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Big Tech wants more data centers. Residents in this New Jersey city said not here.

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Like a modern-day Paul Revere, Ben Dziobek’s voice rang across the night as he ran toward a crowd waiting outside New Brunswick City Hall on Wednesday.

The news? Members of the city council struck down potential plans to build a data center.

“They canceled it! They canceled it!” Dziobek shouts in footage shared by New Jersey’s Climate Revolution Action Network. Loud cheers followed, and then a chant: “The people, united, will never be defeated!”

The New Brunswick City Council had just decided to remove data centers from the list of permitted uses in a plan to redevelop several parcels of land. While no data center had yet been proposed, even the possibility that a data center could someday end up there raised alarm among city residents.

“The city administration is asking the council to amend the redevelopment plan to remove data centers as a permitted use, and to reinsert the requirement for inclusion of a park on the site that’s provided in the prior redevelopment,” New Brunswick’s city planner Daniel Dominguez said at the meeting.

Large, warehouse-style data centers have become a flash point for many communities across America as Big Tech and other AI companies look to power the large language models and chatbots they say are going to change the world. Those data centers, however, can be a drain on water resources and power grids, increase pollution, and decrease the quality of life.

An investigation by Business Insider published last year found that over 1,200 data centers had been approved for construction across the US by the end of 2024. These data centers, the report found, could consume as much power as entire US states and guzzle enormous amounts of water daily in drought-stricken regions.

In New Brunswick, those environmental concerns were top of mind.

“Community members cited concerns over environmental impact, energy consumption, water usage, noise pollution, and the broader implications of allowing large‐scale artificial intelligence and data infrastructure to expand into residential and public community spaces,” the Climate Revolution Action Network, a local environmental activist group that helped organize opposition to the redevelopment plan, said in a press release.

On Wednesday, residents and environmental advocates attended a New Brunswick City Council meeting to discuss the proposal.

During the meeting, Dominguez said the inclusion of a potential data center in the redevelopment plan was intended to “diversify the commercial development site,” but that it was “not critical to the project.”

Attendees cheered after the city council ultimately voted to nix the data center.

“I’d like to thank the council for deciding to scrap what many people did not want in their neighborhoods,” one attendee said. “We don’t want these kinds of centers in here that are going to take resources from the community.”

New Brunswick is one among many communities across the country fighting potential data center developments.

A large group of residents opposing a proposed data center in Clarmore, Oklahoma, turned out for a council meeting to discuss the project last week. Police arrested one of them for speaking for 30 seconds over their allotted three minutes. In San Marcos, Texas, hundreds of residents showed up at City Hall on Tuesday to protest a data center. The city council eventually scrapped that plan after a nearly 9-hour debate, according to local reports.




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Police arrested a man at a meeting to discuss a proposed Oklahoma data center after exceeding his time limit by 30 seconds

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Applause broke out during an Oklahoma man’s speech at a city council meeting on Tuesday to discuss a proposed data center. A minute later, shouts of disbelief rang out across the room.

“Disgusting!” one woman shouted as Claremore Police Department officers handcuffed and escorted Daniel Blanchard out of the room.

Authorities said they arrested Blanchard, whose speech exceeded the three-minute time limit, for trespassing.

Over 100 people, including Blanchard, had gathered in a ballroom at Rogers State University in Claremore to voice their opinions about the large data center project. The developer, Beale Infrastructure, is proposing a campus in the Claremore Industrial Park that includes data centers, supporting infrastructure, and office space.

Blanchard was among the residents who opted to speak during the public comment portion, which limits each person to three minutes. In his speech, Blanchard spoke about what he considered compliance issues related to the potential data centers.

“The Claremore Industrial Economic Development Authority has a fiduciary responsibility to the public, not to build infrastructure. And this act of overreach is putting the health and safety of members of this community at risk,” he said.

AI is driving a data center construction boom across the United States. While companies like OpenAI argue that building new data centers will reindustrialize the US economy and create jobs, residents of towns where developers are proposing new data centers worry about their impact on power grids, water resources, pollution, and overall quality of life.

