Could a film industry entirely crafted from AI ever exist? Social media is abuzz with movie scenes made with Seedance 2.0, the latest tech in AI video generation, including everything from a fight scene between Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise to an alternate ending for The Lord of the Rings.
The tech’s proponents predict AI is the future of moviesbut an actual brain behind Hollywood hits, Ben Affleck, is trending for his counterargument: AI may be a powerful tool, but its nothing without human creativity.
Affleck recently shared his take on AI-generated writing in an appearance on a podcast. As an Oscar-winning screenwriter himself for Good Will Hunting (not to mention an acclaimed actor, director, and producer), Affleck knows a thing or two about the movie business, and he summed up AI-generated creative writing in one word: shitty.”
By its nature, it goes to the mean, to the average,” he said on a January episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. “And its not reliable. I mean, I cant even stand to see what it writes.”
I actually dont think its very likely that its going to be able to write anything meaningful or, and in particular, that its going to be making movies from whole cloth, Affleck said. He predicted instead that for filmmaking, AI is gonna be a tool, just like visual effects.
As a guy who works in tech, is building with AI, and writes a weekly newsletter on the topic, I can't explain as well as Ben Affleck.How is that possible? pic.twitter.com/Gj6dNwaDgj— Katyayani Shukla (@aibytekat) February 12, 2026
But if Affleck is right, then why are artists of all kinds being fed the narrative that AI will be stealing their jobs? Fearmongering from the AI industry is to blame, he claims.
Theres a lot more fear, because we have this sense, this existential dread: Its gonna wipe everything out! Affleck explained on the podcast. “But that actually runs counter, in my view, to what history seems to show, which is, A, adoption is slow. Its incremental.”
I think a lot of that rhetoric comes from people who are trying to justify valuations around companies, where they go, Were gonna change everything! In two years, theres gonna be no more work!” he continued. “Well, the reason theyre saying that is because they need to ascribe a valuation for investment that can warrant the cap expend theyre gonna make on these data centers. (Affleck’s comments come as Big Tech spending on AI data centers has swelled in the last year.)
Afflecks take went viral again this week, thanks to a post on X, from a self-described “guy who works in tech” who is “building with AI and writes a weekly newsletter on the topic”which joked that Affleck could explain AIs applications better than industry experts.
Affleck concluded that in filmmaking, LLMs will likely “be good at filling in all the places that are expensive and burdensome,” but that “its always gonna rely fundamentally on the human artistic aspects of it.”
Now, some on social media are pointing out that in a sense, Afflecks point proves itself: The human touch of a creative writer led to clear, digestible communication. Funny how that works.
Starbucks competitor Dutch Bros saw its stock price rise in premarket trading on Friday after the coffee chain posted double-digit revenue growth in its most recent quarter. However, shares were flat as of late morning, with the stock (NYSE: BROS) hovering at just over $50 a share.
Perhaps even more important for the stockand for those investors who are long on itis the coffee chains announcement that it is on track to nearly double its store footprint by 2029. Heres what you need to know.
Dutch Bros has a record Q4 2025
Dutch Bros was founded in 1992, but its only in recent years that the coffee chain started to become a household name, thanks to its ever-expanding footprint.
And while the chain isnt yet as well known as Starbucks, the company is increasingly looking like a significant threat to the Seattle coffee giant.
Yesterday, Dutch Bros reported its fourth-quarter fiscal 2025 results, showing impressive gains in nearly every key metric, including:
Total revenue: $443.6 million (up 29.4% year over year)
Net income: $29.2 million (versus $6.4 million in the same quarter a year earlier)
Systemwide same shop sales: up 7.7%
Adjusted EBITDA: $72.6 million (up 48.8%)
The company also issued strong guidance in many metrics for its current fiscal year 2026, including projected total revenue of between approximately $2 billion and $2.03 billion, and same shop saels growth of 3% to 5%.
But besides its financial numbers, Dutch Bros also revealed something else: that its aggressive store expansion plans are on track for 2029, and if it achieves the goals, the companys footprint could nearly double in the next three years.
Dutch Bros plots new store opening for 2026 and beyond
While same-store sales are increasing for Dutch Bros, one of the fastest ways for any chain to boost overall sales is to open more locations. And that is exactly what Dutch Bros has been doing.
In its full-year fiscal 2025, which just ended, Dutch Bros said it opened 154 new stores across 22 states. That put its total number of locations at 1,136 stores in 25 states, as of December 31.
And its aggressive rollout is continuing in 2026. In a supplemental earnings slide deck the company released, it revealed that it expects at least 181 new Dutch Bros stores to open in 2026. Those new openings are in service of the companys lofty 2029 goals.
By that year, the company says it aims to have 2,029 stores across the United States.
BROS stock rises today, but is still red for the year
After announcing its record-breaking fiscal 2025 results, Dutch Bros stock jumped by nearly 4% in early-morning trading. However, as of the time of this writing, much of those gains have been given back.
The early-morning stock price gain was no doubt welcome to investors. However, the company, which began trading on the New York Stock Exchange half a decade ago, still has a ways to go if it wants to regain its all-time highs.
Since 2026 began, BROS stock has now declined by nearly 13%. Over the past year, BROS is down more than 36%. During those same periods, the NYSE Composite Index is up about 5.8% year to date, and over 15% over the past twelve months, according to Yahoo Finance data.
Dutch Bros stock hit an all-time high of above $79 a year ago this month.
A key measure of inflation fell to nearly a five-year low last month as apartment rental price growth slowed and gas prices fell, offering some relief to Americans grappling with the sharp cost increases of the past five years.
Inflation dropped to 2.4% in January compared with a year earlier, down from 2.7% in December and not too far from the Federal Reserves 2% target. Core prices, which exclude the volatile food and energy categories, rose just 2.5% in January from a year ago, down from 2.6% the previous month and the smallest increase since March 2021.
