President Trump announced early Wednesday that large data centers will be required to produce their own electricity and share any surplus with the communities around them in the form of a "dividend."

The post Trump Orders Data Centers to Generate Their Own Power, Provide ‘Dividend’ to Communities appeared first on Breitbart.

Data centers are increasingly under attack in the Ukraine-Russia war, as well as Iran’s wanton drone and missile attacks on neighboring states like Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a study revealed this weekend.

The post Study: Data Centers Become Military Targets in Ukraine, Russia, and Middle East appeared first on Breitbart.

In recent days, a Ukrainian drone strike hit Russia’s largest data center, owned by bank and technology company Sberbank. The strike came after Ukraine hit three data centers belonging to the tech giant Yandex, which is often referred to as “Russia’s Google.” After those attacks, Yandex’s traffic dropped 94%. Its users experienced heavy disruption to […]

The post Data centers in the line of fire of Ukraine war appeared first on Asia Times.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates running for the House of Representatives and endorsed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani are all but guaranteed to win their general elections this November, but that does not mean the midterm drama is over in New York. In the state's 17th congressional district, which includes the lower Hudson Valley, Democratic challenger Cait Conley, a combat veteran who served on the Biden administration's National Security Council, could unseat incumbent Republican congressman Mike Lawler in one of the most consequential races of the midterms. 

The highly contested purple district voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election while reelecting Lawler for his second term. Now, Lawler is attempting to win a third term as support for President Donald Trump wanes ahead of the midterms. As of Friday, The Cook Political Report lists the race, which could determine control of the House, as a toss-up. 

If elected, Conley would have far more in common with the "Badass Women" coalition of security state and military veterans than with DSA types (think more Sen. Elissa Slotkin from Michigan than Darializa Avila Chevalier). As Judge Street Journal's Timmy Facciola notes, "Conley's candidacy is testing the viability of a tactful centrism that rebukes left-wing positions like abolishing ICE or restricting weapon shipments to Israel." Lawler is also vying for moderates, pitching himself as "one of the most bipartisan members of Congress" and emphasizing his willingness to break with Trump occasionally while still welcoming Trump's support. 

While Lawler and Conley certainly are not pure MAGA acolytes or DSA members, both have leaned into a tech-critical position, much like that of more radical populists like Lina Khan or Steve Bannon, revealing how pervasive anti-tech sentiment has become in mainstream politics. 

This tech skepticism was on full display during an October 14 debate, when each candidate made the case for why they were the most equipped to regulate AI, insisting that the industry needs guardrails. 

Conley said members of Congress do not want to regulate AI because "they want to look out for their billionaire and trillionaire backers like Elon Musk, who is pouring over $260 million into this midterm election." She then added that Musk backed Lawler in his 2024 race. 

Lawler then accused Conley, who previously consulted for Primer AI, of being "the AI candidate for the AI industry."

While Lawler and Conley disagree on specific data center regulations (Conley supports Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul's data center moratorium while Lawler supports local zoning control over data centers), neither wants to pitch themselves as an explicitly pro-data center candidate. During the debate, Conley claimed that, "On Mike Lawler's watch there have been five data centers built in Rockland County." Lawler has said that he had no say in the decision to build the data centers, and during the debate, he pointed out that the facilities were built for financial services. Lawler also attempted to attack Conley over data centers, slamming her in an ad for saying "we need data centers." Regardless of the candidates' specific policies on data centers, their attacks on one another demonstrate that cheerleading hyperscale data center development is a political liability. In their district, data center has presumably become a dirty term. 

The candidates' tech-skeptical rhetoric did not end with unchecked data center development. After the debate, Reason asked both candidates about their positions on age-verification laws for social media and AI, since such regulations raise significant privacy and censorship concerns by age-gating the internet. Unsurprisingly, both Lawler, who voted for the controversial KIDS Act, and Conley, who has proposed stricter age verification for AI tools, parroted platitudes about why such online safety regulations are necessary to protect children. 

"We have watched how social media is literally hurting the mental health of children," Conley told Reason. "And when you talk about the power of AI and what that power could do, we have to regulate this." 

Lawler gave a similar response, telling Reason that he respects free speech but that protecting children "is paramount." 

