Power
power
Jon Keegan

White House executive order offers up federal sites for AI data centers

With only days left in his administration, President Biden issued another AI executive order as part of his effort to make development of the technology a national priority.

The new order directs the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense to identify federal sites owned by the agencies to lease to the private sector for building “gigawatt-scale AI data centers.”

In the announcement of the new order, President Biden wrote:

“We will not let America be out-built when it comes to the technology that will define the future, nor should we sacrifice critical environmental standards and our shared efforts to protect clean air and clean water.”

Microsoft is planning on investing about $40 billion on data centers in the US this fiscal year. The tech giant and its peers may now enjoy a smoother process in this build-out to facilitate the AI boom.

The order also calls for fast-tracking permitting these AI infrastructure projects, and even allows for “categorical exclusions” of environmental regulations for certain low-impact projects.

One of the most demanding parts of building out AI infrastructure is providing the incredible amount of energy required to run these projects. As part of the executive order, the DOE and DOD are ordered to facilitate hooking these new power-hungry data centers to the grid, and to help “catalyze deployment” of new clean-energy sources for the data centers.

The private developers who build infrastructure through this program are required to pay all costs associated with developing and running the facilities, and must ensure that local consumer energy prices don’t shoot up.

Statement by President Biden on the Executive Order on Advancing U.S. Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure | The White House

Statement by President Biden on the Executive Order on Advancing U.S. Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure | The White House

In the announcement of the new order, President Biden wrote:

“We will not let America be out-built when it comes to the technology that will define the future, nor should we sacrifice critical environmental standards and our shared efforts to protect clean air and clean water.”

Microsoft is planning on investing about $40 billion on data centers in the US this fiscal year. The tech giant and its peers may now enjoy a smoother process in this build-out to facilitate the AI boom.

The order also calls for fast-tracking permitting these AI infrastructure projects, and even allows for “categorical exclusions” of environmental regulations for certain low-impact projects.

One of the most demanding parts of building out AI infrastructure is providing the incredible amount of energy required to run these projects. As part of the executive order, the DOE and DOD are ordered to facilitate hooking these new power-hungry data centers to the grid, and to help “catalyze deployment” of new clean-energy sources for the data centers.

The private developers who build infrastructure through this program are required to pay all costs associated with developing and running the facilities, and must ensure that local consumer energy prices don’t shoot up.

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power
Jon Keegan

Trump’s deal offering top Nvidia chips to China was nixed at last minute, the WSJ reports

Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, really wants to sell the chipmaker’s most powerful Blackwell GPUs to China. He almost had his way.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, President Trump was ready to put Blackwell chips on the negotiating table for his meeting with Chinese President Xi to seek relief from China’s decision to block crucial rare earth exports to the US.

But according to the report, Trump advisers presented a unified front and were able to dissuade him from giving up the most powerful chips to China at the last minute. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were among those opposed to the chip deal. After the meeting, Trump said he did not talk with Xi about Nvidia’s “super duper” chips.

Reportedly those opposed to the deal cited national security concerns, as well as wanting to keep a competitive edge as China seeks to challenge the US’s current dominance of the AI industry.

Exclusive | Trump Officials Torpedoed Nvidia’s Push to Export AI Chips to China

Exclusive | Trump Officials Torpedoed Nvidia’s Push to Export AI Chips to China

But according to the report, Trump advisers presented a unified front and were able to dissuade him from giving up the most powerful chips to China at the last minute. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were among those opposed to the chip deal. After the meeting, Trump said he did not talk with Xi about Nvidia’s “super duper” chips.

Reportedly those opposed to the deal cited national security concerns, as well as wanting to keep a competitive edge as China seeks to challenge the US’s current dominance of the AI industry.

Walt Hickey
shutdown watch
10/21/25
Traders are getting more and more pessimistic about the government shutdown ending any time soon

The market expects the shutdown to last well into November.

The Capitol Building in Washington DC
Jon Keegan
10/10/25
OpenAI’s internal Slack messages could cost it billions in copyright suit

Authors and publishers suing OpenAI over copyright infringement were granted access to internal OpenAI communications about the deletion of a pirated books dataset, and now want to review attorney communications.

Frightened Man
Max Knoblauch
10/9/25
US corporate spending on private flights for executives has ballooned in recent years

The median expense spent by America’s largest companies on air travel jumped 66% from 2020 to 2024.

1990s Business man private jet
power
Claire Yubin Oh

OK, so when was the longest shutdown in US history?

The US government officially shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday after senators failed to agree on a last-minute funding bill. Though initially shrugging off the threat of a shutdown during yesterday’s session, stocks were mildly in the red on Wednesday as investors reacted to what is now the 11th shutdown in the government’s history.

Until this latest shutdown, there had been 20 government funding gaps experienced since 1976 — though not all ended in a full shutdown, with full closure averted in half of those cases.

Indeed, prior to the 1980s, funding gaps didn’t typically have major effects on government operations, with agencies continuing to operate on the basis that the funding would come eventually. However, a more stringent interpretation of the rules led to a stricter appropriations process from the early 1980s onward, with many subsequent funding gaps resulting in a shutdown of affected agencies (unless the gaps were quickly fixed or occurred over a weekend).

Obviously, the duration of the latest shutdown is still unclear, but it will continue until Congress passes a funding bill — most likely via a “continuing resolution,” which has ended every shutdown since 1990. Data analyzed by USAFacts suggest that it might not be a one- or two-day affair, as funding gaps have lengthened in recent years.

Government shutdown patterns
Sherwood News

Indeed, the last shutdown, which began in December 2018, ended up becoming the longest in history, at a whopping 34 days. By the time the government reopened in January 2019, about $3 billion (in 2019 dollars) had been wiped from the GDP in Q4, per data from the Congressional Budget Office, with approximately $18 billion in “federal discretionary spending” delayed over the roughly five-week stretch.

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