Fridays report suggests inflation is cooling, but the cost of food, gas, and apartment rents have soared after the pandemic, with consumer prices still about 25% higher than they were five years ago. The increase in such a broad range of costs has kept affordability, a topic that helped shape the most recent U.S. presidential election, front and center as a dominant political issue.
And on a monthly basis, consumer prices rose 0.2% in January from December, while core prices rose 0.3%. Core inflation was held down by a sharp drop in the price of used cars, which fell 1.8% just in January from December.
Inflation continues to decelerate and is not threatening to move back up, and that will enable more rate cuts by the Fed, said Luke Tilley, chief economist at Wilmington Trust.
There were signs in the report that retailers are passing on more of the costs of President Donald Trump’s tariffs to consumers for goods such as furniture, appliances, and clothes. But those increases were offset by falling prices elsewhere. In other areas, Trump has delayed, scrapped, or provided exemptions to his duties.
Furniture prices jumped 0.7% in January from the previous month and are up 4% from a year ago. Appliances rose 1.3% in January though are only slightly more expensive than a year earlier. Clothing price rose 0.3% in January from December and have increased 1.7% in the past year.
Some services prices also rose: Airline fares soared 6.5% just in January, after a 3.8% jump in November, though they rose only 2.2% from a year earlier. Music streaming subscriptions increased 4.5% in January and are 7.8% higher than a year ago.
Yet those increases were largely offset by price declines, or much slower price growth, in other areas, including many that make up a greater share of Americans’ spending.
The cost of used cars, for example, plunged 1.8% in January, the biggest decline in two years. Gas prices fell 3.2% last month, the third drop in the past four months, and are down 7.5% from a year earlier. Grocery prices rose just 0.2% in January, after a big 0.6% rise in December, and are up 2.1% from a year ago. Hotel prices ticked down 0.1% in January and have fallen 2% from last year.
Rental prices and the cost of owning a home, which make up a third of the inflation index, both rose just 0.2% in December, while rents increased only 2.8% from a year earlier. That is much lower than during the pandemic: Rents rose by more than 8% in 2022.
The tariffs have increased some costs and many economists forecast companies will pass through more of those increases to consumers in the coming months. A study released Thursday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that U.S. companies and consumers are paying nearly 90% of the tariffs’ costs, echoing similar findings in studies by Harvard and other economists.
Yet the increases haven’t been as broad-based as many economists feared.
Tilley said that the higher tariffs have pulled some consumer spending away from other services, which has forced companies to keep those prices a bit lower as a result.
We dont think consumers are in a place to take on price increases across the board, so youre not seeing those price increses, he said. Hiring was particularly weak last year, slowing wage growth, and many Americans remain gloomy about the economy.
Some economists note that the rental figures were distorted by October’s six-week government shutdown, which interrupted the Labor Department’s gathering of the data. The government plugged in estimated figures for October which economists say have artificially lowered some of the housing costs.
Companies are still grappling with the higher costs from Trump’s duties, though some have benefited from tariffs being delayed or scrapped.
Arin Schultz, chief growth officer at Naturepedic, which makes organic mattresses in Cleveland, breathed a sigh of relief when Trump postponed import duties on upholstered furniture until 2027. They would have substantially pushed up the cost of the headboards the company imports.
Schultz welcomed the decision to lower tariffs on imports from India to 18%, from 50%. Naturepedic sources a lot of the cotton fabrics and bedding that it sells from India. When that reduction kicks in, he said, the company could even cut some prices.
Still, Naturepedic’s costs jumped because of duties on imports from Vietnam and Malaysia, where it sources its organic latex, which can’t be grown in the United States. Naturepedic makes its mattresses in the United States at a factory in Cleveland and employs about 200 workers.
We’re paying more now for that, he said, and the company raised its prices about 7% last year as a result. “Tariffs are awful. We are less profitable now as a company because of tariffs.
If inflation gets closer to the Federal Reserves target of 2%, it could allow the central bank to cut its key short-term interest rate further this year, as Trump has repeatedly demanded. High borrowing costs for things like mortgages and auto loans have also contributed to a perception that many big-ticket items remain out of reach for many Americans.
Inflation surged to 9.1% in 2022 as consumer spending soared as supply chains snarled after the pandemic. It began to fall in 2023 but leveled off around 3% in mid-2024 and remained elevated last year.
At the same time, measures of wage growth have declined as hiring has cratered. With companies reluctant to add jobs, workers don’t have as much leverage to demand raises.
Christopher Rugaber, AP economics writer
When most founders begin their journey, they focus on a good product and the right market. But what happens when your customers dont yet know they have a problem? What happens when theres no market, even when you know you have a solution people need?
Its rare to find success stories of simultaneous company and market building because its not a challenge that every organization faces. But if youre innovating within your industry, its a problem you should expect and prepare for because it means having to operate in two realitiesthe internal reality where you know the challenges in your industry and how youre going to solve them, and the external reality where nobody else has recognized the problem that needs to be solved.
In a highly regulated industry like healthcare, safety, and stability create an inertia that often works against innovation. Many products fail simply because they lack market demand and infrastructure. To succeed, you should look beyond the solution and craft a compelling narrative that tells the entire story of your product and why its needed.
As a founder of Paragonix, I navigated these two worlds firsthand during the development of our organ preservation technology. For decades, people transported fragile human organs on ice in coolers you can find in a hardware store. No one was really asking Is there a better way to do this? until we did.
Here are five things I learned about bridging the gap between internal conviction and market skepticism:
1. Name the market
When youre defining a market that doesnt exist yet, one of the most overlooked steps is giving it a name. A name gives stakeholders a tangible anchor and helps sell the version of reality where the market is already real.
Then the focus shifts to creating shared belief, and that only happens by getting out there and talking to people. Its a lot like painting a landscape. Your company may ultimately be just a small piece of the background, but the more detail you give your audience, the more theyll come to understand the whole picture and how you fit into it.
