One Resident Filed a Petition. Amazon Withdrew Its Application.

• THE GRID

One trillion dollars. That's how much the world will spend on AI this year alone. Goldman Sachs put the number out last month. I read it twice.

Not over a decade. Not by 2030. In 2026.

Of that, $581 billion lands in the U.S. Chips. Servers. Cables. Concrete. But Goldman's team made a key point most folks missed. The usual capex figure — around $794 billion in global hyperscaler spend — actually understates the total by about $200 billion. That gap? Investments by non-U.S. companies and private enterprises that don't show up in the usual tallies.

And that spend is just the start. Goldman sees $7.6 trillion in total AI capex from 2026 through 2031. Data centers, computing, and — most of all — power.

Bank of America just revealed your expiration date.

In their Bloomberg interview, they didn't just predict the digital dollar. They gave us the timeline…

2025 to 2030.

We're in that window right now.

Their exact words: CBDCs are an "inevitable evolution of today's electronic currencies."

The Federal Reserve has already asked for public comment. The infrastructure is being built as you read this.

Once the digital dollar launches, every transaction you make will be tracked. Your spending could be controlled. Your accounts could be frozen.

China already did this. Nigeria already did this.

But there's still a legal backdoor.

I'm Tan Gera, ex-Wall Street banker and CFA Charterholder.

I left the system when I saw what was coming.

Over 4,500 investors have already used this legal backdoor to hold assets CBDCs can't freeze and generate yields the Federal Reserve can't touch.

Watch how to access the legal backdoor before it closes →

Bank of America said 2025-2030. We're already in 2026.

The window is closing.

P.S. Bank of America called the digital dollar "inevitable." Discover the legal backdoor investors are using to escape →

Gartner pegs global data center power demand at 132 gigawatts this year. That's up 27% from 104 GW in 2025. And it's on track for 290 GW by 2030.

So the cash is flowing. But the grid can't keep up.

In June, FERC fired off show-cause orders to all six regional grid operators. The message: fix how data centers connect to the grid, or we'll do it for you. Each RTO had 60 days to respond.

Not every utility sees a windfall here. Some see a trap.

Nolan's not wrong. Electricity prices are up nearly 40% since 2021. Utilities filed $18.6 billion in rate hikes in just the first half of this year. And data center demand keeps climbing.

The money map says a trillion a year. The energy map says the wires aren't there yet. Until the grid catches up to the capital, every dollar of AI investment is a bet that electrons will show up on time. Right now, I wouldn't take that bet.

While everyone was distracted with the recent SpaceX IPO…

Elon Musk quietly filed a patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to protect what Jeff Brown believes will be his next breakthrough…

Something he called "the greatest tech invention in history."

Click here to see the details because Elon is predicting this new AI breakthrough will unleash a $1 quadrillion new wealth wave.

• BLACKOUT WATCH

Two signals caught my eye this week. Both point to risks that most investors are brushing aside.

• RESISTANCE

In Harford County, Maryland, residents packed the council chambers for ten straight meetings. They spilled into the street. One demand: ban data centers.

They got their wish.

Harford isn't alone. Across the Chesapeake Bay region, 17 localities have now adopted some form of data center moratorium. Most are in Maryland. Some last up to two years.

The numbers are stark. Data Center Watch found that opposition groups nationwide more than doubled between the end of 2025 and March 2026. In just the first quarter of this year, about $130 billion in planned data center projects were blocked or delayed — approaching the $156 billion blocked or delayed in all of 2025.

In Calvert County, a single resident named Melissa Emmal started a petition in March. By August, Amazon had pulled its application. Three sitting commissioners lost their seats.

And it's spreading. Virginia Beach passed a 12-month moratorium. Chesapeake now requires council approval for most new data centers.

Utilities with data center load baked into their capex plans should watch this map. The permits those plans depend on are getting harder to win — one county board at a time.