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White House Eyes Data Center Agreements Amid Energy Price Spikes (politico.com) 40

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Trump administration wants some of the world's largest technology companies to publicly commit to a new compact governing the rapid expansion of AI data centers, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

A draft of the compact obtained by POLITICO lays out commitments designed to ensure energy-hungry data centers do not raise household electricity prices, strain water supplies or undermine grid reliability, and that the companies driving demand also carry the cost of building new infrastructure.

The proposed pact, which is not final and could be subject to change, is framed as a voluntary agreement between President Donald Trump and major U.S. tech companies and data center developers. It could bind OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta and other AI giants to a broad set of energy, water and community principles. None of these companies immediately responded to a request for comment.
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White House Eyes Data Center Agreements Amid Energy Price Spikes More

White House Eyes Data Center Agreements Amid Energy Price Spikes

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  • Government managed quotas (Score:3)

    by algaeman ( 600564 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2026 @06:49PM (#65981260)
    This can't possibly go wrong!

    • It's a voluntary compact. It won't impact anything

      • Re: Government managed quotas (Score:4, Insightful)

        by gtall ( 79522 ) on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @05:13AM (#65981832)

        Nonsense, it will impact el Bunko's bottom line. "Oh, you want to slide on this provision of the compact you signed with us? What is is worth to you?"

        The main reason el Bunko wants a "voluntary" compact is because he can shake down companies. If he were serious, he'd back legislation in Congress. Although at the moment, with the R's in control, any piece of toilet paper they'd pass would be toothless and full of holes. Maybe he realized that? Him? Not a chance.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        No agreement with Trump is worth the paper it's written on.

    • There is no one more anti-business than a mercantilist businessman.

    • All those AI companies will no longer get the public to subsidize their 24/7 usage of data centers, and this could well force AI to be used only by the people who want them, and only for those uses where it really helps solve problems, rather than just as a fetish. For instance, if one really is big into AI, get one of those Nvidia petaflop boxes and then use that to do all one's AI processing. Oh, as well as pay for the electricity due to running it, as opposed to offloading it to the public as a result

  • The $10 Trillion asymptote chase (Score:3)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2026 @07:07PM (#65981288)
    The AI companies are chasing the IQ asymptote and they know it but cannot admit it.

    GPT n+1 - GPT n < GPT n - GPT n-1

    The bubble will burst as new models are released and found wanting.

    It is disgusting that evil Altman and co are wasting all this power on this stupid race they know no-one will win.
    • Remember when VCs used to worry about concepts like escalation of commitment and protection of capital?

      Those days seem to be long gone. I guess they must have some expectation that the govt will bail them out if they get too big to fail.

      Just add it to the list of reasons why it sucks to be a US taxpayer right now.

      • Well it wouldn't be a Republican administration and Congress without leaving a big fat mess for the next folks to clean up. How else can they get back to whinging about the debt in 2032 without making the next admin have to bail the economy out for the 4th time in my life.

    • Name a recent model and version you have tried, and how you found it wanting.

      • Though I did hear one guy vibecoded his way into asking a sysadmin to restore to a week-old backup.

      • Claude sonnet 4.5. Shite. It can replace a below average intern.

        • Are you a sockpuppet account for greytree? If not, and you are going to answer for him, at least answer the question. Didn't just pick a random model and version and say what it can do. The point was he has no idea what he is talking about, because he talks about what AI can't do, but has no real world experience. If you want to add to the conversation, at least add something to the conversation.
      • I use two remote LLMs, both are very helpful with my work, and a couple of local ones that can also do useful things, everyone knows how useful they are, so fuck off.

        Your poor comprehension skills have caused you to miss the point. If you want to add to the conversation, at least try and understand the conversation.

        LLM AIs will get better more and more slowly, so more and more of our precious energy will have to be thrown at them for smaller and smaller improvements, until the AI companies run out of money
        • LLMs are not going to get better more slowly, they will get better exponentially. Furthermore, LLMs improving is not the foundation of the AI push. That is for general AI, aka AGI. So no, your formula and false assumption is not valid. It is based upon a complete lack of understand of AI and where the effort is being applied.
          • Ah, I see we have a genius in our midst.
            No need for any discussion, he has the present and future all worked out.
            Even though he doesn't understand AI and cannot follow an argument.

            0 K, 0 IQ
            • You literally started off this thread claiming you had the future all worked out. The pathetic thing is you don't even see how clueless you are, and for the record, yes ... I am literally a genius.
              • > > The AI companies are chasing the IQ asymptote and they know it but cannot admit it.
                  >
                  > Name a recent model and version you have tried, and how you found it wanting.
                  >

                Hey, genius ! You don't understand AI, cannot follow an argument and your sig is broken.
                • So you don't know how to use blockquote, can't figure out that my .sig shows differently now due to changes in the Slashcode .css implemented after said sig was created, and that most people don't see it anyway due to responsive design and the pervasive use of the mobile platform, can't come up with anything to say that is valid, choosing instead to focus on my .sig

                  Yeah ... that's par for the course for you I guess.

