Scotland mustn't stumble into 'data centre politics'

One of the most debated socio-political issues in the US just now is the politics of data centres. The degree of interest among analysts is directly related to the scale of the gap between the politicians and the public. And now we are starting to see the first instances of this politics arriving in Scotland.

Data centre politics are potentially very toxic, and it would be a self-inflicted wound not to learn from what has been happening elsewhere and to try to implement the roll-out of large technology developments in a way that does not cause precisely the same social division as corporate wind farms have.

It has already begun in Scotland with a community rebellion growing in the village of Auchtertool, which faces the construction of an enormous data warehouse just outside the village. This development has no local support and brings no real benefit to the community, but will require making enormous draws on local infrastructure.

So what has the pattern been in the US? First, both the 'Silicon Valley Democrats' and the 'Crypto Bro MAGA' factions of US politics were not only firmly supporting the rollout of technology infrastructure such as this, but they were actively boosting the whole project. US politicians are heavily funded by Big Tech donations and were positively evangelical about data centre rollout.

There was then a substantial shock across the political classes when these developments turned out to be particularly unpopular in communities (fully 70 per cent of the public strongly objected). The analysis of why uncovers so many fault lines; it is hard to know which is the largest. For a start, the US has poor utility infrastructure, with many places facing poor water quality and somewhat rickety electricity cabling.

Communities want their water cleaned up and their power to be modernised. What they are now hearing is that instead, there will be even bigger draws on their local utilities, and they rightly expect their own experience of water quality and electricity reliability to decline.

Then, of course, these centres are not visually attractive. The US is already bespoiled by unattractive urban sprawl, and no one is crying out for the open land around their communities to turn into giant warehouses, which are at times physically longer than the town they are being built next to.

This is all greatly exacerbated because there are very few real local jobs in a data centre, and there is next to no procedure for forcing developers to provide much community benefit. Contractors will come and go during construction, but after that, what communities see is only loss, no gain.

And that leans into the most toxic part of this – across both right-leaning and left-leaning citizens, there is an increasing anger at the abuses of their lives, which they attribute to the super-rich. These data centres are symbolically a highly toxic monument to just how little the rich care about the quality of life for others.

The backlash in the US has been sudden, unexpected (on the part of politicians at least) and much angrier than was expected. Yes, that is probably a 'last straw' issue, but that is what has happened. Politicians across the political spectrum are facing extremely hostile town hall meetings. They are getting no credit for these developments at all, only sharp opprobrium.

This is creating sudden new political dynamics. Those on the more anti-corporate left and some on the anti-monopoly libertarian right are seeing this sudden fissure as a very powerful opportunity to convert anger at data centres into anger at corporate abuse generally. Those on the corporate politics side are panicking and have substantially reduced their Big Tech boosterism, at least in public.

The dynamics in Scotland are not identical. Our water quality is higher, and supply of both water and electricity is more stable, our politics are different, and we (so far) don't have quite the same pattern of dropping new industrial developments right on the doorsteps of the most 'left behind' communities.

On the other hand, we are now seeing increasing water shortages, particularly in rural areas where some of these developments are happening, and if those get worse, coinciding with the arrival of data centres, it is a concern. And in Scotland, a lot of these corporate warehouses are being dropped on communities who are already beset by corporate windfarms and corporate battery installations.

Politicians like data centres because they show up on GDP and make the numbers look good – but they are the perfect example of GDP, which barely touches the domestic economy. The real economic benefit to Scotland is minimal. Only the (privatised) providers of electricity gain.

At times, these issues appear to be above Holyrood's head, and there has been little coherent or strategic thought into what is happening. The magic words 'Inward Investment' cause critical thinking to be abandoned by politicians. But it would be wise to learn the lessons before this becomes one more abuse of the public that feeds into the general sense of anger that society is no longer run on our behalf.