Dissonant Times: Data centers, AI, military, global exploitation are entwined

by Paprika

In local news, residents of Salem are actively resisting the proposed construction of the Verrus AI data center. Verrus is backed by Alphabet, the parent company of Google. The city of Salem signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) in March 2025, which ended July 2026; this effectively kept the project details a secret from the public for over a year. Marion County has already approved Verrus for a three-year property tax exemption.

Artificial “Intelligence” (AI) is marketed as a convenient tool for the general public, as the inevitable product of decades of technological advancement, as something to be excited about, or at the very least, to get on board with or risk getting left behind. It is quickly becoming deeply ingrained into every aspect of our society, whether we consent to it or not. Employers increasingly require meetings to be recorded and transcribed by AI. School districts across the country are entering into million-dollar contracts for access to AI chatbots for students and teachers. 

Concerns over privacy violations, data mining, and intellectual property theft make it to the  headlines, with mainstream media outlets such as The New York Times advising caution and The American Bar Association calling for more regulations.

AI data centers power the servers on which AI models operate. These data centers have a large footprint, create noise, air, and light pollution, drain fresh water sources, and strain local power supply. Much of the current discourse on AI data centers focuses on environmental and health consequences in the area surrounding the data centers. In addition to local effects, it is important to track the global impacts. While it’s true that individual and corporate demand for AI have increased exponentially over the past few years, it’s also notable that the Department of Defense (DOD) has invested billions into AI.

Weaponization and surveillance

OpenAI signed a contract with the U.S. government in 2025, sparking mass outrage over the rise of military-grade AI and public surveillance. OpenAI simply updated the language of their agreement in 2026 in response to protests and a “QuitGPT” boycott. OpenAI added the following statement to their agreement with the Pentagon: “Consistent with applicable laws, including the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, National Security Act of 1947, FISA Act of 1978, the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals.”

In that claim, note that only persons believed to be U.S. nationals are excluded from surveillance. Note also that the word “intentionally” was used, absolving the corporation of liability if they claim ignorance where their surveillance violated any of the above “applicable laws”. As we’ve seen repeatedly in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) kidnappings, a person can be presumed a citizen or not based on the language they speak, the color of their skin, the clothes they wear, or any other form of racial profiling. It’s not a stretch to assume that racial profiling will be used to determine who is surveilled.

In 2026, the DOD rapidly scaled up their use of Anthropic’s AI model, Claude, in military operational decisions; it was utilized in the missile strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in (Minab,) Iran on Feb. 28 and in the kidnapping of Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro, in January.

In both cases, the DOD used AI to review maps, social media, and other civilian sources to create a plan of attack and choose target locations. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) extensively rely on AI and cloud services for mass surveillance of civilians and to conduct missile strikes, further enabling Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and attacks on the broader Southwest Asia and North Africa.

This is what AI is for, and what it will continue to be used for. It’s a weapon for the most violent and genocidal militaries. When you’re told it’s a tool of the future, told to get with the times, remember that it’s used to destroy futures, not create them. 

Residents of Salem say ‘No’ to data centers

In a city council meeting on July 27, Salem residents packed the courtyard to express concern and outrage at the NDA and the city’s silence that kept them in the dark about Verrus’ proposed AI data center for more than a year. A cyclist even carted around a guillotine, just to really get the message across. Verrus’ team fled the meeting claiming to fear for their safety over the public’s outrage. And maybe also the guillotine. 

On August 3rd, a week later, a follow-up meeting was held and the public demanded that city council initiate the process for a moratorium, to temporarily stall further development of

AI data centers. The moratorium, once it passes through all the required channels, will last just 120 days, with a potential extension of up to 6 months. This only gives a small window for policy around data center construction to be reviewed and changed. 

Public testimony lasted more than 3 hours. The Verrus team did not attend.

The not-so-hidden cost of powering AI

“They’re gonna come for us next, on our Lakota lands. They’re already setting up on the sacred Black Hills of my homelands, to drill for the lithium and uranium that they want for these data center batteries. So I’m fighting here, and over on my homelands… I want banning of ALL data centers across Turtle Island, especially here, cuz I got grandchildren that live here.” – H. Shootingbear, Public Testimony, Salem City Council Meeting 8/3/2026

Mineral extraction is a violent and toxic process that makes corporations richer while devastating the land and communities within and surrounding it. U.S. mining corporations such as KoBold Metals (backed by billionaires Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and others) target Indigenous communities for resource extraction globally. Kobold Metals uses AI to locate rare earth minerals, which are required to power AI in the first place. It’s a big malicious cycle. The opposition to data centers needs to be broader than simply “we don’t want them here” but rather, “we don’t want them anywhere”.

