这些北弗吉尼亚的潜在反抗者加入反对数据中心的战斗，主要是为了阻止数据中心对其住宅和高档私人社区的侵蚀。
These would-be rebels in Northern Virginia joined the fight against data centers mostly to stop the encroachment on their homes and exclusive private communities.
我正在一座横贯北弗吉尼亚45英里的自然公园里徒步，路径穿越草地、湿地、木桥和一枝黄花，随后登上十几处高地，眼前出现了最不自然的景象——无窗、庞大、长达一个街区的数据中心，以及与之配套的输电线路和变电站。在看见它们之前，我就听到了数据中心的“嗡嗡声”；那声音仿佛一群服用了甲基苯丙胺的蝉在鸣叫。我感到紧张，有些不知所措，仅在劳登县的华盛顿和老多明尼昂铁路步道上走了两英里，就数到了大约20座数据中心。
I am hiking on a nature park that cuts through 45 miles of Northern Virginia, crisscrossing grassy terrain, wetlands, wooden bridges, and goldenrod, and then a dozen promontories offering the most unnatural of sights—windowless, hulking block-long data centers and their attendant transmission lines and substations. I heard “the hum” of the centers before I saw them; their sound resembled a horde of cicadas on meth. I felt nervous, and somewhat overwhelmed, as I counted roughly 20 of them in just the two miles I walked on the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad Trail in Loudoun County.
这里是全美数据中心最密集的区域——共有233座，占全县土地总面积的3%以上。正如其绰号“数据中心走廊”所示，如果科技巨头不受约束地继续超大规模扩张，这里就是全美未来的先兆。但劳登县不仅是科技基础设施失控扩张的例证，也是一场按下暂停键、取得半成功的战斗的例证。
Here is the country’s thickest concentration of data centers—233 centers in all, over 3 percent of the county’s overall land mass. Data Center Alley, as it’s called, is a harbinger of what is to come in this country if tech hyperscaling continues unchecked. But Loudoun County is not only an example of tech infrastructure running amuck. It’s also an example of a semi-successful battle to press pause.
我于9月造访的那一周，当地活动人士刚刚取得一项重大胜利：县监事会以7比1的投票结果，决定对数据中心和电力变电站的审批行动实施为期12个月的暂停。这是更广泛反对阵营赢得的一次胜利。这群反对者跨越党派、出人意料，多为50多岁和60多岁的异见者，他们加入战斗主要是为了保护自己的住宅和高档私人社区。其中一些人甚至拒绝说人工智能的坏话，声称大众想象中对数据中心的恐惧“被夸大了”，尽管他们自己一直在随着数据中心逼近家园而组织反对活动。
The week I visited in September, local activists had just secured a significant victory when the county’s Board of Supervisors voted 7–1 to impose a 12-month pause on board action for data centers and electrical substations. It was one win for the broader opposition, who were cross-partisan, unlikely dissidents in their 50s and 60s, who joined the fight mostly to protect their own homes and exclusive private communities. Some of them even refused to say a bad word about AI, claiming the fear of data centers in popular imagination was “overblown,” even though they themselves had been organizing against them as they encroached on their homes.
这些“意外成为行动派”的人之一是杰西卡·梅德罗斯，55岁。我在她位于斯特林市橡树径广场住宅区的家门口见到了她。白天，她在附近的威廉王子县担任审前服务官员，与少年犯打交道。闲暇时，她只是又一位两个孩子已长大成人的“空巢”母亲，和男友相伴，享受着在附近频繁的户外跑步，以及每天五次遛狗散步。嗯，那是在她街道尽头那座巨大的蓝色 Vantage VA2 数据中心拔地而起之前——它长宽各达四个街区。
One of these accidental activists is Jessica Medeiros, 55. I met her in front of her home, in the Oak Trail Square development in Sterling. She works with juvenile offenders by day, as a pretrial officer in nearby Prince William County. In her off hours, she is just another empty nester of two grown children, hanging with her boyfriend, enjoying frequent outdoor runs in the area and five-times-a-day walks with her dog. Well, that was before the gargantuan blue Vantage VA2 data center at the end of her street, four city blocks long and wide, rose up.
恰巧，这座 Vantage VA2 中心属于最糟糕的那类。首先，它未接入电网，意味着其能源来自现场或附近的发电厂。这些电厂主要由天然气驱动；VA2 中心使用燃气轮机和备用应急柴油发电机。这种依赖意味着，此类枢纽比常规设施更吵、更脏，最终对环境的危害也比常规设施更大。作为例证，在我们见面的那天早晨，梅德罗斯指出了平日烟尘落下的位置。
That Vantage VA2 center happens to be one of the worst ones out there. For one thing, it isn’t connected to the electrical grid, meaning its energy comes from on-site or nearby power plants. These plants are primarily powered by natural gas; the VA2 center uses gas turbines and backup emergency diesel generators. This reliance means that such hubs risk being louder than normal, filthier than normal, and ultimately worse for the environment than normal. As a case in point, on the morning we met, Medeiros pointed out where the soot from the day usually falls.
越来越多的开发商寻求像轮机和发电机这样的发电厂设备，以规避区域电网——这些电网如今正因数据中心的用电需求而不堪重负。
More and more developers have sought power plant equipment like turbines and generators to elide regional power grids, which are now stressed under the data center’s electricity requirements.