Ironically, you may start to see competitors using the language youve created, but thats still a win. After all, if someone else uses the market terminology I created, its a huge validation of the landscape I painted.
2. Compile ample data
Particularly in the healthcare industry, compelling data about your product is the proof of concept that unlocks belief. You need strong basic science or engineering validation to demonstrate how your product works, which helps your future customers realize that something theyre doing isnt working.
Then, you need clinical science showing that your product is not only effective but safe and superior to the existing standard of care. In my experience, that massive data collection effort is what ultimately convinces the market that they need your product.
Before we created the Paragonix SherpaPak Cardiac Transport System, our first portable donor organ preservation system, close to 100% of donor hearts arrived at their destination without any temperature control, monitoring, or reporting, potentially impacting patient outcomes by injuring donor hearts. From the data we collected, we knew there was a dire need for a solution and that our technology could provide the answer.
3. Amplify early adopters
Healthcare is an industry where adoption risk is high, and validation relies heavily on peer trust, making it vital that you amplify success cases from early adopters. These initial risk-takers are more than customers; they are essential co-creators of the new market category and can help you actively cultivate conviction within the industry.
Whether you choose to create a structured advisory council or not, check in often and give them ample opportunity to provide feedback. Doing so doesnt just secure their commitment to sharing positive outcomes with the public; it helps you transform implementation hurdles into strategic operations.
4. Consider the entire ecosystem
As your market scales, its important to study the entire product journey and its surrounding ecosystem. You need to know the adjacent problems, complementary products, and be able to spot future technological needs that sit on the border of your current solution. This is the part that keeps you innovating in a smart, seamless direction, putting you one step ahead of the competition.
As a founder, Ive seen firsthand the importance of talking to not just stakeholders but also end-usersthe clinicians, administrators, buyers, and even patients who arent decision-makers but can amplify your product and market vision. They can offer feedback on workflow integration, usability, and pain points that ensure youre delivering solutions people both love and leverage.
5. Listen to negative feedback
When youre in the early stages of company development, a positive outlook is almost a requirement for overcoming the fear, anxiety, and worry that can threaten to hold you back. Thats one reason that it can be hard to accept feedback from people who dont like your product, dont grasp your vision, or who actively avoid collaborating with you.
But as a company leader, you need to listen to what detractors say. When theyre right about something, it can be a tough pill to swallow, but acting can protect the health of your company as it grows. If theyre wrong, its still important to listen. Developing thick skin is a skill that no one can take away from you and will be useful throughout the entire journey.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Building a company is hard, but building an industry is harder. Markets dont emerge on their own, but leaders who are willing to question long-standing assumptions and replace them with evidence and structure can build them.
When you succeed, the impact extends far beyond your organization because you did more than win the market; you raised the standard for an entire industry.
Lisa Anderson is the president and cofounder of Paragonix Technologies, a Getinge company.
Much of healthcare still operates like a series of snapshots.
For most routine care, you go in once a year for a physical. Maybe you get a few labs drawn. If something looks off, you might get a follow-up or a prescription. But within the constraints of a short visit and limited longitudinal data, care often ends with broad guidance like eat better or check back next year.
Meanwhile, your health is changing every day. Metabolic function, inflammation, aging, and chronic disease dont switch on overnight. They unfold gradually over time, shaped by lifestyle factors including sleep, nutrition, movement, stress, as well as genetics and environment.
But unless you cross a diagnostic threshold or show up with symptoms, the system doesnt intervene. Too often, care is triggered only when something has already gone wrong. Thats because were still practicing episodic, event-driven care, not trend-based care.
THE LIMITS OF EPISODIC DATA
You cant deliver truly personalized proactive prevention with episodic data alone.
A single cholesterol reading can be clinically meaningful, particularly at extremes. The same is true for a day of elevated blood sugar. But outside of acute thresholds, context and trajectory matter. To detect risk early and intervene meaningfully, we need a care model informed by continuous trends, not isolated events. This is where AI, and specifically agentic AI, can make a difference.
WHAT AGENTIC AI REALLY MEANS
When people hear agentic AI, they often assume it means handing over decisions entirely to machines. In reality, agentic AI refers to systems that can act autonomously within defined goals, constraints, and oversight.
Think of autopilot in aviation. Autopilot manages routine complexity by continuously monitoring conditions, detecting turbulence, and making micro-adjustments. Pilots maintain oversight and control, but theyre no longer burdened with manually managing every variable.
In healthcare, agentic AI functions the same way. It continuously observes multiple data streams, identifies subtle but meaningful changes, and delivers timely, relevant insights that enhance clinical judgment, not replace it.
This is not theoretical. Health systems are already integrating AI into diagnostics, operations, and clinical workflows, embedding it into electronic health records, imaging systems, and decision-support tools to manage complexity and surface risk earlier. These deployments signal a shift from isolated AI applications toward infrastructure-level intelligence operating continuously alongside clinicians.
FROM VOLUME TO MEANING
We already have more health data than we know what to do with. The challenge isnt collection. Its synthesis.
Agentic AI helps us move from data overload to actionable insight. By analyzing longitudinal signals, including biological, behavioral, and environmental data, it reveals patterns that allow us to act before risk escalates. This is especially powerful in managing chronic conditions, aging, and metabolic health, areas where prevention is possible, but only when signals are caught early. Research shows that combining longitudinal wearable data with clinical records improves our ability to predict future risk. What agentic systems add is the ability to translate those predictions into timely, predefined actions rather than leaving insights dormant until the next visit.
PATIENTS ARE ALREADY LIVING IN A CONTINUOUS WORLD
At the same time, people are increasingly turning to AI tools to fill the gap. Recent reporting from OpenAI shows that more than 40 million people use ChatGPT daily for health questions, with roughly 70% of those conversations occurring outside normal clinic hours. OpenAI also reported about 600,000 health-related queries per week from underserved rural communities. The behavior is clear: People want real-time answers that the healthcare system is often not structured to provide between visits.
