President Trump has a new message for Americans rebelling over the nation’s data center boom: Get over it.
Trump warned Monday: “If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.”
Why it matters: Nine weeks out from the midterms, the president is charging into a fight Republicans have been scrambling to escape — staking political capital on one of the most toxic issues in the country, Axios’ Zachary Basu writes.
Trump wrote on Truth Social: “The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.”
“If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,” he added.
Trump’s blunt intervention comes as the AI industry mounts a far more disciplined campaign to persuade data center skeptics rather than browbeat them.
Build American AI, an advocacy group linked to the pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future, is ready to unload a $50 million war chest to defend data centers in key states, starting in Kansas, Ohio and Wisconsin.
Zoom in: Prominent investor Gavin Baker laid out his own six-part case for data centers on X, which was quickly amplified by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and other tech leaders.
Water: Newer facilities can sharply reduce freshwater use through closed-loop cooling and recycled water, Baker argues. He says those systems should be required for new projects.
Taxes: Data centers can generate enormous property-tax revenue for local governments, Baker says, potentially outweighing the sales-tax exemptions that have drawn criticism.
Jobs: The buildout is driving demand for electricians, plumbers, welders, HVAC technicians and contractors, making building-trade unions some of the industry’s most important allies.
Power: Baker points to new large-load tariffs and ratepayer-protection agreements as a way to ensure data centers, rather than existing customers, pay for the new generation and grid capacity they require.
Environment: Baker argues that natural gas, renewables and batteries can meet surging demand now, with data centers ultimately moving toward solar and storage.
Towns: Data centers can turn struggling communities into beneficiaries of the AI boom. Baker points to Quincy, Washington, where data centers now account for more than half of the local property-tax base.
Reality check: Republicans in key battlegrounds have spent weeks recalibrating their positions on data centers as the issue turned politically toxic. Trump’s intervention risks blowing up that escape route.
From childcare to elder care to teaching, the labor that sustains society goes undercompensated. A nationalized care economy would change that.
The MIT Press Reader
By: Elizabeth Gregory
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In America, tens of millions of people provide essential care for others, day in and day out, often without anything near adequate recognition or compensation.They are the parents caring for kids and the children caring for their elderly parents and relatives with disabilities “for free.”They are the underpaid legions of teachers, cleaners, nannies, home aides, social workers, midwives, doulas, and hospice volunteers. Without them, life as we know it would grind to a halt.
Together, these groups comprise a vast network of support systems, staffed almost exclusively by women, known as the “care economy.”This economy supplies and maintains the workforce that employers desperately depend on. But due to a long history of disparities, their wages (and, as a result, the country’s GDP) fail to reflect the true value of the care they provide. One might even say that their labor has been effectively donated to the broader American economy — often at great cost to the caregivers themselves.
In recent years, caregivers, unions, activists, scholars, and politicians on the left have advocated that this labor force be recognized and more appropriately compensated for their work. The likelihood of that happening in the U.S. has been minuscule for most of the country’s history, largely because women had few other options. But several ongoing demographic and economic shifts make it more necessary now: declining birth rates and more paid work options for women (reducing the supply of unpaid caretakers) and expanded longevity (increasing the demand for caretaking, as well as other services).
These shifts in basic life patterns are fueling a bottleneck that alters the clout that all workers now wield. These shifts require commensurate changes in our social and economic systems. Their occurrence together has created an unprecedented opportunity to discard decrepit systems and embrace innovation. Disgust with therecent evidenceof corruptionamong those in power and their failure to support basic services for Americans may hasten that embrace.
Developing a nationalized care infrastructure to supply key elements of the care work now provided at home or not at all would have many positive effects for individuals and the economy. They include, among others, the following:
Ensuring all Americans — young, old and in between — get the care they need (where, formerly, the needs of the many without available family members went unmet).
Freeing up current unpaid caregivers to work for pay if they’d like, expanding household resources.
Raising the wages of current paid care workers.
Documenting through payment the heretofore unbooked value of that care work on the ledger of human production, which adds that value directly to GDP.
