Trump Pushes AI Data Centers on Public Land as Big Tech Reaps Billions in Tax Breaks

The Trump administration is considering construction of at least a dozen artificial intelligence data centers on thousands of acres of public land across six Western states, reporting revealed Friday, while a separate analysis found that Big Tech is receiving tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks for AI investments they were already likely to make.

The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is reviewing proposals for at least 12 data centers and related infrastructure projects on 17,600 acres of public land across Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming, according to an investigation published Friday by The Washington Sun's Mara Hoplamazian and Jade Lozada. Many of the proposals had not previously been publicly reported.

The Sun's report came on the heels of an Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) analysis published Thursday that found that five major technology companies—Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle—received approximately $70 billion in federal tax breaks in 2025.

Matthew Gardner, who authored the ITEP analysis, wrote that "AI leaders have acknowledged that the demand from other companies for data centers is 'insatiable,' suggesting that the tax breaks are a windfall rewarding Big Tech companies for building what they would build anyway."

According to Gardner:

Few investments in the American economy look less in need of encouragement right now than the hundreds of billions of dollars the world’s largest technology companies are already racing to spend on AI. And it’s hard to think of an investment that American taxpayers value less: Polling shows that Americans dislike data centers, distrust AI, and are concerned about the economic and environmental effects it may bring.

At the same time, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has directed BLM officials to identify federal lands "ripe for data center development," according to the Sun. State BLM officials were reportedly given only three days to compile lists, with the effort described as a "top priority."

Burgum has also been meeting with Big Tech executives about accelerating data center development, an effort stemming from an executive order President Donald Trump signed in July 2025 directing the federal government to identify lands that could be used for data centers.

Mary Jo Rugwell, president of the Public Lands Foundation—a nonprofit advocacy group—and a former BLM state director, recently accused the Trump administration of “bending [the] knee to the tech oligarchs and letting them do whatever they need to do” without adequate consideration for the impact of data centers on public lands.

Environmentalists warn that building on public land would help tech companies skirt growing public opposition to data centers, which is increasingly transcending the political divide. It would also have outsized consequences for Western states where public lands comprise a disproportionate share of total land area.

“In Oregon, this would be a really bad precedent,” Ben Brint , the senior climate program director at the Oregon Environmental Council, told the Sun. “Some very large percentage of the state is public lands, and if we’re starting to allow that, that’s large swaths of the state that really could be at risk of further development.”