This creates a growing gap between how people live and how medicine is practiced. Agentic AI offers a way to close it by acting as the connective tissue between daily life and clinical care. It doesnt replace clinicians. It doesnt make healthcare autonomous. It makes it responsive.
A NEW INFLECTION POINT
Autopilot didnt revolutionize aviation by removing the pilot. It changed aviation by making the system manageable, extending human capability through continuous support.
Healthcare is now at a similar inflection point. Data volumes will continue to rise. Clinical capacity will remain limited. And episodic care will grow more misaligned with how disease and aging actually develop. Agentic AI offers a path forward by enabling systems to take bounded, predefined actions in response to continuous monitoring, whether by surfacing emerging risk patterns to clinicians or by triggering patient-facing actions like scheduling follow-up visits when concerning trends persist. The result is care that occurs earlier, with better timing, rather than at the moment of acute decline.
The technology for agentic AI already exists. Regulatory pathways are emerging as well, but adoption depends on whether incentives, workflows, and leadership priorities evolve to support continuous care.
Like autopilot in aviation, agentic AI in healthcare will be introduced gradually, first in well-bounded, lower-risk workflows, then expanding as systems, incentives, and governance structures evolve to support continuous intelligence at scale.
To unlock its full potential, healthcare needs reimbursement models that reward prevention, clinical architectures designed for longitudinal data, and governance frameworks that enable responsible deployment without freezing progress. Agentic AI doesnt require a reinvention of regulation, but it does require modernizing operations, governance, and accountability. The systems that move first will define the next era of healthcare.
Noosheen Hashemi is founder and CEO of January AI.
Ellie Frazier first started posting content three years ago, sharing day-in-the-life vlogs and content tips for fellow creators.
As her following grew, she began noticing other creators posting videos with uncannily similar scripts to her own. The clips felt the same. The editing style, identical.
In one example, Frazier stretched in front of a window; another creator stretched in front of a window. Frazier chopped vegetables; the other creator chopped an orange. On its own, that might not seem especially striking. But the voiceover script used by the other creator was also almost verbatim Fraziers words.
Theres a very stark difference between taking inspiration from everybody and giving credit, versus stealing somebody’s voiceover script word for word multiple times in a row, says Frazier in a recent post. Taking credit in the comments for it being their own work.
@elliewfrazier its just not cool she doesnt even follow me #contentcreators #contentcreatortips #socialmediatips original sound – ELLIE FRAZIER
Plagiarismpresenting another person’s ideas, words, images, or work as your own without creditwhile often difficult to litigate, is a cardinal sin in most industries. And yet social media largely operates as a law unto itself.
TikTok will remove content that violates or infringes someone else’s intellectual property rights, including copyright and trademark. However, many posts on the platform do not clearly meet the legal threshold for copyrightable intellectual property, meaning enforcement is often left to creators themselves.
With swaths of content uploaded every day, copycat creators frequently weigh the risk of being discovered against the possibility of profiting from a viral concept with minimal effort. There is even content devoted to explaining exactly how to plagiarize others work.
@josh.little_ Good artist copy, great artists steal. @@Josh original sound – Josh Little
Determining who copied whom is also largely a futile exercise. On a platform that thrives on mimicry, true originality is rare. The lifecycle of a trend is familiar: One person creates an original video. If it goes viral, thousands copy it. Some tag the original creator. But as the trend snowballs, that credit is often lost to the algorithm. Once it has been replicated enough times to be labeled a trend, the concept is widely regarded as fair game.
Frazier isnt the first to spotlight the growing issue of digital plagiarism. In a first-of-its-kind lawsuit brought in 2024, one TikTok creator attempted to sue another for copying her neutral, beige, and cream aesthetic and posting content with identical styling, tone, camera angle and/or text.
More than a year later, the so-called Sad Beige Lawsuit was dismissed after the claimant chose not to move forward.
Imitation may be described as the sincerest form of flattery, but online plagiarism ultimately benefits no one. The original creator loses credit for their idea. The copycat forfeits an opportunity to develop a distinct voice. And audiences are left scrolling through an endless stream of low-quality videos, each one nearly indistinguishable from the last.
As outrage spreads over energy-hungry data centers, politicians from President Donald Trump to local lawmakers have found rare bipartisan agreement over insisting that tech companies and not regular people must foot the bill for the exorbitant amount of electricity required for artificial intelligence.
But that might be where the agreement ends.
The price of powering data centers has become deeply intertwined with concerns over the cost of living, a dominant issue in the upcoming midterm elections that will determine control of Congress and governors offices.
Some efforts to address the challenge may be coming too late, with energy costs on the rise. And even though tech giants are pledging to pay their fair share, there’s little consensus on what that means.
Fair share is a pretty squishy term, and so its something that the industry likes to say because fair can mean different things to different people, said Ari Peskoe, who directs the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University.
It’s a shift from last year, when states worked to woo massive data center projects and Trump directed his administration to do everything it could to get them electricity. Now there’s a backlash as towns fight data center projects and some utilities’ electricity bills have risen quickly.
Anger over the issue has already had electoral consequences, with Democrats ousting two Republicans from Georgia’s utility regulatory commission in November.
Voters are already connecting the experience of these facilities with their electricity costs and theyre going to increasingly want to know how government is going to navigate that, said Christopher Borick, a pollster and director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.
Energy race stokes concerns
Data centers are sprouting across the U.S., as tech giants scramble to meet worldwide demand for chatbots and other generative AI products that require large amounts of computing power to train and operate.
The buildings look like giant warehouses, some dwarfing the footprints of factories and stadiums. Some need more power than a small city, more than any utility has ever supplied to a single user, setting off a race to build more power plants.
The demand for electricity can have a ripple effect that raises prices for everyone else. For example, if utilities build more power plants or transmission lines to serve them, the cost can be spread across all ratepayers.
Concerns have dovetailed with broader questions about the cost of living, as well as fears about the powerful influence of tech companies and the impact of artificial intelligence.