Further growing GDP when the newly employed paid care workers spend their earnings, often in community businesses.
Democratizing the civic status of people previously excluded, by marking both the carer and cared-for as worthy of compensation and investment, respectively.
Growing the economy through services, which adds the value of care to the economy without growing waste.
Building community through care.
The most efficient system for this would, of course, be run nationally, since the federal government, as a major buyer prioritizing the public good over profit, would save significantly on costs. A centralized federal benefits system would mean businesses wouldn’t have to provide so many benefits (or invest so much in HR), while also supplying employers with an expanded labor-force pool. Both businesses and individuals would pay in, but the savings and benefits relative to the current system would be large.
To be sure, the political road to success remains steep. A federal care infrastructure may require nothing short of a constitutional amendment that would add it to the enumerated powers of the federal government. It would need to federally override states’ power to underinvest in some of their people on the basis of race, gender, or class. That’s a heavy lift. But at a time when family formation is happening later and later due to the mounting challenges and costs, a government mandate for a family-support infrastructure would be a gift to all.
So what could a care economy involve — and actually look like?
A care economy would intersect with many spheres of life: health care, affordable elder care, affordable childcare (including afterschool and summer care), food security, affordable housing, solid public education for all, reliable birth control, and paid parental leave. It would also mean increased national investment in ensuring a safe, unpolluted, sustainable environment for coming generations. Such provisions would support and incentivize family formation in our time of declining birth rates, so that people who want kids could feel that having them was affordable and responsible.
It would take a while for us to put in place this full complement of benefits, the likes of which might seem too much to ask for — since it’s certainly much more support than we have now. But recall that most or all are available in various forms in Denmark, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Australia, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Many are also available in India, Japan, Israel, South Korea, and China, two of which have much bigger populations.
A nationalized infrastructure would involve major investments in construction projects, including childcare and elder centers, to supply key segments of the necessary care work now supplied at home or not at all. While the virtues of good child-care centers are well known, creating a national network of well-staffed elder centers in all communities — where elders could access needed care and other services and also socialize, take classes, and do community service — would be a much-needed innovation. They would serve as community hubs, reduce isolation and opportunities for elder abuse, and begin to address the huge economic, health, and societal transformations introduced by expanded longevity, in communities across America.
Over the long term, funding for both childcare and elder centers would also include caregiver salaries, equipment, and workforce training. Some centers could combine both child and elder elements, allowing connection across generations and including care for kids with special needs and people with disabilities.
If a goal to build such a system were agreed upon, the rollout would have to go in stages, both to train the necessary workforce and to avoid supply chain bottlenecks for building materials as well as personal goods, as more people have wages to spend. Starting up sufficient childcare and eldercare centers to meet national demand would initially involve collaborating with pre-existing centers that choose to join (likely most, given the added support), along with new facilities.
A government mandate for a family-support infrastructure would be a gift to all.
Simultaneously, a parallel model could involve payments to home caregivers or directly to those needing care. These could be part of a universal care allowance, tailored to participants’ individual costs and needs (to provide services similar to those currently offered to many veterans). These funds could go to family members who provide care or to professional home health and personal care aides. This option could be especially appealing for people with disabilities, rural Americans, or workers with unconventional schedules.
Far from plush, such care resources would simply provide a decent minimum to sustain a person across their lifetime. But all would benefit from the expanded contributions of insight, skill, and innovation of fellow citizens no longer mired in debt, worry, and the traumas of poverty; from the improved environment; from the economic growth; from expanded community engagement and dialogue; and from the security of a stable democracy.
Care benefits would be dynamic, subject to changing circumstances. If, for example, a family receives free childcare that enables the caregiver to work, along with any needed training for both parents to advance, soon the family moves into a stronger economic position where they pay more of the sliding-scale cost. If a state that previously refused Medicaid expansion shifts to providing its lifelong health care to all — or even better, if the U.S. moves to a national health service for all — fewer people will become ill, and many with current comorbidities can come to manage them, freeing them up to earn, pay taxes, and participate.If under-resourced schools are brought up to par, the communities in those neighborhoods will produce more skilled workers, less crime spurred by desperation, and more tax revenues to cover school costs.
