Why Osborne Says Data Centre Delays Could Cost Britain Control of AI
George Osborne says opposition to data-centre building is holding Britain back and could leave the United Kingdom dependent on the United States for technology. The Guardian
What Osborne said
He spoke in Somerset at the Big Brue festival on the Sunday before 22 September 2026. Osborne was Britain's chancellor in David Cameron's cabinet and now works for OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.
Osborne was appointed managing director and head of OpenAI's "OpenAI for Countries" initiative. Reuters In that role he leads OpenAI's Stargate data-centre buildout outside the United States.
His argument links planning permission, the approval needed to build, to geopolitical capacity, a country's ability to act on its own. He said data centres are being built in Ohio, Georgia and Michigan in the US. He also says Canada has the energy and land for OpenAI data centres. The Next Web
OpenAI paused its British data-centre project in April. The pause was over the cost of energy. The warning was blunt. Build domestic compute, the processing power used to train and run AI models, think factory floor space for AI, or depend on compute built elsewhere.
The debate in Britain
The domestic policy setting is contested. The UK government has classified AI data centres as critical national infrastructure, a formal label for systems seen as essential to the country. The Green party in England has called for a moratorium, a temporary halt, on building AI data centres. Protests about data centres have occurred in central London, in Devon and outside Holyrood in Edinburgh.
Verity Harding is head of the AI and geopolitics project at Cambridge University's Bennett School for Public Policy. Her programme sits squarely in the field Osborne was addressing, where questions of infrastructure, state capacity and technological dependence overlap.
What to watch next
The broader context here is the way compute has entered sovereignty debates. The issue is not only megawatts and planning consents. It is where models are trained and run, under which jurisdiction, on whose grid, and with what recourse if access is constrained. Osborne is framing local opposition as a national constraint with external effects.
Looking at what this means for Britain, the tension is structural. Classification as critical national infrastructure gives data centres formal policy weight. A moratorium call pulls in the opposite direction. Protests in London, Devon and Edinburgh point to localised objections over land, energy and environmental impact. Energy cost, cited for the April pause, adds an economic filter on top of the planning filter.
In my view, the comparison Osborne draws deserves careful handling. Ohio, Georgia, Michigan and Canada are presented as places where energy and land allow buildout to proceed. The UK case turns on different variables, including grid pricing, planning timelines and political tolerance for large-scale infrastructure. Whether those variables can be aligned without overriding local consent is the policy question to watch. The next signals will be planning decisions, energy pricing moves and whether paused projects resume or shift permanently.
