Armory’s Hyperscale Data Center

is a Trojan Horse for St. Louis

An edited form of this letter is currently seeking publication.

Shared here is a draft version with sources cited via hyperlink as they appear in the reporting.

As the story goes: Greeks presented their Trojan enemies with an invading force, disguised as a gift. Once allowed inside, the Greeks – hiding inside the gifted horse – ransacked Troy.

The Mayor is allowing a Trojan Horse into our city.

Despite nonstop pushback from residents, developers from outside the City are pushing a 120 megawatt(MW) “hyperscale” data center right in the heart of Midtown, taking our historic Armory and the attached Goodwill.

Requiring as much power as half of all City residents, guzzling and polluting unknown amounts of our drinking water and rivers (developer Rod Thomas stated the site is allotted 2M gallons a day), pumping air pollution into a hospital district and neighborhoods already plagued by asthma, increasing our heat bubble by up to 6 degrees, and dramatically hiking utility costs, this would be massively destabilizing for our city.

This hyperscale proposal’s conditional use permit was approved by the unelected Board of Public Service despite hundreds of opposing residents’ testimonies, 14,000+ petitioners for a citywide ban (like St. Charles passed), and a local coalition fighting back with citizen action, filing appeals, and pushing for regulations.

Allowing it is simply not an option. We must continue to fight.

Developers claim this is "necessary infrastructure.” That’s what small-scale data centers (1-15MW) are. Already operating in STL, they use utilities on par with other local industries and generate little disturbance. Our largest is 12MW.

This proposed 120MW facility would not be like the others. And its infrastructure would not be for us.

Something this scale is for the resource-greedy AI bubble. “AI” is a broad term. This piece addresses the culprit for these hyperscale facilities: “generative AI” (ChatGPT, other media generators) and “surveillance AI” (Flock, Clearview, etc.).

These tech don’t magically ‘generate’ out of ‘the cloud.’ They take our resources to power and store. There are massive human costs to develop it: humans sort through disturbing media to ‘teach’ AI, and everything AI uses was “scraped” from human minds, hands, and bodies. Yet OpenAI’s Sam Altman announced: “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.”

This May, North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned that these facilities will destabilize our national grid with outages. Less than 60% efficient, the end results are utility bill hiking, diesel generators, and electricity and water theft. US data centers used as much water as the bottled water industry – hyperscale facilities consumed 84% of that in 2023, before the past few years’ boom.

Can our infrastructure even handle it? Well, Ameren already confirmed that ratepayers (that’s you and me) will bear the financial burden of upgrades, and 49K Lake Tahoe residents face losing all power from similar circumstances. A desperate PR attempt in KSDK claims this hyperscale facility would “save” STL’s water infrastructure – while communities neighboring data centers have brown water dribbling from their taps all around the country. Miscarriage and strange cancer rates sharply rose in Oregon near Amazon’s facilities, too. The water is either poisoned, or gone.

In addition, we’ll have a homegrown hub for surveillance AI. This tech was tested abroad (see “Project Lavender”) and is now coming home to roost. STL could even become a military target – US-owned data centers were targeted and destroyed by Iran this spring.

Even the crumbs offered in return – tax revenue for SLPS – are unlikely to materialize. Terrawatt developer David Daneshforooz is being sued for $16M in loan debt. Phil Hulse of shady Green Street faces a $24M lawsuit over an entirely unpaid mortgage. Plus, Green Street owes $2.4M in unpaid City taxes.

That $2.4M could have fully funded lifesaving City services last year, like Code Blue’s unhoused/homeless service, or the City Food Insecurity Fund – a ‘City fund’ actually supported by personal donations.

Yet still, Mayor Spencer has supported this hyperscale facility. The Armory-Goodwill’s conditional use permit approval was rushed through before we can democratically enact our data center regulations, currently in process.

This, after hundreds of STL citizens volunteered thousands of hours to testify. We recognize that once this modern Trojan Horse opens in our city, we’ll be stuck with the violent aftermath for decades and decades to come.

Yes, violent. It is violent to put cancer into our water supply. It is violent to take so much electricity that elders cannot afford air conditioning in heat waves. It is violent to pump our air with jet engine debris, and noise pollution that STL’s Board of Health and Hospitals warns creates serious health issues. This billionaire tech is taking away the things we need just to survive, let alone thrive.

So, communities are shutting down these projects – over $64B worth of projects, in more than 50% of US states. 70% of us oppose local data center construction, with 48% ‘strongly opposing.’ Festus residents ousted leadership over it. The Missouri-wide No MO Dirty Data Centers Coalition bridges young and old, left and right, urban and rural. STL’s local No MO Data Centers campaign is equally diverse.

Americans are actually united on something, here.

And, although it might not feel like it, a better world is still in reach. World Inequality Lab’s recent report headlines: “An equal and habitable world is possible.” We just have to stand up and demand it.

Now, the Trojan Horse has come to STL’s door. A handful of developers and politicians are letting it into our city anyway, selling STL for parts.

Do we simply lie down and let it in?

Those energized to fight this cataclysm can email fightback@nomodatacenters.com.