The histrionics by foes of data centers in our state — vented at public hearings; in staged protests; even in letters to the editor — might leave the impression the workaday facilities pose an imminent threat to public health, global climate and perhaps Western Civilization. 

The centers are mere data-storage hubs, of course. They’re essential to today’s AI-supercharged internet but actually have been around a long time. They have expanded around the country simply to meet net users’ demands. 

Some are smaller-scale, some larger, and like any commercial operation, they use their share of power. But they pay their way. They use water to cool their infrastructure, but the advent of closed-loop cooling systems stops water from evaporating and can ensure semi-arid climes like ours they won’t burden this most precious Western resource.

So, why the uproar from some quarters? Why the consternation among many ruling Democrats in the legislature at the Capitol in Denver? And why have some municipalities — from Denver to, most recently, Monument — enacted moratoriums on new data centers? Democrats on Capitol Hill in Washington even have introduced a national moratorium.

In part, blame an information overload — a lot of it inaccurate — for alarming Coloradans. Rumor mills on social media play a role in spreading the misinformation.

The issue also has been politicized, perhaps inevitably in an election year. Some politicians and political-advocacy groups in Colorado and across the country have sought to leverage misplaced public concerns to their advantage. Their operatives help fan the flames

And that’s where the plot thickens.

According to news reports last week, members of Congress now are calling on the U.S. attorney general to investigate allegations of foreign influence behind the domestic campaign to block the construction of new data centers. They base their concerns on recent research into the funding and orchestration of the anti-data center movement.

Writing in our news affiliate The Washington Examiner earlier this year, a research fellow with the Institute for Policy Innovation cited, “a damning new report from the American Energy Institute” that, “exposes more than $39 million in foreign funding flowing from European billionaires and foundations based in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Denmark into a coordinated network of activist groups whose mission is to block American data center construction.”

“These are not isolated or organic local protests,” wrote researcher Bartlett Cleland. “Rather, they are part of a manufactured opposition campaign bankrolled from abroad, with the full objective of exporting America’s AI future elsewhere.”

He added, “Let that sink in. Foreign interests, watching the U.S. on the cusp of further technological leadership, are spending tens of millions of dollars to make sure we stumble. And some elected officials, wittingly or not, are amplifying their message by calling for moratoriums, imposing regulatory obstacles, and lending political cover to a so-called grassroots movement that is anything but.”

Coloradans’ right to dissent, like that of all Americans, is of course sacrosanct. And no allegations or eventual findings about the scale and scope of foreign attempts to manipulate the campaign against data centers should be construed to curtail public input into local issues.

But concerns about foreign influence lend some badly needed perspective to the data center debate. It’s a dubious controversy that arose, seemingly, out of nowhere. And it pays to ponder who is being served by it.