Datacenter protests have taken an ugly turn in the US, with gunshots fired at the home of an Indianapolis councilor who recently lent his support to plans for a server farm in the area.
Ron Gibson, a city-county representative for Indianapolis's 8th District, was woken in the early hours of Monday by gunfire. He found that 13 shots were fired at his front door, and a note left on the doorstep reading "No data centers."
In a statement posted on social media site X, Gibson said the bullets struck just steps away from where his eight-year-old son had been playing with Lego the previous day, and described the event as "deeply unsettling."
"This was not just an attack on my home, but endangered my child and disrupted the safety of our entire neighborhood," he commented.
"I understand that public service can bring strong opinions and disagreement, but violence is never the answer, especially when it puts families at risk."
About a week earlier, Gibson had publicly supported a rezoning proposal to allow the construction of a $500 million datacenter campus on a 14-acre site in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood of the district he represents.
The city's Metropolitan Development Commission approved the rezoning of the land to make way for the project on April 1, according to local media.
Developer Metrobloks is reportedly ready to invest $500 million in two large data halls to create a 75 MW campus, and stump up for any data network and energy infrastructure upgrades required for the site.
The IndyStar reports that almost 100 people spoke up in opposition to the proposal, arguing a datacenter facility will not create local jobs or serve the greater good for the Martindale-Brightwood area.
This latest incident comes against a backdrop of growing public opposition to datacenters in the US and elsewhere, amid a construction boom to meet demand for more and more compute capacity.
An NPR report in January claimed unrest is growing, and pointed to protests in Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and other states leading to a shutdown of proposed projects. A town in Wisconsin was even said to be trying to remove its mayor after a facility was approved in the location.
A separate report found that datacenter capacity under construction in primary US markets declined in the second half of 2025, as community opposition increasingly disrupted planning approvals.
As the issue climbed the political agenda, President Trump started asking tech giants to provide assurances that their mushrooming US datacenter projects would not impact consumer energy bills or drain local water supplies for cooling purposes.
Last year, The Register found the datacenter industry was well aware it had a public image problem, with opposition to new facilities one of the major topics under discussion at the Datacloud Global Congress in Cannes, France. This latest incident is likely to intensify those concerns among project planners. ®
Source: The register