Who Gained the Most During Trump’s First Year? Billionaires and Corporations.

The first year of Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. president has been a most profitable one for the Trump family and its inner circle. By now, much has been reported about the web of conflicts — the unapologetic ethical morass — that defines the second Trump administration and the Trump family’s cryptocurrency ventures, foreign business deals, military contracts, and more.
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Trump Family Businesses Launched Since Inauguration Have Raked In at Least $4B

Ventures launched by the Trump family since Donald Trump’s reelection have generated at least $4 billion in proceeds and paper wealth for the Trump family. With investments across sectors like real estate, hospitality, media, cryptocurrency and more, the Trumps are “increasingly integrating their business empire” into the wider U.S. economy, says David Uberti, who has been reporting on the family’…
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Fracking Industry Executives Are Salivating Over the AI Data Center Boom

“The demand for power and for AI is like nothing I’ve ever seen.” These words were uttered during an October earnings call, not by a wide-eyed tech executive, but by Jeff Miller, the CEO of Halliburton, one of the world’s biggest oilfield services corporations. Like droves of other companies tied to the fracked gas industry, Halliburton is pivoting toward servicing the data center boom…
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As Electricity Bills Rise, Activists Are Demanding Public Control of Utilities

Electricity bills for millions of utility customers are skyrocketing across the U.S. while the number of households facing extreme utility debt is mounting. Energy costs are being turbocharged by the AI data center boom, which is prolonging the burning of fossil fuels in the face of intensifying climate chaos. Overseeing all this is a powerful regime of investor-owned utilities that dominate our…
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As Towns and Cities Fight Off Data Centers, Calls Grow for a National Moratorium

Billionaire tech moguls talk as if the artificial intelligence revolution is inevitable, and it’s up to the rest of us to adapt. Earlier this year in a blog post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman boasted that society is now “past the event horizon; the takeoff has started” toward building computer “superintelligence.” However, the industry is not just facing blowback from skeptics of the technology itself.
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The US Economy Is Becoming Highly Dependent on a New and Untested AI Industry

Over the last few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has become extremely popular in Silicon Valley and is widely regarded as the most transformative technology in the 21st century. In fact, it is already reshaping sectors like education, transportation, finance, health care, media, and telecommunications. Indeed, it is estimated that about 60 percent of jobs in advanced economies may be impacted…
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