Former UK Chancellor George Osborne has criticised local opposition to datacentre developments across Britain, arguing that resistance is hindering the country's technological and economic progress. Speaking at the Big Brue festival in Somerset on Sunday, Osborne, who now serves as OpenAI’s head of AI for countries, said securing approval for datacentres is increasingly difficult due to community protests.

Osborne emphasised the strategic importance of datacentres, which serve as critical infrastructure for artificial intelligence and cloud computing. He warned that the UK risks losing technological sovereignty to the United States if datacentre construction is not encouraged domestically. “You can either choose to have these datacentres in Ohio and Georgia and Michigan, which is where they’re all being built,” he said. “We don’t allow these things to be built here. They’re going to be built elsewhere... that’s a loss of some sovereign control over the physical location where these things are.”

Public opposition to new datacentre projects has risen sharply in recent months, with protests taking place in locations including central London, Devon, and outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. Critics have raised concerns about the visual impact of large datacentre complexes, questioned their local economic benefits, and highlighted the significant water and energy demands these facilities impose. Some opponents argue that the land and investment could be better directed toward affordable housing.

In response, the UK government has designated AI datacentres as critical national infrastructure, a move designed to accelerate their planning and construction. However, the Green Party has called for a moratorium on new datacentre builds, citing environmental and community concerns.

Osborne dismissed much of the opposition as typical “not in my back yard” (NIMBY) attitudes. “There’s an enormous building boom going on in the United States of datacentres,” he stated, noting that resistance to these facilities appears to be rising politically as well.

Experts note that public unease with datacentres may reflect broader anxieties about the rapid rise of AI technology. Verity Harding, director of the AI and geopolitics project at the University of Cambridge’s Bennett School for Public Policy, suggested the protests are less about datacentres themselves and more about a lack of public confidence in how AI developments are being managed. She said, “The reason everyone hates datacentres has nothing to do with datacentres. It’s the only tangible thing to protest against... people just don’t feel that anybody is in control or thinking about the impact.”

Amid growing global debates over AI governance, executives from leading AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic are scheduled to meet with world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City this week. Osborne welcomed this development, stating that corporate engagement at the highest political levels should be seen as reassuring rather than alarming, as governments and industry collaborate on the future regulation of emerging technologies.