Of course, not all care could or should be outsourced and paid for. Every moment of our lives involves elements of mutual care — these interactions are the core of our lives as free beings. Mutual care among individuals is a gift, as the term “caregiving” suggests. But when that care serves capital without compensation — when women produce the workforce for employers’ profit at great personal and civic cost — it amounts to wage theft and political suppression. Monetizing some care so that no one is pushed into dependency or excluded from the polity repairs that inequity and grows the economy.
So how are we going to pay for it?
The refrain we will always hear from the right is that a strong social safety network would be “too expensive.” But they never drill down into the details. In reality, the costs — both human and financial — of not providing needed care are much greater.
The simplest way to fund a fully functional care infrastructure, as in most caring nations, would involve a mixture of taxes paid by businesses and individuals. The lack of transparent discourse around taxes in the U.S. (ensured by those who benefit from that lack) has obscured the extent to which low taxes mean low services, and as a result, poor or nonexistent caretaking arrangements. This imposes a great harm upon our economy and society, to the (limited) benefit of the few.
To this end, an expanded corporate tax, along with an expanded simple progressive individual tax, would go a long way. An increased corporate tax would effectively serve as compensation to families for the historically unpaid work of “employee production.” Individual tax rates would also rise to cover a lifetime of care services, which many Americans already pay for out of pocket. On balance, middle- and lower-income citizens would pay out less in this scenario than in the status quo, while the wealthy would pay more but still have plenty.
European countries, for their part, employ a federal value-added tax (in place of the widely varying state-level taxes in the U.S.), which taxes consumption. A VAT is generally viewed as regressive in a U.S. context, since lower-income households would be spending a larger share of their income on taxes. However, in Europe, while it’s still technically a regressive tax, poverty rates are much lower — due, of course, to its robust social support network!
A care economy will soon become a demographic necessity.
Specific tax rates can also be worked out dynamically.For instance, when the corporate tax rate fell in the U.S. in 2017, much of the European Union followed suit to stay competitive, leading some countries to cut benefits.Raising the U.S. corporate rate back to where it was in 2016 would allow it to rise in Europe as well and better fund their social support networks. The details for the U.S. would be ironed out fairly, with reference to the models around the world that operate best.
If, however, responsible tax restructuring still proves difficult in our moment, there are other ways to jumpstart funding for care.
The simplest would be initial government investment through deficit spending. (The U.S. has run a deficit most years since 1970 and all years since 2001 to cover items viewed as “necessities,” including defense spending and tax breaks for the very rich.) In this scenario, as productivity increases through care, the value-multiplier effects in the community and the expanded tax base created by the new workers would recover a large portion of the investment over time. Most likely, after a vigorous debate, some combination of the two — expanded taxes and deficit spending to build infrastructure — would be involved.
However we ultimately decide to fund a care economy, one thing is abundantly clear: It will soon become a demographic necessity. The growing demand for workers to care for a large and longer-living retiree population — combined with fewer young people entering the workforce and fewer immigrant workers — will hamper America’s economy if not addressed.
By providing affordable childcare, the care economy would help many of America’s workers — like the 22 percent of women aged 25 to 54 who are currently on the sidelines, many of them mothers who can’t pay for the care that would enable them to work and earn for their families — enter and stay in the game. Investment in care would likely also lead to more births, by lowering the increasingly exorbitant cost of raising kids, which now makes forming families seem irresponsible to many. A national commitment to lifetime care for current and future Americans could do much to reassure potential parents that their kids will have a chance to thrive.
Given the current division in our nation, there would no doubt be endless hand-wringing about the notion of implementing an economy that pays for historically under- and unpaid work. After all, there are powerful actors who profit from the status quo. But dramatic increases in socialized care will lift all boats — the opposite of what we’ve heard for years. If leaders focused on building a caring democracy that addresses the shifting realities of America’s demography and inequality, that could win many over.
