In Santa Teresa, a town in the remote New Mexico desert, a group of residents rises up during a town council meeting, holding signs painted with marker pens: “We don’t want data centers! Water is for humans, not data centers!” In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a similar scene unfolds: a group of local residents interrupts deliberations in the state legislature carrying banners that read: “We don’t want to be a data center city.” In Memphis, the city where Elvis Presley was born, a recent meeting of the county board of supervisors to consider a possible slowdown in the construction of new data centers ended in a fistfight between supporters of the tech facilities and their opponents.