The data centre debate has moved from local planning challenge to global business risk
The technology industry needs to urgently rethink how it makes the case for growth, and what it offers in return.
The turmoil in tech stocks should worry anyone with a stake in AI infrastructure. Trillions of dollars have been wiped off the value of major tech firms in the US, Europe and Asia following midterm elections in which a number of candidates campaigned to slow the growth of data centres, adding to existing unease about whether the vast sums being spent on AI infrastructure will pay off. In the US, what began as local disputes over planning, electricity and water has become a defining political question, threatening the AI boom and the global economy.
The warning signs have been there for some time. The technology industry has been extraordinarily effective at making the case for AI's potential to governments and investors, but it has left a dangerous vacuum where it should have been making the case for what the transformation means for the voters expected to live with its consequences.
Social licence sits at the core of the debate
The debate is about more than individual developments, economic arguments or myths and truths about their impacts. Data centres have become physical symbols of wider anxieties about rapid technological change, inequality, job insecurity and the concentration of wealth and power in society.
The central vulnerability sits with those affected directly, and those looking on from afar: that the benefits of AI progress accrue to a few powerful individuals, while the costs fall on everyone else. It is a compelling frame that spans generations and channels, with TikTok awash with satirical videos from SNL to individual creators, only reinforcing the David v Goliath contrast.
There is a legitimate economic and strategic case for data centres, even for progressive audiences – as essential infrastructure for a modern, prosperous and more equitable society, driving national security, public services and better standards of living. But unless the industry can demonstrate and articulate that the benefits of AI will be widely shared, it risks losing the public and political consent required to build the infrastructure on which those ambitions depend.
Making the national case
The industry needs a narrative about the public benefits of AI that speaks to that deeper values around fairness, trust and control, supported by credible commitments that address the anxieties driving opposition. It must answer questions around who pays for the energy infrastructure, how workers can share in the economic gains, what protections exist against rising costs and environmental impacts, and who gets a say in how the technology develops.
Understanding what credible answers would look like to the public is the gap Hawthorn’s Data Centre Index, launching in Q1 2027, is designed to fill. Combining attitudinal research, segmentation and local-level analysis, it will examine attitudes towards AI alongside local acceptance of proposed development. It will identify who is open to persuasion and what people need to see the industry do before they believe its promises, mapping those findings against local investment cases and the political context.
That insight becomes especially important when the national argument meets individual projects. The Data Centre Covenant, announced in last week’s budget, ties priority grid connections to Local Benefit Plans. The success of those plans will depend on understanding what will earn the support of local communities and the politicians who represent them.
The lesson from this week's market turmoil is that public consent cannot be treated as something to secure once investment decisions have already been made. Ultimately, reclaiming the narrative depends on more than finding the right words. It means giving people credible reasons to believe that technological progress will improve their lives, and giving them a meaningful stake in the future it creates.
