Memphis council delays a data center moratorium to Oct. 20 on a 7-5 vote

The 7-5 margin says seven members preferred waiting to voting ^[1]. The report does not say how the five who opposed the delay would vote on the pause itself. Residents did not get to speak either: the meeting closed before it reached public comment, so Kevin Starr, there to speak on behalf of young Memphians, never had his turn ^[3]. "It was ridiculous, the situation we were put in," said KeShaun Pearson, who runs Memphis Community Against Pollution ^[4].

Memphis is one council. The national total is Heatmap's: at least $260 billion in canceled data center projects this year ^[5], with developers pulling out of about half of it between July and the end of September ^[6], or roughly $130 billion in three months ^[19]. If the tally runs from January, that is about $43 billion a month in the third quarter against about $22 billion a month before it, a doubling ^[20]. The qz.com report does not list the projects behind the total, so the attribution of the full sum to opposition is Heatmap's, as relayed there.

Washington's explanation arrived with a request for proof. Rep. Brett Guthrie, who chairs House Energy and Commerce, and two subcommittee chairmen wrote in June to FBI Director Kash Patel and the White House science advisors asking for evidence of foreign campaigns to block American data centers ^[8]. "Americans deserve to know who is bankrolling the disinformation campaign that seeks to block critical infrastructure investments," Guthrie said ^[9].

The best evidence on offer is small. X said in late August that it found about 200 accounts in a suspected Chinese bot farm ^[10]. Only about one in a thousand of the farm's roughly 200,000 accounts posted about AI and energy ^[15], and 200,000 divided by 1,000 is 200 ^[21]. Millions of people saw X's announcement ^[18]. "No real humans saw these posts about data centers," Darren Linvill told Business Insider ^[12]. OpenAI, for its part, found "no evidence of meaningful breakout beyond its own activity" ^[13], though it also said the operation "sought to exploit and amplify existing public concerns about energy prices and local impacts of data center development" ^[14].

The most specific accusation of foreign money behind local opponents did not last. Kevin O'Leary, who has his own data center plans in Utah, told Fox Business in May that two Utah nonprofits were acting for the Chinese government; both groups and their founders took him to court for defamation, according to PolitiFact, and he backed down on June 25 ^[16].

In our view the risk sits in council chambers. Residents worry about what they will see from their porches and what they will pay on electric bills ^[17], and the foreign posts repeated a complaint Americans were already making ^[14]. A developer that treats the backlash as a foreign operation has little reason to budget for hearings, redrafts and delays like the one in Memphis.

The counter-thesis is that a draft the council is still editing may end in rules a developer can live with, and one city does not make a national trend. Three outcomes are open on Oct. 20: a pause, rules without a pause, or another delay. We would be wrong if the council adopts rules without a pause and the next Heatmap count shows cancellations below the third-quarter pace of about $43 billion a month ^[20].