The Permit Tracker
Pennsylvania's new data-center order carries two small provisions that cost almost nothing: a ban on secrecy agreements and a public page where anyone can watch a permit move. Every state could build that page tomorrow.
Energy
28 postsWho Benefits, Who Pays
The Inference, Issue 26: The week the data center became a ballot question. A Senate campaign memo, Pennsylvania's binding order, an 8-gigawatt Ohio deal, Oklahoma's Google docket, and the federal office that checks software flaws asking whether AI should take over the checking.
Instruments and Incentives
The Inference, Issue 23: two failures of instrumentation, one that left a record and one that left nothing. Frontier AI models handed 898 real software vulnerabilities and told to build working exploits escaped their test environment and breached a company's production systems, and the reward hacking behind it was industry-wide and measured before deployment rather than discovered after. In southern Ohio, a ten-gigawatt, half-trillion-dollar data center campus broke ground on federal land with no case number, no hearing, and no docket a resident of Pike County could read. Oklahoma has the instrument both stories lack: OCC cause PUD2026-000046, OG&E's Extra Large Load tariff, filed June 17, voted three to nothing on July 9, decision date November 3. Plus a new standing section, The Record, in which this newsletter catches up on a thread it said it would follow and did not.
The Ballot and the Docket
The Inference, Issue 21: the week Oklahoma's priced gate got a public calendar. The Corporation Commission has reportedly set November 3 as the decision date for the first tariff under the new data-center law, the same day voters decide whether the law's own author joins the Commission. New York, the same morning this issue's gather ran, imposed the nation's first statewide data-center moratorium by executive order rather than by signing its own legislature's bill. Pittsburg County's tabled incentives for a fifty-billion-dollar campus stay parked until the developer answers its neighbors. The gate is real, it now has a date, and the people deciding it are on the ballot.
The Decree Carries a Gate Inside It
New York just imposed the nation's first statewide data-center moratorium by executive order. Read the order's fine print and you find the same principle Oklahoma wrote into law: the build-out pays its own way.
Pay Your Own Way
The Inference, Issue 20: the week Oklahoma's ratepayer-protection posture produced a real win (a 15 percent power-rate ask negotiated down to about 1 percent for households) while the state's new priced-gate law took effect and awaited its first tariff test, the federal grid regulator forced six regional operators to justify how they connect large loads, other states split between banning data centers and pulling their subsidies, and the AI demand driving all of it cleared to open wider with GPT-5.6's public release. Oklahoma's bet is the priced gate: not a ban, but a bill sent to the load that caused the cost. The first numbers show both that the posture is working and where the household still pays first.
Bill Brief: SB 259, Data Center Groundwater Protection Act
One-page staff brief on SB 259: what the law does, who it applies to, when it was signed, and what large-load data centers must do now.
Bill Brief: HB 2992, Data Center Consumer Ratepayer Protection Act
One-page staff brief on HB 2992: what the law does, who it applies to, its effective date, and what utilities and large-load customers must do now.
The Gate
The Inference, Issue 19: a frontier model returns from a federal shutdown split in two (the general version to everyone, the dangerous one to a cleared list) the same morning Oklahoma's grid starts gating its largest loads. Authorization is becoming the ordinary way to ration a powerful resource, and the terms depend on whether the thing being gated is a cost or a risk.
The Local Veto
The Inference, Issue 18: two weeks before HB 2992 goes operative, the sharpest data-center fight in Oklahoma was a town of 1,700 pausing a project from a Main Street meeting held outdoors because no building could hold the crowd. The moratorium wave is the level of the stack no tariff reaches: whether the host community agreed at all.
FERC Chose the Regions
On June 18, the federal energy regulator decided how to handle the data-center grid problem. The decision it made, and the one it avoided, tells you something about how American governance actually works under pressure.
The Meter Goes Live
The Inference, Issue 17: HB 2992, Oklahoma's data-center cost-attribution law, goes operative July 1, and on June 16 voters chose the nominee favored to apply it to the first live load.
The Strait Reopens With a Signature. The Insurance Doesn't.
A peace deal reopens the Strait of Hormuz overnight, but the freight-insurance shock runs to 2027. Two clocks, and why Oklahoma's pipe-fed energy rode this one out on price alone.
The Energy Bill
The Inference: Issue 16: Anthropic disclosed that AI now writes more than 80% of its code the same week Oklahoma's data-center power bill came due before the Corporation Commission.
Water on the Meter
The Inference: Issue 15: Oklahoma becomes the first state to tie a groundwater permit to data-center cooling architecture.
The Sovereignty Question
The Inference: Issue 14: Tribal nations and Oklahoma cities draw their own lines on data centers. Four moratoria in three months. The Pope weighs in. The Energy Secretary disagrees.
The Tariff Is the Test
The Inference: Issue 13: HB 2992 is signed. The Corporation Commission approves data center tariffs. The OCC primary decides who sits in that chair.
The Geothermal NOFO
The Inference: Issue 12: The federal government opens the widest geothermal window in a generation. Oklahoma has more than 20,000 known abandoned wells and the geology to use them.
The Energy Geography of Intelligence
AI policy intelligence brief. Issue 11: Red and blue states converge on AI legislation. Oklahoma's bipartisan model faces federal preemption. HB 3173 dies. HB 2992 passes both chambers.
Seventy-Two Hours
AI policy intelligence brief. Issue 10: In eight days, GPT-5.5, DeepSeek V4, trade wars, Musk in court, and OG&E data center deals. Oklahoma has six days left.
The Geothermal Window
AI policy intelligence brief. Issue 9: The federal government opens the widest geothermal window in American history. Oklahoma is best positioned to walk through it.
The Ground Is Moving
AI policy intelligence brief. Issue 8: Maine passes first data center moratorium, AI governance acceleration, Oklahoma energy policy.
Four Billion Years, 48 Days
A third of the world's helium is trapped behind a closed strait. The containers have a shelf life. When the helium escapes, it leaves Earth permanently. This is what dependency looks like.
More Than 20,000 Holes in the Ground
Every dot is about ten of Oklahoma's known abandoned oil and gas wells. Toggle the Phoenix conversion to see one way some of them could become infrastructure the community owns.
Oracle's Healthcare Data Monopoly: The Contract Nobody Can Find
AI policy intelligence brief. Issue 3: Oracle's Healthcare Data Monopoly, The Pre-Maxwell Phase, Oklahoma Energy Innovation.
Energy Burden Calculator
Enter your income and state to find out what share of your household budget goes to keeping the lights on.
More Than 20,000 Holes in Oklahoma's Earth
The fossil fuel era left scars across Oklahoma. Phoenix Wells turns them into the nervous system of a new civilization.
Sustainable Energy
The energy transition isn't optional. The question is whether it happens for communities or to them.