In an investigation published in September, Business Insider reported that over 1,200 data centers had already been built or were approved for construction across the country.

The proposed data center in Claremore, a suburban hub of Tulsa home to about 20,000 people, has divided the town. During the three-hour meeting on Tuesday evening, dozens of residents spoke both in favor and against the project.

Blanchard exceeded his three minutes by about 30 seconds before police officers approached him. He gathered his notes and calmly followed the officers to the front of the hall, where town officials were sitting.

In a video of the meeting posted by the town on its YouTube channel, Blanchard appears to hand his notes to a council member. At that point, police arrested Blanchard, placing him in handcuffs. The crowd hollered in shock.

In a statement, the Claremore Police Department said officers aren’t responsible for enforcing city council rules and only become involved in city council meetings when an official orders them to remove an individual.

“The man’s position on the issues, what he said, or his unwillingness to follow rules of the meeting played no part in the officer’s decision to arrest him,” the statement said. “He was arrested for trespassing in compliance with the law and with the hope of restoring order to an important meeting.”

A local politician fighting the data center project posted to X on Wednesday that Blanchard has been released from jail. The next council meeting is scheduled for March 2.




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Snowflake’s CEO says software giants risk becoming a ‘dumb data pipe’ to AI models

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The biggest software companies might be reduced to mere data sources, says Snowflake’s CEO.

“The big model makers want to create a world in which all of the data for all of the enterprises is easily available to them,” Sridhar Ramaswamy said on an episode of Alex Kantrowitz’s “Big Technology Podcast” published last week. “Everything else, the world, is just a dumb data pipe that feeds into that big brain.”

Prior to becoming Snowflake’s CEO in 2024, Ramaswamy was a partner at Greylock Ventures and cofounded AI search startup Neeva, which was acquired by Snowflake.

Ramaswamy added that Snowflake needs to operate with a “fear” that people would stop using AI agents developed by software companies and instead want an all-inclusive agent that has data from Snowflake, for example, and everywhere else

He said his solution was to let customers take the lead and decide how they want to access their data — directly through their own agents, or through a product like ChatGPT.

In the last few months, AI labs have evolved from being sources of AI infrastructure to becoming software providers themselves. OpenAI has entered the sales, support, and document analysis market, threatening incumbents such as Salesforce and Oracle.

On a podcast released last week, Andreessen Horowitz general partner Anish Acharya said software firms were being unnecessarily punished by Wall Street over fears that AI could take over their industry. The VC said that legacy software could not be replaced so easily, because it would not be worth it to use AI for every business function.

He said that software accounts for 8% to 12% of a company’s expenses, so vibe coding to build the company’s resource planning or payroll tools would only save about 10%. Instead, companies should focus on big-ticket items, like developing their core businesses or optimizing other costs.

Ramaswamy and Acharya’s comments follow a brutal start of the month for software stocks, which dragged down tech and broader markets. The sell-off started when already-wary investors panicked about Anthropic’s new AI tool, which can perform a range of clerical tasks for people working in the legal industry.




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Nike salary data reveals what employees can make at the sportswear giant

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As Nike continues its quest to come back as a dominant retail force, the sportswear giant has continued to invest in tech and design jobs.

Publicly available work visa data, which companies are required to disclose to the US Department of Labor, gives an idea of how much Nike’s employees bring home and some of the roles it has invested in.

Nike had about 755 open positions worldwide listed on its jobs board as of February 13. In January, the company also said it planned to lay off 775 employees at its distribution centers, citing efforts to accelerate the use of “advanced technology and automation.”

Nike had several leadership shake-ups in 2025, including promoting at least four insiders to senior roles reporting directly to CEO Elliott Hill.

Hill, who rejoined the company in October 2024, has told investors that Nike is aligning its employees around five key action areas: culture, product, marketing, marketplace, and connecting with consumers on the ground in their communities.

