they just want data centers now. most companies would rather use solar, but they can't on short timelines due to land use regulations (and import tariffs)

And if they put them in the middle of nowhere, I don't see why there's a problem.

What I don't understand is putting these things in populated areas.

Would you like to work in the middle of nowhere?

After construction, not all that many people work at a data center. Some ops staff, maybe a small security team.

So let's spit on those 'not so many people' from our ivory tower?

Besides, it's not about people, it's about power. Pulling a few MW into middle of nowhere is prohibitively expensive.

If they can be deployed in low-earth orbit with nobody working on them, they can be deployed 20 miles east of Bumfuck, Nebraska with nobody working on them.

The physical threat model of the Nebraska option does not rely on the tyranny of the rocket to keep intruders away.

The point is that if you don't put them in the middle of somebody's neighborhood, nobody will care to attack them.

The idea of building robust, lightly-staffed technical facilities in obscure places all over the country is nothing even remotely new. It's how the long-distance telephone network was constructed and successfully operated in the decades before satellites took over: https://telephoneworld.org/long-distance-companies/att-long-...

30 minutes outside of the suburbs doesn't sound like an awful commute.