The Download: introducing the Crime issue

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The Download: introducing the Crime issue

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Introducing: the Crime issue Technology has long made crime and its prosecution a game of cat and mouse. But those same new technologies that have allowed crime to outpace law have also reenergized law enforcement and government—offering new ways to root out crime, to gather evidence, to surveil people. That tension is the key to our new March/April issue. Thanks to technologies like cryptocurrency and off-the-shelf autonomous autopilots, there’s never been a better time to do crime. And thanks to pervasive surveillance and digital infrastructure, there’s never been a better time to fight it—sometimes at the expense of what we used to think of as fundamental civil rights. Here’s a sneak peek at what you can expect: + The fascinating story of what happened when cyber security researcher Allison Nixon decided to track down the mysterious online figures threatening to kill her. Read the full story.+ AI is already making online crimes easier, but those reports of AI-powered superhacks are seriously overblown. Here’s why. + Welcome to the dark side of crypto’s permissionless dream. + Chicago is home to a vast monitoring system to track its residents, including tens of thousands of surveillance cameras. But while law enforcement claims it’s necessary to protect public safety, privacy activists have likened it to a surveillance panopticon. Read the full story. + Modern thieves are stealing luxury cars right from under their manufacturers’ and owners’ noses. But how are they doing it?+ How uncrewed narco submarines are poised to shake up how drug smugglers attempt to evade law enforcement. + How innovative conservationists are using tech to fight back against wildlife traffickers—including by turning rhinos radioactive. Why 2026 is the year for sodium-ion batteries Sodium-based batteries could be a cheaper, safer alternative to lithium-ion, and the technology is finally making its way into cars—and energy storage arrays on the grid.They’re also one of MIT Technology Review’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2026, and we’re holding a subscriber-only Roundtables discussion to explain why. Join our science editor Mary Beth Griggs, senior climate reporter Casey Crownhart and China reporter Caiwei Chen to explore the present moment for sodium-ion batteries—and what’s coming next. We’ll be going live at 1pm ET this afternoon—register now! The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 The Pentagon has given Anthropic an ultimatumEither provide the US military with full access to Claude, or face the consequences. (Axios)+ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has threatened to cut ties. (WSJ $)+ In turn, Anthropic has allegedly refused to ease military restrictions. (Reuters)2 Meta has signed a major chip deal with AMDJust days after it committed to using millions of Nvidia chips to power its AI ambitions. (CNBC) 3 How Jeffrey Epstein infiltrated Microsoft’s upper ranksHe was privy to confidential insider discussions about internal politics and gave advice on the line of CEO succession. (NYT $)+ A smash-hit podcast about the Epstein files is entirely AI-generated. (Fast Company $) 4 Chatbot-assisted cheating is just a part of student lifeTeenagers are regularly asking for—and may grow dependent on—AI’s assistance. (WP $)+ You need to talk to your kid about AI. Here are 6 things you should say. (MIT Technology Review) 5 How Ukraine built an entire drone industry from scratch And hopes to sell its expertise to Western allies once the war is over. (New Scientist $)+ Europe’s drone-filled vision for the future of war. (MIT Technology Review)6 The FDA has removed a warning against ineffective autism treatmentsThe page urged Americans not to fall for alternative remedies including chlorine dioxide. (Undark) 7 Solar power is going from strength to strength in the USUsage was up 35% last year in comparison to the previous year. (Ars Technica) 8 How big is infinity?Maybe one size doesn’t fit all. (Quanta Magazine) 9 Warning: someone near you is wearing smartglassesThat’s the premise behind new app Nearby Glasses, which detects the devices’ Bluetooth signals. (404 Media) 10 Uber employees run ideas past an AI version of their CEOVery good, very normal. (Insider $)+ Synthesia’s AI clones are more expressive than ever. Soon they’ll be able to talk back. (MIT Technology Review) Quote of the day “This has nothing to do with mass surveillance and autonomous weapons being used.” —A senior defense official tells the Washington Post that the Pentagon hasn’t proposed using any of Anthropic’s AI tools in ways that aren’t lawful, after the department threatened to force the company to share its technology. One more thing These scientists are working to extend the life span of pet dogs—and their ownersMatt Kaeberlein is what you might call a dog person. He has grown up with dogs and describes his German shepherd, Dobby, as “really special.” But Dobby is 14 years old—around 98 in dog years.Kaeberlein is co-director of the Dog Aging Project, an ambitious research effort to track the aging process of tens of thousands of companion dogs across the US. He is one of a handful of scientists on a mission to improve, delay, and possibly reverse that process to help them live longer, healthier lives.And dogs are just the beginning. One day, this research could help to prolong the lives of humans. Read the full story. —Jessica Hamzelou We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + As if dinosaur eggs weren’t cool enough, it turns out they’re also a pretty handy aging indicator for other fossils.+ This week would have marked Steve Jobs’ 71st birthday. His Stanford Commencement Address is still one of the best.+ I need to play Capybara Simulator immediately: a game in which you can become a capybara.+ Good news everyone—it looks like we’ve avoided a bananapocalypse 🍌