That strategy plays into Nike’s efforts to focus its marquee brands — Nike, Jordan, and Converse — on key sports such as running and basketball. It’s also pushing a new collaboration, NikeSKIMS, an athleisure brand for women.

“We are in the midst of realignment at Nike,” Nike said in a July statement to Business Insider. The realignment and sport strategy aim to “create sharper distinction and dimension” for its brands, the company said.

Here’s what some key Nike roles can earn, based on work visa data for the year ending September 30.

The salary data includes information from Nike Inc. and some subsidiaries, such as its retail services arm and Air Manufacturing Innovation division. It reflects US-based roles and, given that it’s based on H-1 B visa disclosures, tends to skew more tech-focused.

Data and engineering roles: Software engineers can earn more than $300,000

Software Engineer: $124,592 to $203,581 a year

Software Engineer I: $120,000 to $144,612 a year

Software Engineer II: $152,007 to $178,231 a year

Software Engineer III: $139,845 to $180,353 a year

Senior Director, Software Engineering: $301,378 a year

Data Engineering: $104,500 to $175,000 a year

Data Analytics: $114,600 to $118,398 a year

Director, Supply Chain AI/ML Engineering: $252,535 a year

Design roles: Some designers make around $200,000

Designer II: $94,691 a year

Materials Designer: $100,000 a year

Senior Digital Product Designer: $155,810 a year

Senior 3D Designer: $106,605 a year

Director, NikeSKIMS Apparel Design: $244,466 a year

Manager roles: Managers can take home more than $270,000

Senior Manager, Software Engineering: $273,156 a year

Delivery Excellence, Uniform Operations Manager: $164,439 a year

Senior Product Manager: $153,431 to $169,744 a year

Manager, Data Engineer: $168,031 to $213,190 a year

Senior Program Manager: $147,434 a year

Supply Chain Intelligence Manager: $158,311 a year

Marketing roles: Some marketing jobs can earn as much as $425,000

Lead Professional, Sports Marketing: $128,434 to $143,251 a year

VP, Global Brand Marketing, Women’s: $425,000 a year

Have a tip? Contact Jordan Hart via email at jhart@insider.com or Signal at jordanhart.99. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.




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US Army leaders say soldiers are drowning in so much battlefield data that AI is needed to make sense of it all

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Army leaders say the modern battlefield is so saturated with sensors and networked weapons generating more data than soldiers can realistically process on their own that artificial intelligence is needed to meaningfully sort it all.

For years, the Army’s focus was on fielding more sensors for battlefield information and awareness, but now the service is also having to think about information overload and managing the massive amounts of data coming in.

During a recent US Army and NATO exercise in Europe, troops used a homegrown AI system to consume and sort data. The value wasn’t strictly that the AI could do it faster but rather that it could remember context and patterns that humans couldn’t.

The case from the Dynamic Front exercise is another example of how the US military is increasingly implementing AI and automation into everything from enemy attack simulations to paperwork.

“The modern battlefield, what we’re already seeing across the globe, it is swimming in sensors, and we are drowning in data,” Col. Jeff Pickler, the Army 2nd Multi-Domain Task Force commander, said at a media roundtable on Dynamic Front.

There aren’t enough people to decipher all the available information, he said. “They will never be able to fully process all of that.”


Two soldiers stand near an artillery piece about to fire in a wintry landscape.

This year’s Dynamic Front included almost 2,000 US personnel and almost 4,000 personnel from allies and partners.

US Army photo by Kevin Sterling Payne



The software aimed at addressing that problem remains in beta testing. In the next iteration of Dynamic Front — which will merge with another exercise, Arcane Front, to pair technology experimentation with theater-level combat rehearsals — Army leaders say they intend to test the AI at a larger scale.

“If we’re looking at a target set in the European theater where we think we’re going to need to process upwards of 1,500 targets a day, that’s beyond the human scope,” Pickler said. “The answer to the equation there is in AI and automations.”

During a potential large-scale conflict in Europe, AI could assist in locating and assessing those targets.

