We are in the midst of a warp speed tech transition, driven by unprecedented investment by Big Tech firms seeking global market domination. AI expansion, and the data centres powering it, lie at its heart.  Communities – shouldering pollution, water scarcity, relocation and exclusion – bear the costs of this growth, while some of the world's wealthiest men and their companies continue to grow richer.

We know that the tech revolution has enormous emancipatory potential to enhance our lives and access to knowledge.

But without robust democratic oversight and regulation to direct this transformation towards the common good, this “revolution” risks becoming just another engine of concentrated private wealth, built on externalised environmental and social costs.

This is a new chapter of the same playbook for a sector that has long evaded scrutiny and dodged accountability.

Exceptional growth

The trillions of dollars invested by the “hyper scaler” tech giants in data centre expansion are first facilitated by governments fearful of losing out, falling behind, or confronting powerful capital.

From US tech nationalism to the EU’s plan for Data Centre Acceleration Zones that SOMO has noted risks bypassing environmental assessment, land permitting, and community consultations, to China’s Digital Silk Road project, the message is the same: move faster, clean up later (maybe).

This is dangerous. Environmental safeguards, community participation and regulatory scrutiny are increasingly viewed as barriers to competitiveness rather than essential conditions of legitimate development - and cornerstones of the social licence to operate.

Exceptional opacity

These risks are compounded by the fact that both the investment behind and impacts of data centres remain exceptionally opaque – by design. Investigate Europe reported that Microsoft allegedly lobbied for key environmental performance indicators to remain confidential, for example, while Meta reportedly concealed its identity from Dutch local authorities until after negotiations for the Netherlands’ largest data centre concluded.

Corporate accountability begins with transparency.  But we know from experience that strengthening safeguards becomes far more difficult after the deals have been signed and the project capital invested. Early and continuous transparency must be a condition of these agreements – not grounds for a fight with affected people after the fact.

Exceptional social and environmental costs

This matters because of how many people stand to be affected by this new normal, and the rights at risk.

Data centre electricity demand has more than doubled in the past decade and is expected to double again by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. In the USA, data centres are among the factors contributing to electricity bills rising at twice the rate of inflation over the past year. Their need for uninterrupted power often requires oil and gas electricity generation, supplemented by diesel generators – resulting in massive emissions and air pollution for surrounding communities.

Data centres are also often sited in water-stressed areas, despite their enormous cooling requirements. Two thirds of those built in the USA since 2022 are reportedly in such locations, while Rest of World found 600 facilities globally located in exceptionally hot regions in which water demand is even greater.

And because they generate such local harm, data centres are frequently built alongside lower income and already vulnerable communities, as Big Tech seeks cheap land, limited taxes, and less politically influential opposition.

One study, for example, found that most data centres in California are in areas affected by poor air quality, water stress, and the highest hazardous waste levels – all factors closely correlated with poorer communities.

Similarly, India's rapid push to become a global AI and data centre hub is disproportionately affecting marginalised communities there, particularly Dalits. In Brazil, TikTok’s $40.5bn data centre investment in one of the country’s poorest states faces scrutiny and protest over water use, Indigenous Peoples’ rights and data security. As our Brazil representative Marina Novaes observed: “Brazil may be losing environmental and participatory safeguards in order to attract these big tech companies and AI-related investments.”

Public resistance and regulator response

Notably, rising resistance to the modus operandi of data centre proliferation is another hallmark of this moment. Growing challenges to these developments by Indigenous Peoples, already facing dispossession and despoliation of their lands from the transition mineral mining that feeds AI supply chains, are a case in point.

Globally, public protests are grounded in fundamental demands for democratic participation in decisions reshaping communities and for a fairer distribution of the burdens and the benefits – including the enormous wealth that these investments generate. They call for fair negotiations, responsible site selection, effective human rights and environmental due diligence, and regulation that ensures shared benefit rather than concentrated private gain.

The good news is that some governments are responding.

Bans or temporary moratoriums on data centres have emerged in the Netherlands, Spain, California, and in New York state. European cities like Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Dublin are bringing in exacting restrictions, while Australia is designing new national standards for data centre development.

Last month, more than 40 cities – including London, Chicago, Mumbai, Quezon City, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Abidjan, Rio de Janeiro and Medellín – signed the Global Urban Data Centres Pact, setting out “a clear standard for sustainable data centres, grounded in equity and community benefits that meet local residents’ needs.”

This framing isn’t about compensation for harms after the fact, or after a fight. It directly confronts the risk of AI expansion driving ever-more obscene levels of inequality by calling for data centres to instead become “engines of shared prosperity”. This calls for developers to directly fund infrastructure upgrades, and invest to support local sustainability and social infrastructure.

A new, old challenge for business and human rights 

What all of this shows is that today we are facing a familiar accountability challenge at the intersection of business conduct, human rights, environmental justice and democratic participation. Led by the expertise of rights holders and communities, the business and human rights movement is well placed to build on emerging regulatory progress, insisting on corporate respect for rights, meaningful engagement, and shared benefit as a blueprint for ensuring that the tech transition serves humanity, rather than deepening inequality and polarisation.

The wave of data centre expansion risks producing exactly what J.K. Galbraith warned against: "private affluence and public squalor". The answer is not to halt technological progress, but to govern it so that corporate innovation delivers public prosperity.