1: a principle that probable responsibility for an act or event lies with one having something to gain

-Merriam Webster

In previous articles, I have spoken of who does not benefit from Data Centers. This article will focus on who, for better or worse, does benefit from them and has incentives to keep building and using them for their own advantage. It is possible that some people will use them for, say, curing cancer; however, there are many other end users, investors, and powers that be who will reinforce their status quo with the help of Data Centers and the Artificial Intelligence they enable. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list, but to illustrate how many interests there are pushing for the development of more and larger Data Centers.

The Magnificent Seven

‍These are the most obvious beneficiaries of Data Center development, given their financial incentives to use and sell the use of Data Centers. The Magnificent Seven (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Tesla, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia) combined have a market capitalization of over $21 trillion, relying on Data Centers to sustain their growth and profits from research to manufacturing, development to rent seeking, and as end users of their own product. Apart from the large firms, there are numerous other companies, big and small, new and old, that stand to directly benefit from the Magnificent 7’s Data Centers. These include, but are not limited to, the following types of firms: construction, data center leasing, analytics, consulting, diesel generator, electricity generation and storage, cloud warehouse, HVAC and water cooling, fiber optics, IoT, and, of course, advanced chip manufacturing. These firms are like remora, the small suckerfish that cling to sharks, “removing ectoparasites and loose flakes of skin,” gaining nutrition and benefiting from their protection.

Financial Industry

The benefits of Data Centers to International Financial Institutions run across several axis including but not limited to: gains from investments in stocks, financing data centers directly, and using data centers for trading. The Magnificent 7 have dominated the main stock market indices, gaining approximately 36% of the S&P 500's market capitalization in late 2025, and in 2024, accounted for 59.6% of its price gain. Who has benefited from this increase? Looking at the ownership of these firms, Vanguard and BlackRock have large holdings, for example, in Apple, owning over 2.4 billion shares, equivalent to around 16% of all shares in the company.

The massive buildout of Data Centers by Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon alone is around $700 Billion in 2026, partially bankrolled by the companies themselves but also with the financial support of banks and private equity, such as Blue Owl, Blackrock, Apollo, Brookfield, to name but a few. Finally, Wall Street depends on data centers for analytics, prediction, and its high-frequency trading, allowing financial institutions to trade milliseconds faster than other firms without high-tech trading platforms. This technology may make some people very rich, but it also causes a host of issues, such as flash crashes, liquidity mirages, and increased systemic risks.

Military Industrial Complex

The recent strikes on an Amazon Data Center by Iran provide a glimpse into the Military’s increasing reliance on Data Centers to provide a military edge to the US’s war machine. While it is not known if those particular Data Centers were supporting the U.S. military, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and others are proud to provide Data Center services such as the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability and specialized air-gapped networks. This means that for communities across America and around the world that host Data Centers, they may be seen as legitimate military targets in hostilities against the U.S. Additionally, for the U.S. military, it means that Data Centers have become increasingly important for their intelligence, reconnaissance, and operations in the field, binding them at the hip to Big Tech.

Fossil Fuel Industry

Data Centers require large quantities of fossil fuels to operate from the grid, on-site facilities, and backup diesel generators. This has led to over a dozen coal plants, which were scheduled for demolition, having those plans scrapped and continuing to operate, polluting our communities and environment. The so-called “behind-the-meter” approach to Data Centers’ energy supply often uses natural gas, with “natural gas consumption by data centers [expected to] rise by almost three times,” by 2030. Data center operators want to make sure that if their grid and/or behind-the-meter options fail, they have a backup option, which is typically diesel generators, “one of the dirtiest forms of generation we know,” leading to the release of nitrogen oxides, acid rain, and other harmful pollutants.

Extractive Industry

Besides fossil fuel extraction, there are a myriad of other materials needed for the construction and operation of data centers. You can find lists of them from the WEF and USGS, so I won’t list them all out, but they require labor, land, and energy for extracting, refining, manufacturing, and transporting all across the world. Mineral extraction often is owned by Western companies but involves exploitative conditions in the Majority World, with low pay and high health consequences. The land needed for extraction often comes from indigenous peoples’ territory, leading to environmental degradation and pollution, continuing the legacy of colonialism. Finally, the e-waste from Data Centers is estimated to be “5 million tonnes… per year,” which either ends up in landfills or is recycled, causing negative health effects, especially amongst pregnant women and children

Surveillance Industry

The recent fallout between Anthropic and the Department of War provides a glimpse into how the U.S. government wants to use Data Centers, and the AI they enable, to surveil American citizens. This is not restricted to DoW, with the NSA, DHS, and many other agencies hopping on the surveillance bandwagon. It is also not restricted to the U.S., with China using “social media monitoring, cameras, and facial recognition” to track and arrest dissident actions across its society.

“In ‘1984,’ there weren't enough people to watch all the surveillance cameras all of the time. But artificial intelligence can watch all of the surveillance cameras all of the time.”

Lawyers, Politicians, and Lobbyists

There are many other industries with ties and interests in Data Centers. Lawyers collect fees from lawsuits and help draft legislation impacting Data Centers. Politicians are drawn to support development by promises of increased tax revenues and campaign contributions. Lobbyists are being hired to swarm Washington, D.C., and state capitals on behalf of their corporate backers. AI companies are funding Super PACs to the tune of $125 million in 2025 alone to influence voters and politicians alike. This will make regulating their negative impacts more difficult by swaying public opinion and defeating politicians who want to help their communities.

Conclusion

‍The cloud is often thought of as a diaphanous construct, floating in the ether, ungrounded to anything material. The reality couldn’t be farther from the truth. Data Centers are the physical manifestations of the big data and AI industries, with their roots deeply embedded in the most powerful industries on our planet. The next time a Data Center wants to move into your community, you need to think of the material, labor, and environmental costs to develop, operate, and end it; the end users of the project and any negative actions they may wish to use it for; and the real threats to your community which having a Data Center brings from the health and environmental destruction to the threat of being targeted in a war.

There needs to be serious discussions of who benefits and who stands to be negatively affected by Data Centers. By mapping the interconnected nature of Data Centers with other industries, I hope to help communities weigh the costs associated with development beyond the carrots of a few jobs and the hope of some tax dollars.

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* Note, when I came up with the idea for the Data Center Industrial Complex, I had hoped to be the first to do so, but of course, I was not. See Mél Hogan’s excellent paper here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=o2KMXskAAAAJ&citat ion_for_view=o2KMXskAAAAJ:1DsIQWDZLl8C

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