As the artificial intelligence (AI) gold rush heads into its final stretch, the infrastructure driving it is hitting a profound social wall. What began two years ago as a wave of headline-grabbing announcements for massive hyperscale data centers quickly morphed into quiet murmurings of local discontent. Today, those murmurs have swelled into a deafening cacophony…
By Drew Robb Special Technology & Energy Report Executive Overview The rapid, relentless acceleration of artificial intelligence (AI) has triggered an unprecedented infrastructural bottleneck. Across the globe, data center power demands are soaring past historical baselines, projected to shatter the 200-gigawatt (GW) threshold by 2030. What was once a routine utility connection for a 20-to-40-megawatt…
Executive Overview A high-stakes federal-state showdown is unfolding as California prepares to accept $1.86 billion in federal broadband grants through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. This influx of capital—designed to bridge the digital divide by connecting hundreds of thousands of unserved and underserved homes—comes with a controversial regulatory caveat imposed by the…
