Country music legend Willie Nelson has publicly criticised plans to build a large AI data centre near his hometown of Abbott, Texas, warning it would harm the local community and environment. In an open letter posted to X, the 93-year-old singer, who owns a home and farmland in the area, described such facilities as "loud, water thieving, light polluting" and argued they threaten the rural character and farming livelihoods of small American towns.

Nelson, a longtime advocate for family farmers through his Farm Aid initiative, said rural America's strength lies in its people, open spaces and connection to the land rather than large industrial developments. His intervention comes amid a wider row in Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott has both promoted the state as an "epicentre" of AI development and, more recently, pushed for restrictions on data centres in rural areas to protect water and power supplies. A May Gallup poll cited in the article found seven in ten Americans oppose local data centre construction, reflecting the scale of public unease Nelson's letter taps into.