This bipartisan consensus over social media regulation has long been brewing in Congress. The mainstream political conversations about AI and data centers, however, are relatively new this midterm election cycle. And it appears both Lawler and Conley have figured out which way Americans' sentiment toward AI is leaning, and they have waged their campaigns accordingly. 

The post Nobody Wants To Be the Pro-Tech Candidate in This New York Race That Could Flip the House appeared first on Reason Magazine.

When Vivek Ramaswamy ran for president in 2024, he liked to describe himself as a "national libertarian" whose worldview included skepticism of new Middle Eastern wars and support for free trade (provided it wasn't with China). 

In a midterm election season in which voters are increasingly angry about higher prices born of protectionist tariffs and high gas prices caused by a new Middle Eastern war, that would seemingly give Ramaswamy, now running for governor of Ohio, a straightforward story to tell about how he'd bring costs down. 

Unfortunately for the Republican gubernatorial candidate, the person responsible for the tariffs and the war is President Donald Trump, whose support he's counting on to get him over the finish line in a surprisingly close race against Democrat Amy Acton. 

The latest polls show Ramaswamy slightly ahead of Acton, with many voters still undecided. 

Other Republican midterm candidates, most prominently Mike Rogers in Michigan, are escaping this bind by criticizing the tariffs and the war without explicitly naming the president who's responsible for both. 

Ramaswamy has chosen a different tactic: Shift the conversation to other sources of voters' cost-of-living anxiety that can't be directly laid at Trump's feet. 

In the last weeks of this election campaign, Ramaswamy has focused like a laser on two proposals he says will deliver cost relief to Ohio voters. The first is his proposed rollback of homeowners' property taxes. The second is a moratorium on new data center construction. 

Like many Midwestern and Western states, Ohioans' property tax bills have shot up in recent years, driven by a pandemic-era spike in home values. 

That's in turn sparked a full-blown property tax revolt in the state. The Republican-controlled Legislature passed a raft of property tax relief measures in 2025. Activists are also collecting signatures to place a full abolition of taxes on real property on the statewide ballot next year. 

Ramaswamy hasn't endorsed full property tax abolition, but he is promising voters that he will roll back property tax assessments for homeowners to pre-pandemic levels. 

On the data centers, he has staked out a very restrictionist position. 

Ohio is currently one of the leading states for data center development. Pew Research counts 57 projects currently in the pipeline there, attracted by cheap land and a robust power grid. 

The state's data center boom has caused a backlash in rural communities, where voters have objected to data centers' consumption of land and electricity and the special tax incentives some projects have received. 

On the ballot in 10 Ohio localities this November are initiatives that would impose additional restrictions on data center development. 

Ramaswamy has proposed to go further with a statewide moratorium that will remain in effect until the Legislature passes laws that not only require data centers to cover the full costs of the power infrastructure they need, but also provide property tax rebates and free electricity to nearby homeowners. 

Local property tax cuts paired with local reductions in spending would, of course, be well in line with a small government worldview. 

But the residential property tax rollback Ramaswamy has proposed doesn't directly do that. 

Instead, it would reduce property tax revenues and then leave it up to localities to make up for the lost revenue somehow. That could result in spending cuts. 

It could also result in localities shifting tax burdens onto commercial properties, raising non-property taxes (like sales taxes), or relying on the state government for more of their revenues. 

In the former two scenarios, local tax regimes would become more hostile to growth, given that property taxes are considered one of the most "efficient" taxes. In the latter scenario, the link between people who pay taxes and the people who consume taxpayer-funded local services would become more distant.  

Neither is ideal. 

While some data centers in Ohio have received tax subsidies, Ramaswamy's proposed solution is to block new data centers until they're legally required to subsidize their neighbors with free electricity and other community benefits. 

All of that is to say that it's a shame to see Ramaswamy adopt increasingly non-libertarian positions to avoid making critiques of Trump's cost-increasing tariffs and Iran war that would align with his erstwhile "national libertarian" worldview. 

It's ironic, too, that, in trying to avoid making those critiques, Ramaswamy has wound up being more restrictionist on data centers than Trump himself. 

In an August Truth Social post, the president famously urged local communities to "let Data Reign" and welcome data center development. Those that did would become "rich and successful," he predicted. Those that didn't would remain "poor and backward." 

