Brogarky loves the very idea of a “free city.” These local billionaires talk about how they will build millions of new homes and drive America’s economic and technological dynamism. But in essence, these are simply separatist territories unregulated by the government and run by tech giants. Nuisances like taxes, environmental overhauls, and the pretense of democracy may disappear, replaced by “revolutionary” perks like slave labor and eugenics.
While techno-libertarians have tried and failed to build free cities in various places around the world, including Prospera, Honduras, Elon Musk now has a star-based corporate city in Texas. There is a movement in Greenland for a free city. There’s even a union-friendly settlement of the billionaire-backed California Forever project northeast of San Francisco. And the Free Cities lobby group is calling on the Trump administration to announce a number of free sites on July 4th of this year.
But for a much smaller number of sites, there is a growing belief that President Trump’s stinky declaration is unnecessary. They intend to gain freedom from California to New York Island.
Because if the ultimate goal of these so-called free cities is to unshackle surveillance by governments, by the people, and for the people, that is already happening now, as laws are being rewritten and rejected to accommodate the AI ambitions of the bloggers.
Today, let’s focus on energy and data center rush.
A bill is currently moving through the U.S. Senate that would allow AI data center companies to avoid federal power regulations by building their own energy infrastructure. The Data Act of 2026, proposed by Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, would essentially free broligarchs from federal power laws and allow them to create their own energy policy.
States are also proposing laws to cut off the AI industry from society.
A proposed bill has been introduced in the Florida Legislature that would hide data center public records. pic.twitter.com/gaZgYUt68Q
— Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) January 25, 2026
But let’s get back to the U.S. Senate bill. Learn more about Data Center Dynamics:
If passed, the bill would create a new utility category called “consumer regulated electric utility” (CREU), and companies that build their own power infrastructure would fall under this new designation. To qualify for CREU, a power utility must be completed and disconnected from the main grid and constructed solely to serve new electrical loads…
The exemption allows data center developers to avoid provisions of the Federal Power Act, including Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rate regulations, reliability standards, interconnection rules, transmission planning, and merger approvals.
The law would also allow companies to sell electricity retail to other customers, provided the systems remain isolated from the grid.
The bill may be expected to be opposed by utilities, but who will win in the political bidding war between the utility industry and Silicon Valley?
And, you know, most of the data centers that are being developed are actually planning to build their own power plants that are disconnected from our collective power grid. From distilled products:
The 48 GW of data centers, representing about 33% of the total planned capacity, are currently planning 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 100% to power their projects. According to Cleanview’s data center tracker, less than 2 GW of data center capacity was planned under the meter as of December 2024. And in 2025, developers have announced around 40 projects that plan to partially or fully skip the grid.
Some of these projects, such as the Homer City Energy Campus in Pennsylvania, will soon be home to the nation’s largest fossil fuel power plants. It is proposed to be a 4GW+ natural gas power plant that would send all the power to an on-site data center. Other projects use a combination of technologies ranging from solar, wind, batteries, and even nuclear power. However, the most common is natural gas. 72% of projects plan to use it.
It’s as if the money knows the Cotton Co. data law is destined to succeed. If the bill passes, data centers and dedicated power plants would be built faster. And you’ll spend less time thinking about questions like, “Isn’t this a huge waste of money?”
It’s also dire news for the climate. Global Energy Monitor found in a report published Wednesday:
U.S. gas-fired power plant projects nearly tripled last year. united states of america! united states of america! Leading the world in new gas-fired power generation. It is responsible for a quarter of the world’s current gas power generation pipelines. More than one-third of new U.S. plants are directly related to data center projects.
And, as Distilled points out, “Homer City’s 4 GW project could soon become one of the nation’s largest single sources of carbon emissions.”
But wait, that’s not all.
Nuclear regulations secretly scrapped
In addition to fossil fuel policies permissive to AI overlords, the Trump administration is also destroying nuclear safety regulations. So far, we’re forced to rely on a partial view of the new regulatory framework leaked to NPR because the details have been shared only with companies that can profit from them and not the public. Take that, NPR:
The changes are to a departmental order that sets requirements for nearly every aspect of nuclear reactor operations, including safety systems, environmental protection, site security, and accident investigation…The order significantly reduces hundreds of pages of requirements for reactor security. It also reduces protections for groundwater and the environment, eliminating at least one important safety role. The new order eases record-keeping requirements and increases the amount of radiation workers can be exposed to before a formal accident investigation begins.
What are the driving forces behind the change? As NPR points out, private equity, venture capital, and technology have largely poured billions into small modular reactors. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Meta claim they want nuclear reactors to power AI.
There’s nothing like rules created in secret to create public trust. And that raises obvious concerns. Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told NPR:
“They’re trying to put a wrecking ball into the nuclear safety and security regulatory oversight system that has kept the United States from having another Three Mile Island accident. I’m concerned about the safety of these reactors at all.”
Last May, President Trump signed a series of executive orders regarding nuclear power. These include the creation of a new Department of Energy program to build at least three experimental nuclear reactors to reach nuclear criticality by July 4, 2026, which also happens to be the date on which techno-libertarians are pushing to announce Free Cities sites. What a wonderful Independence Day!
But the new nuclear rules show once again why Broli Gulch doesn’t need a walled free city to escape. Alternatively, you can turn the entire country into one of your dream emirates. Just as the AI industry is seeking a “free” lane to quickly break through obstacles in the Federal Power Act, new nuclear regulations will likely unleash its great innovation power: less environmental and worker protections = less costs.
In this case, seven nuclear security directives totaling more than 500 pages were combined into one 23-page directive.
While there are arguments for reforming the “as low as reasonably achievable” (ALARA) nuclear safety principle, what the administration is doing is pandering to AI money. From NPR again:
Repealing the standard means new reactors could be built with less concrete shielding, workers could work longer shifts and potentially receive higher doses of radiation, said Tison Campbell, a partner at K&L Gates who previously worked as a lawyer at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“The result is potentially lower construction costs, savings in employment costs and more,” Campbell said. “This could reduce the overall financial burden of building and operating a nuclear power plant.”
And the administration is seeking to disrupt more than just ALARA by relaxing requirements, such as requirements for knowledgeable systems engineers who must understand each part of a reactor, to prevent a minor problem in one component from becoming a major problem in another that could lead to a major accident. That position is now considered an “unnecessary burden.”
This sentiment is understandable, as the entire AI industry is certainly an unnecessary burden on society. If the tech overlords and their descendants plan on escaping further, they think they should destroy enough while they’re still alive.
I mentioned the techno-libertarian interest in the Free Cities of Greenland. Potential reasons for the obsession include the arctic island’s rich energy and mineral resources, climate suitable for data centers, and the fact that the 2020 post-apocalyptic survival disaster thriller “Greenland” may appeal to Broly Garkies, who are big fans of Apocalypse Bunker.
Perhaps there is another reason. As the United States scrambles to increase data center carbon emissions and accelerate global warming, a new paper published in Nature Communications finds that Greenland could be saved from rising sea levels that would be devastating to many other coastal regions.
The Greenland ice sheet is expected to contribute significantly to global average sea level rise this century. However, isostatic adjustment of the glaciers is expected to cause a regional sea level drop around Greenland as the land rebounds and the gravitational pull of the shrinking ice sheet is reduced.
