I'm a little bit surprised to see someone taking such grand & absolute claims so seriously. I guess I don't, generally. Actually thinking about it, it's not that I treat them as unserious, it's more like I read it as something akin to hyperbole. Anyway this isn't to say exploring this ("taking it serously") isn't worthwhile, just that I hadn't been prior.

As for the backlash itself, it seems safe to say it's motivated by a wide range of things. Ultimately though, I do agree with the point in the title (i.e. it's about datacentres) but I think a lot of the other factors mentioned are significant, but I still wouldn't expect even a perfect (impossible) poll/study to find a neat, unifying reason for most of the backlash.

Of course it's about the datacentres: why would anybody want even a modest, ye olde time datacentre, let alone a neo cloud / AI one, in their neighbourhood? You can call this nimbyism, which it is, but it's important to note the gulf of difference between a tech company's private profit facility and the sorts of projects where "nimby" typically is invoked.

Because this particular DC rollout is so massive and high profile, people have realised en masse that rejecting these things is something they can do. The anti-AI movement is absolutely a big part of this -- in terms of publicity, awareness, outreach -- but the various local peoples can (should, must) have their own reason for rejecting/protesting the projects.

Finally, given the dismal rate of promised capacity actually coming online -- which was apparent prior to and separately from "the backlash" -- I can't help but wonder if the widespread local resistance will end up as a scapegoat when questions start getting raised.