“The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam”, The Wall Street Journal
Booed commencement speakers, blocked data centers, plummeting poll numbers: Fast-growing industry has a faster-growing crisis
By Amrith Ramkumar, Katherine Blunt and Lindsay Ellis May 18, 2026, The Wall Street Journal
Former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt shared his thoughts on technology and artificial intelligence during a commencement address at the University of Arizona. Photo: The University of Arizona
The only thing growing faster than the artificial-intelligence industry may be Americans’ negative feelings about it—as former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt saw on Friday.
Delivering a commencement address at the University of Arizona, Schmidt told students the “technological transformation” wrought by artificial intelligence will be “larger, faster and more consequential than what came before.” Like some other graduation speakers mentioning AI, Schmidt was met with a chorus of boos.
In one poll after another in recent weeks, respondents have overwhelmingly voiced concerns about AI, a challenge to claims by industry executives that their technology would gain popularity by improving people’s lives.
Consumers resent energy-price jumps exacerbated by the spread of data centers. Workers fear widespread job losses. Parents worry about AI undermining education and harming children’s mental health. In recent months, the wave of anger has brought protests, swayed election results and spurred isolated acts of violence.
Attendees at a rally in Detroit in December opposed a utility’s plan to provide power for a data center in rural Michigan. JIM WEST/ZUMA PRESS
In April, a 20-year-old Texas man allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman’s home and made threats at the company’s San Francisco headquarters, according to a federal complaint filed against him. A few days earlier, someone fired 13 shots at the front door of an Indianapolis councilman who had recently approved a data center.
“It’s something I never thought would be imaginable,” said Councilman Ron Gibson, who found a note saying “NO DATA CENTERS” under his doormat. Two days later, Gibson found a similar note saying “f— you.”
Pollsters and historians say the souring of public opinion is all but unprecedented in its speed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen something intensify this quickly,” Gregory Ferenstein, who conducted a recent poll with researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, said of the backlash.
The poll showed about 30% of Democrats think America should accelerate AI innovation as quickly as possible, compared with roughly half of Republicans and 77% of tech founders.
Rising political issue
Also unprecedented is the rapid rise of AI anxiety’s salience as a political issue, one that is shaking up routine re-election races and scrambling partisan battle lines, political analysts say.
After bubbling up in a handful of races last year, it has exploded onto the ballot across the country. Voters in Festus, Mo., ousted four city council members a week after they approved a $6 billion data center. Dozens of communities in states from Maine to Arizona are trying to ban new data centers. Some 360,000 Americans are in Facebook groups opposed to the facilities, roughly quadruple the number from December, figures from organizations fighting the AI build-out show.How quickly Americans think AI is moving byage groupSource: Poll from The Economist and YouGovNote: Poll was conducted between May 9-11 andfeatured 1,549 U.S. adult citizensToo fastRight paceToo slowly18-2930-4445-6465+050100%
“People just feel like they’re under siege,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), who has proposed bills to impose new requirements on data centers and AI companies.
AI has risen in importance most quickly among 39 political issues studied by polling firm Blue Rose Research in the past year, though it still trails priorities including the economy, immigration and foreign policy.
While AI rejectionism has put wind in the sails of some campaigns, for AI companies and builders of the data centers that serve them, it is creating an acute crisis. Investors have staked tens of billions of dollars in capital on the ability of OpenAI, Anthropic and other companies to get access to ever-larger quantities of computing power, and they in turn have pledged much of that capital to fund data-center construction.
The companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the midterm elections to help fight the backlash.
But all over the country, community-level organizations have been succeeding in blocking data-center projects. Local opposition blocked or delayed at least 48 projects valued at some $156 billion last year, according to Data Center Watch, an organization tracking the trend. A record of 20 were canceled in the first quarter of the year because of local backlash, figures from climate-media outlet and data provider Heatmap show. Dozens more are currently facing similar obstacles on top of obstructions because of permitting snafus and equipment shortages.
On Monday, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller called for a moratorium on new hyperscale data-center development in the state, citing concerns about the costs to farmers and strain on the power grid.
Persuading the ‘cave people’
As the poll numbers continue dropping, industry leaders and their allies wonder how much worse they can get and what it will take to turn them around. A string of high-profile layoff announcements in which executives have attributed steep job cuts to AI have furthered Americans’ mistrust of the technology.
