmaker George Lucas is one of the latest to indicate he’s open to AI in the movie industry. In a recent interview, the director said resistance to the tec…
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