The “Meta”morphosis of Kuna, Idaho

by Matthew W.G.

In the era of AI proliferation, the absurdities of the neoliberal turn in capitalism have brought us to the precipice of a dark new world. In Kuna, Idaho, an emblematic aspect of that new world will soon be a reality. The building of two large data centers in the rural Idaho town represents the culmination of a decades-long four-pronged race to the bottom in the management of capitalist interests: 1) ever more outrageous incentives offered by state and local governments for outside industries to move to their territories, 2) the pervasive domination of our leisure time by a predatory attention economy, 3) regulatory capture of environmental policies ostensibly enacted to promote renewable energy, and finally 4) the obsolescence of human labor through AI automation.

For those who grew up along the I-84 corridor in the Treasure Valley during the last thirty years, the small farming town of Kuna was likely the site of grade-school field trips to see the birds of prey along the Snake River and teenaged indiscretions at the infamous Kuna Caves. In 2010 there were just 15,000 residents living in Kuna, but over the decade that followed the population nearly doubled and has continued to rise. When Meta, the multi-billion dollar tech giant, announced in 2022 that Kuna would be the site of its next data center, that growth exploded, accompanied by rampant speculation on farmland and real estate.

The Meta data center, which is scheduled for completion in late 2026, will sit on 620 acres of farmland with the data center structure itself being almost a million square feet. The construction contract was awarded to the out-of-state firm Hansel Phelps for $800,000,000[1]. The facility will require approximately 20 megawatts of power (at least half of which it will pull from the Idaho power grid) and 1-5 million gallons of water per day[2] drawn from a new well drilled into the aquifer. With a little known (and oddly specific) 2020 Idaho tax cut[3], Meta will be able to purchase all of the data center equipment for its facility in Idaho without paying any sales tax, and a “renewable energy tariff” policy will allow Meta to get massive amounts of electricity from Idaho Power for free[4].

For all this, Meta has pledged a one-time $500,000 donation to the local Kuna school district for athletics and technology and promised that the new facility will bring 100+ jobs to the area[5]. Claims that the center will be “water positive” and that it is bringing more renewable energy to Idaho require important qualifications. It will not be water positive when it opens, but with technology that is still in development, may be able to be water positive by 2030[6]. What, if anything, will happen if it can’t meet this goal is unclear. The promised influx of renewable energy will actually power the data center and, once in place, makes the data center eligible for an electricity matching program from Idaho Power that will result in massive amounts of free power for Meta. Let’s be frank, this is an unbelievably sweet deal for Meta.

In fact, the allure of Kuna for data centers is so sweet that in early 2025 Diode Ventures announced plans to build another data center of comparable size and capacity right down the road from Meta’s[7]. This time, the acreage for the data center was purchased from former Kuna mayor, Duane Yamamoto, shortly before he passed away in early 2025. At the time of the sale his wife cited looming health costs as one reason for their decision to sell[8].

Here are the facts: When these data centers are complete, Idaho Power will be providing 40 megawatts (possibly more) of additional power to the grid (enough for a town of 40,000 people)  without substantially increasing its income. Somewhere between 2 and 10 million gallons of water will be leaving the aquifer every day, and all Meta and Diode will have to pay for that water is the cost of the energy it takes to pump it out of the ground. Millions of dollars in taxable sales will have taken place without increasing the revenue of the state. Nearly $2,000,000,000 will have been spent in construction costs—a dollar amount that could accomplish a major infrastructure project in the Treasure Valley such as a mass transit system. 1,200 acres of farmland will be lost (not to mention the residential development that will surely follow). The town of Kuna will be changed forever, and it is certain that the current residents will experience a substantial increase in their cost of living—an increase that is likely to push many of them out of the community.

While these data centers have been in the works, Meta has been busy defending itself (and losing) in a major lawsuit alleging it used UX designs it knew were addictive and harmful to children (a laughably obvious claim at this point). Time will only tell if the company’s appeal of the ruling will be successful, but if it isn’t, Meta will be required to pay $4 million in damages. This sum is pittance for the titan of tech with yearly capital expenditures in the hundreds of billions[9].