Lithium is one of many minerals required to power data centers. Copper is another, used to conduct electricity. 79% of lithium and 89% of copper “resources” in the U.S. are located within 35 miles of reservation lands. As a “solution” to the massive strain data centers are placing on local power grids, nuclear energy has increasingly been invested in and utilized to power them.

Tech giants have been investing in nuclear energy corporations for years, such as Amazon investing in X-energy since 2024. Uranium is the primary mineral used for nuclear energy. To this day, Congolese in Africa are forced into slave labor camps in order to maintain the ever-increasing demand for mineral extraction from the tech industry; the cost of this tech boom is quite literally human lives.

But what about all the jobs?

“We are beyond needing to prove how data centers will harm our community… Regal Cinebarre shut down last year, myself and 40 others lost our jobs. How can you tell me that city council cares about a few new jobs? It’s either us or the data centers, I ask you, which side are you on?” – J. Millet, Public Testimony, Salem City Council Meeting 8/3/2026

A common claim made by Verrus and other companies in the data center business is that they are job creators; that permanent jobs will be available after construction, and hundreds of temporary jobs during the construction phase.

We don’t have to look far to find that permanent jobs are minimal and appear to range between 25-50 employees. In Hillsboro, tax records show 284 employees between 11 of the major data centers – that’s an average of 25 employees per data center. Discussion of temporary jobs is where we can see the most tension amongst the public. Labor unions advocate that temporary jobs are how their workforce make their entire living, often traveling out of state for work. Rather than minimizing the need for local construction and electrician 4 jobs, it feels important to ask why our counties are giving massive tax breaks to the tech industry, instead of supporting projects that benefit the community as a whole?

The city of Hillsboro also initiated the process for a 120-day moratorium on data center developments. While schools are closing and teachers are laid off state-wide, tax incentives are still being given to billionaires to construct and operate these data centers. The Oregonian reports that property tax giveaways to tech giants like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft statewide are already totaling more than $450 million for 2026 alone.

Coming to a city near you…

“Data centers create heat island with their motors and thermal mass which increase surrounding temperatures by 3-16 degrees. Why are we having this discussion when over 1 million acres of Oregon has burned this year?” – A. G., Public Testimony, Salem City Council Meeting 8/3/2026

Meanwhile, just last month in Eugene, a land-use lawyer representing an unnamed client sent a letter to the city inquiring about data center and other technology-related permitting. His client is a prospective buyer of the old Hynix semiconductor plant, located at 1830 Willow Creek Circle, a 200-acre complex. The Hynix building is adjacent to protected wetlands and less than 0.5 miles from multiple apartment complexes.

There are already serious concerns over industrial pollution in West Eugene, where residents report smoggy conditions and difficulty breathing. A literature review by Beyond Toxics linked diabetes, high blood pressure, heart and thyroid disease in West Eugene to toxic chemicals emitted by industrial manufacturers. There are a high percentage of Latine residents in this area as well as a high percentage of low-income residents. This racial and economic disparity has already occurred for years before bringing data centers into the mix.

The American Lung Association identified data centers as a source of air pollution affecting human health and contributing to premature death. Environmental pollutants, like PFAS, are linked to cancer and reproductive harm, and are used in semiconductors, water treatment chemicals, and cooling systems that power and sustain AI servers. Constant noise causes high anxiety levels, impaired cognition, migraines. Overwhelmingly, it is clear data centers bring death.

If city council determines that our (outdated) regulations regarding pre-AI data centers are applicable to today’s centers, it becomes a green light for tech corporations to apply for permits to build. As was demonstrated in Salem, once that happens, council will claim that it’s legally “out of their hands” unless the public demands for a moratorium and a review of those outdated regulations. 

Demanding a complete ban or at the very least a moratorium at this meeting can be one step against AI data centers locally. However, organized resistance needs to happen at multiple levels; this is a time to get creative with our approaches, to refuse complicity, to fight back.

“The moratorium is a start not a finish. It’s our jobs as humans to be stewards of this land, we are looking at mass extinctions worldwide, why? AI data centers are the current death of our World.” – M. Hernandez, Public Testimony, Salem City Council Meeting 8/3/2026

Reprinted from https://dissonanttimes.org/ under the Creative Commons license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.