What percentage of people do you think are affected by AI datacenters?

That argument applies better to blast furnaces than to data centers, but I don't see people complaining about steel. Data centers just don't take up much space or power in the scope of industrial manufacturing.

Your other arguments are legitimate, but "it's a waste of electricity" and "data centers make some significant difference to a nontrivial number of people" are not the same propositions.

I live in rural Wyoming and it's a huge deal here, if these projects go through many people are affected.

Some of these data centers are multiple orders of magnitude bigger than a blast furnace.

I think people are pissed that they're subsidizing the R+D cost of their own unemployment.