Digital Colonialism, a series co-produced by NPQ and MediaJustice, explores how the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers is reshaping communities across the United States.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere, and it is quickly becoming integrated into almost every aspect of our lives. Within the last few months, you’ve probably noticed it’s nearly impossible to use a platform that is not using AI—whether that be AI-generated search answers, AI-assisted chatbots, or virtual assistants. LinkedIn, Soundcloud, and Spotify are just a few platforms that have changed their privacy policies to use our data to train AI models. And we’ve seen heavy adoption of AI in our newsrooms, schools, and workplaces.
Ironically, all of this is happening while “experts” are still debating whether this “AI boom” is just short-term hype or a turning point that will transform our future. Regardless of the outcome, communities across the country are already living with the harmful consequences of Big Tech’s latest profit grab in the name of so-called innovation.
While the experts continue to speculate about AI’s place in our society, what’s not up for debate is how we arrived here. Take the announcement of the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan earlier this summer. Under the guise of accelerating AI innovation, Trump’s plan effectively clears the path for Big Tech to build data centers without any oversight or accountability. The plan also attacked “woke” AI, eliminating regulations that protect the public from bias and discrimination. The billions of dollars Big Tech has poured into the Trump administration’s priorities are paying off.
Regardless of the outcome [of this “AI boom”], communities across the country are already living with the harmful consequences of Big Tech’s latest profit grab in the name of so-called innovation.
This is a glaring example of how Big Tech is working in tandem with the administration to dismantle human rights protections and democracy. Our communities continue to pay the ultimate price while this innovation, disguised as progress, threatens to drain our natural resources and expedite climate degradation.
The rapid expansion of AI data centers across the country reveals a system of political choices that further disenfranchise marginalized communities. However, a broad movement of activists is coming together to mount serious opposition in the spirit of restoring our democracy and preserving the natural world.
Corporate Capture of Resources
The “AI Race” isn’t just unleashing new chatbots and digital tools. The push to rapidly integrate and accelerate the use of AI is fueling “hyperscale” data centers and the construction of massive warehouses that require enormous amounts of land, energy, and water to make this technology possible. While many tech corporations pledge sustainability, numerous reports and studies show that data centers strain our most basic resources.
Despite these warnings, this infrastructure continues to be built out, often in secrecy through nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) or shell companies, excluding the very people most impacted by the related pollution, energy demands, water, and land consumption.
In Louisiana…Meta’s $10 billion data center will require three new methane gas plants in Cancer Alley, deepening existing health and environmental harms.
To better understand the impacts up close, MediaJustice traveled to Memphis, TN, in June this year to strategize with organizers resisting the expansion of Colossus, the world’s largest supercomputer built by xAI, a company owned by Elon Musk.
Surrounding the facility is Boxtown, a historically Black community with some of the highest rates of cancer and toxic air concentrations in the nation, a direct result of decades of environmental racism. Given the secrecy and lack of transparency behind the project, Memphis Communities Against Pollution (MCAP) launched its own investigation into Colossus.
The investigation revealed that Elon Musk was illegally operating unpermitted methane gas turbines, polluting the air that Black communities breathe to power xAI’s supercomputer.
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An All-Too-Familiar Story
What’s happening in Memphis isn’t an isolated incident, but a familiar experience for communities of color and working-class communities across the South. MediaJustice’s recent report, The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South, shows how tech corporations are draining resources—economic and environmental—while harming surrounding communities.
In Louisiana, for example, Meta’s $10 billion data center will require three new methane gas plants in Cancer Alley, deepening existing health and environmental harms. In Bessemer, AL, tech giants have rezoned land for a $14.5 billion project without informing residents that the developer’s water request exceeded city capacity. Across the region, states are giving away hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks to tech corporations, while utility companies pass off the cost of building the new infrastructure to communities. Unsurprisingly, Big Tech isn’t making good on its promise of new jobs and economic development, as many facilities employ only 25 to 50 permanent workers.
Big Tech has framed the scramble for our land, energy, and water as an unavoidable, inevitable step toward progress. But the build-out and the subsequent harms produced by data centers aren’t coincidences. They are the direct result of a system designed to prioritize corporate interest over the public good. The guise of innovation is giving tech companies cover to radically transform who has access to our most precious fundamental resources. And local fights are forcing us to see the AI race for what it truly is—a deliberate political project rooted in theft, exploitation, colonialism, and the privatization of public resources.
Reflections from Memphis
MediaJustice returned to Memphis in October, only this time we were joined by over 90 organizers from across the South, eager to learn from one another and bring those lessons back to local campaigns around the region.
In partnership with MCAP, we hosted a regional training to deepen our collective knowledge about data center projects, develop our own messaging to combat Big Tech’s propaganda, and study successful interventions against data centers. Organizers walked away with a deeper understanding of how to stop data center proposals in their communities and connections to one another to bolster their organizing efforts.
Our previous campaigns against Big Tech have taught us that corporations rely on both misinformation and the isolation of our struggles to maintain their power. We know—and they know—that when we align our fights, we build power. According to Data Center Watch, between May 2024 and March 2025, 142 activist groups in 24 states, across party lines, carried out organizing efforts that delayed or stopped $64 billion in US data center projects.
To further demonstrate and harness our collective power, that same weekend in Memphis, we marched in solidarity with Tigers Against Pollution, a coalition of university students partnering with MCAP on the campaign against Musk’s xAI. The march coincided with Trump’s latest threats to deploy the National Guard to Memphis, which had already increased police presence on the ground.
The march wasn’t only about xAI, but a protest against the police force that would use the technology to criminalize, detain, and incarcerate Black, Brown, and working-class people. Big Tech’s entire business model is predicated on monitoring, tracking, and storing as much information on people as possible. The current political regime further raises the stakes. Not only will xAI fuel more biased and discriminatory algorithms that place barriers between people and housing and jobs, but it will also equip the Trump administration with dangerous surveillance technology to stalk, criminalize, and arrest people they decide don’t belong in our country.
Organizing right now is about reclaiming our right to decide how our resources are used, who benefits, and whose voices matter.
How MediaJustice Continues to Stand Up
As our collective movements for justice grow our power to save our democracy, it’s critical to recognize that Big Tech is a major force against us. We cannot take back our power without contending with Big Tech as a major obstacle to liberation. Every tax break, every secret land deal, every fast-tracked permit undermines our ability to make our democracy work for the people.
Organizing right now is about reclaiming our right to decide how our resources are used, who benefits, and whose voices matter. Fighting data center expansion is the frontline fight we need to build a bigger movement base across the board that can meaningfully challenge and take down the current administration and Big Tech’s threat to democracy and our planet.
Data centers are a salient example of the latest version of digital colonialism ushered in by Big Tech. But when we fight together, we win. We’ll uplift the stories of those on the front lines fighting to take back our power. Despite what Big Tech wants us to think and do, the people are indeed saying no.
