As American communities grow weary of the hidden costs of digital infrastructure — rising electricity bills, strained water supplies, and the quiet transformation of their landscapes — Brazil's leading presidential candidates are racing toward the very thing U.S. voters are pushing away. In Latin America's largest economy, data centers have become a symbol of ambition rather than a source of grievance, with both Lula and Bolsonaro framing multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure investments as the surest path to modernity. What emerges is a quiet but consequential divergence in how societies are