At a rally in Vandalia, Ohio, over the weekend for Ramaswamy and Republican Senate candidate John Husted, Trump reiterated his support for data centers, saying, "We want them. Look, there's so much money to be made for Ohio. You can't just turn them off. They'll go to China."

Rather than criticize the president's statist interventions, Ramaswamy is talking up his own instead. Ohio will be poorer as a result.

The post To Avoid Criticizing Trump's Tariffs and War, Vivek Ramaswamy Takes on Data Centers appeared first on Reason Magazine.

The International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday that the global economy faces serious risks from Big Tech firms taking on massive debt to fund the buildout of artificial intelligence data centers worldwide. The IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability Report outlines a number of risks to economic growth in the coming years, including a reliance on AI […]

The post IMF warns of debt-fueled AI spending as bubble fears grow appeared first on Asia Times.

President Donald Trump responded Monday to warnings of potential dangers related to artificial intelligence by dismissing the need for any safeguards and calling AI concerns a “hoax.”

Trump rejected the idea of placing guardrails on AI, saying on Truth Social that the only control needed is “a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!”

In the post, he appeared to hint at the government’s pursuing criminal or regulatory penalties against AI companies after industry insiders warned of potentially catastrophic dangers posed by the rapidly evolving technology.

“The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ — and we will continue to do so!” he said, referring to Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, maker of the Claude AI chatbot.

Amodei said Saturday in an essay that AI companies should “slow the pace” of AI development.

Trump continued: “We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”

Even as the American public and members of his own party grow increasingly skeptical of AI, Trump has framed the technology’s continued growth as an economic and geopolitical imperative. Communities that reject AI data centers will wind up “backwards and poor,” he warned recently. And in Ireland over the weekend, he was even blunter: “Whoever wins AI wins.”

Yet, a recent NBC News Decision Desk Poll found that 70% of adults said they were more worried about AI than excited about it. A similar percentage — 69% of adults — said they somewhat or strongly oppose building AI data centers in their areas. That includes 57% of Republican voters.

Trump remained undeterred Monday afternoon, returning to Truth Social in a full-throated defense of AI, saying, “AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX.” In the same post, he said AI would be “the Greatest Economic Development Engine in History — Bigger than Oil, Gold, Diamonds, or even the Internet.”

He later called in to the All-In Summit and made similar remarks to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. He posted in support of AI more than a half-dozen times Monday on Truth Social.

Amodei’s recent warning has prompted other AI leaders to publicly call for a slowdown in its development so researchers can better understand and control any threats posed by the technology. They include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who said his company would adopt one of the safeguards Amodei proposed in his essay.

Last week, Anthropic AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, writing in a viral X post that OpenAI and Anthropic were “gambling with our lives” and warning that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” A lead Anthropic researcher, Evan Hubinger, said on X that Coxon was right, saying that “we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!”

Many politicians responded with their own calls for stronger checks on AI to address safety concerns.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Monday called for a Senate briefing with top administration officials, while House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he expects Trump to “summon” AI platform leaders for a “deliberate discussion about the responsibility of the companies to maintain safety and what role, if any, the government has to play in that.”

A meeting between Trump and AI leaders is “in the works,” but no timing has been nailed down yet, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, told reporters Monday that he is “long-term pro-AI” but that he understands regulations could protect against a potentially “catastrophic event.”

“The notion that we’ve got the leaders of the most cutting-edge innovation going on in the world at this point and with the amount of capital into this saying, ‘Hey, we even think we need to slow down,’ and we don’t take that advice? … I think we’d all look pretty damn silly if months from now we had an event that we could have stopped,” Warner said.

Some Republicans said AI regulation would not be feasible until after the November elections.

“To look at this Congress at this point in time and expect us in the foreseeable future to draft an AI regulation bill that strikes the proper balance between safety and innovation is not going to happen. Nothing’s going to happen, in my opinion, until after the midterms,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told reporters.

Kennedy added that in his view AI leaders were asking Congress for permission to slow their development, adding, “They don’t need our permission.”

