Bigger and bigger data centers are leading to proposals for massive electric power transmission lines, sometimes across hundreds of miles. These high-voltage power lines cost tens of billions of dollars a year and are the latest front line in the battle over tech giants' massive operations. Artificial intelligence advances are seen by President Donald Trump as critical to the nation’s economic and national security. But their energy needs are threatening to overwhelm the power grid and the transmission expansion is drawing opposition from landowners, conservationists, local officials, consumer advocates and states.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued its first construction permit for a commercial nuclear reactor in eight years. The commission granted the permit Wednesday for a Bill Gates-backed company to build a sodium-cooled nuclear reactor in western Wyoming. The company filed for the permit in 2024. Construction of the reactor 130 miles northeast of Salt Lake City, Utah, is expected to begin within weeks, with a completion target of 2030. Gates is eyeing next-generation nuclear plants as a power source for the electricity-hungry data centers behind artificial intelligence. He is a founder of and primary investor in TerraPower, the company building the plant.

Iranian drone strikes damaged three Amazon Web Services sites in the Middle East, exposing how vulnerable cloud data centers are in conflict. AWS said late Monday that drones directly hit two data centers in the United Arab Emirates and another site in Bahrain suffered damage after a drone landed nearby. AWS later said recovery work in the UAE was making progress. An expert said that Amazon typically configures its services so that the loss of a single data center would be relatively unimportant to its operations. He said the attacks are a reminder that cloud computing isn’t “magical” and still requires physical facilities that are vulnerable to disaster scenarios.