Elizabeth Gregory directs the Institute for Research on Women, Gender & Sexuality at the University of Houston, where she is a professor of English and the Taylor Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies. She is the author of “Apparition of Splendor” (University of Delaware Press), “Ready” (Basic Books), and “The Real Domestic Product,” from which this article is adapted.
Posted on Aug 10
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A liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tanker in front of oil tanks at the SK Innovation Co. Ulsan Complex oil refinery facilities at dawn in Ulsan, South Korea, on Wednesday, June 24, 2026. SeongJoon Cho—Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Iran war exposed just how much the world relied on a narrow 20-mile-wide waterway. Soon after the U.S. launched strikes on Iran, the latter threatened to strike ships trying to traverse the Strait of Hormuz, the channel for much of the Middle East’s oil and gas exports. The threat of shortages pushed countries across Asia to impose export bans, cut import duties, and start rationing fuel to maintain supplies.
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Treasury Sec. Bessent warns of “economic D-Day” against Iran
Six months since the onset of the war, doomsday scenarios—price spikes, long lines at gas stations, power outages, and grounded flights—haven’t quite come to fruition, as increased production and hefty stockpiles blunted some of the damage.
It seems that normality, in some form, could be returning to the Strait. On Wednesday, Iran announced a new revenue-sharing agreement over the waterway, though a military spokesperson blamed the U.S. for “obstructing this process.”
Yet the revelation of how easy it was for Iran to block, and continue blocking, one of the world’s most important waterways is pushing governments to diversify their sources of energy.
And now, with the prospect of a U.S.-Iran deal in the near-term on life support and Iranian control of Hormuz now looking secure for years to come, what previously saved the global oil market in the first half of the year might not work for a second time.
“Global oil and gas supply is still a major point of geopolitical leverage,” says Saul Kavonic, head of energy research at MST Financial. “Notwithstanding the rise of alternative and green technologies over the past decade, the global economy is still very reliant on oil and gas.”
“Hostile actors can threaten that for their geopolitical ends.”
A ‘big wake up call’
Before the war, roughly a fifth of the world’s oil trade passed through the Strait of Hormuz, which sits between Iran and Oman. More than 80% of that cargo was bound for Asia, primarily China, India, Japan, and South Korea.
“Before this crisis many market observers would have told you it would be impossible to block or completely close the Strait of Hormuz, because a country like Iran did not have the capabilities. They tried in the 1980s, but they did not succeed,” says Carole Nakhle, CEO at Crystol Energy, an energy consultancy.
Yet the conflict has shown “how easy and inexpensive it has become to threaten very expensive energy infrastructure,” she added, with relatively cheap drones capable of putting refineries, pipelines, ports, and other multibillion-dollar facilities at risk.
“This has been the big wake-up call for the entire global energy industry. It’s a fundamental paradigm shift of the last 50 years of the energy industry,” says Kavonic. “We’re moving from just-in-time supply chains to just-in-case supply chains.”
Energy importers are starting to diversify. Before the war, the Middle East accounted for 90% of Japan’s crude oil imports, and roughly 11% of its liquefied natural gas. “Japan found it was more vulnerable than expected, particularly when it comes to LNG—it imports 100% of its energy,” says Kavonic. “In Japan, if the LNG doesn’t arrive, the lights go off and the country shuts down.”
Now, Tokyo is investing elsewhere to shore up future supplies. Japan’s Inpex, for example, formed a joint venture to expand its LNG investment in Australia’s Northern Territory.
“It’s boomtime for Woodside and Chevron, two big LNG players who aren’t too concentrated in the Middle East. The oil majors are now also rapidly ramping up their investment in LNG,” Kavonic says, spotting an opportunity for buyers to diversify their sources of gas away from the Middle East.
Exporters, too, are diversifying. For oil exporters, the major lesson has been the need to invest in alternate supply routes. That includes ploughing billions into building out ports in ports on both the western side of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf of Oman, effectively bypassing the strait entirely. Oil producers are also investing in pipelines, like Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline. If all these additional investments pan out, only 10% of the world’s oil will need to travel through the Strait of Hormuz, down from 20% before the war.