Trump continues to embrace artificial intelligence as a top economic and national security priority, although he seemed to acknowledge the backlash last month by posting on social media that data centers must pay their own way.
At other times, he has brushed concerns aside, declaring that tech giants are building their own power plants, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright contends that data centers don’t inflate electricity bills disputing what consumer advocates and independent analysts say.
States moving to regulate
Some states and utilities have started to identify ways to get data centers to pay for their costs.
They’ve required tech companies to buy electricity in long-term contracts, pay for the power plants and transmission upgrades they need and make big down payments in case they go belly-up or decide later they dont need as much electricity.
But it might be more complicated than that. Those rules can’t fix the short-term problem of ravenous demand for electricity that is outpacing the speed of power plant construction, analysts say.
What do you do when Big Tech, because of the very profitable nature of these data centers, can simply outbid grandma for power in the short run? Abe Silverman, a former utility regulatory lawyer and an energy researcher at Johns Hopkins University. That is, I think, going to be the real challenge.
Some consumer advocates say tech companies’ fair share should also include the rising cost of electricity, grid equipment, or natural gas thats driven by their demand.
In Oregon, which passed a law to protect smaller ratepayers from data centers’ power costs, a consumer advocacy group is jousting with the state’s largest utility, Portland General Electric, over its plan on how to do that.
Meanwhile, consumer advocates in various states including Indiana, Georgia, and Missouri are warning that utilities could foist the cost of data center-driven buildouts onto regular ratepayers there.
Pushback from lawmakers, governors
Utilities have pledged to ensure electric rates are fair. But in some places it may be too late.
For instance, in the mid-Atlantic grid territory from New Jersey to Illinois, consumer advocates and analysts have pegged billions of dollars in rate increases hitting the bills of regular Americans on data center demand.
Legislation, meanwhile, is flooding into Congress and statehouses to regulate data centers.
Democrats bills in Congress await Republican cosponsors, while lawmakers in a number of states are floating moratoriums on new data centers, drafting rules for regulators to shield regular ratepayers and targeting data center tax breaks and utility profits.
Governors including some who worked to recruit data centers to their states are increasingly talking tough.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat running for reelection this year, wants to impose a penny-a-gallon water fee on data centers and get rid of the sales tax exemption there that most states offer data centers. She called it a $38 million corporate handout.
Its time we make the booming data center industry work for the people of our state, rather than the other way around, she said in her state-of-the-state address.
Blame for rising energy costs
Energy costs are projected to keep rising in 2026.
Republicans in Washington are pointing the finger at liberal state energy policies that favor renewable energy, suggesting they have driven up transmission costs and frayed supply by blocking fossil fuels.
Americansare not paying higher prices because of data centers. Theres a perception there, and I get the perception, but its not actually true, said Wright, Trump’s energy secretary, at a news conference earlier this month.
The struggle to assign blame was on display last week at a four-hour U.S. House subcommittee hearing with members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Republicans encouraged FERC members to speed up natural gas pipeline construction while Democrats defended renewable energy and urged FERC to limit utility profits and protect residential ratepayers from data center costs.
FERC’s chair, Laura Swett, told Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, that she believes data center operators are willing to cover their costs and understand that its important to have community support.
Thats not been our experience, Landsman responded, saying projects in his district are getting tax breaks, sidestepping community opposition and costing people money. Ultimately, I think we have to get to a place where they pay everything.
Marc Levy, Associated Press
After 25 years of obsessing over Mars, Elon Musk announced that SpaceX has shifted focus from invading the Red Planet to invading the Moon. He claims he will build a self-sustainable lunar metropolis in less than a decadea sharp contrast to his proposed Mars colony, which he says would now take at least 20 years. Both timelines are as fictional as Star Trek, but at least now his plan makes sense.
It is a jarring plot twist from January 2025, when Musk dismissed the Moon as a “distraction.” Now, he says, the satellite is the “overriding priority” to secure civilization. Musk argues a lunar base is necessary because a “natural or man-made catastrophe” on Earth could cut off the supply lines a Mars colony would need to survive.
Musk might actually be making sense this time. As Harvard physicist Avi Loeb points out, Musk is right to pivot. The Moon is closer, making it faster to get to, and it aligns with the geopolitical objectives of the United States (the government pays a lot of SpaceXs bills). It makes sense financially, opening the opportunity for the return of investment that may come from mining the lunar surface and orbiting asteroids, as well as his absurd plan to put one million AI satellites in orbit (made and launched from the Moon, no less).
The financial aspect is the key. Really, its the whole end game. By choosing a target thats more accessibleand lucrativethan Mars, Musk is crafting a realistic illusion for investors and bull analysts. He needs to inflate the immediate financial expectations of SpaceX, so his company can get as much money as possible in its programmed 2026 IPO.
Hard limits
The unavoidable fact that forced him to pivot from Mars is, above everything, basic physical limitations. [The Moon] is much more practical to bring people back and forth,” Loeb told NewsNation. Musk described his “self-growing city” on X as a settlement that would be capable of expanding rapidly using local resources. It’s not something that that has ever been demonstrated. Still, Loeb argues that “the moon makes much more sense” before we attempt to leap into the deep void of the solar system.
The physics of space travel don’t care about Musks marketing tweets. The Moon is simply a more forgiving target. Musk says that SpaceX can launch to the Moon every 10 days, allowing for rapid iteration; whereas Mars missions are shackled to planetary alignments that only occur every 26 months.
[Rendering: SpaceX]
The commute is also drastically different: a two-day hop versus a six-month deep-space haul exposed to radiation and all sorts of space dangers. As Quentin Parker, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Hong Kong, points out: “If you have some issue or emergency, youre a few days away from Earth. Youre months away if youre on Mars.” Thats the difference between a rescue mission and a lot of funerals.
Whenever it is ready, Starships massive capacity to haul over 110 tons of cargo makes it a powerful workhorse to send everything Musk needs to build his fabled city as fast as possible.
