Data Centers Have a New PR Plan: Your Kid’s Field Trip

Welcome back to Power Play! Each week, senior writer Molly Taft tackles a topic around this midterm season’s biggest issue: data centers. They’re out this week, so Caroline Haskins is reporting for duty. If you’ve got a question or thought for the column, feel free to shoot Caroline an email at [email protected] or reach her securely on Signal at carolinehaskins.61.The nonprofit 7x24 Exchange International wants to promote data centers, which they believe are "mission critical” infrastructure. As part of this work, the group recommends a children’s story, “What is a Data Center?,” which follows a honey badger named Honey who gets a guided tour of a data center from a worker named Oliver. Oliver explains that the job of data center employees is to make sure that the “functions supported by the data center” are available to anybody, “no matter what time it is.”"Like when my mom shops online late at night because my dad is sleeping and won't know about it?" Honey asks.The story is part of a broader pattern across the data center industry. In addition to lobbying, job creation programs, tax breaks, companies and interest groups are trying something a bit more creative: winning over the youth. As pushback to massive data center build-outs and energy-guzzling campuses intensifies, the industry is apparently taking a softer approach to community building using a tactic other industries with a public relations problem have tried.Alex Molnar, a research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and the director of the National Education Policy Center, tells WIRED that, for over a century, industries with an image problem—fast food, tobacco, oil and gas—have brought their messaging to schools.“A very, very big reason why corporations get involved in the schools is, quite simply, corporate propaganda—for the purpose not necessarily of selling a product, but of telling their ‘story,’” Molnar says.In May, the Potomac chapter of the Association for Computer Operations Management (AFCOM), a trade group for the data center industry, sponsored Memorial Day-themed flag-making kits to be distributed to 3,100 first graders across 37 schools in Loudoun County, Virginia, also known as Data Center Alley. In addition to the flag kits, kids received an informational card with statistics about “the positive impact” that the data center industry has on the local economy.Besides promoting heartwarming tales about how women can shop, 7x24 Exchange is also the brains behind a holiday it calls “International Data Center Day,” which is “designed to create awareness of the data center industry and inspire the next generation of talent.”The nonprofit encourages people to pitch the holiday to school administrators. For participating high schools, it offers a celebratory crossword puzzle and information about data center training programs. For elementary schools, it offers data center-themed coloring pages, instructions for an evaporation-themed science project, and print-out activities like “Draw a picture of the cloud" and “Draw a data superhero.” It also promotes several data center-themed books for young readers, including one in which two sisters visit a data center and meet a robot named JB and another that features two brothers who visit a "vibrant digital world" and save the internet. Then there’s “Polly Packet's Precious Payload,” which follows a mother who teaches her daughter about data centers.7x24 Exchange has also visited or organized at least a half-dozen K-12 events at schools across the country this year. In Minnesota, it brought Fridley High School students on a field trip to a local Cummins diesel power generation facility in order to learn about the “generators that power data centers worldwide.” (7x24 Exchange, Cummins, and Fridley High School did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.)The nonprofit is far from the only organization sponsoring school activities that are friendly to data centers. WIRED’s tally of public blogs and social media posts found that, since 2025, at least eleven companies and industry groups have hosted student field trips to local data centers.Sabey, a company that runs seven US data centers, has hosted a number of field trips for Washington-based high schoolers, including one in May for Eastmont High School students, one in January for Manson School District students, and another last October for Quincy High School students.Manson School District publicized the trip in a blog post showing what appears to be adults and students in a conference room. The image labeled us “AI-generated content,” though, and several people in the photo have missing limbs. The blog says that students learned about “the role data centers play in storing, processing, and protecting information” and “the wide range of careers” in the data center industry.Quincy School District communications coordinator Jessica Blancas tells WIRED that the district “has organized data center visits for many years” at the facilities of companies like Microsoft, Vantage, Yahoo, and Sabey. She described the latter company as a “long-standing” district partner, citing its consistent work offering “guest speakers,” “mock interviews,” and “internship opportunities.”Blancas adds that the district has organized “all-girls visits to Sabey,” as well as tours for students who intend to go into specific fields like construction or engineering. (Manson School District and Sabey did not respond for comment.)Amazon, meanwhile, hosted a field trip last February at its Arlington, Virginia, “Skills Center,” a free community space for anyone “curious about cloud computing and future job possibilities.” It was open to any high school in the DC metro area, though Jackson-Reed High School was the only one to attend.Molnar says he doesn’t get what’s in it for kids. “Why would a third grader be interested in a data center?” he says.“You're going to see miles after miles of the most boring things imaginable,” he adds. “Lines after lines of these servers generating enormous volumes of heat. You're also going to hear some fair amount of noise. And you're not going to see many people because not many people work there when they're built.”It’s common for companies to sow goodwill through public outreach, and as tech companies have reckoned with the backlash to data centers, these field trips are taking place in an increasingly fraught environment.A Pew Research poll conducted over the summer found that about half of the 10,000 Americans surveyed see data centers as “mostly bad” for the environment and quality of life, and across the country, an ideologically diverse cohort has started rallying against them. In some places, the negative sentiment toward local data centers has been amplified by their proximity to local schools.Providing educational materials and offering field trips are ways that industries can maintain their social license to operate in a community. The data center sector is, in many ways, following the playbook other industries have to sow goodwill with children as well as their parents. The oil and gas industry has sponsored university research projects and STEM programs in K-12 schools. The tech world has similarly funded STEM programs, as well as advocated for in-school coding programs while lobbying to make computer science count as a science credit.Fossil fuel companies have also spent millions of dollars developing K-12 lessons with pro-industry talking points, particularly in states like Oklahoma and Texas.Molnar believes this kind of corporate influence shouldn’t be allowed because kids are “in an absolutely powerless position.” Kids “need to be protected” by their school districts and communities, he says.“As an adult, I have access to alternative information—I have a critical ability to assess what I'm hearing, and to render some kind of judgments,” Molnar says. “None of that is true of children.”What We’re WritingData centers may be for kids, but some of the products that rely on their server racks sure aren’t. When Meta launched Muse, it looked like a cute little AI agent for the masses. But my colleague Reece Rogers recently discovered that Muse has a naughty side. When Reece asked Muse if it was able to sext, it told him to “shoot your shot.” Reece did, and Muse was receptive. Enthusiastic, even! We published the chat logs—well, the PG-13 ones since WIRED is a family site, after all—and Reece spoke to consumer advocates who were alarmed at Muse’s sexy demeanor.Meta, for its part, says this is all part of the plan. “Muse is an app for people 18 and over that allows them to engage in adult conversations, if they choose, using a private and secure VM only accessible to them,” company spokesperson Daniel Roberts told Reece. So if that’s your thing, have at it!What We’re ReadingMaine’s senate race was not on our data center midterms to watch, but apparently it should’ve been! Thursday’s debate between incumbent Republican Susan Collins and Democratic challenger Troy Jackson was interrupted by a protester yelling about the environmental impact of data centers. Collins tried to use the moment to score points as the more anti-data center candidate, though her finances might indicate otherwise.CoreWeave has been on a wild ride this week as the bonds it sells to finance its data centers have seen wild selloff and corresponding stock drop. Though there’s been a slight recovery to end the week, it reflects increasing skittishness around the data center buildout. Bloomberg also reports that CoreWeave’s founders have sold $3.3 billion in stock since the company went public.Westfield, Massachusetts, killed a $3 billion data center project, boston.com reports. The small western Massachusetts town’s planning board pilloried developer Servistar for missing deadlines and being slow to develop the project.