The system can do this quickly, but the speed isn’t the main benefit. AI can remember patterns that humans might forget or not even notice. Pickler gave an example of AI realizing that unrelated shipping reports, a local power outage, and a fertilizer delivery together might suggest missile fueling activity.

“So the difference isn’t seconds versus minutes — it’s minutes instead of months. Not because the machine scans quickly, but because it keeps context across sources that humans can’t hold in memory,” Pickler said after the roundtable.

“It doesn’t replace analysts by reading faster,” he said, “it replaces the weeks analysts spend reconnecting information spread across thousands of reports.”


Two soldiers sit at a table working on laptops.

AI, autonomy, and machine learning are at the forefront of the Army’s modernization efforts.

US Army photo by Capt. Regina Koesters



In a conflict scenario, that could mean analysts reach a clearer picture of the battlefield faster. Correlations between data gathered from different sensors could surface more quickly. If an adversary were fueling, arming, or moving weapons in ways that were not immediately obvious, AI could help flag those links.

Humans, though, would still decide how to respond.

Soldiers have seen success with iterating on the current AI model, the Army said. It’s been retooled during testing, and humans remain in the loop, reviewing outputs at multiple stages.

The goal is to continue increasing the overlap the model would have with human-produced information. In a targeting example, a milestone would be if AI achieved 90 to 95% agreement with humans on 100 target sets.

The Army’s push for AI and automation is also driving the development of its Next Generation Command and Control software, a priority initiative.

The technology being developed by vendor teams including Anduril, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin uses AI and machine learning to provide commanders and soldiers with real-time data on ammunition levels, maintenance needs, intelligence feeds, targeting, and simulated enemy attacks.

But AI is also changing other aspects of how the Army works. Autonomous features in drones, weapons, and targeting might be at the forefront, but behind the scenes, personnel are using new tools, redesigned workflows, and data integration for recruiting, maintenance, and inventors. These are manual tasks that the service believes can be improved with AI.




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Chong Ming Lee, Junior News Reporter at Business Insider's Singapore bureau.

Anthropic says it will pay 100% of the grid upgrade costs tied to its AI data centers

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Anthropic says it’s going to foot the bill for electricity price increases tied to its data centers.

“We will pay for 100% of the grid upgrades needed to interconnect our data centers,” Anthropic said in a blog post published Wednesday, adding that it will absorb costs that might otherwise be passed on to American households.

Anthropic said it will secure additional power to avoid pushing up electricity prices and invest in “grid optimization tools” designed to reduce strain and keep prices low.

“The country needs to build new data centers quickly to maintain its competitiveness on AI and national security,” Anthropic said. “But AI companies shouldn’t leave American ratepayers to pick up the tab.”

Anthropic’s pledge comes months after the company said it is investing $50 billion in AI infrastructure in the US, beginning with data centers in Texas and New York.

Tech giants are pouring staggering sums into AI infrastructure as they race to expand data center capacity, a buildout that has drawn scrutiny over rising electricity costs.

In November, Meta said it would invest $600 billion in the US “to support AI technology, infrastructure, and workforce expansion.” Apple said in August it would add another $100 billion to its US infrastructure spending, bringing its total investment to $600 billion.

Meanwhile, utility bills are climbing. Electric and gas utilities sought $31 billion in rate increases from state regulators last year, more than double the $15 billion requested the year before, according to a study published last month by PowerLines, a nonprofit that advocates for utility customers. Many utilities have cited power demand from data centers as the key factor for rate increases.

President Donald Trump has urged Big Tech to prevent data centers from pushing up electricity costs.

“I never want Americans to pay higher Electricity bills because of Data Centers,” Trump wrote last month in a post on Truth Social.

The “big technology companies who build them,” the president said, “must pay their own way.”

Microsoft last month introduced similar measures, saying it would pay utility rates high enough to cover the cost of its data centers’ electricity use and reduce the impact of its data center expansion on local residents.




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Jobs report updates: Dow, S&P futures hold steady ahead of employment data release

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It’s jobs Wednesday!

