The Data Cloud is Not Weightless
Gab Lisi
iCloud. Google Cloud. Amazon Web Services. Microsoft Azure. We use them every day. I used several of them to research and store articles for this piece. But what is the “cloud”? Language has many uses. It can liberate, oppress, clarify, and obscure. The term “cloud” does a particular kind of work here. Much like clouds in the atmosphere, the data “cloud” obscures what is actually behind it, what sustains it, and where it exists.
Meta is breaking ground on another expansion of its New Albany Data Center. This expansion raises the total investment to more than $1.5 billion. (Photo: New Albany Data Center)
The “cloud” is often described as if it is placeless, frictionless, and detached from the material world. Data frequently feels instant, invisible, and immaterial but the infrastructure that sustains it is incredibly material and now, close to home. The cloud exists across the United States, and the globe, in the form of data centers. These large-scale physical facilities are anchored like any other building in land, water, electricity, and public policy. These centers are reshaping the landscapes and economies of the communities that host them. In Columbus, Ohio, alone, where I am writing this, there are more than 114 data centers. But a recent Gallup poll found that 7 in 10 Americans are against local construction of data centers. Why?
Understanding data centers requires moving beyond their technological framing and analyzing them as a form of fixed capital investment. These facilities represent massive, long-term investments by technology firms seeking to secure the infrastructure necessary for data storage, processing, and artificial intelligence (AI) development. Unlike traditional industrial projects (think warehouses or office buildings), data centers operate on a high-capital, low-labor model. They require substantial upfront construction, but once operational, they employ relatively few workers. Their economic footprint is therefore uneven: concentrated in capital returns, limited in long-term employment generation.
This matters because data centers are often justified to local governments and residents as engines of economic development, that is to say: they are worth the cost. Companies promise jobs, improvements to the electrical grid, tax revenue, and regional growth. As of late, in response to widespread local pushback to data center developments, they are also touting closed-loop cooling and eco-friendly electrical usage. While construction phases may generate short-term employment, long-term job creation remains minimal relative to the scale of investment and public incentive.
Tax revenue is also far from guaranteed. Many states offer extensive tax abatements to attract these projects. In Ohio, for example, tax exemptions initially designed to lure tech investment, cost the state approximately $1.6 billion in 2025 alone. The benefits that do materialize are unevenly distributed, with significant value flowing upward to corporate balance sheets and shareholders (the 1 percent) rather than remaining within the host community.
Data center expansion is not simply a market phenomenon; it is actively enabled by public policy. Local and state governments compete to attract these facilities through tax abatements, infrastructure investments, and regulatory accommodations. Public utilities are often required to expand capacity or reconfigure systems to meet the energy demands of these projects. In practice, this can result in higher utility costs for residents, strained water systems producing dirty water, and increased environmental pressure.
In effect, public resources are mobilized to secure private investment, embedding corporate infrastructure within local economies under terms that frequently prioritize capital accumulation over community agency and viability. Notably, many of the companies building these facilities possess the financial capacity to construct them without such extensive public subsidy.
Data centers are frequently placed in areas where land is relatively inexpensive and regulatory resistance may be lower. These communities are often rural (like an area a few miles from where I grew up that saw its first data center as early as 2010) and historically working-class. Increasingly, however, development is expanding into suburban and urban areas as well, including places like Indianapolis, IN and Memphis, TN. In many cases, these are communities where local governments are more willing to offer incentives in exchange for promised development, and where residents may have fewer resources to contest large-scale projects. As a result, the costs associated with data center expansion (environmental stress, increased utility demand, and land-use changes) are disproportionately borne by populations already positioned at the margins of economic decision-making.
Data centers are not neutral infrastructure supporting a digital economy. They are mechanisms through which capital reorganizes space, labor, and resources. They directly intertwine our local geographies and economies into the broader capitalist world-ecology which consistently erodes political and economic democracy. The effect? The corporations shove the costs downward onto those already navigating a rising cost of living and a wage crisis, not to mention the environmental impacts accelerated by these centers.
Which brings us to the focus of this series: where resistance emerges. The opposition to data centers often appears fragmented at first. For example, there may be a few residents concerned about land use posting on Facebook, a couple environmental advocates focused on resource consumption, one or two local officials and questioning any long-term fiscal impacts, and religious leaders concerned about the negative effects on community members who live near to the data center.
Members of the Black Church Coalition met on the Indianapolis, IN east side to discuss next steps in their push against a planned 70-foot-tall data center on a long-vacant lot near East 25th Street and North Sherman Drive. Photo by: WRTV.
This does not mean resistance is inevitable in every case or that it will always take a uniform shape. But the underlying conditions create a substantial foundation for conflict. As these projects become more visible and their impacts more tangible, they become sites where broader questions about development, control, and economic distribution come into focus. More plainly, they become sites where deep solidarity can be built in our communities across identitarian lines.
Programs like those developed through the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice, including Solidarity Circles, point toward how this work can take form in practice. These initiatives function as sites of leadership development, equipping faith communities with the tools to understand the solidarity economy and to organize within their own contexts. In doing so, they extend solidarity beyond opposition or protesting, and into construction by helping communities move from reacting to extraction toward building democratic institutions capable of sustaining more democratic and equitable forms of life.
The “cloud,” then, is not weightless. It is grounded in systems of power that are negotiated, contested, and materially experienced. Understanding those systems is the first step. The next is examining how people respond when those dynamics become difficult (and for some, impossible) to ignore.
More to come in Part 2: When Extraction Produces Deep Solidarity, which takes a deeper look at the community resistance to data centers emerging across the United States. Part 3 will examine the role faith leaders can (and some already are) play in that fight.
Gab (she/they/he) is the Assistant Director of the Wendland-Cook Program at Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt Divinity School. Gab resides in Columbus, OH and their dog, Franklin (or Frank). They hold an M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary, an MSL from The Ohio State University, and a B.A. in Theology and Criminal Justice from Xavier University (Cincinnati, OH). They are curious about power analysis, class analysis, and Catholicism. In their spare time, you can find them at home reading, camping with Frank, or hanging out with friends.