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Introducing: the Crime issue

Technology has long made crime and its prosecution a game of cat and mouse. But those same new technologies that have allowed crime to outpace law have also reenergized law enforcement and government—offering new ways to root out crime, to gather evidence, to surveil people.

That tension is the key to our new March/April issue. Thanks to technologies like cryptocurrency and off-the-shelf autonomous autopilots, there’s never been a better time to do crime. And thanks to pervasive surveillance and digital infrastructure, there’s never been a better time to fight it—sometimes at the expense of what we used to think of as fundamental civil rights.

Here’s a sneak peek at what you can expect:

+ The fascinating story of what happened when cyber security researcher Allison Nixon decided to track down the mysterious online figures threatening to kill her. Read the full story.

+ AI is already making online crimes easier, but those reports of AI-powered superhacks are seriously overblown. Here’s why.

+ Welcome to the dark side of crypto’s permissionless dream.

+ Chicago is home to a vast monitoring system to track its residents, including tens of thousands of surveillance cameras. But while law enforcement claims it’s necessary to protect public safety, privacy activists have likened it to a surveillance panopticon. Read the full story.

+ Modern thieves are stealing luxury cars right from under their manufacturers’ and owners’ noses. But how are they doing it?

+ How uncrewed narco submarines are poised to shake up how drug smugglers attempt to evade law enforcement.

+ How innovative conservationists are using tech to fight back against wildlife traffickers—including by turning rhinos radioactive.

Why 2026 is the year for sodium-ion batteries

Sodium-based batteries could be a cheaper, safer alternative to lithium-ion, and the technology is finally making its way into cars—and energy storage arrays on the grid.

They’re also one of MIT Technology Review‘s 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2026, and we’re holding a subscriber-only Roundtables discussion to explain why. Join our science editor Mary Beth Griggs, senior climate reporter Casey Crownhart and China reporter Caiwei Chen to explore the present moment for sodium-ion batteries—and what’s coming next.

We’ll be going live at 1pm ET this afternoon—register now!

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The Pentagon has given Anthropic an ultimatum
Either provide the US military with full access to Claude, or face the consequences. (Axios)
+ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has threatened to cut ties. (WSJ $)
+ In turn, Anthropic has allegedly refused to ease military restrictions. (Reuters)

2 Meta has signed a major chip deal with AMD
Just days after it committed to using millions of Nvidia chips to power its AI ambitions. (CNBC)

3 How Jeffrey Epstein infiltrated Microsoft’s upper ranks
He was privy to confidential insider discussions about internal politics and gave advice on the line of CEO succession. (NYT $)
+ A smash-hit podcast about the Epstein files is entirely AI-generated. (Fast Company $)

4 Chatbot-assisted cheating is just a part of student life
Teenagers are regularly asking for—and may grow dependent on—AI’s assistance. (WP $)
+ You need to talk to your kid about AI. Here are 6 things you should say. (MIT Technology Review)

5 How Ukraine built an entire drone industry from scratch
And hopes to sell its expertise to Western allies once the war is over. (New Scientist $)
+ Europe’s drone-filled vision for the future of war. (MIT Technology Review)

