The American Battlefield Trust and the Coalition to Protect Prince William County say they’re fighting to protect the battlefield area from “the permanent scars that the world’s largest data center development would inflict upon us.”


“The stories that we hear and the surveys we read about


the collapse of American education regarding history and civics are real,” he warns, adding that “the younger gen- eration needs to hear about these places any way they can. This is truly hallowed ground. In many cases, these battle- fields are still cemeteries.” Just one example: Manassas, site of the bloody Bull Run battlefields in Virginia where Union and Confederate forc- es traded blows again and again as the fate of the Nation’s Capital and the United States itself hung in the balance. The American Battlefield Trust and the Coalition to


Protect Prince William County say they’re fighting to pro- tect the battlefield area from “the permanent scars that the world’s largest data center development would inflict upon us.” One reason for the struggle: The little-known fact that


approximately 70% of the world’s internet traffic flows through a 6-mile-wide corridor in historic Northern Virginia.


The data industry’s mind-numbing storage require-


ments, combined with artificial intelligence’s unquench- able thirst for computer power and energy, have made every square mile of Northern Virginia real estate a sought- after commodity. Developers are offering tens of thousands of dollars


above market rate for homes and undeveloped land in the area. Some homeowner association leaders are digging in to fight the commercial onslaught. Other landowners, however, are ready to sell and move somewhere else. In 2023, the Prince William County Board of Supervi-


sors greenlighted a massive data center on the edge of the Manassas battlefield, rezoning over 1,700 acres to establish the Prince William Digital Gateway — a stunning daisy- chain corridor of 37 data centers projected to occupy some 27.6 million square feet of space. Upon completion, it would comprise the largest concen-


DECEMBER 2024 | NEWSMAX 39


CANNON/WIRESTOCK/GETTY IMAGES / DATA CENTER/AP IMAGES


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