What Data Centers Actually Do (And Why They Want You to Think It's About AI)
There’s a line being sold to communities across Ohio and the country right now, and it goes something like this: “We need massive new power plants and data centers to support artificial intelligence and innovation. This is about the future. This is about progress.”
And a lot of people are buying it because they think of AI as ChatGPT answering their questions, or tools that generate images, or helpful technology that makes their lives easier.
That’s not what these data centers are for.
The Misconception
When the Department of Energy announced a $33 billion natural gas megaplant in Pike County, Ohio, to power a 10-gigawatt AI data center campus, they framed it as necessary infrastructure for “the AI boom” and “cutting-edge technologies.”
When Ohio legislators introduced four bills on the same day to regulate data center water use, grid connections, and tax exemptions, the industry pushed back by warning that restrictions would stifle innovation and economic development.
The framing is deliberate: if you oppose the data centers, you’re opposing the future.
But that framing is a lie.
What Data Centers Actually Do
Consumer AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or image generators use a tiny fraction of total data center capacity. Most data centers existed long before the current AI boom, and most of what they do has nothing to do with the AI tools regular people use.
Here’s what’s actually running in these facilities:
Cloud Computing Infrastructure
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud — the backbone of corporate IT. These platforms run databases, websites, applications, and business systems for thousands of companies. This is not innovation. This is corporate infrastructure that’s been outsourced to centralized server farms.
Surveillance Capitalism
Every search query you type. Every product you click. Every location ping from your phone. Every social media post, like, and share. Every purchase. Every website you visit. All of it is stored, processed, analyzed, and sold to build behavioral profiles used for targeted advertising. This is the core business model of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and the entire digital advertising economy.
Social Media Platforms
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube — platforms designed to maximize engagement by feeding you algorithmically curated content that keeps you scrolling. The servers running those algorithms and storing billions of photos, videos, and messages are what fill data centers. This isn’t about helping you. It’s about keeping your attention long enough to serve you ads.
Streaming Services
Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, Hulu — content delivery networks that store and stream media. Useful? Sure. Essential infrastructure worth poisoning public lands and building gas megaplants for? That’s the question communities aren’t being allowed to ask.
E-Commerce and Financial Systems
Amazon’s entire retail operation. Online banking. Stock trading platforms. Payment processing systems. Corporate logistics and supply chain databases. Again: corporate infrastructure, not public innovation.
Everything Else
Gaming servers. Email systems. Corporate CRM databases. Business analytics platforms. The entire cloud-based economy existed long before anyone outside of research labs had heard of ChatGPT.
The AI you use as a consumer is a rounding error in this equation.
Why the AI Framing Works
The industry knows that if they pitched this honestly — “we need to build massive gas plants so Facebook can store more data about you and Amazon can run its cloud services” — communities would push back.
But if they say it’s about AI, about innovation, about the future, about staying competitive with China, about cutting-edge technology that will transform every industry? That’s a much easier sell.
It reframes opposition. If you question whether your community should accept the environmental and fiscal costs of these projects, you’re not defending your air and water and public lands — you’re standing in the way of progress.
It’s a marketing strategy, and it’s working.
What This Means for Ohio
In Pike County, the federal government is asking a rural Appalachian community that has never been compensated for radioactive contamination from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant to accept a $33 billion gas megaplant, a 10-gigawatt data center campus, nuclear reactors, a commercial uranium enrichment facility, and a hydrogen power plant — all on the same contaminated federal land.
The justification? AI and innovation.
The reality? Corporate cloud infrastructure and data processing that will generate billions in revenue for investors, the top 1%, AEP, and their partners, while Pike County gets the emissions, the water use, the infrastructure strain, and the risk.
Across Ohio, more than 16,000 acres of state parks and wildlife areas have been nominated for fracking since January. The justification? Growing energy demand from data centers.
The reality? Gas extraction to power server farms that run corporate databases and surveillance systems, with the environmental costs externalized onto public land and the communities that depend on it.
Four bills introduced in the Ohio Legislature this month would require data centers to report water consumption, obtain PUCO approval before connecting to the grid, and end sales tax exemptions. These are modest, common-sense regulations.
The industry is already calling them anti-innovation.
The Real Question
Should communities accept the environmental, fiscal, and public health costs of massive energy infrastructure projects to support an industry whose primary function is corporate cloud services and surveillance capitalism?
That’s the question the AI framing is designed to prevent you from asking.
Because if the pitch were honest — if lawmakers said “we need to frack Salt Fork State Park so Meta can run its data centers and Google can store more search histories” — the answer might be different.
Innovation is not what these data centers are for.
And as long as the industry can keep conflating consumer AI tools with the corporate infrastructure they’re actually building, communities will keep approving projects that they wouldn’t accept if the purpose were stated plainly.
Pike County deserves better than being told that accepting a gas megaplant on contaminated land is the price of progress.
Ohio’s state parks deserve better than being fracked to power server farms.
And the public deserves an honest conversation about what we’re actually being asked to sacrifice, and for whom.