6 The FDA has removed a warning against ineffective autism treatments
The page urged Americans not to fall for alternative remedies including chlorine dioxide. (Undark)

7 Solar power is going from strength to strength in the US
Usage was up 35% last year in comparison to the previous year. (Ars Technica)

8 How big is infinity?
Maybe one size doesn’t fit all. (Quanta Magazine)

9 Warning: someone near you is wearing smartglasses
That’s the premise behind new app Nearby Glasses, which detects the devices’ Bluetooth signals. (404 Media)

10 Uber employees run ideas past an AI version of their CEO
Very good, very normal. (Insider $)
+ Synthesia’s AI clones are more expressive than ever. Soon they’ll be able to talk back. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“This has nothing to do with mass surveillance and autonomous weapons being used.”

—A senior defense official tells the Washington Post that the Pentagon hasn’t proposed using any of Anthropic’s AI tools in ways that aren’t lawful, after the department threatened to force the company to share its technology.

One more thing

These scientists are working to extend the life span of pet dogs—and their owners

Matt Kaeberlein is what you might call a dog person. He has grown up with dogs and describes his German shepherd, Dobby, as “really special.” But Dobby is 14 years old—around 98 in dog years.

Kaeberlein is co-director of the Dog Aging Project, an ambitious research effort to track the aging process of tens of thousands of companion dogs across the US. He is one of a handful of scientists on a mission to improve, delay, and possibly reverse that process to help them live longer, healthier lives.

And dogs are just the beginning. One day, this research could help to prolong the lives of humans. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)

+ As if dinosaur eggs weren’t cool enough, it turns out they’re also a pretty handy aging indicator for other fossils.
+ This week would have marked Steve Jobs’ 71st birthday. His Stanford Commencement Address is still one of the best.
+ I need to play Capybara Simulator immediately: a game in which you can become a capybara.
+ Good news everyone—it looks like we’ve avoided a bananapocalypse 🍌

Stay Ahead

Explore More Insights

Stay ahead with more perspectives on cutting-edge power, infrastructure, energy, bitcoin and AI solutions. Explore these articles to uncover strategies and insights shaping the future of industries.

From packets to prompts: What Cisco’s AITECH certification means for IT pros

Cisco positions the AITECH learning path as a bridge from “traditional knowledge-based work” to innovation-driven roles augmented by AI, explicitly targeting professionals who need to design technical solutions, automate tasks, and lead teams using modern AI tools and methodologies. The curriculum spans AI-assisted code generation, AI-driven data analysis, model customization (including RAG),

HPE’s latest Juniper routers target large‑scale AI fabrics

The three new models give customers several options for configurations and throughput capacity, but they all share support for the same deep buffers, security, and optics for AI network fabric buildouts, Francis said. In addition to the new hardware, HPE added new AI support, including a Model Context Protocol (MCP)

New Relic connects observability platform to business outcomes

Industry watchers believe that vision will take some time to become a reality across enterprise organizations. “Every organization is a snowflake in its adoption curve and readiness timeline,” says Stephen Elliot, global group vice president at IDC. “IT behavioral change is one of the most underreported requirements for agentic AI

Pure Storage becomes Everpure, acquires 1touch

Other recent research confirms this. In an October Cisco survey of over 8,000 AI leaders, only 35% of companies have clean, centralized data with real-time integration for AI agents. And by 2027, according to IDC, companies that don’t prioritize high-quality, AI-ready data will struggle scaling gen AI and agentic solutions,

Energy Department Announces Largest Loan in Department History, Delivering Over $7 Billion in Electricity Cost Savings for Georgia and Alabama Customers

