Since Trump’s return to power, we’ve been talking about the linkage between big tech, fossil fuels, and fascism. And one of the key symptoms of this in 2026 is the growth of Data centers.
Data centers are growing like a second coal industry. Each one may consume a city’s worth of water and electricity – mostly generated by fossil fuels. For example, people in Memphis are breathing polluted air thanks to Elon Musk’s Colossus data center and his Grok AI. In the climate crisis, vulnerable people worldwide will die because of data centers. And the uses AI and big data are being put to aren’t benign – like helping students write papers or making funny pictures online: DOGE, Pallantir, and OpenAI promise to surveil us, deport us, and send drones to kill unwanted humans.
That same week in DC, is the Data Center World Conference, where industry executives and political enablers will meet to wheel and deal. Like the CERA week conference we protested a few weeks ago, this is a gathering of the worst people, doing the most to harm our climate and comunities. So, we will convene in Washington, DC, to expose how their data centers are destroying our environment and threatening our democracy. We will begin with a tour of the tech oligarchy where speakers will expose how they are driving the techno-state. Finally, we’ll conclude with a rally outside the convention center where we will raise our voices to demand a moratorium on new data centers.
Later in the week, our friends at BXE will bring similar demands to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which is weighing new rules to expedite data center construction – especially if they come with their own fossil fuel fired power plants.