The best Stratechery content from the week of May 18, 2026, including data center discontent, agent economics, and slime mold.
The increasing scale and resource demands of AI compute infrastructure, particularly data centers, are leading to heightened scrutiny and potential bottlenecks.
Strategic readers should care as the 'data center veto' represents a critical choke point for AI development and deployment, impacting national competitiveness and power dynamics.
The ability to freely site and power large data centers is diminishing, turning resource constraints and societal acceptance into binding constraints for AI expansion.
- · Renewable energy developers
- · Energy-efficient AI hardware providers
- · Regions with abundant and cheap power
- · AI companies dependent on rapid, unconstrained data center expansion
- · Established grid operators without modernization plans
- · Regions with water scarcity or high energy costs
Increased public and regulatory pushback against new data center construction.
AI development and deployment will be concentrated in areas with robust and available power infrastructure, creating new geographic disparities.
Innovation in energy-efficient AI algorithms and hardware will accelerate to mitigate power and resource constraints.
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