With the backlash to data centers, Flock and AI glasses, a mass opposition to big tech is underway. Silicon Valley is in denial.

Data centers, Flock surveillance cameras, Meta's AI glasses — Americans dislike them all, and the numbers keep climbing. A Heatmap poll found 75 percent of people oppose data centers being built where they live, and a man who smashed a Flock camera is hailed as a hero.

Silicon Valley's answer: Deny and blame

Tech leaders aren't having second thoughts. Some call the resistance a 'psy-op funded by the Chinese Communist Party'; others call it 'psychosis'; one AI pundit even argued that opposing data centers amounts to 'genocide' against future sentient AIs, because without them, those AIs would never be born.

Their denial is almost self-inflicted: with $30 trillion in promised revenues on the line for investors, a pause is simply not an option.

The public isn't being unreasonable

Data centers pollute and drain the grid, Flock cameras feed license-plate data to ICE for deportations, and AI glasses earned the nickname 'pervert glasses.' And none of it was put to a vote.

People feel steamrolled: their neighborhoods transformed and surveilled to benefit a distant corporation, while they pick up the tab. That, not some psychosis, is the common thread among environmentalists, conservatives, and NIMBYs alike.

Don't compare data centers to steel mills

Advocates say steel mills faced protests too. True, but steel mills create decent permanent jobs; data centers create a few part-time construction gigs and one IT desk.

The real story: Americans trust tech giants less and less, and they're fighting back against having their homes and public spaces turned into corporate infrastructure without consent.