WASHINGTON—U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright today announced the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF) has closed a historic $26.5 billion loan package to deliver over $7 billion in electricity cost savings to millions of customers in Georgia and Alabama. In accordance with President Trump’s Executive Order, Unleashing American Energy, this unprecedented loan package will support two wholly owned subsidiaries of Southern Company. Funded under President Trump’s Working Families Tax Cut, the investment will lower American energy costs, create thousands of jobs, and increase grid reliability in Georgia and Alabama. “Thanks to President Trump and the Working Families Tax Cut, the Energy Department is lowering energy costs and ensuring the American people have access to affordable, reliable, and secure energy for decades to come,” said Secretary Wright. “The President has been clear: America must reverse the energy subtraction agenda of past administrations and add more reliable power generation to our electrical grid. These loans will not only lower energy costs but also create thousands of jobs and increase grid reliability for the people of Georgia and Alabama.” The two loans will build or upgrade over 16 gigawatts (GW) of firm reliable power to the electrical grid. This includes 5 GW of new gas generation, 6 GW in nuclear improved through upgrades license renewals, hydropower modernization, battery energy storage systems and over 1,300 miles of transmission and grid enhancement projects. These loans represent the largest government investment aimed at directly lowering consumer energy costs and increasing grid reliability. Once all funds are received through the program, the loans are estimated to reduce Southern Company’s interest expenses by over $300 million per year, helping expedite lower electricity costs for customers. Southern Company is among the first utilities working with the DOE and the Trump Administration to restore American

Energy Secretary Keeps Critical Generation Online in Mid-Atlantic

Emergency order keeps critical generation online and addresses critical grid reliability issues facing the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States WASHINGTON—U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued an emergency order to address critical grid reliability issues facing the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The emergency order directs PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (PJM), in coordination with Constellation Energy Corporation, to ensure Units 3 and 4 of the Eddystone Generating Station in Pennsylvania remain available for operation and to employ economic dispatch to minimize costs for the American people. The units were originally slated to shut down on May 31, 2025. “The energy sources that perform when you need them most are inherently the most valuable—that’s why natural gas and oil were valuable during recent winter storms,” Secretary Wright said. “Hundreds of American lives have likely been saved because of President Trump’s actions keeping critical generation online, including this Pennsylvania generating station which ran during Winter Storm Fern. This emergency order will mitigate the risk of blackouts and maintain affordable, reliable, and secure electricity access across the region.” The Eddystone Units were integral in stabilizing the grid during Winter Storm Fern. Between January 26-29, the units ran for over 124 hours cumulatively, providing critical generation in the midst of the energy emergency. As outlined in DOE’s Resource Adequacy Report, power outages could increase by 100 times in 2030 if the U.S. continues to take reliable power offline. Furthermore, NERC’s 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment warns, “The continuing shift in the resource mix toward weather-dependent resources and less fuel diversity increases risks of supply shortfalls during winter months.” Secretary Wright ordered that the two Eddystone Generating Station units remain online past their planned retirement date in a May 30, 2025 emergency order. Subsequent orders were issued on August 28, 2025 and November 26, 2025. Keeping these units operational

Insights: Venezuela – new legal frameworks vs. the inertia of history

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Eni makes Calao South discovery offshore Ivory Coast

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CFEnergía to supply natural gas to low-carbon methanol plant in Mexico

CFEnergía, a subsidiary of Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), has agreed to supply natural gas to Transition Industries LLC for its Pacifico Mexinol project near Topolobampo, Sinaloa, Mexico. Under the signed agreement, which enables the start of Pacifico Mexinol’s construction phase, CFEnergía will supply about 160 MMcfd of natural gas for an unspecified timeframe noted as “long term,” Transition Industries said in a release Feb. 16. The natural gas—to be sourced from the US and supplied at market prices via existing infrastructure—will be used as “critical input for Mexinol’s production of ultra-low carbon methanol,” the company said. Pacifico Mexinol The $3.3-billion Mexinol project, when it begins operations in late 2029 to early 2030, is expected to be the world’s largest ultra-low carbon chemicals plant with production of about 1.8 million tonnes of blue methanol and 350,000 tonnes of green methanol annually. Supply is aimed at markets in Asia, including Japan, while also boosting the development of the domestic market and the Mexican chemical industry. Mitsubishi Gas Chemical has committed to purchasing about 1 million tonnes/year of methanol from the project, about 50% of the project’s planned production. Transition Industries is jointly developing Pacifico Mexinol with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group. Last year, the company signed a contingent engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract with the consortium of Samsung E&A Co., Ltd., Grupo Samsung E&A Mexico SA de CV, and Techint Engineering and Construction for the project. MAIRE group’s technology division NextChem, through its subsidiary KT TECH SpA, also signed a basic engineering, critical and proprietary equipment supply agreement with Samsung E&A in connection with its proprietary NX AdWinMethanol®Zero technology supply to the project.