  • Non-Binding Nothing Burger (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crunchy_one ( 1047426 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2026 @07:20PM (#65981312)

    The proposed pact, which is not final and could be subject to change, is framed as a voluntary agreement...

    More sound and fury, signifying nothing.

  • Wait... between who? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2026 @07:32PM (#65981338) Homepage

    The summary: ...The proposed pact... is framed as a voluntary agreement between President Donald Trump and major U.S. tech companies and data center developers.

    Wait, between who??? This is an agreement between the data companies and Donald Trump, personally?

    • It's what's known as a gentleman's agreement. Typically these are sealed with nothing more than a handshake and the exchange of a single gold bar.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

      Mega corps and the orange turd. Two entities known for keeping promise.

    • What, do we expect The Great Negotiator to work with Congress and pass actual laws? Perish the thought that the admin would acknowledge such things and that the Republican Congress would remember Article I exists.

      Not said is that to get around this the companies will have to make a healthy transaction with the Presidential Crypto Bribe System.

    • In a traditional monarchy, there is no concept of state, only the king. When an agreement is made with "the country", it is a personal agreement with the king. The agreement lasts as long as the king is alive. After the king dies, his heir is the king, and any previous agreements must be renewed with the current king.

      Hence also the saying "the king is dead, long live the king". It means that the subjects of the previous king, who are no longer subjects to anyone temporarily, proclaim their agreement with

  • Why would datacentre operators do this? (Score:4, Informative)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @03:44AM (#65981724)

    As it stands datacentre operators are pulling all stops to bypass existing regulations. What makes anyone think they will voluntarily join this agreement?

    Funny story about Microsoft in Amsterdam, they are building a huge vertical datacentre. Why vertical? Turns out the regulations governing hyperscale datacentres in the Netherlands considered the power consumption *AND* foot print (law makers are stupid the world over it seems). By building a 20 story datacentre they keep their foot print on the ground below the threshold and their hyperscale datacentre suddenly didn't need to meet any regulations or approvals for a hyperscale datacentre.

    We're talking about companies that are proposing putting datacentres at the bottom of the ocean, or powering them via magical fairy dust ... I mean SMRs. We're talking about companies who couldn't get a grid connection resulting in Elon Musk getting 30 small gas turbine generators used typically for temporary construction power to run his datacentre permanently, and then 2 years later tell the local government that he doesn't need to meet emissions regulations for a power plant because the gas turbines are "not permanent".

    No one is going to give a shit about Trump's proposal. It makes me wonder ... is this just all for show?

    • is this just all for show?

      Of course it is. It's his MO. Say a lot, do very little, claim victory.

      Energy prices are absolutely going to rise for consumers because of AI. Now Trump can say he wrote a big, beautiful, (worthless, toothless) pact but those big bad companies did it anyway. If he really wanted to stop them he could get a law passed. He doesn't want to stop them. He wants to be seen to be stopping them, while doing nothing.

      • You don't recognize this as the warning it is? "Do it voluntarily, or face regulators who won't be as friendly."

    • As it stands datacentre operators are pulling all stops to bypass existing regulations. What makes anyone think they will voluntarily join this agreement?

      Well, it's currently voluntary, That could change. The government could encourage compliance by threatening all kinds of regulations and delays in datacenter development if this problem isn't addressed, but neither the government nor the developers want that,

      This problem needs to be addressed though because electric rates are going up fast due to the demands. I think these developers should be required to fund development of the energy needed to run their facilities. Do you have any other suggestions?

      • Well, it's currently voluntary, That could change. The government could encourage compliance by threatening all kinds of regulations

        So you're postulating the current government would threaten regulations against the tech industry? One moment please. *deeep breath*.
        BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHA

        Thanks for the laugh.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Of course it is all for show, just like saying you're going to build underwater data centers powered by SMRs is for show.

      If you are president of the United States or CEO of a trillion dollar company the expectation is that you have "big ideas". If you go around making practical proposals based on hardware or infrastructure that either exists today or that we know how to create without exhotic materials and entirely new regulatory frameworks, people will start saying things like "i could have come up with th

  • The past 30-days have been unusually cold and windy in my state, and people are getting their electric bills and freaking out. Social media is full of surprised people wanting to sue the power company for being "greedy".. lol. Not sure what they were expecting-- we were warned our bills would be higher in 2026 because of the influx of new data centers.

    • What happened is the efficiency of home heating with a heat pump promised to be cheap to run when comparing overall costs to fossil fuels. Then the price of electricity nearly doubled overnight. Now people are stuck with an expensive heat pump and high electricity rates. Anyone hoodwinked into using only resistive element heat as the backup to the heat pump is now seeing a $$$$$$$$$$$$$ bill.

  • Why not just pass a law that states this instead of asking if they would like to sign an agreement?

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