Although the hard facts of resource exploitation represented by the Kuna data centers may seem extreme, it is not a new or unique story in the history of capitalism. What pushes this story over into a new dark absurdity is that even the jobs these multi-billion dollar companies claim to be bringing to the area are jobs working to make other jobs obsolete. And to add to that insult, they are jobs that will be filled by workers who were targeted as children to keep their attention always on the social feed of their future employer—to suck the joys of childhood into one of the most efficient profit machines in human history.

One can imagine a Kafkaesque scene in which a worker drives to Meta’s Kuna data center every day, working a mind numbing job only to come home and spend every evening compulsively scrolling through content on one of Meta’s platforms. One day the worker arrives at their job to find that the work they’ve been doing has been automated by the very product of that work. They drive home in a blazing climate-change-induced heat and turn on the faucet in their kitchen to quench a growing thirst, but instead of water, a dead roach falls from the faucet into the faux-marble sink of their mass-manufactured CBH home.

For Democratic Socialists with an eye to the interests of the working class and no regard for the capitalists who put us in this absurd situation, the solutions to this emerging nightmare are obvious and myriad. For the residents of Kuna, the downsides to the building of the gargantuan data centers in their quiet little town were personal and obvious from the beginning. By the time the second data center was in the works, hundreds of Kuna residents showed up to the city council meeting to oppose moving forward[10]. But small towns and lower income states like Idaho have always been especially vulnerable to exploitation for the same reason that peripheral countries in the global capitalist economy are: we just have very little power to resist. Now, more than ever, the working class in Idaho must be conscious of itself as a class with shared interests so we can band together when the capitalist machine starts churning its gears to grind up our members. An organized working class movement could have stopped the construction of the data centers in Kuna and diverted resources to the kinds of project we actually want to see here in the Treasure Valley. But for now it seems that the Kuna data centers will be another loss to the capitalist class—one more cautionary tale about the dangers faced by the working class in the absence of an organized working class movement.

Notes

[1] Salinas, Javier Contreras. “Meta, Formerly the Facebook Company, Awards Hensel Phelps Kuna Data Center.” Hensel Phelps. January 6, 2025. https://www.henselphelps.com/meta-formerly-the-facebook-company-awards-hensel-phelps-kuna-data-center/.

[2] Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI). “Data Centers and Water Consumption.” June 5, 2025. https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption.

[3] Idaho Commerce. 2026. “Data Center Sales Tax Exemption - Idaho Commerce.” January 20, 2026. https://commerce.idaho.gov/incentives/data-center-sales-tax-exemption/.

[4] “Clean Energy Your Way – Flexible Option”. Idaho Power. March 27, 2026. https://www.idahopower.com/energy-environment/green-choices/clean-energy-your-way/clean-energy-for-your-home/.

[5] Meta. “Meta’s Kuna Data Center.” nd. https://datacenters.atmeta.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Meta_s-Kuna-Data-Center.pdf.

[6] Graham Mann. “Hot Topic: What Is Water Neutrality?” Smart Water Magazine, March 8, 2022. https://smartwatermagazine.com/blogs/graham-mann/hot-topic-what-water-neutrality.

[7] “Diode Ventures Plans 620-acre Data Center Park in Kuna, Idaho.” 2026. DCD. April 14, 2026. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/diode-ventures-plans-620-acre-data-center-park-in-kuna-idaho/.

[8] Sydney Kidd. “Large Data Center Planned on 620 Acres in Kuna, With Dollars Earmarked for Schools, Fire, Police.” BoiseDev, January 29, 2025. https://boisedev.com/news/2025/01/29/diode-ventures-kuna-data-center/.

[9] Chmielewski, Dawn, Courtney Rozen, and Jody Godoy. “Meta, Google Lose US Case Over Social Media Harm to Kids.” Reuters, March 26, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/jury-reaches-verdict-meta-google-trial-social-media-addiction-2026-03-25/.

[10] Abby Davis. “‘Frustrated With the Process’: Kuna Community Reacts to New Data Center Approval.” Ktvb.Com, April 4, 2025. https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/local/kuna-community-reacts-new-data-center-approval/277-3785f039-7a80-405d-9dc9-988037c89174.