Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers
by sseagull on 1/30/2026, 1:23:53 PM
https://www.wpr.org/news/4-wisconsin-communities-signed-secrecy-deals-billion-dollar-data-centers
Comments
by: dguest
I'd like to hear the argument for why this is needed.<p>I can imagine a number of reasons, but this is all I found in the article:<p>> If I’m a company considering making strategic investments... I don’t want my competition to know where I’m going, what I’m doing, what pace I’m doing it at... You want to make sure everything is buttoned up and bow tied before that type of information is put into the public realm.<p>I'm having trouble with this. Is the worry that Amazon will outbid or outmaneuver Meta? How does this work in practice?<p>Whereas everyone here seems to assume it's to avoid NIMBY. I can see how a Meta spokesperson won't say "if we told you we're trashing your land you'd object" but I'd hope they could come up with a better argument than "your community is a pawn in a 5d chess game, better that you don't know".
1/30/2026, 2:20:14 PM
by: phkahler
There is an obvious question I don't see anyone asking. Why do these data centers have to be built in every state? I guarantee it's not to run LLMs.
1/30/2026, 2:10:52 PM
by:
1/30/2026, 2:35:29 PM
by: delichon
NIMBY for data centers is opportunity for SpaceX. When they saturate the demand for communication, data processing demand will be ramping up with no apparent ceiling. The merger between SpaceX and xAI positions them to benefit both from the AI revolution, and from the resistance to it. It's like a hypothetical 19th century textile company that managed to profit from Luddite riots by using them to help move production to Umpa Loompa.
1/30/2026, 2:06:48 PM
by: onionisafruit
I’m having trouble with the football-field to acre conversion in this article. It talks about the complex being the size 12 football fields and the data center being 520 acres. I could believe it if those numbers were swapped and there was a 12 football field data center in a 520 acre complex. So I don’t know if they swapped the sizes of the complex and the actual data center or the author thinks football fields are much larger than they really are.
1/30/2026, 2:20:56 PM
by: comrade1234
I wouldn't mind if they put one in Douglas county where I have a cabin. It would hopefully get some of the locals off government disability payments which seems to be the main income source there.
1/30/2026, 2:25:17 PM
by: chasd00
Ftfa “ The lack of public disclosure, while relatively common for typical development proposals in the planning stages…”<p>Sounds like it’s not something new or reserved for data enter projects only but I agree it sure seems a shady practice.
1/30/2026, 2:19:42 PM
by: yunohn
> “I know the opponents currently disagree, but I think the city acted in as transparent a way as they could,” Campbell said.<p>The audacity of public officials these days is astounding.
1/30/2026, 2:01:02 PM
by: timmg
I find it strange how data centers are getting (sorta) vilified. I keep hearing stories on NPR that are kinda subtle fear-mongering.<p>Like data centers are probably the least bad thing to build nearby. They take in power and produce computer. No pollution, no traffic, no chemicals or potential explosions.<p>They do take power. But, like, we know how to generate electricity. And solar is getting really cheap.
1/30/2026, 2:24:16 PM
by: insuranceguru
It's the standard municipal playbook now: obscure the deal until the ground is broken to avoid NIMBYism, then present it as a fait accompli for jobs. The interesting part will be the resource strain. These centers guzzle water and power at a rate most small municipal grids aren't scoped for. I wonder if the secrecy deals include clauses about priority access to utilities during peak load events?
1/30/2026, 2:02:22 PM
by: outside1234
Someone is going to have to explain to me why anything at the state or local level should be allowed to be secret like I am two years old because I don't get how this helps citizens.
1/30/2026, 2:13:51 PM
by: bell-cot
The most important news is in the subtitle -<p>> Wisconsin has now joined several states with legislative proposals to make the process more transparent.<p>Legislative or constitutional, good democratic government <i>really</i> needs limits on how much its supposed officials can do in secret.
1/30/2026, 1:33:29 PM
by: nythroaway048
This is happening all over the country. This is the Disney World playbook; people in these towns should understand what their land is worth to companies like Meta et al, and make a decision after having <i>all</i> the facts laid out for them in public.
1/30/2026, 1:44:05 PM
by: lapcat
Capitalism as we're taught from economics textbooks does not exist in our reality. The theory is that sellers are supposed to compete among themselves to attract consumers. Instead we have local, state, and even national governments competing among themselves to attract sellers. And of course political election campaigns are mostly privately funded, so even the kind of competition that does exist is rarely "meritocratic," and it's certainly not democratic (small d). The wheels are greased in various ways, with campaign contributions in office and cushy corporate jobs afterward. You might say, "the public should stop electing corrupt representatives," but again, our political system is based on private funding of election campaigns, so the system practically requires financial corruption. The political duopoly is an advertising duopoly: politicians can't spread their message without money, which is why alternative parties are trapped forever in obscurity. Advertising is the price of admission to the debate. The for-profit news media conspires in this system by refusing coverage, and media-sponsored debate invitations, to candidates without money, allegedly because they're not "viable," a Catch-22 situation.
1/30/2026, 2:11:29 PM
by: CodeCompost
> Now Meta, the trillion-dollar company<p>How is it that Meta is worth a trillion dollars?
1/30/2026, 1:42:27 PM