Base alpha and lava tubes
Musk is calling his proposed self-sustaining lunar city “Moon Base Alpha,” a direct homage to the 1970s British-Italian science fiction television series Space: 1999. In the show, Moonbase Alpha is a high-tech scientific research center located in the lunar crater Plato.
Musk citys hardware is radically different from the series’ shiny sets and spaceships. The workhorse for his plan is the Starship Human Landing System, a modified version of the regular Starship stripped of its heat shield and flight flaps since it will never need to re-enter Earths atmosphere. Instead of massive engines at the base, this ship uses smaller hull-mounted thrusters for touchdown to avoid blasting a crater into the landing zone and kicking up lethal dust.
[Rendering: SpaceX]
Once landed, a massive elevator would lower crews and cargo from the high-altitude cabin. The sheer volume of a Starship offers nearly 35,000 cubic feet of pressurized spacedwarfing the Apollo Lunar Modules cramped 160 cubic feetwhich allows for actual living quarters rather than just survival pods. SpaceX also envisions landing and tipping Starships horizontally and burying them under five meters of regolith to shield crews from cosmic radiation.
Powering this buried city requires overcoming the lunar night, which lasts for two weeks of freezing darkness. For that, SpaceX will need nuclear reactors like those designed by Kilopower, 10-kilowatt fission units that can run continuously for a decaderather than relying solely on solar. The city will still need solar arrays, especially in the initial phase. NASA and SpaceX are developing Vertical Solar Array Technology (VSAT)32-foot-tall masts designed to capture sunlight that grazes the horizon at the lunar South Pole.
To move around, astronauts wont just be walking; they will live inside pressurized rovers, essentially mobile habitats that allow them to explore for weeks without returning to base.
But the ultimate goal is to go underground. Musks engineers are exploring another old idea for lunar bases: lava tubes. These massive natural tunnels were formed millions of years ago by ancient lunar volcanic flows. They offer ready-made protection with stable temperatures of around 63 degrees.Inside these subterranean cathedrals, SpaceX can build habitats using regolith-based 3D printing tech, like those imagined by 3D-printing construction companies Luyten and Icon. Giant rovers can also weave fibers from moon dust to construct inflatable module supports inside the lava tubes.
[Rendering: Icon]
However, the chasm between rendering and reality remains vast. SpaceX targets a 2026 orbital refueling test for Starshipa critical prerequisite for any lunar missiona date that has been pushed repeatedly and doesnt look like its going to happen. Aside from part of its elevator, the company hasnt delivered most of the hardware for Starship HLS. Its all on the drawing board, which is why NASA reopened the bids for the lunar lander in 2025 after SpaceX failed to progress on their promised milestones. Icons lunar construction system is still in R&D, and the Kilopower nuclear reactors, while promising, are still in the ground-testing phase with deployment unlikely before the 2030s. Musks less than a decade timeline assumes a flawless convergence of technologies that, right now, exist mostly on paper.
Follow the money
But we know Musks pivot isnt about practicality. Its about business and valuation.
On February 2, SpaceX merged with Musks artificial intelligence venture, xAI, creating a corporate titan valued at $1.25 trillion. Sources indicate SpaceX is preparing for a mid-June 2026 IPO that could target a valuation as high as $1.5 trillion, potentially the largest listing in history. Investors love many fast catalysts, not multi-decade pipe dreams.
Musk wants to dominate AI, and he knows he needs raw power so he plans to build orbital data centers to feed this AI obsession, allegedly bypassing the power and cooling constraints of terrestrial facilities.
Musks narrative is selling the idea that the only way to put one million xAI servers in orbit is to exploit the Moons resources. Mine it for silicon and oxygen. Build the factories to make the servers. Build a magnetic cannon system to launch the servers into Earth orbit. The Moon becomes the construction site for the “vertically-integrated innovation engine” he promised during the xAI merger announcement.
Musk appears to believe he can build this infrastructure before his life ends. It doesnt matter that multiple experts think thats impossible. It doesnt matter that hes basically proposing building a potential weapon of mass destructiona cannon satellite launcheron the Moon. It doesnt matter that he wants to put a one-million satellite orbital minefield around Earth. And it doesnt matter that thermodynamics makes his idea of cooling xAI servers in space extremely hard.
[Rendering: SpaceX]
Space is not “the cheapest place to put AI in 36 months or less,”as Musk has said. In fact, according to Lluc Palerm, research director for satellite at consulting firm Analysys Mason, Musks plan to make money out of space servers has the same magnitude of challenge as a Mars mission.
Still, building a lunar city aligns perfectly with NASAs Artemis programwhich recently saw the SLS rocket lift off for the first time in 50 yearsand offers immediate revenue potential through government contracts that a distant Mars colony simply cannot match.
The Bezos threat
Which brings us to the second player in this Moon race: Musk is suddenly battling a competent Jeff Bezos. For years, SpaceXs factory in Texas stood unrivaled. But Blue Origin has finally started delivering. Its landing its New Glenn rocket and planning a Blue Moon Mark 1.5 lander that doesn’t require complex orbital refueling. Thats competition to Musk in terms of actual Earth dollars.
Multiple sources have told Ars that Bezos has told his team to go all in on lunar exploration, writes Ars Technicas space editor Eric Berger This creates a genuine threat that Blue Origin could put humans on the lunar surface before Starship gets there.
Bezos isn’t just playing catch-up either. He is building a parallel industrial machine. Blue Origin has successfully tested Blue Alchemist, a technology that melts lunar regolith to autonomously manufacture solar cells and transmission wire without needing any materials from Earth. The company has also launched Project Oasis, a mission to map lunar water ice and helium-3 using low-orbit satellites equipped with neutron spectrometers. To cut costs, Blue Origin is developing Project Jarvis, a reusable stainless-steel upper stage for the New Glenn rocket, mirroring the reusability of Starship.
