The Horrifying Truth About Data Centers Nobody Is Talking About
The short version: Man In America's viral clip taps real anger over secretive data-center siting, but the 'surveillance state' framing distracts from the boring, provable stuff: noise, water, power bills, and closed-door approvals.
Our Take
Man In America is tapping into something real: communities finding out about a 24/7 industrial facility next door only after the bulldozers show up. His clip on the reported 62-square-mile Utah project fast-tracked with little public input echoes a pattern GridWatch sees over and over — county commissions and economic development boards approving massive land and tax deals before neighbors ever get a mic at a meeting. Whether or not you buy his 'surveillance state' framing, the underlying complaint holds: these approvals move fast, and the people footing the bill on power rates, water tables, and property values are the last to know.
Where we'd push back is on treating this as a hidden conspiracy rather than a documented, trackable pattern. Nearly 3,000 facilities built or planned isn't a secret — it's public record scattered across thousands of local filings, utility rate cases, and water permits that almost nobody reads. The noise-at-1-a.m. and light-pollution complaints he raises aren't fringe; they're the same substation hum, cooling-tower drone, and security lighting showing up in nuisance complaints near existing campuses from Virginia to Arizona. That's the part worth taking seriously without the extra mythology.
If your town has one of these proposed or under construction, don't wait for a YouTube clip to tell you — check our facility map and see what's already been approved near you, then use our take-action page to find out when the next hearing actually is.
This is GridWatch the USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Man In America, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.