Data centre debate heats up ahead of US midterms - here's what you need to know Until a few years ago many of us may have been blissfully unaware of what a data centre was. They are at the heart of the AI boom, housing the advanced computer chips and servers needed to run services like ChatGPT and Claude. But the speed at which they're growing, the enormous amount of electricity they consume and concerns about their environmental impact are fuelling a public backlash around the world. In the US, they've become a huge issue ahead of the midterm elections on 3 November, with both Republicans and opposition Democrats coming out against their development. It's putting opponents of data centre expansion on a collision course with US President Donald Trump, who has dismissed the pushback as a sick conspiracy, even as public anger grows.

AI companies have told ministers they have 12 months to head off public opposition to datacentres in the UK or risk US-style protests that could threaten their construction. Successive dry summers and rising energy bills are increasing public scrutiny of plans for the huge computer warehouses that are used to train and run AI models, says a submission to the Labour government from a group including the AI infrastructure companies Nvidia, Microsoft and Cisco. Amid increasing anti-datacentre activism in the US and Europe, they are calling on ministers to create a "compact" that would show how communities can benefit from hosting datacentres, including allowing councils that host them to retain more tax revenues. The move by the Sovereign AI Leadership (SAIL) taskforce reflects rising concern among tech companies that arguments that have blocked datacentre developments in parts of the US are taking hold in Britain. Microsoft has promised to invest $30bn (£22bn) in UK AI infrastructure.

A previously unreported cache of law enforcement and intelligence agency documents show that law enforcement agencies have, since 2021, considered AI both a tool and a target of would-be terrorists. A previously unreported cache of law enforcement and intelligence agency documents show that law enforcement agencies have, since 2021, considered AI both a tool and a target of would-be terrorists. For many, it was a wake up call about the threats to reproductive care facilities. For the FBI, though, it was also a sign of what the agency had feared for years: bad actors were using generative AI to plan and execute terror plots. The suspect used an unnamed generative AI tool that failed to detect his request for bomb-making instructions, law enforcement officers wrote in a previously unreported document reviewed by the Guardian.

House Republicans allege the Chinese Communist Party is using tax-exempt organizations and social media to wage an influence campaign against American AI infrastructure data centers.

Andy Burnham once kept Palantir out of Greater Manchester. His first test as prime minister is whether to cut the company's £330 million NHS contract--and risk a rupture with Big Tech and Washington. When Andy Burnham sat in his office in Manchester as the regional mayor, building an unrivaled power base on Britain's left that ultimately catapulted him into the prime minister's office, he did so in the only region of England that refused Palantir access to its data. Now, as Burnham enters his first parliamentary session as British leader, Palantir could prove to be his first major test in office, as sources in Westminster tell WIRED the prime minister is under significant pressure from his new colleagues to break the company's contentious contract with the National Health Service. The dispute could become the first major crisis of Burnham's premiership, with those sources saying pressure is mounting on him to decide the future of Palantir's growing role across the British state in the coming weeks.

Is the war entering a new phase? Polls have closed in Russia's first wartime parliamentary elections, with the ruling United Russia party on course to win the tightly controlled vote. The Kremlin wants the elections, the first parliamentary vote since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, to showcase popular support for the war and legitimise its action. The drone strikes on Sunday killed at least three people in the Moscow region and two more in the Russian-held part of Ukraine's Kherson region, including an election official, according to the region's governor and the election commission. Russian authorities also reported attacks on the country's electronic voting systems and communication lines during the polls, but said the electoral process was mostly smooth.

Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has resigned after his ruling right-wing bloc was narrowly defeated by the centre-left opposition in the country's general election. He made the announcement in a post on X on Thursday afternoon, after preliminary votes from Sunday's election showed about 50,000 votes separated the two blocs in the country of about 10 million people. Opposition parties led by Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats look set to win 176 seats in the 349-seat Riksdag, Sweden's parliament. Kristersson, a conservative, had been supported in government by the anti-immigration hard-right Sweden Democrats (SD), and had promised them cabinet jobs if he won the election. His right-wing bloc looks set to win 173 seats in the Riksdag, according to data from the Swedish Election Authority.

There is an eerie low hum that emanates from data centres, where tens of thousands of chips make trillions of computations a second to help drive the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. These chips power the text, images and video generated by the queries made by the world of the advanced AI models. Their computations, which are in effect the switching on and off of microscopic silicon transistors that make up a chip, are actually silent. But, as with all computers, almost every watt of the significant electricity powering this process leaves as heat, and the sound you can hear is the slow whir of thousands of fans required to prevent the heat from frying the racks of servers. Depending on the size of the site, you may also hear the thrum of transformers in substations channelling electricity.

China is racing to build data centers and energy infrastructure to close the AI gap with the US. Donald Trump warns that data center protests could benefit Beijing.

The opposition to datacenters has crossed party lines. The opposition to datacenters has crossed party lines. Tue 1 Sep 2026 08.19 EDTLast modified on Tue 1 Sep 2026 09.08 EDT I was lucky enough to see her in concert a decade ago in California, in the same arena where Google now hosts its annual I/O conference. It's been a long time, and all my iPhone 4 photos are so blurry you can barely tell it's a musical performance, but my memory is clear enough to compensate. She told many stories about her childhood, which led into a trio of fabulous songs: My Tennessee Mountain Home, Applejack and Dr Robert F Thomas.