Gas, far more than oil, could become the key energy commodity hurt by a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz. While crude oil can be carried via pipeline–perhaps from oil producers in the Persian Gulf to ports on the western side of the Arabian Peninsula–gas can’t, meaning there are no alternative routes to get LNG to Asia if Hormuz is blocked.
Qatar, one of the world’s leading producers of LNG, is trying to find some way to keep its export routes open, through diplomacy, finding new customers, and taking rare opportunities to get their product through Hormuz. It has also set up a fast recovery timeline so it can restart production once the strait reopens.
Escaping an energy collapse
Things didn’t collapse as analysts feared at the beginning of the conflict. In April, for example, the head of the International Energy Agency predicted that flights may soon need to be grounded in Europe due to jet fuel shortages.
While oil prices did surge to as high as $126 per barrel, they didn’t hit the $150 to $200 a barrel level that some analysts feared. And while several Asian countries imposed emergency measures to conserve fuel, a lengthy and catastrophic shortage never materialized. “The global market is proving to be more resilient to major supply shocks than many thought,” Kavonic says.
One reason was the sheer amount of oil sitting in reserve. The IEA mandates that its 32 member countries stockpile at least 90 days’ worth of oil; similar mandates for gas stockpiles were imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In March, the agency coordinated the release of 400 million barrels from these emergency oil stockpiles, the largest such intervention in its history.
Oil producers like the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the UAE also increased their production and carrying capacity. Yet perhaps the unsung hero in the market was China, which drew on its huge stockpiles, leaving more oil in the market for other economies.
“OPEC has lost its primary role as global oil market manager,” Kavonic says, referring to the cartel that tries to maintain the global prices of oil. “It’s now moved to China.”
He notes that China’s increased leverage in oil markets will have repercussions throughout the Pacific. “We can see how dependent Pacific Island nations are on diesel to keep the lights on. So we’ve seen countries in Asia not just have to manage their own imports but support the Pacific as well. Otherwise 30 years of Pacific policy could be undermined in a few months.”
But how long this will last is unclear, particularly now that tensions between Iran and the U.S. have flared up again, and a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz now looks likely.
“We spent the last four months living on the oil market credit card. And if we continue at that rate, that credit card will be maxed out in a few months,” Kavonic says.
Fortune will host several sessions on what a more complicated geopolitical world means for Asia’s businesses at the upcoming Fortune Leaders Forum, hosted in Macau on Sep. 8. Learn more here.
The Fortune Leaders Forum will convene Fortune 500 executives and founders of leading Asian companies to help define the future of leadership in an age of convergence and complexity. September 8 in Macau. Apply here.
Note to stressed parents: Instead of trying to be perfect, do this.
Experts offer tips for raising children while overwhelmed
Anna Lamb
Harvard Staff Writer
August 28, 2026 6 min read
Parental stress is an urgent public health crisis, according to a 2024 U.S. Surgeon General report that found nearly half of parents and caregivers face daily pressures that they feel are “completely overwhelming.”
A panel of experts convened recently at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health to discuss how parents can care for themselves while raising healthy children and what communities and governments can do to help.
Karestan Koenen, a professor of psychiatric epidemiology at the Chan School, kicked off the discussion by acknowledging the unique strains on parents today.
“The first thing I want to say is that there isn’t anything wrong with the parents themselves,” she said. “I think when we’re stressed as parents, we often blame ourselves, but parents are facing so many systemic challenges. Challenges coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, challenges with lower incomes, higher childcare costs, community supports being eroded, the barrage of information from social media and global events.”
“I think when we’re stressed as parents, we often blame ourselves, but parents are facing so many systemic challenges.”Karestan Koenen
When a parent gets overwhelmed, the panelists agreed, the first step is to acknowledge it.
“The key here is recognizing early on when there’s distress, difficulties moving day to day, when it’s starting to show up in how we’re engaging with our family, with children, maybe how we are showing up at work,” said Archana Basu, a Chan School epidemiologist and Harvard Medical School assistant professor of psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The next step, according to Basu, is to address the behavior changes with children.
