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Data Centers From Two Sides

Author: Published on: Published in: Analysis

I had a very interesting day when I attended two very different Forums. One was held at Radisson Blu Amager Hotel & Conference Halls – Data Center Forum Copenhagen, and the other was across the street from the hotel in a separate venue, the first public protest of Folkets Datacenter Forum (16 organizations supporting this initiative). It was the first time both industry and civil organizations narratives started addressing each other and their opposing view points.

The common touch point only being sustainability of Data centers being a big challenge in the coming years while acknowledging that politics, public sentiment and American geopolitics has led to increase criticisms in hyper-scale data centers that will fundamentally exacerbate our already strained Energinet (Danish Energy Grid). Approximately 60 gigawatts of projects are waiting for grid connections in Denmark. The country’s peak electricity demand is roughly 7 gigawatts. The queue is nearly nine times the peak load, and a significant portion of it is data centre capacity (TNW, 2026).

Both sides agree that this is going to be a balance that needs all stakeholders to be involved and educated on the repercussions of such long term, societal, and environmental impacts. The irony is not lost on me, as neither Forums attended each other’s debates, nor do we have any voting power regarding the lobbying that has fundamentally gutted the politics behind AI here in the European Union (EU). We have extreme reactions on both sides of the fence and trillions of dollars are on the line as the future of AI may very well happen here in the Nordics, as ‘green’ renewables being used to offset the massive footprint AI brings to the equation, we forget the opportunity costs of such narratives away from our social welfare society and other social services foregone to support selling of data to NSA for soft power, Greenland being the constellation prize to the USA to appease our oppressor, and Viking Link set to selling of energy to fund offshore tax havens in Ireland.

As the Data Center Forum paints Denmark as a pinnacle of great innovation coupled with 66% self build projects from most Big tech suppliers, geopolitical stability, and the wealth of investment, knowledge work, and brown fields available for such projects to be realize, the people’s movement against Data centers paints a very controversial picture. Hearing from the People’s Movement against Data Centers showed how easy it was from a top down decision to disempower local municipalities with limited resources, information and expertise, and also the needed, quick mobilization to allow democratic oversight to what’s being built in their back yard. A testimony from Lolland’s Municipal worker, a data center worker, and political commentary from Holbaek of real challenges of everyday people to stop such well-funded and coordinated initiatives, makes one realize the global impact American Tech companies can really have outside their HQ.

Source: DataInfo.dk https://datacenterinfo.dk/vaer-med/kort-over-datacentre

As more dots of Data Centers pop up on the Danish map, the news gathering people’s opinions around data centers, talks of data sovereignty and even technical books written here in Denmark on how Sustainable AI can only be curbed by political and business appetites, puts us in a precarious position slowed by bureaucratic and democratic processes of public backlash of realizations we may not have time for. US Big tech doesn’t play by local jurisdictions, quite the contrary, they abuse the democratic process to their advantage by moving fast and paying well to look the other way. As Marietje Schaake has reasearched extensively, this has become a TECH COUP.

This new petition to completely stop production of data centers at Borgerforslag: Fuldt stop for etablering af datacentre i Danmark, shows growing opposition to what this means for the Danish Civil society as our electric bill increases, Defensetech narratives shift resources away from people & nature, and the encouragement of Denmark to be leading it’s demise as Data centers become “critical infrastructure,” ergo, top secret to transparency for the people to question what exactly these data centers are being used for. The EU AI ACT for all its efforts, exempt research and defense tech, and governments don’t have to abide by the same rules, so no accountability and transparency needs to be reported, governed, or given any real public oversight.

If these facts don’t scare you into a bigger picture of what is at stake here, perhaps Anthropic‘s current announcement of AI opposition, including activism against the Empires of AI, is now deemed an act of terrorism against critical infrastructures, retaliation has algorithmic consequences that WILL spill over to the EU and the models they choose to implement.

I’m afraid Denmark’s time for negotiation and mobilization of a people’s movement to fight American hegemony in our own Palantir run police system, has not been recognized and accounted for in these development projects happening. Let’s not forget some leaders of the political parties’ sentiment towards privacy as the first proposal from ChatControl 2.0 was actually proposed by Danish EU presidency as a signal of political agenda playing out with the intention and motivation of corruption that can only be encouraged when one holds the weapons of Mordor at their finger tips. Though stopped by Majority vote, Chatcontrol v.1.0 was still passed thru fundamentally gutting freedom of speech, privacy rights to citizens, and further encroachment of surveillance capitalism in the EU. Though encrypted communication is exempt (for now), this should sound warning bells to the widening gap in democratic vulnerabilities that government corruption of the lobbied and the EU playing into the fear of the USA proxy wars as the sign of the times. More than ever, we must be diligent of our own vulnerabilities, gaps in people’s democractic rights and knowlwedge, and stronger mechanisms to curb corruption in our own political systems of which we operate.

I hope the global movement will work together in time to curb industry appetite coming from the richest people in the world, before our democracies pay the price.

Further reading and resources for the Danish Public:

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