对我来说，这些数据中心既是法治衰退的实体化身，也是科技寡头崛起的实体化身。它们当然已成为全美关于人工智能讨论的一部分，并已成为反对人工智能行动主义的一个中心。根据人工智能安全公司 10a Labs 的“数据中心观察”项目，2026 年上半年，第一季度至少有 75 个价值 1300 亿美元的数据中心项目受到当地团体干扰，第二季度至少有 45 个价值 680 亿美元的项目受到干扰。
To me, these data centers are a physical embodiment of both the decline of the rule of law and the rise of the tech oligarchs. They are, of course, part the national conversation around AI and have become a center of the activism against it. In the first half of 2026, the Data Center Watch project by AI security company 10a Labs found that at least 75 data center projects worth $130 billion were disrupted by local groups in the first quarter and at least 45 projects worth $68 billion in the second.
“数据中心反对报告”发现，美国有 64 万人加入了反数据中心的 Facebook 群组。Z 世代加入了像新泽西州的“气候革命行动网络”（CRAN）这样的组织。
The Data Center Opposition Report found that 640,000 people are in anti-data center Facebook groups in the United States. Gen Zers have joined groups like New Jersey’s Climate Revolution Action Network, or CRAN.
“在我看来，这个中心……只是表明了我国正在发生的事情，因为金钱和权力正在接管公民的生活，”梅德罗斯说。她身材娇小，金发，自称精力旺盛如小狗，尽管最近脚部受伤，步伐仍矫健如跑者。她正快步绕着一栋看起来像“脑叶切除术后的宜家”建筑的周边走动。它有着同样欢快的钴蓝色外观，但里面没有家具、顾客或肉丸，只有机架和热气。
“To me, this center…is just indicative of what is happening in our country, because the money and the power are taking over the lives of citizens,” says Medeiros, a petite blonde who describes herself as having the energy of a puppy, with the swift gait of a runner, despite a recent foot injury. She was rapidly walking around the perimeter of a building that looks like a post-lobotomy IKEA. It has got the same cheerful cobalt exterior but no furniture, customers, or meatballs inside, only racks and heat.
“上周，特朗普取消了，那是什么来着？哦对，这些发电厂的排放标准要求。对我们这种人来说，这基本上就是搞垮我们。我们不再拥有那些保护了。”（特朗普政府的环保局最近豁免了数据中心公开披露排放数据的义务。）梅德罗斯和她的邻居格雷格·皮里奥（Greg Pirio），75 岁，一位专门从事对外援助的政府承包商，是投身抗议万蒂奇工厂的多位邻居中的两位，他们参加社区会议和市政厅会议、接受媒体采访、建立噪音和空气质量监测系统，并向地方代表请愿。
“Last week, Trump eliminated the, what was it? Oh yeah, the emissions level requirements for these power plant. For people like us, that basically screws us. We don’t have those protections anymore.” (The Trump EPA had recently exempted data centers from publicly disclosing their emissions.) Medeiros and her neighbor Greg Pirio, 75, a government contractor who specializes in foreign aid, are two of a number of neighbors who have thrown themselves into protesting the Vantage plant, attending community meetings and town halls, doing press, creating systems for monitoring noise and air quality, and petitioning their local representatives.
但他们表示，该中心也损害了他们的健康。两人都曾就医，皮里奥曾两度前往急诊室，患有严重干眼症，他们认为这是工厂造成的。（待了一个小时后，我自己的眼睛也在搏动性疼痛，我不得不频繁眨眼催生泪水以缓解刺激。）对于该地区更脆弱的人群，影响甚至更糟。据梅代罗斯和其他邻居称，一家四个孩子全都因此患上了呼吸系统问题。梅代罗斯的声音现在也变得嘶哑，她将其归咎于这些中心。
But the center has also taken its toll, they say, on their bodies. Both have gone to doctors and Pirio twice to the ER, with extremely dry eyes that they believe were caused by the plant. (After an hour, my own eyes were throbbing, and I was blinking for tears to relieve the irritation.) For more vulnerable people in the area, the effects have been even worse. According to Medeiros and other neighbors, one family’s four children have all developed respiratory problems as a result. Medeiros’ voice is a rasp, now, as well, which she attributes to the centers.
这并非他们的臆想。一份最新报告《健康知情计算：估算并应对数据中心的公共卫生影响》对数据中心用电及现场发电机使用产生的排放进行了建模，预测了健康风险和成本，尤其是在承接这些中心的社区。关键罪魁祸首之一是这些中心产生的细颗粒物。
They aren’t just imagining things. A recent report, “Health-Informed Computing: Estimating and Addressing the Public Health Impact of Data Centers,” modeled emissions from data center electricity and on-site generator usage, projecting health risks and costs particularly in host communities. One of the key culprits is the fine particulate matter these centers create.
但这并非它们的唯一威胁。它们持续不断的嗡嗡声应被视为噪音污染，世界卫生组织发现噪音污染会导致高血压、心脏病和睡眠障碍。（我采访的两人提到，自中心在其家附近开业以来，他们出现了睡眠障碍。）如果中心的轰鸣声超过 85 分贝，可能造成听力损伤——而持续全天候的噪音，在学校附近还与较低的教育成果相关，据布朗大学研究人员即将发表的一项研究显示。我看着一支橄榄球队在一所高中球场比赛，该球场被亚马逊数据中心综合体包围，他们会受到何种影响？
But that’s not their only threat. Their constant whining noises should be understood as noise pollution, which the World Health Organization has found to cause high blood pressure, heart disease, and sleep disturbances. (Two of the people I spoke to mentioned sleep disturbances since the centers opened near their homes.) Hearing damage is a possibility if the roar of the center goes above 85 decibels—and the constant sound, all day, near schools has also been connected to lower educational outcomes, according to a forthcoming study from researchers at Brown University. How would the football team I watched, playing at a high school field hemmed in by an Amazon data center complex, be affected?