On Friday, protesters broke into the Plimsollweg construction site near Amsterdam's Sloterdijk, where Pure Data Centres is building three data towers for Microsoft. They climbed a construction crane, lit flares and hung banners, some objecting to Microsoft's services to the Israeli military and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Guardian reported. Police said force was used and an officer was slightly injured; protesters told the Guardian that police used force and tear gas. By Friday evening, police said they had detained between 150 and 200 people on suspicion of trespassing.
The action coincided with a two-day campaign by the Stop Dirty Data Centres coalition, with protests planned in 15 or 16 countries, depending on the count. The coalition said it had not coordinated or promoted the break-in, but considered such tactics understandable when communities lacked meaningful participation in decisions. In Amsterdam, the protest was organised by the Dutch direct action group Geef Tegengas, NL Times reported, citing AT5; Extinction Rebellion and pro-Palestinian activists joined, while Fossielvrij NL demonstrated at, but not on, the site.
The site was contested before Friday. Since 2022, national rules have limited new hyperscale data centres to two locations, Eemshaven and Wieringermeer. NRC reported in January that Pure Data Centres secured a permit by applying for three separate 85-metre towers, a split that regional broadcaster NH Nieuws described as a way around the national rule; the province granted the permit in 2025. Amsterdam alderman Steven van Weyenberg has said it was a single permit application and would not have counted as a hyperscale centre in any case. The project, worth about €1 billion according to NH Nieuws, is due for completion in 2028. Amsterdam plans to stop new data centres from 2035, but six projects already in the pipeline can proceed, according to Van Weyenberg's office.
The grievances driving this movement are concrete and local. Campaigners object to competition for electricity and water, pressure on housing development, and the environmental costs of expanding digital infrastructure. In Amsterdam, Geef Tegengas says the Microsoft project will consume as much electricity as every household in the city combined; NRC, which first reported the project, put its eventual use closer to that of all households in Haarlem. Geef Tegengas also links it to the city's grid shortage, which, according to a letter from the city executive to the council, is delaying the construction of some 30,000 homes across the city.
A separate Equinix development in Amsterdam Zuidoost illustrates the scale of the demands involved. Its completed campus is projected to consume 779 million kWh annually, compared with 869 million kWh for Amsterdam households, NL Times reported. Its planning application estimates water requirements of 274 million litres annually for the first phase, rising to 1.1 billion litres at full development. Only one of four towers is initially planned; further construction depends on grid capacity that is not expected before 2036, NOS reported. Grid operator Liander told NOS that homes planned in the area will get priority over data centres. "There are zero benefits for the neighbourhood," Dylan Bakker of the residents' group Stop Datacenter Zuidoost told NOS.
In Ireland, data centres accounted for 23 percent of metered electricity consumption in 2025, compared with 28 percent for the residential sector, according to the Central Statistics Office. Under a connection policy the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) set in December 2025, new data centres must provide generation or storage, on site or nearby, matching their maximum import demand. They must also source at least 80 percent of their annual demand from additional renewable electricity in Ireland, phased in over six years. The policy is therefore more flexible than a blanket requirement to generate all their power on site. The underlying political dispute concerns who receives scarce infrastructure capacity and who pays to expand it. Companies and governments point to the economic importance of AI; communities facing constraints on housing and public services point to what the same grid and water could otherwise supply.
The Amsterdam breach followed earlier direct action against the same development. In July 2026, Extinction Rebellion activists threw balloons into the construction site; the group said they contained hydrogen peroxide, acetic acid, salt and acrylic paint meant to degrade its concrete foundations. "We must join forces and resist the anti-democratic power of this small group of the very wealthiest," XR spokesperson Martijn Dekker said, according to The Register. Developer Pure Data Centres said the incident caused no damage or delay, NRC reported, and that it would take legal action.
Separately, Mauro Lubrano, writing for the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), documented an arson attack on the Equinix AI campus construction site in Meudon, France, in November 2025, claimed by a group he describes as an insurrectionary anarchist cell. Much of the opposition's measurable impact has come through conventional political and planning processes. Data Center Watch reported that local opposition disrupted at least 45 projects worth approximately $68 billion in the second quarter of 2026, down from a record 75 projects worth about $130 billion in the first. Its findings describe increasingly local, project-specific challenges involving permits, infrastructure and policy decisions.
The picture is therefore broader than a single movement escalating towards property destruction. Peaceful campaigning, electoral pressure, civil disobedience and separate acts of sabotage coexist.
The most consequential development may be the translation of opposition into electoral commitments. Bloomberg reported that newly elected governors in Ohio, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico and Texas campaigned on stopping or pausing data centre construction, while governors in New York and Oregon pledged to extend existing pauses. Cleanview estimated that roughly 40 percent of pending US capacity was located in states where incoming governors had promised restrictions. Local voting also points towards greater resistance. Ballotpedia's November 4 tally of 2026 votes recorded outcomes favouring restrictions in 46 of 47 decided data centre-related votes. Those outcomes included different kinds of measures and the rejection of pro-development proposals, rather than 46 newly enacted bans.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul had already ordered a pause of up to one year on July 14, by executive order, covering new data centre projects of 50 megawatts or more that still need state environmental permits. The order holds back discretionary environmental permits, exempts applications already deemed complete, and does not shut down existing facilities. Voters in Monterey Park, California, approved a ban in June; early returns showed 86 percent support, LA Public Press reported. Markets have also moved. On Thursday, November 5, the Nasdaq 100 fell 6.4 percent, erasing about $2.3 trillion in market value amid concern about the AI trade after the election, Bloomberg reported. It added that systematic trading strategies amplified the decline, so the fall cannot be pinned on data centre politics alone.
There were already reasons to question the announced construction pipeline. Bernstein estimated that roughly 35 percent of announced capacity in its analysis would ultimately be built. Bernstein analyst Madison Rezaei explained that confidence was lower in inexperienced developers that had yet to demonstrate their ability to deliver.
Microsoft told NOS it respected people's right to express their views peacefully but did not approve of actions that break the law or put people's safety at risk. Pure Data Centres said entering a live construction site was unlawful and dangerous, and urged protesters to leave and engage in dialogue. Amsterdam's own government has voiced reservations: alderman Alexander Scholtes (D66) told AT5 it was "highly undesirable" that the data centre would be entirely in the hands of a single large non-European company. EU technology chief Henna Virkkunen has argued for additional infrastructure, telling Reuters that Europe needs more data centres of its own, "built with care". The industry's defence is that data centres support services extending well beyond generative AI. In the Holland Times, Equinix Benelux director Michiel Eielts has emphasised their importance to internet access, businesses, public services and security. That argument explains why governments may favour conditions on development rather than permanent prohibitions.
Timing also matters. New York's order applies to new permits and exempts applications already deemed complete, so a moratorium need not immediately stop work already progressing through the construction pipeline. William Blair's Tim Mulrooney appeared on "Fast Money" on November 2, the day before the election, in a segment titled "Risk to data centers is smaller than headlines suggest".
Nevertheless, the opposition makes a slower, more contested and potentially more expensive expansion more likely. The question is how much capacity will be delayed, relocated or abandoned as those constraints tighten. The next tests are concrete: whether governors who campaigned on pauses act on them once in office, whether New York lifts or extends its pause once the state's environmental review is complete, and whether Amsterdam's grid allows Equinix to build beyond its first tower. In each case the fight is less about cranes and flares than about who gets the next megawatt.