Another fear bubble, carefully inflated by the activist class.
They need a new cause because, whether they admit it or not, they can see the writing on the wall. The climate scare no longer commands the unquestioning attention it once did. People have more immediate concerns than apocalyptic deadlines. Inflation, housing, energy bills, jobs—reality has an irritating habit of pushing ideology aside.
So the spotlight swings to data centers.
Suddenly they are the new existential threat. They consume too much electricity. They use too much water. They threaten the grid. They are everything yesterday’s villain wasn’t. Most importantly, they provide another banner to march behind and another excuse to demand more political intervention.
It is simply the latest bubble.
And, like so many bubbles before it, it will eventually end as little more than a trash-can fire.
The uncomfortable reality is that most of the data center projects currently being announced will never leave the drawing board. The market simply is not there.
We’ve seen this movie before.
Cast your mind back roughly twenty years to the great North American LNG import frenzy. Import terminals were planned up and down both coasts. Capacity projections suggested the United States would soon be importing enough liquefied natural gas to make the entire continent burp.
Even if the shale revolution had never happened, the planned capacity bordered on the absurd. Every developer wanted a project. Every investor wanted exposure. Every consultant had another feasibility study to sell. It became a feeding frenzy fueled by optimism, cheap money, and the comforting belief that demand would somehow catch up.
It never did.
The boom faded not with a spectacular collapse but with a quiet, almost embarrassing whimper.
The same dynamics are unfolding around data centers.
Everyone wants a piece of the next technological gold rush. Every developer has another megaproject. Every investor dreams of owning the infrastructure of the AI revolution. Every government wants to subsidize its own digital future.
And everyone is buying chips.
Warehouses are quietly filling with processors purchased at extraordinary prices, many of which will spend months—perhaps years—sitting on shelves. Silicon does not age like fine wine. Technology has a remarkably short shelf life. Leave it boxed long enough and yesterday’s cutting-edge hardware becomes tomorrow’s obsolete inventory.
That is not an asset.
It is dead capital.
It is money frozen inside balance sheets that are becoming so lopsided they resemble the roof of an Alpine farmhouse after a heavy snowfall.
Will data centers be built?
Of course.
Will AI continue to grow?
Almost certainly.
Will anything remotely close to the currently announced pipeline ever become reality?
Not even close.
A handful of projects will be completed. Many more will quietly disappear. Others will be postponed until everyone forgets they were ever announced.
The market has an unpleasant habit of puncturing investment manias long before protesters ever get the chance.
No demonstrations required.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-left-wing-anti-data-center-movement