40 to 1: American Voters Are Rejecting AI Data Centers

Texas is the fastest-growing data center market in the U.S. and the most concentrated base for Big Tech's AI construction push. This status may no longer hold after the 2026 midterm elections. Democrat James Talarico won the Senate seat, Gina Hinojosa was elected governor, and Democrats took control of the Texas House of Representatives for the first time in 24 years. They positioned data center policy as a core campaign issue. For hyperscale cloud vendors with ongoing expansion plans in Texas, this spells major trouble, and has amplified widespread anxiety that U.S. AI construction could grind to a halt. Original Article

This anti-data-center sentiment is far from unique to Texas. Out of 41 midterm referendum measures across the U.S., 40 opposed data center development, and six cities voted to implement outright bans. Meta's president stated that the midterm results will make building new data centers far more difficult. Some analysts argue this setback could even give a boost to China's AI ambitions. A MIT Technology Review article from January this year put it bluntly in its headline: Data centers are amazing, everyone hates them. Link

Texas Democratic Representative Greg Casar told Wired: "The pushback against data centers is one of the top defining issues of the 2026 elections. In a few years, we will look back at this as the early tremor of a much larger AI earthquake that will roil U.S. politics."

Energy Policy: While Democrats have won control of both chambers of Congress, Trump remains in the White House, so major federal climate and energy legislation is highly unlikely to pass. The midterm elections have exerted a far greater influence at the state and local level, where state grid operations, data center development, renewable energy deployment and greenhouse gas emission rules are all set to be reshaped. Link

On November 9, the Senate will vote on the BAAJA (Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act). This bill seeks to cut through red tape in the approval process to speed up the construction of U.S. energy infrastructure, and may kick off an overhaul of the slow, convoluted permitting system. Some environmental groups oppose the full bill or certain clauses within it. Link The bottleneck for AI data centers is shifting away from chips to power supply and development permits.

Other must-read updates today:

• Hackers raised the temperature of refrigerator units at three blood banks in France, and alarms were triggered before any blood products were lost. Hundreds of hacks targeting supermarket refrigerators were reported prior to this incident, and experts remain divided over the identity of the perpetrators.
• Democrats are preparing to launch an investigation into Elon Musk. His companies hold more than $16 billion in U.S. government contracts. His unprecedented political spending may have backfired and damaged Republican electoral performance. The blue wave in Texas has also unsettled Musk and SpaceX.
• The new Congress is likely to challenge Trump's planned science funding cuts, though the president still retains the power to veto any bills.
• China is attracting top AI talent while curbing talent outflow. It recently blocked SoftBank's acquisition of ABB Robotics. Chinese chip makers are poaching engineers from foreign competitors. Prominent mathematician Xiao Ma left the U.S. to work on AI research in China.
• Watchdog organizations have filed a lawsuit against tech giants for providing advisory services to the Pentagon. Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey are set to profit from these advisory contracts.
• A new study tests whether AI is aware of its own "thoughts", attempting to map AI's introspective capabilities. Another MIT Technology Review article argues that the AI consciousness debate is a trap.
• Faint red spots spotted by the JWST could be the first observed supermassive black holes from the early universe. Scientists have entered the "zeptoverse" for the first time, where rare particle decay could reveal the world far smaller than atoms. NASA's Swift telescope re-entered Earth's atmosphere 22 years after its launch.

A notable figure worth knowing:

Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov is at minimum an unofficial intelligence operative. Every month, he drives a VW van fitted with radio hardware, roof antennas and drone monitoring equipment to the front line, spending days scanning the airwaves for transmission signals to assist Ukrainian forces. Drones have defined this brutal conflict, and most of them rely on the radio communications Beskrestnov has been obsessed with since childhood. A former military officer now working as a civilian, he has taken it upon himself to inform his national defense team of all radio-related intelligence. Unlike traditional spies, he shares his findings with more than 127,000 followers on social media, including soldiers and government officials. His work has earned him fans in the military, but also sparked controversy among senior leadership. Full Article

Some good news:
Mars has a new mystery: a cliff formation whose composition is completely different from the surrounding terrain. A photographer waited for months of clear weather to capture a perfect sunset shot of St. Petersburg. East Timor has eliminated trachoma, making this blinding disease fully eradicated across all of Southeast Asia. We also have this year's top bird photography award winners, ranging from shots of bald eagles feeding to northern gannets bursting out of the water.