The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced proposed changes Monday that would allow gas power plants, data centers and factories to begin construction on non-polluting components such as piping, wiring, cement pads and other support structures before obtaining air-emission permits. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a news release that the “proposal works to provide solutions to…
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Two trends, seemingly separate, have been accelerating over the past few years. First, Wall Street has been plowing billions of dollars into financing data centers. Second, the U.S. military has been ramping up its use of artificial intelligence (AI). Now, these two trends are directly merging. In late March 2026, the U.S. Army announced its selection of companies to build and operate two…
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Artificial intelligence, or AI, is helping Indigenous communities detect illegal logging, track wildfires, and monitoring of traditional lands. But the data centers powering AI are driving new threats, requiring water, energy, and critical minerals often extracted from Indigenous territories. Now, Indigenous leaders at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII…
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When he drives through his neighborhood now, Brian Page passes rows of police cars and AI‑powered cameras that track nearly every movement. For most of his life, Page, who goes by “Scapegoat Jones,” felt safest in the community that Atlanta officials have since flooded with officers and surveillance technology in the name of “public safety.” He bought a house six minutes from the one he grew…
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The artificial intelligence industry’s data center boom is the latest chapter in a long history of environmental racism and resource exploitation in vulnerable Native communities, says Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne activist Krystal Two Bulls, the executive director of Honor the Earth, an Indigenous-led environmental justice organization that is tracking over 100 proposed data center projects…
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On a February morning in 2024, a little-known agency in Rockland County held a public hearing on a proposed subsidy for the expansion of a JPMorganChase data center in Orangeburg, near the New Jersey border. In return for nearly $77 million in tax breaks, the project promised to create exactly one permanent job. No one showed up. After 20 minutes of silence, an agency official called the…
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