“We know that honest communication that is direct and describes what is happening — the impact on the family or the immediate environment — is key,” she said. “Younger children need more concrete information about things like difficulty getting out of bed or how a parent might be feeling because it’s harder for a younger child to understand a parent’s emotional state if they’re not described in more concrete terms. Older children, on the other hand, often have heard about it. They have access to a lot of information online.”
Parents can ask what their kids have read online, and any questions they might have, said Basu. “And throughout it all, noting that, ‘You know me as your parent. I’m the best source of information for you about my health.’”
Richard Weissbourd, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and director of the Making Caring Common Project, agrees that communication is essential.
“Even at a pretty young age, you can tell kids, ‘I’m experiencing something that’s upsetting, and it’s not about you.’ And the data show it’s healthy and a huge relief for kids,” he said.
Plus, open communication can be a learning opportunity for children.
“Even at a pretty young age, you can tell kids, ‘I’m experiencing something that’s upsetting, and it’s not about you.’ And the data show it’s healthy and a huge relief for kids.”Richard Weissbourd
“Kids really want to understand how you cope with something, and depression anxiety can have damaging effects on kids. But it’s also true that parents who are depressed and anxious often have a lot of wisdom about suffering and have wisdom to share. And I would encourage parents to think about what wisdom they have to share.”
For Jayne Singer, a psychologist and HMS assistant professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, teaching moments can also come when our stress manifests in temper flare-ups — when a child gets on mom’s last nerve and she snaps.
“After there’s been a disconnect, after there’s been a mismatch, there is the opportunity to come back into relationship and model the key things that we’re helping children to develop as emotionally competent people,” she said. “The ability to express the emotion, be able to understand that the emotion was tied to a circumstance, and then it led to an impulse and behavior. So, if after losing it, coming back in and saying, ‘You know what? I was feeling really angry. I was feeling really frustrated. I love you.’”
Moreover, she said, parents need to acknowledge that they are not going to be perfect when trying to raise the next generation.
“We’re not holding ourselves up as paragons, but we are saying we too are going to lose our temper sometimes,” she said. “Young children test our limits, they test the limits of our patience. And that’s a crucial thing for them to understand in order to develop empathy. Like, ‘Oh, right, my behavior does have an effect on other people. I need to learn how to manage my own impulses that come from my own upset.’”
For Weissbourd, the focus for parents should be on this long-term emotional development, rather than parents policing their kids’ achievements or day-to-day emotional well-being.
“Hyper-focus on achievement and on well-being moment-to-moment often overwhelms our focus on kids tuning into other people, empathizing with other people, caring for other people,” he said. “And when they’re able to do those things, they’re going to have better relationships their whole life. They’re going to be better parents. They’re going to be better romantic partners, better friends, and that’s the most robust and durable source of happiness that we have.”
On a macro level, the panelists pointed to the need for better food and housing security for parents, more parks and recreation programs and places for kids and for parents to informally gather in community. But on the micro level, parents can take control of day-to-day habits for stress management like exercise or talking with a friend.
Singer suggests taking a few seconds to oneself when the day gets overwhelming.
“Can you give yourself permission to pick yourself up out of the fray, go to the bathroom and do a body scan, even if it’s for 30 seconds? Where am I feeling the tension? Is it my head? Is it my stomach? Is it my chest? Are my shoulders up at my ears? Take 30 seconds to take care of yourself and breathe,” she said. “Or do progressive muscle relaxation, just little micro practices to punctuate the day. Often, with that message of being nurturing and responsive, we forget to take care of ourselves.”
And when parents aren’t perfect, the panel all agreed that it’s better to apologize after the fact and continue trying to improve.
“What I’ve learned is the parenting journey and the opportunity to repair is never over,” Koenen said. “I’ve had conversations with my son as a teenager and emerging adult about things in the past related to my parenting stress and honest conversations where he said to me, ‘It was hard when I was young. You were really stressed.’ And I just said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry I showed up like this.’ It’s great if you can repair in the short term, but life will also present you with deep opportunities in the long term.”
