OPINION
The San Gabriel Mountains as seen from Monterey Park (File Photo – cityofmontereypark)
The dream of AI infrastructure is a tech billionaire hallucination far removed from the reality of what normal people want and need.
By Nicholas Rabb
Since November of last year, the Greater Los Angeles area – specifically the San Gabriel Valley (SGV) – has been bombarded with data center proposals, as well as local fights to stop them. Monterey Park’s battle against a massive 50 megawatt proposal, four football fields in size and standing to use the electricity of 40,000 homes annually, has garnered massive attention and outcry. Now, attention is turning to three proposals in and around City of Industry, notably the proposal to demolish Puente Hills Mall and construct a 10 megawatt, 150,000 square foot data center. Some proposals go relatively unnoticed, such as the Amazon acquisition of an existing data center in Pasadena.
Our local experience mirrors a national trend. Across the United States, data centers are being pushed onto communities as part of growing speculation on AI profits. The pushback is also nationwide; as Data Center Watch reported in 2025 that during the previous year, $64 billion in data center projects had been blocked or delayed by organized local resistance.
The unrelenting drive for data centers by Big Tech, the Trump administration, and investors, is a manifestation of the fact that billionaire elites (even more so tech elites) live in a hallucination of reality far removed from what normal people want and need.
As the climate and ecological crisis deepens, economic instability rages, and ICE surveillance and deportations ravage our communities, a vision of an AI- and data center-powered future is insulting.
Data centers require a massive amount of electricity to power the tens of thousands of servers. Even the Puente Hills Mall proposal, at 10 megawatts, would use the equivalent annual electricity of 8,300 average U.S. homes given 24/7 max-capacity operation. The heat generated by this concentration of computation is so great that even mid-size data centers require millions of gallons of water per year to cool the processors. To build the center, massive amounts of rare-earth elements for chip manufacturing are required, depleting resources through unsustainable and deeply unethical mining practices.
And that’s just the baseline data center used for cloud storage and enterprise systems. AI infrastructure, the newest boon, uses dozens of times the electricity of typical computations because the AI models themselves are extremely computationally inefficient, a fact Big Tech ignores.
Communities around the nation have been suffering at the hands of data centers. xAI’s Colossus II center outside Boxtown, TN, has been polluting residents’ air by running unsanctioned diesel turbines. In the greater Reno area, massive data centers are projected to require billions of gallons of water per year, while Nevada already has used groundwater reservoirs faster than they can be replenished. Energy prices have shot up all around the country, most drastically in data center-dense areas, raising bills for residents.
Meanwhile, ICE is purchasing dozens of new AI technologies to strengthen the deportation machine that has been terrorizing our communities. ICE has relied on data centers since its inception, previously calling its cloud infrastructure “mission critical.”
As I’ve spoken with hundreds of residents at anti-data center rallies, scores of students at my workplace at Cal State LA, and even people I’ve just met, it has become crystal clear to me that nobody wants this. Instead, I hear people wondering why our cities are not building housing, green spaces, or community infrastructure.
Data centers stand to be a blight on our communities, but they can also be an opportunity to change our priorities, to say enough is enough and reject the fever dreams of billionaire tech bros. After we push out data center developers, it’s time we stay organized and use our momentum to demand our cities invest in our air, water, food, shelter, and community life – things we actually need to survive and thrive.
Nicholas Rabb is a postdoctoral researcher at Cal State LA studying the impacts of AI on education. He holds a PhD in computer and cognitive science from Tufts University, where he researched misinformation, surveillance, and sociotechnical systems, and is an organizer with No Data Center Monterey Park and the No Data Centers SGV Coalition.
I want to add another voice to this conversation. Gathering signatures to oppose data centers is a powerful way to show City Council that residents are paying attention – but it’s only the first step. Before this opposition hardens into a permanent “no,” I believe our community deserves the full picture: what data centers actually are, what they aren’t, and most importantly, what power we still have to shape them if they do come.
The better path is a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA). Instead of shouting “no,” we should be organizing to demand what DC builders and City Council must deliver: binding commitments on water usage, noise mitigation, local hiring, air quality monitoring, infrastructure investment, and transparent governance with real community oversight.
I live in the proximity neighborhood. This affects my family too. If the coalition or City Council wants to move from opposition to actual protection, I’m happy to help shape what a strong CBA and governance framework should look like. I’ll work with the CBA team to make them build with us, not over us.