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George Osborne has added a sharper sovereignty argument to his call for Britain to approve more data centres, saying the country could lose control over where its AI infrastructure is built. Speaking at the Big Brue festival in Somerset, the OpenAI executive said comparable facilities were being built in US states including Ohio, Georgia and Michigan while British projects faced local opposition.

Osborne said that if Britain did not allow the facilities to be built, they would be built elsewhere, leaving the UK with less control over the physical location of the infrastructure supporting AI. The Guardian reports that protests have taken place in London, Devon and outside Holyrood in Edinburgh, with opponents raising concerns about landscape, jobs, housing, water use and energy demand.

The argument lands in a live policy dispute. The UK government has classified AI data centres as critical national infrastructure to speed development, while the Green Party in England has called for a building moratorium. Cambridge researcher Verity Harding told The Guardian that public anger reflects wider unease about who controls the technology and its impact, rather than opposition to server buildings alone.

Sources and evidence

• George Osborne says datacentre nimbys holding back Britain – The Guardian: George Osborne argues that UK opposition to data-centre construction could move AI infrastructure abroad and reduce Britain's control over the physical location of its AI capacity; the UK government has designated AI data centres as critical national infrastructure, while opponents cite environmental and community costs.

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