00:00Maryland voters didn't wait for new laws. They walked into the voting booth and fired the
00:05politicians who welcomed data centers into their counties. From a Wisconsin lawsuit over a project
00:13developers threatened to kill, to $23 billion quietly loaded onto America's power bills,
00:20the fight over the data center boom just found its sharpest weapon yet. The ballot box.
00:27We begin in Maryland, where frustration over data centers just toppled a slate of sitting
00:33politicians. In Frederick County, home to a planned data center hub, Council President Brad Young
00:41finished third of four Democratic primary candidates fighting for two seats, losing the
00:48position he'd held while championing the hub's expansion. Candidates running on what they called
00:53data center sanity, many with no political experience at all, largely won out. The sweep
01:00was even more dramatic in Calvert County, where officials have been weighing data centers near
01:06the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant. Voters ousted all three incumbent commissioners who voted against a
01:13local moratorium. Board President Todd Ireland, Vice President Mark Cox Sr., and Commissioner Buddy
01:21Hantz. Their Republican nominations went instead to newcomers Patty Stueckler, who ran on an explicitly
01:28anti-data center platform, and Jason Skaggs, who hammered the county over transparency. Advocates say
01:37this is only the beginning. That same fury is spilling into courtrooms in Wisconsin. Midwest environmental
01:45advocates filed suit on behalf of the Sierra Club in Ozaukee County Circuit Court, accusing the state's
01:53Department of Natural Resources of skipping a legally required environmental review for one of the
01:59largest data center projects in state history. The target is the massive Vantage campus rising in
02:06Port Washington, on the shore of Lake Michigan. According to the lawsuit, the DNR initially moved toward
02:14requiring a full environmental impact statement, then backed off after the developer warned that the
02:20review would, quote, kill the project. Environmental groups say that's exactly backwards. The bigger the
02:28project, the more scrutiny it deserves. Not less. The case asks a judge to force the review. A move that
02:36could stall construction and set a precedent for every hyperscale project in Wisconsin. A state suddenly at the
02:44center of the AI building boom. And the reason this anger keeps spreading comes down to one number on
02:51everyone's monthly bill. The independent market monitor for PJM Interconnection, the grid that serves
02:5967 million people across 13 states and Washington DC, has concluded that expected demand from data centers was the
03:08primary driver of the primary driver of 23 billion. Dollars in electricity price increases already locked in for
03:15customers. Increases that will last until at least the end of 2028. And clawing that money back is nearly impossible
03:23once capacity auctions have cleared. The strain is showing everywhere. During this month's heat wave, PJM braced for a
03:32record 166 gigawatts of demand. And the cost of keeping the grid stable has jumped nearly 70% this year
03:41to
03:41over 16 billion dollars. Data centers use about 4% of U.S. electricity today. A share expected to triple
03:50within three years. Yet the demand driving those bills higher just got dramatically bigger. Meta announced a
03:59sweeping expansion of the sweeping expansion of Hyperion. Its artificial intelligence campus rising in
04:04northeast Louisiana between the small towns of Ravel and Delhi. The project, first unveiled as a 10
04:12billion dollar development, will now scale to 5 gigawatts of computing capacity, pushing Meta's total
04:20planned investment in the state past 50 billion dollars. That makes Hyperion one of the largest AI data centers on
04:28the planet. A facility that will draw as much power as five nuclear reactors produce. To feed it, Meta's
04:36agreement with Entergy Louisiana supports seven new natural gas generating plants, three grid-scale battery
04:44projects, and upgrades to existing nuclear generation. The company says the campus will support more than
04:511,000 permanent jobs in Richland Parish. One of the poorest corners of Louisiana. A region suddenly
04:59hosting a machine of almost unimaginable scale. The pressure on the grid is only half the story.
05:07Water tells the other half. In Illinois, the towns that said yes to data centers are now sending the bill
05:14to their own residents. Yorkville, DeKalb, and Joliet have all approved data center projects. And all three
05:23are now raising residents' water rates to pay for the infrastructure upgrades those thirsty facilities
05:30require. Homeowners packing council meetings call it hypocrisy, bringing what they call waterhogs to town
05:37while families are told to conserve. The numbers explain the anger. A single large data center can
05:44swallow up to 5 million gallons of water a day for cooling. As much as a city of 50,000
05:51people,
05:52state lawmakers in Springfield are now weighing legislation that would mandate water-efficient
05:57cooling systems for new facilities. Part of a national wave of water disclosure and permitting bills
06:05sweeping through state houses this year. City halls are taking notice. And in Indiana's capital,
06:14the pause button just got pushed. An Indianapolis City County Council Committee voted 10-3 to advance
06:21a moratorium that would halt approvals of new data centers until December 31, 2027. Council President
06:30Maggie Lewis introduced the measure after months of protests impact public meetings demanding the city
06:37slow down. Even the city's own Department of Metropolitan Development backed the pause, saying it welcomes time
06:45for deeper research and stakeholder engagement. Two counselors, Michael Paul Hart and Derek Cahill,
06:52objected that the ordinance doesn't clearly define what counts as a data center.
06:57But the proposal now heads to the full council. With a final vote expected in August, Indianapolis
07:04isn't alone. The very same evening, the city council in Mankato, Minnesota voted 7-0 for its own
07:13one-year pause after residents raised farming, water, and health concerns. Yet despite that regulatory
07:21wave, construction is pressing forward. And in rural Utah, shovels just hit the ground on something
07:28enormous. In Millard County, Jewel Capital Partners broke ground on a 4,000-acre energy and data center
07:36campus that developers bill as the largest data center campus in the country. The site sits in Utah's high
07:44desert near Fillmore, where the elevation delivers what the company calls optimal cooling efficiency for
07:51the AI workloads. It's chasing. What makes this project different is its energy-first design. The campus pairs
07:59on-site power generation with the data halls themselves. And Jewel says it hopes to begin initial energy
08:06production by the end of this year. An ambitious timeline the company admits. But one it insists is
08:13achievable. County commissioners approved the multi-billion dollar project after weighing the promise of
08:19high-paying jobs against the questions rural communities everywhere are asking about who really
08:26benefits. And the financial firepower behind all of this construction is staggering. Pipeline
08:34giant Williams announced a $5.34 billion investment from a consortium led by Blackstone, joined by
08:42Apollo Global Management and accounts managed by KKR, to fund five power plants built specifically for
08:50data centers and other massive energy users. The investors take a 49% stake in Williams's power
08:58innovation portfolio. While Williams keeps 51% and full operational control, the projects carry names like
09:06Socrates, Apollo, Aquila, and Neo, and they share one defining feature. They're behind the meter plants,
09:16generating electricity directly for their customers instead of waiting years in the clogged
09:21internet. Interconnection queues that have become the industry's biggest bottleneck. Wall Street's
09:27biggest private capital firms are now betting billions that the fastest way to power AI is to
09:34skip the grid entirely. And that tells you everything about where this boom is headed.
09:51How many are you?
09:53Now, what do you think about the million years after you are the κ°λ°©er?
09:59Well, that has a lot of value. And this is the biggest problem if you're going to be a
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