Interior gave BLM three days to flag public land for AI data centers
The Interior Department asked Bureau of Land Management state directors to identify public land "ripe for data center development," with leaders given just three days to compile lists for Interior, Eric Katz and Mara Hoplamazian at the Washington Sun report, citing two people familiar with the request. The story ran Sep. 11, 2026.
A former BLM official told the paper Interior called the inventory a top priority. The Bureau of Land Management is the agency that manages most federal public land in the West. A data center here means a warehouse-scale building packed with servers that train and run AI models, the kind towns have been fighting in their own backyards.
The ask follows a Trump executive order last year that told agencies to accelerate data-center permitting, including identifying federal land. A recent budget blueprint presses BLM to refocus on aiding AI data-center buildout even as further staff cuts are proposed.
Secretary Doug Burgum has been meeting the companies that would fill those acres. His calendar last year included dozens of tech and energy executives. Among them: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy last spring, on permitting, infrastructure, and technology "to support data center growth."
Also Bechtel on AI data-center design and build, NextEra in a $100 billion DOE-site project context, Shell, Chevron, Exxon, BP, Baker Hughes, and SpaceX's Gwynne Shotwell on a space data-center pitch.
Burgum calls data centers "intelligence factories." Interior spokesperson Aubrie Spady says he leads the National Energy Dominance Council and engages energy companies and partners. A hyperscaler is a giant cloud or AI company that builds those factories at industrial scale.
The local fight is the point. When a town or county says no to a server farm, federal acres become the backup lot. That is the public-trust turn: land held for the public getting queued for private AI compute on a three-day clock.
Former BLM state director Mary Jo Rugwell of the Public Lands Foundation put it this way: "I think we're just bending knee to the tech oligarchs…" One former official cited 50% vacancy rates in land and realty divisions in their state.
Remote sites often lack electricity and water. Staff expertise gaps sit next to the vacancies.
The administration has not completed environmental reviews for data centers on public lands. An environmental review, often under NEPA, is the study usually required before big federal projects move.
Boulder City, Nevada, saw an approval halted by a judge over reuse of a solar study. Silver Springs, Nevada, testing was approved without full reviews. The National Park Service has been considering a 36-acre land swap at Prince William Forest Park in Virginia.
No signed site list has been released to the public. The Washington Sun story rests on anonymous sources plus calendar reconstruction. What is public is the mechanism: Interior asked for lists, set a three-day deadline, and framed the work as a priority while reviews lag and staffing thins.
Public land was never a blank spreadsheet for rack density. Three days to map it for intelligence factories is the tell that the local veto is being routed around, not answered.