At the edge of towns and farmland across the U.S., windowless buildings are rising fast—some the size of shopping malls, others sprawling across hundreds of acres. While innocuous from the highway, like blank blocks dropped onto the landscape, to the communities living around them they can cause uproar. Data centers produce competing pressures—energy demand, land use, noise, and rapid infrastructure expansion—but one of the most persistent concerns may not hold up to scrutiny: whether they