Community opposition is becoming a major constraint on U.S. data-center expansion. At least 75 projects worth about $130 billion faced significant resistance and were blocked or delayed in the first quarter of 2026, more than double the roughly $64 billion delayed or canceled during all of 2025. Morgan Stanley warned in an Aug. 17 research report that developers must underwrite political opposition like land, power and labor. Moody’s Ratings forecasts roughly $785 billion in 2026 capital spending by Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Oracle and CoreWeave, approaching $1 trillion in 2027, while the bank projects a 38-gigawatt U.S. power shortfall from 2026 to 2028 and interconnection waits of five to seven years in some regions. Concerns about electricity costs, water, pollution, noise, farmland, transmission lines and opaque negotiations are prompting scrutiny in Texas, Virginia and New York and could affect project finance, future AI-campus scale and the 2026 elections. OpenAI is hiring a head of community engagement for Ohio and Georgia projects and committing $40 million to an Ohio community fund; Meta is hiring a community engagement manager and has spent millions of dollars on advertising, while Microsoft says it will no longer seek local tax incentives for newly built data centers.