Bezoss vision is not to build underground cities on the Moon but to build O’Neill colonies, massive orbiting habitats. He sees the Moon not as a colony, but as the mine that will build them (again, a crazy long-term plan).
So Musks pivot appears to be a calculated move to seize the commercial opportunity of the Moon before his rival does.
Red Moon rises
While Musk tweets about future cities and Bezos powers up, the most dangerous enemy for the United States space hegemony is on a fast collision course. China is the last part of Musks wild turn.
The Asian giant is executing a concrete, century-long roadmap. On January 29, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) officially launched the Tiangong Kaiwu program, a massive national plan named after a 1637 Ming explorers encyclopedia to extend Chinese industrial dominance across the solar system. The plan treats space not as a scientific frontier, but as an economic zone.
According to academic Wang Wei, who architected the proposal, the goal is to secure strategic minerals from near-Earth objects to fuel Earth’s sustainable development. According to the regimes official China Space Daily, among the 1.3 million asteroids in our solar system about 700 are relatively close to Earth and estimated to be worth over $100 trillion U.S. dollars each. Taking technical feasibility and cost-effectiveness into consideration, 122 of them are economically suitable for mining and use.
This is a four-stage industrial conquest. CASCs roadmap dictates that by 2035, China will establish a lunar resource development system and begin mining near-Earth asteroids. By 2050, operations will expand to Mars and the main asteroid belt. The timeline extends to 2075 for the exploitation of Jupiter and Saturn, aiming for a fully operational solar-system-wide resource network by 2100. Unlike Musks private ventures, this is state policy: verify feasibility by 2030, build the supply chain by 2035, and dominate the market by mid-century.
China has already poured concrete for this launchpad. They have successfully deployed the Queqiao satellite constellationincluding the recently launched Queqiao-2creating the worlds first permanent communication relay for the lunar far side. This network is the backbone for future autonomous mining operations.
Furthermore, the plan includes a gigawatt-class space-based digital infrastructure that integrates cloud computing and space debris monitoring, essentially creating a space traffic control system that China intends to manage. While Musk is pivoting his company to catch up, Beijings machine has been methodically laying the tracks for decades. And it has a plan to catch up and surpass the U.S.
While Musk may want us to believe that only he has the key to our future and that his new Moon plan is now what we all need, there are clearly other people on the planet who think otherwise. For now, what we really have is yet another erratic plot twist, a radical course change masquerading as The New Way to Save Humanity while he makes lots of money in the process.
Part of a figure skaters job is to make their routine look as effortless and graceful as possible, as if theyre floating on ice and soaring into the air through sheer force of will. In reality, theyre often launching themselves multiple feet into the air with what amounts to sand bags on their feet; generating hundreds of pounds of centripetal force through rotations; and landing on a blade thats just 3/16 of an inch wide.
At the 2026 Winter Games in Milan and Cortina, Italy, NBC is using an AI tool developed by a former MIT researcher to help audiences understand just how mind-boggling the feats of todays Olympic athletes are.
Jerry Lu [Photo: Bryce Vickmark/MIT]
Jerry Lu is a 2024 MIT graduate and the founder of OOFSports, a sports analytics company that uses AI to analyze program footage, document performance data in real time, and allow commentators to give viewers a more concrete understanding of athletes feats. At Milan Cortina, hes partnering with NBC Sports on its figure skating, snowboarding, and skiing programming, collecting data like the height of jumps, athletes speed, and their rotational paths.
As figure skaters continue to break new ground in the sportlike landing more and more jumps with quadruple rotations (see American skater Ilia Malinins first-ever quad axel landed at the Olympics), Lus AI-powered tech can help make sense of their routines, moment by moment.
[Video: Jerry Lu]
A big ask from NBC
Lus career in sports analytics began with his own interest in competitive swimming. During his undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia, he worked with the mathematician Ken Ono to develop a wearable device that let the schools swimmers analyze their strokes, which helped them to increase propulsion and reduce drag. Lu later served as a technical consultant for five swimmers who won medals at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, followed by 16 medalists at the Paris Olympics in 2024.
During his time at MIT in its dedicated sports lab, Lu began experimenting with sports analytics technology for other fields, including a program designed to help Australias BMX freestyle team optimize its strategy. Following the Paris Olympics, he says, NBC approached him directly to ask if he could create a data analytics system for figure skating in Milan Cortina.
At that point, some of the artistic sports were missing this data-driven storytelling abilityif you watch hockey on TV, it looks slow, but if you watch it in person, it looks fast, Lu says. Similarly, he explains, if one were to watch American figure skater Amber Glenn perform a jump on screen, it might not look mind-blowingbut in person, she would be soaring unbelievably high in the air. NBC needed a way to bridge the gap between those two experiences.
Building an AI model for the Olympics
For Lu and his teamnone of whom are skatersthe first step toward building this tool was jumping on a call with former Olympic skaters and longtime NBC analysts Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir. Unlike sports like swimming or track and field, the judging parameters for figure skating can involve quite a bit of grey area, meaning that Lus team needed a full run-down of what the judges would be looking for.
They essentially taught us the sport, Lu says. They taught us exactly what they were looking for, what the judges are looking for, what, from their understanding, is a virtue, and whats a vice. We needed to come up with ways to quantify those and essentially give them the metrics with which they can compare across athletes.
Making a tool for analyzing figure skating required a completely different system from swimming, Lu says. Whereas propulsion and drag were the two main variables in that sport, figure skating is all about the speed and rotation needed to complete complicated jumps. To calculate those metrics without wearables, his team trained an AI model to analyze program footage and identify a variety of rotational points on the athletes body, from their head to shoulders, elbows, hips, and ankles.
Using those data points, the team then taught the model to categorize different jumps based on body positioninglike the toe loop, luxe, and axeland, further, to count the athletes total rotations in order to classify the jumps as a double, triple, or quad. By understanding exactly where the skater is at any given point, the AI model can calculate statistics like their speed when entering a jump, total jump height, jump exit speed, and the ground they cover across the rink; all crucial elements of their performance. These kinds of numbers can help commentators like Lipinsky and Weir paint a much more detailed picture for this years Olympic viewers.
