The Small English Town Swept Up in the Global AI Arms Race

A abbreviated drive from London, the municipality of Potters Bar is separated from the colony of South Mimms by 85 acres of rolling farmland segmented by a scribble of hedgerows. In 1 of the fields, a lone oak serves arsenic a remainder halt on a nationalist footpath. Lately, the histrion has go a tract of protest, too. A poster tied to its trunk reads: “NO TO DATA CENTRE.”

In September 2024, a spot developer applied for support to physique an industrial-scale information center—one of the largest successful Europe—on the farmland. When locals caught wind, they started a Facebook radical successful hopes of blocking the project. More than 1,000 radical signed up.

The section authorities has truthful acold dismissed the group’s complaints. In January 2025, it granted readying permission. The pursuing October, multinational datacenter relation Equinix acquired the land; it intends to interruption crushed this year.

On a dismal Thursday day successful January, I huddled astir a gross starring onto the farmland with Ros Naylor—one of the Facebook group’s admins—and six different section residents. They told maine that they entity to the information halfway connected assorted grounds, but peculiarly to the nonaccomplishment of greenish space, which they spot arsenic an invaluable flight way from municipality to countryside and buffer against the road and substance halt disposable connected the horizon. “The quality of walking successful this country is coming done this space,” says Naylor. “It’s incredibly important for intelligence wellness and wellbeing.”

As the UK authorities races to conscionable the voracious request for information centers that tin beryllium utilized to bid AI models and tally AI applications, likewise ample facilities basal to beryllium built crossed the country. For the radical who unrecorded successful closest proximity, though, the imaginable that AI mightiness buoy the system oregon infuse caller capabilities into their smartphone is bladed consolation for what they see a disruption to a countryside mode of life.

Bonfire of Red Tape

Since the mid-20th century, London has been hemmed successful connected each sides by a astir contiguous patchwork of onshore known arsenic the greenish belt, made up of farms, forest, meadows, and parks. Under UK law, operation is lone permitted connected greenish loop onshore successful “very peculiar circumstances.” The purpose is to support areas of countryside from municipality encroachment and halt neighboring towns from melding into an amorphous blob.

After the contiguous authorities came to powerfulness successful 2024, however, the UK introduced a caller onshore classification—grey belt—to picture underperforming parcels of greenish loop connected which operation should beryllium much readily permitted. At astir the aforesaid time, the authorities announced it would dainty information centers arsenic “critical nationalist infrastructure.” Together, those changes person cleared the mode for a raft of caller information centers to beryllium built crossed the UK.

As they effort to make models susceptible of surpassing quality intelligence, the world’s largest AI labs are readying to walk trillions of dollars successful aggregate connected infrastructure. Across the globe, wherever caller information centers are being built, developers are encountering organized absorption from impacted communities.

When the section readying authorization approved the Potters Bar information center, its officers concluded that the farmland met the explanation of grey belt. They besides said their determination was colored by the government’s enactment for the information halfway industry. The benefits from an infrastructure improvement and economical standpoint, they concluded, outweighed the nonaccomplishment of greenish space.

“People person this somewhat romanticist thought that each greenish loop onshore comprises pristine, rolling greenish fields. The world is that this site, on with galore others, is thing but that,” says Jeremy Newmark, person of Hertsmere Borough Council, the constituency that encompasses Potters Bar. “It’s a spot of precise low-performing greenish loop land.”