‘The digital colonization of flyover states’: how datacenters are tearing small-town America apart. We’re dealing with our own version of the situation here in the Waco area. The first common thread is the contempt the techbros have for any resistance. They make no attempt to win hearts and minds; they just try to trample everyone in their path. The second common thread is their ceaseless lying about water use: a new data center about 30 miles from me denies that it will be using any water from Lake Whitney. It is, we are told, pure coincidence that the data center happens to be located on the lakeshore.