Today: The pushback against Wyoming’s data center build is rising; Brazil becomes the new front to break China’s stranglehold over rare earths; Driverless trucks shipping your Doritos are coming to a road near you.

Welcome back: Twenty years ago, Stan and Tammy Higgins moved into a home in Cheyenne,Wyoming. From their back window, they saw grazing cattle, roaming antelope and coyotes on the prowl. Now that pastoral scene is gone, reports Joe Barrett for the WSJ.

Heavy trucks, earth movers and hundreds of construction workers have run nearly round-the-clock for about two years building a Meta Platforms data center. To the east, Microsoft recently announced plans to triple the acreage of its already sizable data complex. To the south, work is just getting started on Project Jade, which could one day be among the biggest data centers in the U.S.

Now comes the “man camp.” In America’s least populous state, companies must import armies of workers—and find somewhere to put them. So local officials are weighing a developer’s pitch to erect a “temporary workforce housing complex” for as many as 5,600 laborers and tradespeople. The complex would be larger than 84 of Wyoming’s incorporated cities and towns, according to state data.

America’s artificial-intelligence push is fueling a data-center boom and a backlash to match. Cheyenne shows what happens when the AI surge lands in a place with a critical labor and housing shortage. Leaders’ visions of a once-in-a-lifetime economic opportunity collide with longtime residents’ desire to hold on to their quiet way of life.

• The American Rebellion Against AI Is Gaining Steam (WSJ)

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Western companies are pouring money into Brazil’s rare-earth industry, hoping the South American nation can help loosen China’s grip on the minerals used in electric vehicles, wind turbines and advanced weapons.

Miners are racing to develop deposits across Brazil, which holds the world’s second-largest rare-earth reserves after China. But their ambitions extend beyond digging up ore, reports Samantha Pearson from Poços de Caldas for the WSJ. Companies and government officials say they want to build processing plants that can separate rare earths, produce metals and eventually manufacture magnets.

The realization of that ambition would represent a much bigger challenge to China. While Beijing holds roughly half of global rare-earth reserves, it controls more than 90% of processing and magnet production, giving it a dominating influence over global supply chains.

The push has turned Brazil into a focal point in the struggle between Washington and Beijing over critical minerals. The U.S. has been scouring the globe for rare earths, backing projects from Africa to Australia in an effort to loosen Beijing’s grip on the industry.

A 26,000-pound box truck loaded with Doritos and Frito-Lay chips rolls out of a distribution center, bound for a Walmart store about 4 miles away. It looks like any other truck, but there is no one at the wheel, Esther Fung reports for the Journal.

It’s one of the 35 driverless trucks PepsiCo is running on Arizona roads, marking it as the first major U.S. consumer-goods company to disclose the real-life, large-scale use of autonomous trucks on public roads. They’re traversing busy highways and local streets as they transport PepsiCo products between bottling plants, storage facilities and stores like Walmart and Dollar General.

Driverless trucks are more reliable than human drivers, according to Jim Farrell, senior vice president of supply chain at PepsiCo’s North American beverages division. The on-time arrival performance from driverless trucks reached 99%, after factoring out uncontrollable variables like weather and traffic.

• Energy giant TotalEnergies capped its prices at the pump, but only in France, amid calls for a windfall tax on its surging profits. (WSJ)
   
• US and Japanese banks significantly increased their fossil fuel financing last year, led by JPMorgan Chase. (FT)
   
• El Niño has formed across the equatorial Pacific, setting the stage for months of droughts, floods and temperature fluctuations. (Bloomberg)
   
• A scientist resigned from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, citing a lack of confidence in its governance structure. (Heatmap)
   
• The Iran war is pushing countries to prioritize domestic energy in order to protect themselves from volatile oil and natural gas markets. (NYT)
   
• Super-rich’s assets cause outsized amount of climate harm according to a new study from environmental NGO Greenpeace. (Guardian)

WSJ Pro Sustainable Business gives you an inside look at how companies are tackling sustainability. Send comments to bureau chief Perry Cleveland-Peck at perry.cleveland-peck@wsj.com and reporters Clara Hudson at clara.hudson@wsj.com and Yusuf Khan at yusuf.khan@wsj.com. Follow us on LinkedIn at wsjperry, clara-hudson and yusuf_khan.