Will AI ever replace Olympic figure skating judges? This researcher says no
Outside of his collaboration with NBC, Lu has turned his figure skating model into an app called OOFSkate, which lets skaters of any level film their routines and instantly understand their own stats. The app became an official partner of U.S. Figure Skating in December 2025.
Lus next step is creating a version of this technology that not only tracks skaters routines, but also scores them. Right now, he already has a model in the works, which he plans on debuting some time during the skating off-season. Ultimately, he says, the model will be able to assist in evaluating technical performance on a select number of skills, but it will never replace human judgements on athletes artistic performance.
Figure skating is this very unique blend of artistic and technical abilities, u says. The Olympics is all about athletes going higher, faster, strongerotherwise you dont deserve to be here. Figure skating has a part of that, which is that the bigger jumps get awarded bigger points, which is correctif you did a quad and I did a triple, you should get more points. But at the same time, this artistic element is also part of the thesis of figure skating.
Americans expressed their preference for alternatives to the Super Bowl this year, and Kid Rock wasnt it.
The Puppy Bowl brought in 15.3 million viewers last Sunday according to official Neilsen numbers released Thursday, the pup-centered events biggest audience since 2018. The Super Bowl side event featuring romping baby dogs, now in its 22nd year, offers a lighthearted alternative for anyone alienated by the yearly American football ritual.
In the Puppy Bowl, two teams of puppies (Team Ruff and Team Fluff) wrestle, romp and nap their way down a miniature football field featuring live play-by-play commentary, referees, and even a Lombarky trophy. The event raises money for animal shelters and also adopts out most of its own star pups, whether they emerge victorious or not.
Last year, 12.8 million viewers tuned in to the Puppy Bowl, which airs on Animal Planet, Discovery, TBS, truTV, and HBO Max. The fluffy Super Bowl alternative drew in 6 million viewers in its first year and has been averaging around 12 million viewers in the last handful of years.
This years Puppy Bowl delivered its strongest performance in nearly a decade, and its success across linear and streaming highlights our unique ability to unite audiences around content that feels good and does good, Discovery Channel Head of Content Joseph Boyle said in a press release. Were grateful to bring viewers so much joy and are deeply proud of the purpose at the heart of this event.
The Puppy Bowl wasnt the only alternative Super Bowl show in town. Billed as the All-American Halftime Show, conservative org Turning Point USA promoted a MAGA-approved alternative show headlined by Kid Rock for people angry about Bad Bunnys booking at Super Bowl LX.
This year, Super Bowl LXs official halftime show starring Bad Bunny averaged 128.2 million viewers enough to put it in the all-time top four, but a dip from Kendrick Lamars record-setting 133.5 million viewers in 2025. The performance was almost exclusively in Spanish, a choice that inspired outrage from President Trump and others in his orbit, but still inspired a massive swath of people to tune in.
MAGAs hater halftime
While the Kid Rock halftime show was originally expected to stream on X, by game time Turning Point USA hit a snag and was pointing followers solely to its YouTube stream. UPDATE: Due to licensing restrictions, we are unable to stream The All-American Halftime Show on X, the organization wrote on X. Head on over to our YouTube channel tonight around 8PM ET to watch the full show .
On YouTube, the competing performance pulled six million concurrent viewers at its peak. On MAGA-friendly video site Rumble, the concert had been viewed 2.3 million times as of Thursday morning. If all two million of those views happened live, which isnt likely, that could leave the Kid Rock-led show at around 8 million viewers without factoring in some of the niche networks with relatively small audiences like OAN that aired the performance.
Much like the Puppy Bowl, Turning Post USAs alternative Super Bowl halftime show was pre-taped. An intro video from U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth kicked things off, praising the organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk for its courage.
During the headline performance, Kid Rock visibly struggled to lip sync the words to his own hit song Bawitaba, joining the backing track only occasionally a fact made even more puzzling given that it was pre-recorded. MAGA-approved musicians Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett also performed during the alternative halftime show.
By Thursday afternoon, Turning Point USAs video of the Kid Rock-led concert was up to 21 million views, which is closer to the only numbers that Turning Point has provided publicly. The NFLs official YouTube channel racked up more than 78 million views of Bad Bunnys performance during the same time frame.
Republicans vs. Bad Bunny
In a Truth Social post following Bad Bunnys halftime show, President Trump called the international superstars notably joyful celebration absolutely terrible. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, Trump said, sidestepping the fact that the NFL itself chose Bad Bunny to reach a massive, untapped audience within the U.S. and abroad.
The game itself wasnt always riveting, but Bad Bunnys Super Bowl halftime show was widely considered to be a performance for the ages. The inventive Spanish language set showcased energetic choreography, intricate street scenes of New York and Puerto Rico, many nods to the islands culture and its struggles, and even a real, live wedding.
Trump wasnt the only one to criticize Bad Bunny. House Speaker Mike Johnson told a reporter last year that the NFL made a terrible decision when it invited Bad Bunny, one of the most popular musicians in the world. “There are so many eyes on the Super Bowl, a lot of young, impressionable children, Johnson said.
The irony is rich given the fact that Kid Rocks own songs have glorified statutory rape. The 2001 Kid Rock song Cool, Daddy Cool features the lines Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage, and See, some say that’s statutory, but I say it’s mandatory lines that drew fresh outrage leading up to the Super Bowl.
Other members of the MAGA base questioned or outright denied Bad Bunnys status as an American citizen, including super influencer-turned-boxer Jake Paul, who called the performer a fake American citizen a claim so plainly racist that even his brother called him out. “Puerto Ricans are Americans & Im happy they were given the opportunity to showcase the talent that comes from the island,” Logan Paul wrote on X.
