The only reason Loudon county became datacenter alley is due to where the transatlantic cables landed. And Washington DC being next door.

It’s basically the OG networking effect. You put equipment there because everyone else had equipment there.

The rest just grew with it. It had nothing to do with power infrastructure. If anything, datacenters created the power infrastructure in the area.

Agreed on the tax abatement stuff. Those should be outright illegal regardless of industry.

I agree that datacenters showed up because a ton of fibre was already there.

I was talking about reasons that the general public of Loudon County has had a positive view toward datacenters -- not why datacenters chose the county (that's a different list entirely).

Notably, that the datacenters showed up in a way that offered almost no material downsides to the locals... and that this differs markedly from what many towns face today.

It's actually because of DARPANET/ARPANET and other early computer research that was military or intelligence funded. It led to a concentration of networking in the region that led to MAE-East and it's all spiraled from there. The transatlantic cables were an aftereffect of everything else.

I'm pretty sure they actually come ashore in Virginia Beach and New Jersey, both a solid 4 hour drive away.