How Tucson fought back against Big Tech

What an Amazon data center in the desert says about our economy

Welcome to You’re Probably Getting Screwed, a weekly newsletter and video series from J.D. Scholten and Justin Stofferahn about the Second Gilded Age and the ways economic concentration is putting politics and profits over working people.

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One of the political challenges decades of unchecked economic consolidation creates is a sense of inevitability. We might all be getting screwed in the second Gilded Age, but that is just the way life is. That cynicism is understandable and to a degree warranted. Our politics would be better off if our elected leaders better understood the righteous frustration and anger people have in our existing economic order instead of belittling it or trying to change the subject. However, the structure of our economy is absolutely within our control, it just requires some political courage. While such courage feels hard to find these days, this week had a really great example.

Source: Arizona Luminaria

In a unanimous 7-0 vote this week the city council in Tucson, Arizona - a city of 542,000 that is Arizona’s second largest - rejected a proposal to build a massive data center for Amazon. The 290-acre data center campus would have been one of the largest development projects in Tucson’s history and is codenamed Project Blue. If a project has some ridiculous codename you can be pretty certain Amazon is behind it. While data centers are nothing new in Arizona, or around the country, hyperscale centers like Project Blue are cropping up across the country as Silicon Valley’s demand for artificial intelligence (AI) skyrockets. For example, as Tucson was rejecting Amazon’s overtures, a 160-acre data center plan emerged in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

National coverage of Project Blue has focused a lot on its environmental implications. Data Centers require massive water consumption to keep cool, particularly in a desert location like Tucson. It is no surprise that grassroots opposition to the project was organized under the banner, No Desert Data Center. Project Blue would use 622 million gallons of drinking water in its first two years of operation. In addition to that massive water use, if Project Blue ran at 80% capacity, its energy consumption would surpass what Tucson Electric Power currently provides to every residential, commercial and industrial customer in the city. As one commentator pointed out in a local op–ed, it would be like adding a second Tucson to the grid.

But the strong opposition to this project - evident in a series of public meetings on the issue that each attracted 800-1,000 attendees - went much deeper than environmental concerns. What first sparked anger and skepticism was a key feature of Big Tech’s playbook for these kinds of projects. For nearly two years city and county officials had discussed this project away from the public eye, largely because of nondisclosure agreements (NDA) officials had signed. It was the nonprofit newsroom Arizona Luminaria, not local officials, that revealed Project Blue would benefit Amazon. Yet the most comprehensive read on the pushback to this massive data center probably came from Tucson City Councilwoman Nikki Lee.

Project Blue represents a lot of things to a lot of people right now, more than just the data center and the project itself. It's a distrust in government. It's a distrust in corporations. It's a very large distrust in tech companies, a distrust in technology and privacy in general, and a fear of artificial intelligence and how fast things are moving and how little control we have. - Nikki Lee

And for good reason. There is a company called Fetcherr that builds AI-powered systems to enable airlines to dynamically price tickets in a way that will maximize how much you get screwed by those prices. Cory Doctorow has coined the phrase enshittification to explain the way Tech monopolies slowly degrade their once innovative products. AI is sort of a re-shittification though, taking an already unpleasant experience like buying airline tickets, and supercharging the terrible. What has Fetcherr received for building this fancy price gouging machine? Well last year Wall Street gave it $90 million dollars!

Source: Reuters

This is the current economy. The American Prospect recently detailed that while many sectors are facing headwinds, Wall Street and Silicon Valley (Mothra and Godzilla) are doing great! In fact, AI is essentially powering any growth we currently see. Among the S&P 500, just 10 companies are driving positive growth with the other 490 essentially flatlining, and those 10 companies are primarily tech companies gorging on AI. Already in 2025 Big Tech has spent more ($155 billion) on AI than the federal government has spent on education, training, employment and social services combined. There could be a universe where the return for all that spending is innovations harnessed to transform our lives in positive ways, but what Americans have been given to date is exploitation that is rewarded by financiers and government. What Tucson and its vote to kill Project Blue helps demonstrate, is that we can push back.

When the US Senate had to publicly indicate if it was going to go along with Big Tech’s plan to prevent any AI safeguards, it voted 99-1 against Silicon Valley. Once officials in Tucson and Pima County had to publicly answer whether they were going to do the people’s work or serve Amazon, they immediately voted to reverse course. These fights are not easy. Our politics are no longer built around these shared economic struggles. I’m not a cable news watcher, but I am guessing neither Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity did any deep dives on Project Blue. However, these fights are winnable, and every level of government can play a role. Put another way, you are getting screwed, but you do not have to be.

YOU’RE PROBABLY (ALSO) GETTING SCREWED BY:

ESPN-NFL Merger

The NFL will now own 10% of ESPN after it sold the rights to NFL Network and NFL RedZone to the Worldwide Leader in Sports. Not only does this mean the NFL has ownership of what ostensibly is supposed to be a news network covering the league, but seems headed for higher prices and a crappier fan experience.

For more on why this combination will be bad for football fans, just listen to Joon Lee.

Disney

Speaking of ESPN, its parent company Disney has announced it is buying out NBCUniversal’s stake in Hulu and will fully integrate the streaming service into its Disney+ streaming service. For all the talk of cord-cutting, it feels like we have seen this movie before only it came via Comcast not Amazon.

Constituent Service

Congressional Republicans have been referring various constituent issues, such as a business frozen out of its checking account or a chemotherapy patient denied a credit card refund, to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The only problem, those same members voted to gut the agency. ProPublica digs into yet another way the Big Beautiful Bill has unleashed the fraudsters and monopolists.

Data obtained by ProPublica through a public records request shows that many of the same Republican members of Congress who have targeted the CFPB for cuts have collectively routed thousands of constituent complaints to the agency.

Rail Monopolies

Last week JD covered the potential consequences of the proposed mega-merger between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, two of the country’s largest railroads. If you want an even deeper dive into why the Surface Transportation Board should reject this combination, Hal Singer and Logan Summerlin have you covered with a new piece over at The Sling.

Income Inequality

I hear you, Bill Burr!!! (Warning: It’s Bill Burr so there is some cursing here)

Illusion of Competition

More from Alex Falcone (also some cursing) on the companies that own all our stuff. See here for a deeper dive on this problem.

Corporate Crime

John Oliver’s segment on how the Trump Administration is lenient on Corporate Crime is worth a watch (okay, maybe I didn’t need to include all the cursing warnings):

Trump’s Antitrust Division

The current Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice settled with UnitedHealth and Amedisys, clearing the path for their $3.3 billion merger. So much populism!

Tariffs

The U.S. has now imposed the highest tariff level since 1933, according to the latest calculations from the Budget Lab at Yale, with an average tariff rate of 18.6%.

NPR answers what this means for you. The too long, didn’t click version:

• Yes, we'll probably have to pay more for stuff

• We don't know how much more we'll pay

• Overall, inflation will rise, but perhaps not too badly

• The labor market could get worse

• The economy will likely slow — but perhaps without a recession

SOME GOOD NEWS

Illinois says no to Mark Zuckberg

We have detailed the weird vision that Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg has for replacing human interactions with AI chatbots, but one state has taken steps to get out in front of Silicon Valley’s creepy AI Utopia. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker recently signed the Wellness and Oversight for Psychological Resources Act into law. The new law prohibits anyone from using AI to provide mental health and therapeutic decision-making.

BEFORE YOU GO

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Break ‘Em Up,

Justin Stofferahn