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The Data Center Rundown

Jan 28, 2026

 
Regulatory and social grid pressure

Senate Democrats have proposed legislation that would require grid operators to establish data center load queues to mitigate the impact of data centers on the electrical grid.

Read at Data Center Dynamics→

The environmental non-governmental organization Food & Water Watch announced plans to intensify its campaign efforts aimed at halting the construction and operation of new data centers.

Read at Data Center Dynamics→

A group of four Democratic senators has formally requested that the Secretary of the Treasury investigate recent debt transactions involving data center developments.

Read at Bisnow→

 

Should the Treasury Secretary investigate recent debt transactions involving data center developments?

The United States government authorized the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to engage backup generators at data centers to maintain grid stability through Tuesday, January twenty-seventh, during a severe storm.

Read at Data Center Dynamics→

 
Sovereign and global AI infrastructure

The establishment of HUMAIN's $1.2 billion framework in Saudi Arabia may signify the emergence of a novel model for structuring institutional-grade data centers backed by sovereign entities to facilitate artificial intelligence scaling.

Read at Global Data Center Hub→

India is planning a $25 billion green gigacampus, Microsoft is increasing density in the United States, and Google is establishing an anchor presence in Thailand, all within a global context shaped by capital and power dynamics.

Read at Global Data Center Hub→

A summit organized by Bill Gates in Madrid aims to support data center expansion in Spain and Portugal amid rising regulatory scrutiny concerning their energy consumption.

Read at Data Center Dynamics→

 

MoD Palantir contract

The United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence has awarded a direct follow-on contract valued at £240.6 million to Palantir for the continued licensing and support of its data analytics software over a three-year period.

Read at The Register→

 
Chatter
The view from Reddit
“Is anyone else's browser security strategy just... hope?”

A concerned administrator questions the perceived lack of concrete strategy around browser security, expressing anxiety over the lack of visibility into user activity across multiple logged-in accounts despite having standard endpoint and network protections in place.

Read at r/sysadmin→

“Entitled/spoiled users rant”

A solo IT professional, who admits to fostering user dependency by immediately addressing every request, is now overwhelmed by entitled user behavior and burnout, recognizing the need to implement a formal ticketing system despite lacking the energy to enforce the change.

Read at r/sysadmin→

“Is it just me or institutional knowledge is no longer valued?”

A long-tenured employee laments that loyalty and deep, specialized technical knowledge, once rewarded with security, are now disregarded by management who expect remaining staff to simply 'figure it out' after layoffs.

Read at r/sysadmin→

 

Do management teams currently undervalue deep, specialized institutional knowledge after layoffs?

 

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