Texas Grids and Alberta Refineries Face Data Center Backlash
August 5, 2026
State regulators in Texas and provincial officials in Alberta are aggressively reshaping energy policies to accommodate surging hyperscale demand while municipal backlashes stall local infrastructure. Simultaneously, federal trade restrictions on Chinese hardware and booming chip revenues for companies like AMD highlight how the material race for AI compute is fracturing domestic politics and straining power grids from the US South to the Canadian resource frontier.
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Texas says data centers must pass an audit before connecting to the grid
Texas announced new a audit on data centers that could slow approval for new facilities seeking to connect to the state energy grid. Governor Greg Abbott (R) on Monday directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to verify and audit new…
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Alberta’s Propaganda Push to Sell the Public on Data Centres
‘Don’t worry, folks. Just think of them as ‘digital refineries.’
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Hamilton's mysterious data centre reversal haunts other municipalities
All but one of the 16 elected officials in the city had voted in favour of a bylaw that would put a pause on new data centres in the city for a year. Then, at a council meeting the following month where the bylaw was expected to pass, the majority of council flipped.
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How Data Centers Broke American Politics
What the Unabomber, Steve Bannon’s tech guy, and Bernie Sanders taught me about the great data center backlash of 2026.
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Trump administration reportedly drafting ban on Chinese datacenter components
Trump’s FCC is developing a measure to bar US imports of new models of Chinese datacenter devices, sources say The Trump administration is reportedly drafting a ban on US imports of new models of Chinese datacenter components, in the latest sign US authorities are scrambling to respond to the rapid…
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America’s Cosmic Bet on AI
The winner takes it all. What happens if the United States loses?
- geopolitics
- structural power
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AMD’s datacenter business is booming while gaming takes a backseat
Driven by demand for AI capacity, AMD's data center revenue more than doubled year-over-year in its latest earnings report, reaching $6.7 billion. That's up from $5.8 billion in Q1, and jumping 107 percent from the $3.2 billion it reported for the same period a year ago. At the same time, AMD's gami…