North Atlantic’s Gravenchon refinery scheduled for major turnaround

Canada-based North Atlantic Refining Ltd. France-based subsidiary North Atlantic France SAS is undertaking planned maintenance in March at its North Atlantic Energies-operated 230,000-b/d Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon refinery in Port-Jérôme-sur-Seine, Normandy. Scheduled to begin on Mar. 3 with the phased shutdown of unidentified units at the refinery, the upcoming turnaround will involve thorough inspections of associated equipment designed for continuous operation, as well as unspecified works to improve energy efficiency, environmental performance, and overall competitiveness of the site, North Atlantic Energies said on Feb. 16. Part of the operator’s routine maintenance program aimed at meeting regulatory requirements to ensure the safety, compliance, and long-term performance of the refinery, North Atlantic Energies said the scheduled turnaround will not interrupt product supplies to customers during the shutdown period. While the company confirmed the phased shutdown of units slated for work during the maintenance event would last for several days, the operator did not reveal a definitive timeline for the entire duration of the turnaround. Further details regarding specific works to be carried out during the major maintenance event were not revealed. The upcoming turnaround will be the first to be executed under North Atlantic Group’s ownership, which completed its purchase of the formerly majority-owned ExxonMobil Corp. refinery and associated petrochemical assets at the site in November 2025.

AMD strikes massive AI chip deal with Meta

The funding is also unique. Instead of a cash purchase, AMD has reportedly given Meta warrants to buy up to 160 million shares at $0.01 each. Stock warrants are financial instruments that give you the right (but not the obligation) to buy a company’s stock at a fixed price before a certain expiration date, according to the vendors. With 1.6 billion shares outstanding, Meta is poised to acquire 10% of AMD. But perhaps not. These shares vest only as Meta buys more computing capacity. The final tranche vests only if AMD’s stock price hits $600, according to a recent 8K filing. AMD shares are currently valued at just over $200 as of this writing. The deal is identical to the one AMD struck with OpenAI last October. That deal was also for 6 GW worth of GPUs and included a warrant for up to 160 million AMD common stock shares structured to payout once certain targets were met. Meta is not playing favorites. Last week it announced that it will also deploy standalone Nvidia Grace CPUs in its production data centers, citing greatly improved performance-per-watt. That doesn’t come as a surprise to Gaurav Gupta, vice president analyst at Gartner, who says we are compute constrained and Hyperscalers or frontier model companies will use a multisource approach to get access to compute. “No one wants to be stuck with a single vendor. Diversify and then different workloads have different compute needs.,” he said.

Nvidia lines up partners to boost security for industrial operations

Akamai extends its micro-segmentation and zero-trust security platform Guardicore to run on Nvidia BlueField GPUs The integration offloads user-configurable security processes from the host system to the Nvidia BlueField DPU and enables zero-trust segmentation without requiring software agents on fragile or legacy systems, according to Akamai. Organizations can implement this hardware-isolated, “agentless” security approach to help align with regulatory requirements and lower their risk profile for cyber insurance. “It delivers deep, out-of-band visibility across systems, networks, and applications without disrupting operations. Security policies can be enforced in real time and are capable of creating a strong protective boundary around critical operational systems. The result is trusted insight into operational activity and improved overall cyber resilience,” according to Akamai. Forescout works with Nvidia to bring zero-trust technology to OT networks Forescout applies network segmentation to contain lateral movement and enforce zero-trust controls. The technology would be further integrated into partnership work already being done by the two companies. By running Forescout’s on-premises sensor directly on the Nvidia BlueField, part of Nvidia Cybersecurity AI platform, customers can offload intensive computing tasks, such as deep packet inspections. This speeds up data processing, enhances asset intelligence, and improves real-time monitoring, providing security teams with the insights needed to stay ahead of emerging threats, according to Forescout. Palo Alto to demo Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security on Nvidia BlueField DPU Palo Alto Networks recently partnered with Nvidia to run its Prisma AI-powered Radio Security(AIRs) package on the Nvidia BlueField DPU and will show off the technology at the conference. The technology is part of the Nvidia Enterprise AI Factory validated design and can offer real-time security protection for industrial network settings. “Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security delivers deep visibility into industrial traffic and continuous monitoring for abnormal behavior. By running these security services on Nvidia BlueField, inspection

