Morgan Stanley warned this week that community resistance has become a material development risk for data centers in the United States. The six largest hyperscalers (Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Oracle and CoreWeave) are expected to spend approximately $785 billion in capital expenditures this year, with total data-center lease commitments exceeding $1.2 trillion. The bank projects a 38-gigawatt U.S. power shortfall between 2026 and 2028, with some regions already facing grid-interconnection waits of five to seven years. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott ordered an audit of all data-center projects, while Virginia is implementing a « cost-causer-pays » framework for transmission infrastructure. Colocation operators like Equinix and Digital Realty, with facilities averaging 5 to 10 megawatts compared to gigawatt-scale AI campuses, may be relatively better positioned to navigate this growing political backlash.
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