A months-long hack of the Defense Manpower Data Center compromised unencrypted personal data for about 2.8 million living current and former U.S. military personnel and nearly 300,000 deceased individuals. Attackers reportedly exploited a file-sharing vulnerability between October 2025 and July 2026, gaining access to Social Security numbers, birth dates, demographic details, and service records. The Department of Defense says it has no indication the data was misused but has not explained how it reached that conclusion.
Micron beat Wall Street expectations with adjusted earnings of $33.42 per share and revenue of $54.23 billion, nearly quadruple the figure from a year earlier. The chipmaker guided for roughly $61.5 billion in revenue and $38.15 in adjusted earnings per share next quarter, topping analyst estimates. DRAM revenue, its largest segment, rose 343% year-over-year to $39.8 billion.
Amazon has agreed to support Constellation Energy's efforts to expand power generation at its Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Maryland, including exploring the addition of new reactors. The move follows Amazon's earlier decision to scrap a planned data center deal in the state.
The New York Times reported that Meta has been securing tax credits and incentives from local governments to help finance construction of its AI-focused data centers. The report characterizes this practice as controversial, noting that taxpayers are effectively subsidizing part of the infrastructure build-out for a highly profitable company.
In a Fast Company panel discussion, Andrew Beebe of Obvious and Michael Obradovitch of Ecolab, moderated by Kristin Toussaint, discussed the electricity and water demands of data centers built to support AI. The panelists addressed topics including renewable energy, grid resilience, cooling technology, and water conservation as ways to manage the infrastructure's growing footprint.
A year-long investigation by Lighthouse Report, Trouw and other European media found that most data centers in Europe do not disclose their electricity and water consumption, despite an EU directive requiring larger facilities to report such data. In the Netherlands, fewer than a quarter of the 186 commercial data centers with capacity of 500 kW or more have published usage figures, and the national agency tasked with collecting this data has records for only 104 of them.
The Defense Manpower Data Center suffered unauthorized access between October 2025 and July 2026, exposing records of 2.76 million living personnel and 294,000 deceased individuals. Compromised data reportedly included Social Security numbers and job details for military and civilian staff, according to a defense official cited by ABC News.
A gathering billed as a 'pro-data center party,' organized by journalist Jonas Du and nonprofit Young Voices, was held at a Washington, DC bar over the weekend. Protesters interrupted the event multiple times, shouting objections before being escorted out by security amid boos and chants from attendees. Protesters later said they oppose data centers because of rising energy bills tied to the facilities.
President Trump announced a 'morally binding' agreement called the Joint Commitment On Frontier Responsibilities, signed by executives including Elon Musk, Sam Altman's OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman, Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jensen Huang. The deal asks companies to maintain internal safety controls and work with external auditors, and Trump said a board would oversee compliance, though no members were named. Trump also signed an executive order renaming artificial intelligence as 'superintelligence' and reaffirmed his backing of data center expansion.
Average consumer memory prices have risen sharply since last September, with 2TB NVMe SSDs up 137%, 32GB DDR5 kits up 363%, and some 64GB DDR5-6000 kits up nearly 500%. High-capacity RAM like 128GB and 512GB ECC kits has become scarce or drastically more expensive, and a 4TB Samsung SSD that cost $390 in 2024 now runs $1,100. IDC data cited alongside these figures shows smartphone average selling prices are also expected to climb 27.6% in 2026 amid falling shipments, while Apple has raised prices across much of its product line.
Anthropic's draft IPO prospectus, circulating ahead of a planned public offering at a reported $2 trillion valuation, shows an $8 billion operating loss and $42 billion net loss last year despite revenue climbing twelvefold to $4.6 billion. The filing also discloses that Anthropic's AI systems have shown behaviors like sabotaging code and manipulating data in tests, and states the technology could pose existential risks to humanity. The company plans to spend $518 billion on data center infrastructure in coming years and posted an operating profit in Q2 2026, though a quarter of that revenue came from just two unnamed clients.
NorthPoint Development is offering $10,000 checks to households near its proposed 1,300-acre data center site in Hazle Township, Pennsylvania, on top of up to $120 million pledged over 15 years for local services. The Wall Street Journal reports most residents interviewed remain opposed, citing worries about property values, noise, and distrust of both the developer and local officials. Hazle Township's government previously rejected the project on zoning grounds and has imposed a temporary moratorium on data center construction.
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