The cloud has an address. It has a power line, a substation, generators, batteries, pipes, cooling units, kilometres of fibre optic cable and land for all of it to sit on. The harder artificial intelligence is sold as an invisible technology, the more visible its physical side becomes - and that physical side is now knocking on the door in Macedonia.

The debate flared up around an initiative for a data centre in the fields of Pancharevo near Pehchevo, with talks between the government and Chris Pavlovski, the Canadian businessman of Macedonian origin behind Rumble, also in play. On 25 August the Council of the Municipality of Pehchevo unanimously rejected the initiative. Unanimously - a figure you rarely encounter in Macedonian local politics.

First requirement: electricity, and a lot of it

A data centre does not simply ask for "enough kilowatt-hours a year". It asks for high connected capacity, a stable grid, backup systems and a supply that must never cut out. That is exactly where the first problem lies for a country that imports electricity. What is a technical specification for the investor is, for the state, the question of whether it will import even more - and at what price.

The supply has to be uninterrupted, so multiple independent feeds from the grid, UPS systems and backup generators are used. Those generators, when they kick in, run on diesel. That is part of the bill you will not read about in the press releases announcing a new investment.

Second requirement: water for cooling

Servers produce an enormous amount of heat, and the cooling system is among the most important parts of the facility. In modern centres with powerful GPU systems for artificial intelligence, the cooling demands are higher still. There is no single figure that applies to every data centre - the volume of water depends on size, equipment density, the local climate and the chosen cooling system.

That is not an answer that closes the subject. It is the one that opens it. When an investment asks for water but cannot say in advance how much, the question of where that water will come from is left with the municipality - and with the people on the same water supply.

Third requirement: the location is part of the machine

Power and water get the attention, but without connectivity a data centre is a building with servers inside it. It needs high-capacity fibre links, several independent operators and physically separate routes, so that one cable being cut does not mean the service is cut. The location is also chosen for its exposure to floods, earthquakes and fires.

So the facility wants a stable grid, fibre routes, land, security and qualified staff. On paper Macedonia has a geographic position and a telecommunications infrastructure that make it interesting. But the big centres also want something harder: competitive electricity prices, appropriate regulation and a long-term guarantee of supply.

What does the place get in return?

This is the question heard least in the whole discussion. Around 12,000 data centres operate worldwide, and those specialised for artificial intelligence exist in only 32 countries. Here the subject opened as an offer, not as an analysis - the investment first, the bill afterwards.

Pehchevo did it the other way round, and that is precisely why the case is instructive. The council asked to know what was coming into the municipality before saying yes. That is not a rejection of technology. It is a rejection of a blank cheque. When a municipality says no unanimously, sooner or later somebody will have to answer what exactly was on offer.

A data centre wants a great deal of power, a way to get rid of the heat, fibre links, land and a workforce. But it also wants something no technical specification contains - trust. And trust does not get imported along with the servers.