Where the Battles Against Harmful Highways and Hyper-Scale Data Centers Collide

Hyperscale AI data centers and highways are both harmful forms of fossil fuel infrastructure that get built without much community input — and it's time to fight back against both, one of our favorite podcasters argues.

By Kea Wilson

12:03 AM EDT on September 22, 2026

Where the Battles Against Harmful Highways and Hyper-Scale Data Centers Collide

Photo: Chad Davis

Like the interstate system before it, a network of massive, hyper-scale AI data centers is cropping up across America. And much like highways, they’re spewing air, water, and noise pollution across our communities, unleashing more surveillance tech and police on our sidewalks, and erasing the climate gains of every bike or a bus trip we take — all for the supposed “benefit” of communities that many advocates doubt.

Today, The Brake is back from hiatus with Saul Levin, veteran transit advocate and host of one of our favorite new podcasts, The Hum, where he interviews the leading voices in the data center resistance movement. And along the way, he helps us understand not just why these two types of fossil fuel infrastructure have so much in common, but how the same playbook can help defeat them both — especially if we band together.

For a transcript of this conversation with AI typos (yes, we recognize the irony): click here.

Kea Wilson

Kea Wilson is Senior Editor for Streetsblog USA. She has more than a dozen years experience as a writer telling emotional, urgent and actionable stories that motivate average Americans to get involved in making their cities better places. She is also a novelist, cyclist, and affordable housing advocate. She lives in St. Louis, MO. For tips, submissions, and general questions, reach out to her at kea@streetsblog.org, or on Bluesky @keawilson.bsky.social.

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