Yes, you read that right. The monthly jobs report, a Friday tradition, is coming out this morning, five days later than originally scheduled due to the partial government shutdown.

Economists expect the US added 65,000 jobs in January and unemployment remained at 4.4%.

Investors are looking at the January jobs report to see if the job market has continued stabilizing following a difficult 2025. The US added only 584,000 jobs last year, the lowest employment growth since 2003, excluding recessions.

The coming report will include revisions to past job growth, so last year’s employment level could change.

The report is expected to drop at 8:30 a.m. ET. Stay with us as we preview the data and then give you an inside look at everything you need to know about the report when it drops.




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Eric Schmidt-backed data center venture is negotiating a major deal with Google

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Bolt Data and Energy, a data center development firm that was cofounded late last year by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, is negotiating a deal that would allow it to begin construction on a large data center project it is planning in West Texas.

Schmidt’s firm is in discussions with Google, his former employer, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks. The tech giant, one of the leaders in the race to develop and commercialize artificial intelligence, is considering a commitment of 250 megawatts, according to one of the people. The other person said it was too early to characterize the exact size of the potential transaction because it was still under discussion.

The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because the potential transaction is still being arranged and the talks are confidential.

“We don’t comment on rumors,” a Google spokeswoman told Business Insider, declining to comment further. Google announced last year that it plans to build $40 billion of cloud and AI infrastructure in Texas by 2027.

The potential deal highlights how Big Tech is racing to secure the power, physical infrastructure, and land needed to fuel AI, even as the costs and financial risks of those bets loom.

In December, Bolt completed its first funding round, raising $150 million from investors, including $50 million from Texas Pacific Land Corporation, a public company that owns large tracts of land in West Texas. As part of the investment from TPL, Bolt will develop data centers on land in TPL’s portfolio.

A presentation detailing Bolt’s development plans, shared with Business Insider, said that TPL’s land would give it access to abundant power and water for cooling. These commodities have become increasingly strained as data center development has boomed around the country.

The presentation states that Bolt’s development would begin with an “initial 250 megawatt facility” and expand in 250-500 megawatt increments into a 5 gigawatt campus.

Bolt’s plan is one of several large-scale projects that have been envisioned in Texas to cater to the AI race. Fermi, a public company co-founded by former Texas governor and US Energy Secretary Rick Perry, has plans for an 11-gigawatt campus in Amarillo.

In December, Business Insider revealed that Amazon had pulled back a $150 million cash advance it had pledged as part of a preliminary deal to anchor the project. Fermi’s disclosure of the reimbursement of that advance caused its stock to fall by 50%. Fermi’s CEO, Toby Neugebauer, told Business Insider that although Amazon had reclaimed its advance, the negotiations for it to take space with Fermi were still ongoing.

Major bank lenders who extended $38 billion to finance the construction of data center campuses in Shackleford County, Texas, and Port Washington, Wisconsin, for Oracle and OpenAI, meanwhile, have had difficulty selling off pieces of the huge loan to other banks and investors. Those troubles stem, in part, from worries about whether Oracle’s credit will be strained by its massive AI spending.

To help allay concerns, Oracle announced it would raise as much as $50 billion in debt and equity in 2026 to continue to pursue its AI buildout while also maintaining “a solid investment-grade balance sheet.”

Last week, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, revealed in its fourth-quarter earnings report that it plans to spend between $175 and $185 billion on capital expenditures in 2026, roughly double its outlay in 2025. The spending is being done largely to pay for AI equipment and infrastructure.

A record wave of spending has been announced by big technology companies on AI this year, including Amazon’s disclosure during its earnings last week that it would spend $200 billion alone this year.




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Jeff Bezos speaks out about The Washington Post for the first time since mass layoffs — and focuses on ‘data’

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Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos gave his first public statement since the paper enacted massive job cuts this week, and it focused on “data” and understanding reader interests.