The Rundown: ICE is preparing to spend up to $2M on Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot dogs, adding the four-legged machines to its enforcement arsenal for what it says will handle inspections, surveillance, and hazardous operations.
The details:
The notice, posted to DHS’s Acquisition Planning Forecast System, values the buy at $1M to $2M for Spot units and accessories. ICE says the remotely operated robots will handle inspection, situational awareness, and hazard assessment in dangerous, hard-to-reach locations. DHS’s own equipment guide prices a public-safety Spot package at ~$250K, with cameras, thermal imaging, a robotic arm, and roughly 90 minutes of battery life. Spot isn’t new to law enforcement: LAPD, NYPD, and the Secret Service have deployed it, while Boston Dynamics explicitly bans weaponizing its robots.
Why it matters: ICE is looking to add the machines amid a much bigger expansion: the agency has ~$113B at its disposal through 2029, arrested nearly 50K people in July, and just awarded $16.7M for 6K electric-shock gloves, making robot dogs one piece of a quickly growing enforcement arsenal.
Economist Professor Richard Wolff explains why he believes the American empire is in decline—and why China and Asia are shaping the future of the global economy. We discuss the history of U.S. colonialism, the failures of American capitalism, China’s hybrid economic model, the economic consequences of the Iran war, and the growing appeal of socialism in the United States. Professor Wolff also examines whether America and China can peacefully coexist, how the upcoming midterm elections could reshape American politics, and why both Republicans and Democrats may be unprepared for the dramatic changes ahead. 🔵 Follow Professor Wolff’s YouTube Here: / @richarddwolff
Data centers have suddenly become one of the hottest political fights in America. Polls show overwhelming opposition to having them nearby, politicians are scrambling to respond, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has announced tough new restrictions while declaring himself a “hell no” on certain projects. But is the backlash telling the whole story? Michael Smerconish speaks with Pennsylvania developer Brian O’Neill, who is planning billions of dollars in data center projects and says many of the public’s biggest concerns don’t apply to what he wants to build. They discuss jobs, electricity, water use, the race with China, allegations of foreign manipulation — and whether America risks falling behind in AI while trying to protect local communities.
This clip is taken from our event “Fiona Hill: The World in 2026” from February 2026. Become an Intelligence Squared Member to access the full video. Click this link for an exclusive 15% discount on Membership: https://www.intelligencesquaredplus.c….
Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Stock: Getty Images
President Trump has a new message for Americans rebelling over the nation’s data center boom: Get over it.
Why it matters: Nine weeks out from the midterms, the president is charging into a fight Republicans have been scrambling to escape — staking political capital on one of the most toxic issues in the country, Axios’ Zachary Basu writes.
Trump’s blunt intervention comes as the AI industry mounts a far more disciplined campaign to persuade data center skeptics rather than browbeat them.
Zoom in: Prominent investor Gavin Baker laid out his own six-part case for data centers on X, which was quickly amplified by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and other tech leaders.
Water: Newer facilities can sharply reduce freshwater use through closed-loop cooling and recycled water, Baker argues. He says those systems should be required for new projects.
Taxes: Data centers can generate enormous property-tax revenue for local governments, Baker says, potentially outweighing the sales-tax exemptions that have drawn criticism.
Jobs: The buildout is driving demand for electricians, plumbers, welders, HVAC technicians and contractors, making building-trade unions some of the industry’s most important allies.
Power: Baker points to new large-load tariffs and ratepayer-protection agreements as a way to ensure data centers, rather than existing customers, pay for the new generation and grid capacity they require.
Environment: Baker argues that natural gas, renewables and batteries can meet surging demand now, with data centers ultimately moving toward solar and storage.
Towns: Data centers can turn struggling communities into beneficiaries of the AI boom. Baker points to Quincy, Washington, where data centers now account for more than half of the local property-tax base.
Reality check: Republicans in key battlegrounds have spent weeks recalibrating their positions on data centers as the issue turned politically toxic. Trump’s intervention risks blowing up that escape route.
Image source: Boston Dynamics
/ @richarddwolff 
canisgallicus 