Dylan Patel, CEO of AI-infrastructure consulting firm SemiAnalysis, recently predicted there would be large-scale protests against OpenAI and Anthropic within a few months. “People hate AI. AI is less popular than [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. AI is less popular than politicians,” he said on a podcast. How U.S. voters feel about each topicSource: March NBC News surveyNotes: ICE is Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Poll of 1,000 registered voters; categories of very andsomewhat positive and negative were added togetherPositiveNeutralNegativeDon’t knowAIDonald TrumpRepublican partyDemocratic partyICEIran050100
A review of documents aggregated by AI startup Halcyon shows that thousands of people have expressed concerns about data-center costs by filing sharply worded public comments in regulatory dockets as utilities across the country seek approval to power them.
Ndubisi Okoye, a Detroit-based advertising creative director and muralist, was one of them. He learned last year that his utility company had sought approval of a contract to power a data center that Oracle ORCL -3.29%decrease; red down pointing triangleplans to build near Ann Arbor, Mich.
“We do not want any data centers, especially in Michigan,” he wrote in a public comment. “Do not bring that here ever!”
Okoye said in an interview that he opposes data centers for their impact on the environment, and he worries about the effect artificial intelligence might have on his opportunities as an artist.
In Memphis, Tenn., 31-year-old Justin Pearson is finding support by centering data-center opposition in his Democratic campaign for Congress. Pearson has helped lead the fight against Elon Musk’s xAI over a local data center.
The NAACP recently sued xAI, which was acquired by Musk’s SpaceX, claiming the company has illegally operated gas turbines without a valid air permit in nearby Southaven, Miss. Pearson said voters in the Republican area shared the same data-center concerns as many of his Democratic constituents. “We are building common ground in a powerful way,” he said.
Tennessee state representative Justin Pearson has criticized plans by Elon Musk’s xAI to use gas turbines to power data centers. BRANDON DILL/THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES
Big tech companies have promised to pay more for electricity that powers data centers at the urging of President Trump, but executives said they need a coordinated effort to highlight the benefits of the tax revenue data centers provide and the ways AI can improve daily life. Trump recently said data centers “need some PR help.”
Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, said “doomers” peddling worst-case scenarios, lingering anger at social-media companies and negative media coverage have fueled poor sentiment in the U.S. “If you’re going to constantly and consistently talk about AI from a fear perspective, you are going to drive fear,” he said.
The company is focused on finding solutions to problems such as energy costs and children’s safety, Lehane said. “We as an industry need to be a lot more calibrated in making the case as to why this is good for the country and good for the world,” he said.
At a recent data-center conference in Washington, one executive said the industry is facing “cave people” who oppose all development. Another said her daughter hears her friends complaining about data centers.
“There’s a disconnect between what we’re saying and what is happening out there, and I think that’s the issue we have to address,” Ernest Popescu, CEO of the company developing the data center in Indianapolis that Gibson had approved, told the crowd.
Amrith Ramkumar is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington covering tech and crypto policy. He previously covered clean energy and was a Journal markets reporter in New York who wrote about special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, when SPAC mergers were a popular alternative to traditional initial public offerings. He also previously wrote about stocks and commodities, including battery metals such as lithium and cobalt.
Amrith joined the Journal as a markets intern after graduating from Duke in 2017.Follow
Katherine Blunt writes about Alphabet for The Wall Street Journal and is based in San Francisco. She previously covered power and utilities. Her coverage of PG&E was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting and earned a Gerald Loeb award. She also shared a Loeb award for a special project investigating child-safety issues on Meta platforms. She is the author of “California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric and What it Means for America’s Power Grid
Prior to joining the Journal in 2018, Katherine was a business reporter at the Houston Chronicle. Before that, she covered transportation for the San Antonio Express-News.Follow
Lindsay Ellis is a Washington, D.C.-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Before joining the Journal in 2022, she was a senior reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education, covering college finance and governance, as well as higher education’s response to Covid-19. There, her coverage of public-university boards earned a finalist designation for the Dateline Award for Investigative Journalism for the D.C. Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. She also has reported about higher education and business at the Houston Chronicle and the Albany Times-Union.
Lindsay began her career as an intern in the Atlanta bureau of the Journal, covering U.S. and corporate news.Follow