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As voters went to the polls across the US last week, I was in Ashburn, Virginia, part of what’s known as Data Center Alley—the world’s largest data center hub. It’s also where the backlash now sweeping the country arguably first began taking shape.

Driving through it is surreal. Concrete monolithic buildings loom along every major road, with names like Skybox and CloudHQ.

It’s accepted wisdom in Big Tech that the war against data centers must be about something bigger than just data centers themselves.…