Data centers have long underpinned the internet as we know it, but the generative AI boom has ushered in a new era of rapid, largely unchecked development. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta alone are expected to spend over $700 billion on capital expenses in 2026, an increase of 60% from 2025. Much of that money will be funneled toward stockpiling specialized chips and breaking ground on massive new data center facilities across the U.S. and around the world.

Many of the data centers of old pale in comparison to new AI-focused facilities, some of which are the size of university campuses. The rapid development has inspired a new term for the tech giants that build them: hyperscalers.

For journalists, this moment of ballooning investment and aggressive rural land acquisition by tech companies presents an opportunity — and a responsibility — to investigate.

The federal government’s $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, which aims to expand high-speed internet access nationwide, dominated broadband policy headlines in 2025. But state legislatures were also active in their efforts to bridge the digital divide. Combined, the states passed over 160 broadband-related bills and resolutions in 2025, including regulatory changes, expanding the authority of their broadband offices and addressing internet affordability for low-income customers.

As states prepare to deploy their BEAD projects and navigate new uncertainties from federal policymakers—including the potential withholding of some funding from states that have passed certain regulations on artificial intelligence—it will be increasingly important for states to balance the dual needs of administering federal funding and advancing their state-identified priorities. Bills passed in 2025 provide early insight as to how state legislatures may consider managing these dual challenges in 2026 and beyond.

X’s Grok is failing to accurately verify video footage from the Iran conflict and is sharing its own AI-generated images about the war.

When disinformation expert Tal Hagin asked Grok to verify a post on X about Iranian missiles that had supposedly struck Tel Aviv, Elon Musk’s AI-powered chatbot failed miserably.

Grok repeatedly misidentified the location and date for the video, which was originally shared on X by an Iranian state-owned media outlet on Sunday. Then, the chatbot tried to prove its point by sharing an AI-generated image.

“Now Grok is replying with AI slop of destruction,” Hagin wrote in response. “Cooked I tell you.”

NPR's Scott Simon speaks with Michael Thomas, CEO of Cleanview, about his new report on tech companies' plans to build their own off-grid power plants to provide energy for data centers.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Companies that include Amazon, Google, and OpenAI are racing to build data centers across the country to fuel the growth of artificial intelligence. But these facilities need massive amounts of energy, and this has people who live nearby concerned about their electric bills. President Trump says he's got a solution for these tech giants.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Build your own power plants. And everybody thought I was kidding. They said really? You can do that? How would you do that? I said, we'll get you your fast permits, then you'll build your own plants.

SIMON: That's the president at a White House roundtable this week, where a number of tech executives pledged to do just that. But many energy experts are skeptical. Michael Thomas is the founder and CEO of Cleanview, a market research company that tracks data centers and clean energy development. He joins us now from Boulder, Colorado. Thanks so much for being with us.

MICHAEL THOMAS: Thank you so much for having me.

SIMON: Is the president right? Would that work? Would it lower electricity prices?

A former employee of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency reportedly stole Americans’ personal data from the U.S. Social Security Administration and stored it on a thumb drive, according to a whistleblower complaint reported by The Washington Post.

The former DOGE software engineer told co-workers at his new job that he “possessed two tightly restricted databases of U.S. citizens’ information” and was planning to use the information at his new company, according to the report, which added that the Social Security Administration’s inspector general is investigating the whistleblower complaint.

The former DOGE employee, whom The Washington Post did not name, worked at the Social Security Administration last year. 

WASHINGTON, March 10, 2026 – The wireless industry is urging regulators to clarify that light poles qualify as “poles” under federal pole attachment law, saying the change would make it easier to install small cell equipment and expand broadband service.

In recently filed comments, CTIA asked the Federal Communications Commission to confirm that Section 224 of the Communications Act applies to all utility-owned or controlled poles, including light poles.

Tech giants used the affordability of their services as a shield against scrutiny. In the AI era, that shield is breaking down, Issie Lapowsky reports.

Tech Policy Press fellow James Ball asks, how should we interact with a technology designed to ‘speak’ with us on what appear to be human terms?

New research suggests tech behind AI platforms such as ChatGPT makes it easier to perform sophisticated privacy attacks.

AI has made it vastly easier for malicious hackers to identify anonymous social media accounts, a new study has warned.

In most test scenarios, large language models (LLMs) – the technology behind platforms such as ChatGPT – successfully matched anonymous online users with their actual identities on other platforms, based on the information they posted.

The AI researchers Simon Lermen and Daniel Paleka said LLMs make it cost effective to perform sophisticated privacy attacks, forcing a “fundamental reassessment of what can be considered private online”.

An article from the Advanced Communications Law and Policy (ACLP) Institute at the New York Law School claims that over 1 million locations were missed by the BEAD grants. They identified these as locations that are still shown as unserved and underserved on the FCC broadband maps, but which did not make it into the BEAD program.

ACLP also identified two other sources of locations that will likely not get broadband. They predict some BEAD defaults since a number of small and untested ISPs won sizable BEAD grants. They also believe there will continue to be defaults in other grant programs.

ACLP recommends that up to half of the $20 billion+ that will not be spent on BEAD grant be deposited into a BEAD Reserve Fund to be used to cover the shortfalls.

WASHINGTON, March 9, 2026 – The National Telecommunications and Information Administration responded to a report that claimed to spot a major structural flaw in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program — a flaw that could cost billions. 

A report published by the Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute (ACLP) at New York Law School said under rules set in June by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, 24 small internet service providers were chosen to receive a combined $2.5 billion to provide broadband to consumers. 

In response, the NTIA said it has reviewed the ISPs as part of BEAD, reduced permitting obstacles and made it clear that relying on future subsidies for broadband buildout was not allowed. 

