Fort Bliss, in Texas, could soon be the site of a hyperscale data center developed by the Carlyle Group.US Army/Zuma
If you live near a military base, there’s a chance you’ll soon find that a privately owned data center has moved into your area. A year ago, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Defense to lease land to private developers for this purpose. “You can’t fight it,” Trump said this week of data centers, which have grown wildly unpopular.
Amid concerns about massive electricity use and pollution, data center buildout on military bases is happening at hyperspeed. In March of this year, two private developers—the Carlyle Group and CyrusOne—were selected to develop hyperscale data centers, built for cloud computing and AI, on federally owned land in Texas and Utah. The Department hasn’t explained where they’ll get their power, though—and as El Paso Matters reported recently, the proposed Texas data center alone could require more power than all of El Paso itself. And in May, the DOD asked for an additional $30 billion to build hyperscale data centers that would, according to Defense One, “integrate largely untested hardware and software used to make life or death decisions into the military.”
Military spokespeople are framing this as critical to national security. “Nearly a century ago, President Roosevelt urged Americans to build the military infrastructure needed to preserve our democratic ideals during a time of profound global crisis,” Assistant Secretary of the Army Marc Andersen wrote in Fortune in June. “As we celebrate our country’s 250th anniversary, we once again find ourselves at a pivotal moment…The battlefield now begins long before the first shot is fired. It begins in mines, factories, power plants, laboratories, data centers, and logistics networks.”
As I’ve previously reported, the federal government is using national security to justify allocating billions of dollars to tech companies, including Elon Musk’s xAI. In one legal filing on behalf of xAI’s right to avoid permitting processes, Cameron Stanley, the Department of War’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, wrote that “Grok’s continued operation and availability is a matter of paramount national security.” The Department of War used Grok to “deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury,” he added. The Pentagon has paid Musk’s company at least $200 million for use of its technology.
Placing data centers on federal land may be a workaround for rising backlash over potential environmental harm caused by the facilities. Throughout the 20th century, under the legal doctrine of “sovereign immunity,” the federal government has historically exempted military bases from much pollution regulation by citing the primacy of national security. Bases such as Camp Lejeune in North Carolina have leaked volatile organic compounds, jet fuel, and heavy metals into nearby groundwater, rendering them what Abre’ Connor of the NAACP calls “sacrifice zones.”
Members of Congress across the political spectrum are raising questions about the military’s move into public-private data center partnerships. But Republican appropriators rejected several data-center-related amendments to a current Defense spending bill, including one from Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) that would have fully prohibited the construction of AI data centers on federal lands, including military installations. (Tlaib later introduced that amendment as a standalone bill.)
The only regulatory provision that actually made it into the House Armed Services Committee’s version of the fiscal year 2027 defense authorization bill was put forth by Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fl.) It would prohibit data centers built on military installations from using Chinese-built components. The Army said in a statement that Mills’ measure would create an “unworkable standard,” which would “drive world-class commercial partners—and over $1.3 billion in private capital—away from Army land.”
Individual bills like Tlaib’s, however, may still move forward. “Public lands should not be turned into sacrifice zones for the AI arms race,” said Shayna Lewis, Deputy Director of Win Without War, in a press release. “This bill is a wakeup call and a necessary safeguard that would protect communities from being forced to shoulder the energy, water, pollution, and infrastructure costs of systems designed to accelerate war-making and deepen the Pentagon’s deference to Big Tech.”