Raising the temp on liquid cooling

IBM isn’t the only one. “We’ve been doing liquid cooling since 2012 on our supercomputers,” says Scott Tease, vice president and general manager of AI and high-performance computing at Lenovo’s infrastructure solutions group. “And we’ve been improving it ever since—we’re now on the sixth generation of that technology.” And the liquid Lenovo uses in its Neptune liquid cooling solution is warm water. Or, more precisely, hot water: 45 degrees Celsius. And when the water leaves the servers, it’s even hotter, Tease says. “I don’t have to chill that water, even if I’m in a hot climate,” he says. Even at high temperatures, the water still provides enough cooling to the chips that it has real value. “Generally, a data center will use evaporation to chill water down,” Tease adds. “Since we don’t have to chill the water, we don’t have to use evaporation. That’s huge amounts of savings on the water. For us, it’s almost like a perfect solution. It delivers the highest performance possible, the highest density possible, the lowest power consumption. So, it’s the most sustainable solution possible.” So, how is the water cooled down? It gets piped up to the roof, Tease says, where there are giant radiators with massive amounts of surface area. The heat radiates away, and then all the water flows right back to the servers again. Though not always. The hot water can also be used to, say, heat campus or community swimming pools. “We have data centers in the Nordics who are giving the heat to the local communities’ water systems,” Tease says.

Vertiv’s AI Infrastructure Surge: Record Orders, Liquid Cooling Expansion, and Grid-Scale Power Reflect Data Center Growth

2) “Units of compute”: OneCore and SmartRun On the earnings call, Albertazzi highlighted Vertiv OneCore, an end-to-end data center solution designed to accelerate “time to token,” scaling in 12.5 MW building blocks; and Vertiv SmartRun, a prefabricated white space infrastructure solution aimed at rapidly accelerating fit-out and readiness. He pointed to collaborations (including Hut 8 and Compass Data Centers) as proof points of adoption, emphasizing that SmartRun can stand alone or plug into OneCore. 3) Cooling evolution: hybrid thermal chains and the “trim cooler” Asked how cooling architectures may change (amid industry chatter about warmer-temperature operations and shifting mixes of chillers, CDUs, and other components) Albertazzi leaned into complexity as a feature, not a bug. He argued heat rejection doesn’t disappear, even if some GPU loads can run at higher temperatures. Instead, the future looks hybrid, with mixed loads and resiliency requirements forcing more nuanced thermal chains. Vertiv’s strategic product anchor here is its “trim cooler” concept: a chiller optimized for higher-temperature operation while retaining flexibility for lower-temperature requirements in the same facility, maximizing free cooling where climate and design allow. And importantly, Albertazzi dismissed the idea that CDUs are going away: “We are pretty sure that CDUs in various shapes and forms are a long-term element of the thermal chain.” 4) Edge densification: CoolPhase Ceiling + CoolPhase Row (Feb. 3) Vertiv also expanded its thermal portfolio for edge and small IT environments with the: Vertiv CoolPhase Ceiling (launching Q2 2026): ceiling-mounted, 3.5 kW to 28 kW, designed to preserve floor space. Vertiv CoolPhase Row (available now in North America) for row-based cooling up to 30 kW (300 mm width) or 40 kW (600 mm width). Vertiv Director of Edge Thermal Michal Podmaka tied the products directly to AI-driven edge densification and management consistency, saying the new systems “integrate seamlessly

Execution, Power, and Public Trust: Rich Miller on 2026’s Data Center Reality and Why He Built Data Center Richness