Thousands of authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman have published an “empty” book to protest against AI firms using their work without permission.

About 10,000 writers have contributed to Don’t Steal This Book, in which the only content is a list of their names. Copies of the work are being distributed to attenders at the London book fair on Tuesday, a week before the UK government is due to issue an assessment on the economic cost of proposed changes in copyright law.

By 18 March ministers must deliver an economic impact assessment as well as a progress update on a consultation about the legal overhaul, against a backdrop of anger among creative professionals about how their work is being used by AI firms.

Overview. The roundup serves as a guide for navigating global digital policy based on the work of the Digital Policy Alert. To ensure trust, every finding links to the Digital Policy Alert entry with the official government source. The full Digital Policy Alert dataset is available for you to access, filter, and download.

To stay updated, Digital Policy Alert also offers a customizable notification service that provides free updates on your areas of interest. Digital Policy Alert’s tools further allow you to navigate, compare, and chat with the legal text of AI rules across the globe.

Drawing from the Digital Policy Alert’s daily monitoring of G20 countries, the roundup summarizes the highlights in four core areas of digital policy.

Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly polarizing — not just because of the content it produces or which jobs it might displace, but because many Americans believe it is driving up their electric bills.

Currently, most data centers draw from the public grid rather than securing their own energy sources – a fact that many associate with sky-high electricity prices. Responding to widespread bipartisan concern, President Trump gathered various technology executives at the White House this week to sign a pledge promising not to raise energy prices for consumers. Tech leaders should respond to this momentum by embracing data centers that are co-located with energy sources rather than relying on the grid’s power. Solutions like this will ensure everyday Americans never foot the bill for our country’s AI ambitions.

Most existing data centers are plugged into the grid, so they use the same energy supply on which households depend. When demand grows, utility companies often need to pass on costs of grid upgrades to consumers, so households end up paying more for their electricity. The pledge responds to this reality, but temporarily covering those costs and permanently eliminating them are two different things. There is a logical next step to turn promises into action.

ProPublica is releasing a trove of disclosure records that detail the finances of more than 1,500 Trump appointees, including former lobbyists, industry executives and at least a dozen officials who declined to identify former clients.

Thousands of companies are jockeying for billions of dollars in Defense Department contracts to build a shield designed to intercept and destroy missiles launched against the United States.

But amid the intense competition, a handful of firms have an important inside connection.

At least four of the companies awarded contracts so far are owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm founded by billionaire Steve Feinberg, who until last year ran the company and is now the deputy secretary of defense — the second-highest-ranking official in the Pentagon.

Feinberg oversees the office in charge of the Golden Dome for America project, which is modeled on Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

Feinberg filed paperwork saying he divested from Cerberus and its related businesses. But his government ethics records contain an unusual clause: He is allowed to continue contracting with the company for tax compliance and accounting services as well as health care coverage, a financial relationship that documents show could continue indefinitely.

Feinberg’s financial statements and ethics agreement are part of a trove of nearly 3,200 disclosure records that ProPublica is making public today. The disclosures, which can be viewed in a searchable online tool, detail the finances of more than 1,500 federal officials appointed by President Donald Trump. Records for Trump and Vice President JD Vance are also included.

Meta acquired Moltbook, the Reddit-like “social network” where AI agents using OpenClaw can communicate with one another. The news was first reported by Axios and later confirmed to TechCrunch.

Moltbook is joining Meta Superintelligence Labs, a Meta spokesperson told us. Moltbook creators Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr will join the team as part of the acquisition. Deal terms were not disclosed.

“The Moltbook team joining MSL opens up new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses. Their approach to connecting agents through an always-on directory is a novel step in a rapidly developing space, and we look forward to working together to bring innovative, secure agentic experiences to everyone,” the Meta spokesperson said.

For over two decades, American platforms effectively wrote and enforced the rules of the global internet. Companies such as Meta and Google built content moderation systems that became de facto global standards, and the rest of the world adapted. Now that dynamic is coming to an end.

The European Union’s Digital Services Act and the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act are now asserting regulatory authority over American platforms and their European users. The European Commission has opened proceedings against TikTok and Meta and issued a €120 million fine against X. Ofcom has launched investigations into dozens of platforms.

This time, Washington has responded with force.

The Claude chatbot developer says the Trump administration overstepped by escalating a contract dispute into a federal ban on the company’s technology.

Artificial intelligence is supercharging surveillance, and the law has not caught up with it. 

ACLP said small ISPs set to expand their markets drastically because of BEAD money may not have 'the bona fides' to meet their deployment commitments.

BEAD: Is NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth handing out BEAD program billions to a bunch of 99-pound ISP weaklings? That just might be the case. A new report Thursday could be the first yet to identify a major structural flaw in the $42.45 billion BEAD program, perhaps resulting in defaults that fleece taxpayers and deny thousands of consumers the robust broadband service they have been promised.

The report, prepared by Alex Karras and Michael Santorelli at the Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute (ACLP) at New York Law School, identified 24 small ISPs that combined are set to receive $2.5 billion from BEAD under new rules established by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last June.

Today's guest has spent thirty years on the front lines of one of the defining battles at the intersection of technology and democracy: privacy and the fight for who controls your digital life.

Cindy Cohn is the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and she has been in the room for some of the most consequential fights over digital rights since the internet became part of everyday life—from fighting for encryption in the 90s, to the NSA mass surveillance revelations, to battling FBI gag orders that kept Americans in the dark about government data requests, and now for the fight against the grave civil rights and privacy abuses of the Trump administration.

Now, as she’s preparing to step down from her role at EFF, she's telling her story, and trying to recruit a new generation to the fight. Her new book, Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance, out March 10 from MIT Press, weaves her personal journey with the legal battles she's fought on behalf of whistleblowers, researchers, innovators, and everyday people.