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A planned UK data center has been pushed back into the 2030s due to delays connecting to the power grid, and Microsoft has withdrawn from the project as a result. The delay reflects broader infrastructure bottlenecks facing large-scale computing buildouts in the UK.
SemiAnalysis research shared on X found that over 300 local data center moratoriums across the US have only likely delayed about 2.3 gigawatts out of roughly 21 gigawatts of planned capacity in affected areas. The firm tracks more than 400 local restrictions across 17 states and says its 2027 forecast of 38 GW of US data center capacity has barely changed over the past year.
Trade group 7x24 Exchange International is promoting a children's story, 'What is a Data Center?,' featuring a honey badger character touring a facility to learn why data centers matter. The effort is part of a broader push by data center companies and industry groups—including job programs, tax-break lobbying, and local chapter outreach like the Potomac chapter of the Association for Computer Operations Management—to build goodwill with communities and young people as opposition to large data center construction grows.
A Wall Street Journal risk briefing notes that major technology companies are bringing data centers online ahead of schedule even as artificial intelligence development confronts a significant new obstacle. The same report says U.S. tariff pressure is pushing other countries to strengthen their forced-labor regulations.
Ukraine has carried out drone attacks over the past week targeting several of Yandex's major data centers, disrupting Russian consumer apps including shopping and taxi services in major cities. A Cloudflare report found that while the attacks caused real service outages, Russian bot-driven disinformation traffic was not eliminated but instead shifted to other hosting providers.
Firma Power is offering data center operators a way to source power from new wind, solar and battery storage projects rather than defaulting to gas plants. The startup's pitch comes as the U.S. is set to add a record 86 gigawatts of clean energy capacity this year, with many more low-cost projects awaiting connection to the grid.
Cyrus Beschloss, CEO of data marketplace Verb, said at CNBC's Trading the Midterms event that many people who publicly oppose AI and data center construction continue to use tools like ChatGPT. He argued that if forced to choose between shutting down data centers entirely or losing access to such AI tools, many critics would find the decision far harder than their public stance suggests.
NorthPoint Development's planned Amazon Web Services data center campus, dubbed 'Project Hazelnut,' includes an offer of $10,000 in direct cash to every resident of Hazle Township, Pennsylvania. Despite the payout, residents are organizing against both the data center and the associated transmission lines needed to power it, according to PennLive reporting.
Nvidia and Cisco have jointly unveiled Ultra-Dense Small Form Factor Pluggable (USFP), a new optical transceiver standard supporting 400Gb/s per lane, the first interface to do so. Cisco says the module is designed to eventually reach total transfer rates of 12.8Tb/s, offering four times the bandwidth of existing 200Gb/s optics and 1.3x better power efficiency. Initial USFP transceivers will have 16 full-duplex lanes and work with both switches and Nvidia's SuperNIC adapters, which move data between GPUs using the RoCE protocol.
Cloudflare's analysis found that after Ukrainian strikes on Yandex data centers cut Yandex Search and Yandex.Cloud traffic to 10-15% of normal levels, malicious bot activity largely migrated to other hosting providers such as Radist and Selectel rather than disappearing. Gambling-sector bot traffic rose slightly overall (167.7 million to 170.1 million requests, +1.4%), and Russian-origin social media bot activity fell only marginally, by 0.6% to 5.7% depending on the metric.
A YouGov/Economist survey found that among voters living within a mile of an AI data center, support for Democratic candidates rose from 54% to 61% between May and October. Nationally over the same period, the Democratic voting share rose more modestly, from 53% to 55%.
Dell Technologies stock fell 11% on Wednesday, pulling down Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Oracle, Super Micro and NetApp amid worries that enterprise AI spending won't match the scale of the ongoing data center buildout. Barclays analysts cut ratings on Dell, HPE and NetApp from buy to hold, saying they see no 'meaningful AI inflection' in enterprise demand and attributing recent revenue gains largely to a global memory shortage rather than AI adoption.