Across the United States and globally, data centers are proliferating at an unprecedented rate, driven primarily by the artificial intelligence arms race among Big Tech hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta. These facilities, often hyperscale in size, form the physical backbone for training and running ever-larger AI models, with construction and capital expenditures surging into the hundreds of billions annually. According to a 2024 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report commissioned by the Department of Energy, U.S. data centers consumed 176 TWh in 2023—about 4.4% of national electricity—projected to rise to 325-580 TWh by 2028, equating to 6.7-12% of total U.S. electricity use. Pew Research Center and the IEA corroborate this, noting global data center electricity demand could double to around 945 TWh by 2030, with AI as the primary accelerator; individual AI-focused hyperscalers can consume as much power as 100,000 households, and the largest new builds up to 20 times that. This boom has mainstream coverage framing it as real-estate and investment news, yet it carries deeper implications: unprecedented strain on power grids, with concentrations in states like Virginia (where data centers took 26% of electricity in 2023), rising calls for nuclear restarts or gas backups, massive water consumption for cooling (potentially billions of gallons annually in stressed regions), and community pushback over noise, pollution, and resource diversion. Beyond energy, these centralized compute clusters raise heterodox concerns about enabling mass data aggregation and potential surveillance infrastructure. While not explicitly built for government spying, the concentration of data processing in few corporate hands facilitates easier access via legal or extralegal means, echoing historical NSA programs and privacy warnings from legal scholars. The White House has moved to accelerate federal permitting for AI data centers tied to national security, underscoring their strategic role. What mainstream outlets treat as benign industrial expansion may instead represent the physical layer of a new technocratic architecture—one where AI competition justifies resource monopolization and data centralization that could underpin unprecedented social and informational control. Community opposition in multiple states highlights not just environmental costs but fears of these facilities as enablers of broader monitoring capabilities in an era of biometric AI and pervasive cloud storage. As investments exceed $200 billion yearly from top hyperscalers alone, the unchecked explosion risks locking in dependency on fossil or nuclear backups while consolidating power—both electrical and societal—in ways that demand far greater scrutiny than typical real-estate reporting provides.