A person fired 13 shots at the home of an Indianapolis city councillor days after he advocated for data center construction at a local meeting. The council member was unharmed but the shooter left a chilling note in a Ziploc bag on his doorstep: “No Data Centers.”
While police say the incident was isolated, burgeoning anti-tech sentiment has fueled a slew of attacks, from graffitied robots to Waymos set ablaze as AI backlash spills out in the open.
It’s an industry-wide PR problem — and it’s just getting bigger. A few years ago, energy and environmental costs were mostly local issues relegated to Facebook groups and community newsletters. Now that the tech has become ubiquitous, it’s become a national issue (recent polls show trust in tech companies has dropped globally). And it means companies are having to account for new costs: security, repair, and the price of negative public sentiment.