Days of Action against data centers: Taking on AI, capitalism and ecological harm

On Friday, hundreds of people forced their way onto the construction site of a Microsoft data center in Amsterdam during an action called for by Geef Tegengas. Activists from the group climbed onto the roof and released colored smoke canisters. Up to 200 protesters were subsequently arrested, dpa reported.

Footage from the rally shows protesters holding signs against the industry’s lack of transparency and its environmental costs, but also against the AI technology itself. “Right to Know!”, “We say No to AI!” and “Don’t feed AI!”, the signs read.

The action is one of a dozen held in European cities last weekend and part of a pan-European campaign called Stop Dirty Data Centres. It is the first umbrella campaign of its kind, mobilized by a coalition of more than 100 groups from across the continent calling for protests and actions.

The forms of protest and the motives behind them varied, but all the groups are calling for a Europe-wide moratorium on data centers. They want further construction paused until a democratic framework exists for deciding which projects are needed and how they should proceed.

The biggest investment in human history

The data center build-out is poised to become the largest infrastructure investment in human history – bigger than the railroad boom or the telecom boom. According to McKinsey, the world will spend €6.25 trillion on data centers by 2030.

Unsurprisingly, data centers have become a central issue in the US midterm election campaigns. In Europe, many groups see the issue as an opportunity to strengthen their cause against an exclusive, powerful and influential sector: the AI industry – a largely intangible industry, whose activities take place in virtual clouds running on servers housed in those very data centers.

Geef Tegengas, which organized the action against Microsoft in Amsterdam, says that the US hyperscaler’s site will consume as much electricity as all of Amsterdam’s households combined and will delay the construction of 30,000 homes. The group campaigns against fossil fuels, extractivism and militarization and takes disruption as its form of protest.

The activists are accused of stealing items and damaging property. “We understand that this project stirs up strong emotions, and we respect people’s right to express their views peacefully. However, we do not condone any actions that break the law or endanger people’s safety,” Microsoft told NOS, the Dutch public broadcaster.

Doesn’t Europe need more data centers?

BloombergNEF estimates the EU’s data center capacity at around 9 GW of IT load, less than a quarter of that hosted by the US. Given the strong expansion of data centers in the US, even the EU’s most optimistic target – tripling its capacity – will not be enough to close this gap.

Is Europe falling behind? Nikolas Becker, Head of Policy and Science at the Gesellschaft für Informatik (German Informatics Society), doesn’t think so. “I think it is good that Germany and Europe did not follow every trend and did not needlessly sink capital into early mistakes,” he told netzpolitik.org on Saturday at a Berlin networking conference for groups opposing data centers.

“I think that [building data centers] is fundamentally necessary to maintain sovereignty. But it should be done carefully and approached from the perspective of the application: What do we want to use AI for, and what exactly do we need for that?” Becker added.

Some organizers of Stop Dirty Data Centres oppose building more data centers altogether. “In Germany, only 35% of their [data centers’] capacity is utilized. In the Netherlands, the story is the same: only about 30% of the capacity is used. So why build more?” Max Schulze, director of Leitmotiv, a Dutch digital rights group, told netzpolitik.org.

Resistance organizes in Germany

On Saturday, more than 130 participants gathered at the Impact Hub in Berlin under the title “Connect the resistance – stop data centers!” The event was aimed at people who are critical of the current expansion of data centers across Germany. Organizers speak of the movement cycle’s “early stages”, in which groups from different walks of life form alliances.

At the meeting, groups using blockades and sabotage, as well as those organizing around local council meetings, exchanged experiences and concerns.

“We want the future of our digital infrastructure to be decided democratically – and not solely in the interests of large technology conglomerates and investors,” says Thomas Tennhardt, federal chair of Grüne Liga, which organized the event.

While Grüne Liga highlights environmental concerns, the co-organizer Nodes of Resistance takes a firm stance against the technology itself.

“For the areas where pattern recognition can be useful, all this computing power is not needed. Large language models are just a hype we are living through, advertised as the silver bullet to solve every social problem, as the next step in human evolution,” says Malte Engeler, press spokesperson for Nodes of Resistance.

“Now this hype is being used to shift money away from social security, from building hospitals and schools. In the end, AI is a class issue: it replaces the weakest in the job market and is used to experiment on the most vulnerable,” Engeler explains.