The Trump administration has likened the need to build out the nation’s artificial intelligence infrastructure to the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort that produced the world’s first atomic bomb. The White House’s point person on the effort, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, has spoken of the “AI arms race” with China as an existential issue for the nation.
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In a letter sent to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Thursday, a group of Democrats demanded answers on the Trump administration’s reported plans to construct at least a dozen data centers on public lands owned by the federal government. The letter to Burgum was spearheaded by House Natural Resources Committee ranking member Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California) and signed by 15 other Democrats.
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The Trump administration is reportedly considering a dozen data center projects to be built on public lands, a plan that would grant tech firms massive swaths of protected lands as they expand AI projects already sharply criticized for outsized use of public resources. The proposals under consideration are spread across six states — Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming — and would…
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A federal agency will offer tens of thousands of acres in northwestern Colorado that the nation’s largest elk herd relies upon for migration, foraging and winter habitat to oil and gas companies for lease in the state’s biggest such sale in modern history. More than 100 parcels included in a June 16 lease sale by the Bureau of Land Management encompass elk, pronghorn and mule deer migration…
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This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. The 31 national monuments designated since the Clinton administration, which could be downsized as the Trump administration pushes to open more public lands to extractive industries, safeguard clean water for…
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