The billionaire Amazon founder, who built one of the world’s most valuable companies with a relentless focus on customer satisfaction, indicated he wanted to see that same energy at the Post.

“The Post has an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity,” Bezos wrote. “Each and every day our readers give us a roadmap to success. The data tells us what is valuable and where to focus.”

Bezos’ statement came as Post CEO Will Lewis announced he was stepping down, to be replaced in an interim capacity by Post CFO Jeff D’Onofrio.

Bezos’ statement struck a similar tone to comments made by the paper’s top editor, Matt Murray, in addressing staff earlier this week.

“Today is about positioning ourselves to become more essential to people’s lives in what has become a more crowded, competitive, and complicated media landscape,” Murray said during a staff call on Wednesday. “For too long, we’ve operated with a structure that’s too rooted in the days when we were a quasi-monopoly local newspaper.”

Murray sent staffers a detailed memo on Wednesday that outlined focus areas in which he said the Post demonstrates “authority, distinctiveness, and impact.” Those priority areas will include politics, national affairs, national security, and other forces “shaping our future,” like science and business, Murray wrote.

Murray spoke repeatedly about focusing on areas of reader interest and understanding audience data in an appearance following the layoffs on the Puck podcast “The Grill Room.”

The messaging from Bezos and Murray could help appease some critics who have seen moves by the Post in recent years as rooted in political ideology and not data — though it will be difficult to win them over.

The Post faced a revolt both inside the newsroom and among readers when Bezos made a late-hour call in 2024 that the paper wouldn’t endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in 36 years. NPR reported that more than 200,000 subscriptions were canceled in the days following.

The paper faced another round of criticism in February 2025 when Bezos decided to reorient the Post’s opinion section — generally considered the owner’s prerogative — around personal liberties and free markets.

Former Post executive editor Martin Baron, who worked closely with Bezos during his tenure as top editor, wrote in a LinkedIn post after the layoffs that the paper’s challenges had been made “infinitely worse by ill-conceived decisions that came from the very top.”

Critics of Bezos’ moves have said he should consider financially supporting the paper, given its role in society.

“It just seems heartbreaking that he doesn’t feel the paper is important enough to bankroll,” Sally Quinn, the longtime journalist and widow of former Post executive editor, Ben Bradlee, said this week on CNN.

Bezos said in his statement that he felt the Post’s leadership going forward could build an “exciting and thriving next chapter” for the paper.




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ICE arrested 2 truck drivers heading to a major Meta data center project

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  • ICE arrested two drivers on Wednesday near a Meta construction project in Louisiana, officials said.
  • The individuals were detained during a traffic stop inspection of vehicles heading to the site.
  • “ICE did not enter the Meta site at any time,” the local sheriff’s office said.

Meta’s new mega data center project had a brush with immigration authorities.

The Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana’s Richland Parish, where the massive Hyperion Data Center is under construction, said Wednesday that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained two dump truck drivers traveling to the site during a traffic stop inspection.

“During those stops, two drivers were arrested by ICE due to their immigration status,” the office said. The drivers were from Guatemala and Honduras.

“ICE did not enter the Meta site at any time,” the office said.

In a statement to Business Insider late Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said that ICE did not target a Meta data center in Louisiana.

The DHS spokesperson said that the ICE agents had carried out a “targeted operation” to arrest the truck driver from Honduras, and had encountered another driver from Guatemala. It said both were arrested and are in ICE custody.

Meta declined to comment to Business Insider.

The Meta project is the largest of several multi-gigawatt data centers that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said will come online as the company races to catch up on AI computing capacity.

Wednesday’s arrests crystallize an issue that companies have increasingly had to grapple with over the past year: how to prepare workers for an ICE encounter, whether on or off company property.

The action also follows a recent surge of ICE activity in cities and towns across the US, which has met some resistance in Democratic-led states.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has been a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. The state is receiving nearly $1 million a month to house detainees at its Angola prison, Axios reported, citing public records.

January 15, 11.25 p.m. E.T. — This story was updated to include comments from a DHS spokesperson.




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