DAVID MARCUS: What big tech’s weekend from hell means for the future of data centers

The last several days have not been good for big tech. On Thursday, Microsoft Outlook, which handles most of the business email in America, suddenly shut down. Then, on Friday, the FAA grounded every flight in the country, apparently because of technical upgrades that went wrong.

These fiber-optic faceplants happen to come at a moment when much of the country, mostly at the local level, is seeing fierce opposition to data centers, not only because of environmental concerns and energy prices but also because of real concerns that tech is becoming too big a part of our lives.

Local opposition grows

In Maryland, the story of Taylor Frazier-McCollum, a community activist who helped block a $5 billion data center project planned for the site of an abandoned mall, went viral, with the left praising her and the right mocking her alternative idea for the site: a trampoline park.

This kind of attitude toward data centers has many very smart people pulling their hair out in frustration. For them, the economic and technological benefits, including beating China in the AI race, obviously far outweigh the concerns of nonexperts like Frazier-McCollum.

The benefits of a data center seem murky by comparison.

Foreign influence campaigns

Many proponents of data centers argue that China is funding propaganda to slow growth in the sector, even as data centers start popping up all over China. This is true. China, the Eddie Haskell of the planet, is absolutely 'giving us the business' by stoking anti-data center fervor.

But it is important to remember that data centers aren't controversial because of Chinese information operations; rather, Chinese information operations exist because data centers are controversial.

Political consequences

Up until about six months ago, data centers were not a major national news story. The concerns you hear from local communities sound mundane compared to the fervent calls from experts to win the new space race against China and unleash the power of AI.

This week's tech mishaps, which inconvenienced millions of Americans at work and at airports, present an opportunity for the tech industry to explain in more practical terms why we need so many data centers.

Democrats, one could say cynically, capitalized on the anger many Americans felt at being talked down to by the big tech set, using it to great electoral advantage, especially in traditionally right-leaning rural areas.

But Democrats, no matter who leads them, cannot maintain their blanket disapproval of data centers for long, as this weekend showed. It was safe enough to call for data center moratoriums in the races of 2026, but as they seek to govern, Democrats will need data centers.

Future outlook

At the local level, much of the data center fuss is already working itself out through the sausage-making of politics and the courts. Some communities, like the Amish, will eschew the infrastructure projects completely and lose out on the pot of gold.

For now, proponents of data centers would be wise to point to events like the Outlook outage and the flight groundings, without sneering, as the very reason we need so many data centers to power the conveniences we have all grown accustomed to.

With the midterms behind us and our tech infrastructure on thin ice, now is the time for the case to be made that, one way or another, our future lies in data centers.