Cheering the Wrong Decline
When news broke that nearly half of U.S. data centers planned for 2026 would be delayed or canceled, an almost ecstatic response swept across social media platforms. Too many people thought to themselves that it was good, that data centers were a nuisance, and that we were better off without them.
One comment in particular said “Cancel them all. We are living well without them,” and all the replies shared the sentiment. These frustrations aren't coming from nowhere.
The frustration over data centers is both real and earned, in large part because the initial expansion of data centers came with tax handouts, no energy supply, and a culture of secrecy, bound by non-disclosure agreements, that exacerbated distrust in communities across the country. But the people cheering these delays have badly misread what is actually happening, who it hurts, and what it means for America's position in the world.
The delays betray the weakness of the American industrial base and our own capacity to invest in more infrastructure. One of the key culprits is a device most Americans couldn't pick out of a lineup: the electrical transformer. A transformer is some niche technology. It is the box on the utility pole at the end of your street, scaled up to industrial size, the piece of equipment that steps high-voltage electricity down from the grid so it can safely power a building. Data centers need enormous ones, custom-built, and they need a lot of them. Before 2020, you could order a high-power transformer and receive it in roughly 24 to 30 months. Today, according to Bloomberg's reporting on Sightline Climate data, lead times have stretched to as long as five years. For a data center whose deployment cycle is meant to run 18 months or less, that is a project-killer.
