The broligarchy loves itself the idea of “freedom cities.” The billionaire backers of such locales talk of how they will create millions of new homes and drive American economic and technological dynamism. At heart, though, they are simply secessionist territory run by tech barons where they are free of government regulation. Gone could be nuisances like taxes, environmental reviews, and any pretense of democracy and in their place could be “innovative” perks like slave labor and eugenics.
The techno libertarians have tried—and failed— freedom cities in different locales around the world like Prospera in Honduras, yet Elon Musk now has his Starbase company town in Texas. There’s a push for freedom cities in Greenland. There’s even some pro-union window dressing for the billionaire-backed ‘California Forever’ project northeast of San Francisco. And freedom city lobbying groups are urging the Trump administration to announce a slew of freedom sites this July 4.
Yet it increasingly looks like they won’t need no stinking declaration from Trump for a measly few sites; they’re gonna get their freedom all the way from California to the New York island.
That’s because if the ultimate goal of these so-called freedom cities is to throw off the shackles of oversight by government of, by and for the people, well, that’s already happening as laws are being rewritten and torn down to cater to the broligarchy’s AI ambitions.
Today let’s focus on energy and the data center rush.
There’s currently a bill making its way through the US Senate that would allow AI data center companies to bypass federal electricity regulations by building their own energy infrastructure. Proposed by GOP Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, the DATA Act of 2026 essentially releases the broligarchs from the Federal Power Act and allows them to craft their own energy policies.
States, too, are proposing laws to wall the AI industry off from society:
Bill filed in the Florida Legislature that would hide public records of any data center being proposed in Florida. pic.twitter.com/gaZgYUt68Q
— Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) January 25, 2026
But back to the US Senate bill. Here are more details from Data Center Dynamics:
If passed the bill would create a new utility category called “consumer-regulated electric utilities” (CREUs), with companies who build their own independent power infrastructure falling under this new designation. In order to qualify for CREU, the utilities would have to be completed disconnected from the main grid and built solely to serve new electric loads…
The exemption would allow data center developers to avoid the provisions of the Federal Power Act, including Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rate regulation, reliability standards, interconnection rules, transmission planning, and merger approval.
The act would also permit the companies to sell electricity at retail to other customers, subject to the caveat that the system is islanded from the grid.
One could expect the bill to be opposed by utility companies, but who wins in a politician shopping spree contest between the utility industry and Silicon Valley?
And what do you know, a big chunk of data centers under development do indeed plan to build their own power plants that are disconnected from our collective grid. From Distilled:
48 GW of proposed data centers—roughly 33% of all planned capacity—now plan to skip the grid by building “behind-the-meter” projects. This is a very new trend.
A little more than a year ago, virtually all data center developers planned to use the electric grid to power 100% of their projects. In December 2024, there was less than 2 GW of planned behind-the-meter data center capacity, according to our data center tracker at Cleanview. Then in 2025, developers announced roughly 40 projects that planned to skip the grid partially or entirely.
Some of these projects will soon be home to America’s largest fossil fuel power plants, like Homer City Energy Campus in PA—a proposed 4 GW+ natural gas plant that will send all of its power to an onsite data center. Other projects will use a combination of technologies—everything from solar, wind, batteries, and even nuclear. Natural gas is by far the most common, though. 72% of projects plan to use it.
It’s almost like the money knows Cotton’s DATA Act is destined for success. Should the bill pass, it will mean more data centers and devoted power stations and sooner. And less time to reflect on questions like ‘is this a colossal waste of money?’
It’s also disastrous news for the climate. Global Energy Monitor, in a report issued Wednesday, found the following:
- Gas-fired power plant projects in the US nearly tripled last year.
- USA! USA! leads the world in new gas-fired power generation.
- It is responsible for a quarter of the current global gas power pipeline.
- More than a third of US new plants are directly linked to datacenter projects.
And as Distilled notes, “Homer City’s 4 GW project could soon become one of the largest single sources of carbon emissions in the country.”
But wait, there’s more.
Nuclear Regulations Secretly Discarded
In addition to the accommodating fossil fuel policies for our AI overlords, the Trump administration is also trashing nuclear safety rules. We have to rely on a partial view of the new regulatory framework leaked to NPR since so far the details are only being shared with companies standing to benefit while remaining hidden from the public. Take it away, NPR:
The changes are to departmental orders, which dictate requirements for almost every aspect of the reactors’ operations — including safety systems, environmental protections, site security and accident investigations…The orders slash hundreds of pages of requirements for security at the reactors. They also loosen protections for groundwater and the environment and eliminate at least one key safety role. The new orders cut back on requirements for keeping records, and they raise the amount of radiation a worker can be exposed to before an official accident investigation is triggered.
What’s the driving force behind the changes? As NPR notes, it’s largely private equity, venture capital, and tech, which have plowed billions into small modular reactors. Amazon, Google, Meta, and company say they want the reactors to supply power for AI.
Nothing like rules made in secret to engender public trust ! And it’s causing obvious concern. Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told NPR the following:
“They’re taking a wrecking ball to the system of nuclear safety and security regulation oversight that has kept the U.S. from having another Three Mile Island accident. I am absolutely worried about the safety of these reactors.”
In May of last year, Trump signed a series of executive orders on nuclear energy, including one for the creation of a new program at the Department of Energy to build experimental reactors with at least three to achieve nuclear criticality by July 4, 2026—which also happens to be the date being pushed by the techno libertarians for an announcement of freedom city sites. What an Independence Day it might be.
Yet, the new nuclear rules once again show why the broligarchs don’t need walled-off freedom cities to escape; they can just turn the entire country into one of their dreamed-of emirates instead. Similar to the way the AI industry is seeking a “freedom” lane to speed past any Federal Power Act roadblocks, the new nuclear rules will supposedly unleash their great power of innovation—i.e., less environmental and worker protections=less costs.
In this case, seven nuclear security directives totaling more than 500 pages have been consolidated into a single, 23-page order!
While there are arguments for reforming the “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” (ALARA) nuclear safety principles, what the administration is doing is catering to AI money. Again from NPR:
Removing the standard means that new reactors could be constructed with less concrete shielding, and workers could work longer shifts, potentially receiving higher doses of radiation, according to Tison Campbell, a partner at K&L Gates who previously worked as a lawyer at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“So the result could be lower construction costs, saved employment costs and things like that,” Campbell said. “That could reduce the overall financial burden of constructing and operating a nuclear powerplant.”
And the administration is tearing down even more than just ALARA by axing requirements like one for a cognizant system engineer who is supposed to understand each part of a reactor in order to help prevent a minor problem in one component from becoming a major problem in another that could lead to a severe accident. That position is now considered an “unnecessary burden.”
One can understand the sentiment, as the whole AI industry sure feels like an unnecessary burden for society—one that the tech overlords and their offspring plan to further escape should they adequately destroy it in their lifetimes.
We mentioned the techno libertarians’ interest in Greenland freedom cities. Potential reasons for that obsession include the Arctic island’s abundance of energy and mineral resources, favorable climate for data centers, and half-jokingly the 2020 apocalyptic survival disaster thriller titled “Greenland” which would appeal to the broligarchy, who are big fans of apocalypse bunkers.
Perhaps there’s another reason. As the US races to fire up more carbon-burning emissions for data centers and accelerate global warming, a new paper published at Nature Communications finds that Greenland might be spared from the sea level rise that will devastate so many other coastal locations:
The Greenland Ice Sheet will significantly contribute to global mean sea-level rise this century. However, glacial isostatic adjustment is expected to cause regional sea-level fall around Greenland as the land rebounds and the gravitational pull of the shrinking ice sheet decreases.
