Erin Brockovich Launches Campaign Against Data Center Secrecy Environmental activist Erin Brockovich is shifting her decades-long transparency crusade to the invisible infrastructure behind AI, arguing that communities are being sidelined as massive data centers quietly move into their backyards.

Early complaints and mounting anger

By April 2026, Brockovich had begun collecting reports from residents living near existing or proposed data centers, asking them to detail local impacts and concerns. Within the first month, she received nearly 4,000 submissions, with “transparency” emerging as the dominant theme, ahead of worries about noise, water use, and rising utility bills.

Around the same time, she publicly aligned herself with communities already mobilizing against the rapid spread of AI data centers, particularly in places where people feared “a possible drain on water supplies, a surge in electricity costs, and a decline in their overall quality of life.”

Launch of the mapping campaign

In late May, Brockovich formally launched a new campaign with a website that hosts a map of data centers across the United States, describing it as “work in progress” and built from facilities reported by local residents. The goal, she wrote, is to expose a recurring pattern: “projects announced after permits are already secured, developers who don’t return calls, local officials who signed NDAs before their neighbors knew a project was being considered.”

She stressed she is not making “a blanket argument against data centers or AI,” but against the secrecy she says is eroding public trust.

Political and industry responses

High-profile projects have already triggered political pushback. In Utah, a massive data center backed by investor Kevin O’Leary drew statewide opposition, prompting Governor Spencer Cox to release a new framework promising that data center development would protect “water resources, air quality, utility rates, wildlife, and quality of life.”

Industry practices are also starting to shift. Microsoft, which once relied on nondisclosure agreements in early planning, announced it would stop requesting them amid rising local resistance. Brockovich argues such changes show that residents’ anger over having projects “shoved down their throat in secrecy” is forcing a broader rethinking of how digital infrastructure gets built.

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