DCF founder Rich Miller has spent much of his career explaining how the data center industry works. Now, with his latest venture, Data Center Richness, he’s also examining how the industry learns. That thread provided the opening for the latest episode of The DCF Show Podcast, where Miller joined present Data Center Frontier Editor in Chief Matt Vincent and Senior Editor David Chernicoff for a wide-ranging discussion that ultimately landed on a simple conclusion: after two years of unprecedented AI-driven announcements, 2026 will be the year reality asserts itself. Projects will either get built, or they won’t. Power will either materialize, or it won’t. Communities will either accept data center expansion – or they’ll stop it. In other words, the industry is entering its execution phase. Why Data Center Richness Matters Now Miller launched Data Center Richness as both a podcast and a Substack publication, an effort to experiment with formats and better understand how professionals now consume industry information. Podcasts have become a primary way many practitioners follow the business, while YouTube’s discovery advantages increasingly make video versions essential. At the same time, Miller remains committed to written analysis, using Substack as a venue for deeper dives and format experimentation. One example is his weekly newsletter distilling key industry developments into just a handful of essential links rather than overwhelming readers with volume. The approach reflects a broader recognition: the pace of change has accelerated so much that clarity matters more than quantity. The topic of how people learn about data centers isn’t separate from the industry’s trajectory; it’s becoming part of it. Public perception, regulatory scrutiny, and investor expectations are now shaped by how stories are told as much as by how facilities are built. That context sets the stage for the conversation’s core theme. Execution Defines 2026 After

Utah’s 4 GW AI Campus Tests the Limits of Speed-to-Power

Back in September 2025, we examined an ambitious proposal from infrastructure developer Joule Capital Partners – often branding the effort as “Joule Power” – in partnership with Caterpillar. The concept is straightforward but consequential: acquire a vast rural tract in Millard County, Utah, and pair an AI-focused data center campus with large-scale, on-site “behind-the-meter” generation to bypass the interconnection queues, transmission constraints, and substation bottlenecks slowing projects nationwide. The appeal is clear: speed-to-power and greater control over delivery timelines. But that speed shifts the project’s risk profile. Instead of navigating traditional utility procurement, the development begins to resemble a distributed power plant subject to industrial permitting, fuel supply logistics, air emissions scrutiny, noise controls, and groundwater governance. These are issues communities typically associate with generation facilities, not hyperscale data centers. Our earlier coverage focused on the technical and strategic logic of pairing compute with on-site generation. Now the story has evolved. Community opposition is emerging as a material variable that could influence schedule and scope. Although groundbreaking was held in November 2025, final site plans and key conditional use permits remain pending at the time of publication. What Is Actually Being Proposed? Public records from Millard County show Joule pursuing a zone change for approximately 4,000 acres (about 6.25 square miles), converting agricultural land near 11000 N McCornick Road to Heavy Industrial use. At a July 2025 public meeting, residents raised familiar concerns that surface when a rural landscape is targeted for hyperscale development: labor influx and housing strain, water use, traffic, dust and wildfire risk, wildlife disruption, and the broader loss of farmland and local character. What has proven less clear is the precise scale and sequencing of the buildout. Local reporting describes an initial phase of six data center buildings, each supported by a substantial fleet of Caterpillar

Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

And Microsoft isn’t the only one that is ramping up its investments into AI-enabled data centers. Rival cloud service providers are all investing in either upgrading or opening new data centers to capture a larger chunk of business from developers and users of large language models (LLMs). In a report published in October 2024, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that demand for generative AI would push Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Meta, and Apple would between them devote $200 billion to capex in 2025, up from $110 billion in 2023. Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders, followed closely by Google and AWS, Bloomberg Intelligence said. Its estimate of Microsoft’s capital spending on AI, at $62.4 billion for calendar 2025, is lower than Smith’s claim that the company will invest $80 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 2025. Both figures, though, are way higher than Microsoft’s 2020 capital expenditure of “just” $17.6 billion. The majority of the increased spending is tied to cloud services and the expansion of AI infrastructure needed to provide compute capacity for OpenAI workloads. Separately, last October Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company planned total capex spend of $75 billion in 2024 and even more in 2025, with much of it going to AWS, its cloud computing division.

John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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