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said what worries him about AI “is that you’ve got a bunch of people up here, literally, who are probably still driving their ’72 AMC Gremlins with some eight-track tape players — and they probably just parked their powder blue leisure suit a couple years ago — are going to be regulating something they have no idea what it is.”

He said he would like Congress to “bring in the industry people and figure this thing out and get it right.”

Former President Barack Obama on Monday called AI leaders’ move to slow the pace of development a “good and necessary first step,” saying it was time to “structure a more open, public and democratic conversation about AI.”

He said voluntary standards by companies were not enough.

“We need government — and specifically our leaders in Washington — to get proactive in coming up with concrete proposals, laws and regulations that deal with serious safety concerns, anticipate AI’s impact on jobs and our kids, and make sure that AI’s benefits are widely spread,” he said.

Obama called last week for AI policy to be prioritized within the Democratic Party.

Vice President JD Vance told reporters Monday that AI leaders’ warnings are “something that we’re concerned by” but said the administration wants to ensure “we actually regulate smartly.”

“I have to say, just personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them,” Vance said. “It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse. So I think we just have to be careful about this.”

Beijing on Monday disparaged the warnings from U.S. tech leaders as “fearmongering” from a “Cold War playbook” aimed at hobbling China.

During his trip to Ireland, Trump asserted over the weekend that the U.S. was leading China in artificial intelligence and said, “Whoever wins AI wins.”

“We can put guardrails,” he said Sunday. “We can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”

Read full story here…

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week's newsletter includes stories on:

• The Trump administration's latest strategy for boosting manufactured housing construction.
• Anti-pot activists' use of California's environmental review law to stop new cannabis facilities.
• Yet another data center backlash in the heart of data center country.

Chassis Gone but Not Forgotten

Building codes for traditional site-built housing are typically set by states or local governments. Manufactured housing, which is built in off-site factories and then delivered as a completed unit to its final destination, is controlled by building codes set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

One major piece of direct deregulation in the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, which became law in July, was the elimination of the HUD code's requirement that manufactured housing sit on a permanent steel chassis.

Wonks debate just how burdensome this rule was and how responsible it was for causing a major decline in the production of manufactured housing.

Regardless, no one believes that the requirement did anything but raise costs for what was once a major source of affordable housing.

While Congress' new housing law officially eliminates the chassis requirement, actually implementing this deregulatory change will require a number of additional federal rules and further local and state deregulation.

The Trump administration got the ball rolling on the former last week, when HUD unveiled its "Next Generation Manufactured Housing Action Plan."

It announced HUD's plan to begin crafting new construction safety and installation standards for now-permitted chassisless manufactured housing. The Road to Housing Act requires this rule change, but does not set a deadline for when it needs to be done.

Additionally, HUD announced its plan to begin rulemaking on creating new energy efficiency standards for manufactured housing, as required by the new housing law. This must be completed by July 2027.

That's the same deadline for states to submit certifications to the federal government that they've changed their own regulations on manufactured housing to conform to the new federal rules that no longer require a chassis.

These rule changes will all take time. We can at least be sure they will happen, given that the changes are required by the new housing law.

A potential bottleneck, as always, will be local zoning codes that are not directly impacted by Congress' reforms.

Many localities still define manufactured housing as a home that's built with a permanent chassis. That language could end up blocking manufactured homes constructed without a chassis under the new standards.

Another plank of HUD's action plan is to provide "stakeholders" with information on zoning for manufactured housing. The 21st Century Road to Housing Act also creates various financial incentives for localities to update their zoning codes to allow for more housing.

That is to say, carrots can still be brought to bear to ensure that local deregulation happens. But voluntary action on the part of localities or additional preemption of local zoning laws by states will still be required for federal chassis reform to be fully realized.

Anti-Pot Group Uses Environmental Law To Block New Cannabusiness Zoning Rules

Recreational marijuana was legalized by California voters a decade ago. The rule changes needed to allow entrepreneurs to grow and sell the stuff are still a work in progress.

Back in August, after five years of work, San Diego County at last certified its environmental review of zoning changes that would dictate where commercial cannabusinesses like dispensaries and grow operations could set up shop in unincorporated areas.

That certification has merely led to another roadblock.

In September, the group No Skunk Butts filed a lawsuit under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to block implementation of the new zoning rules.

CEQA requires local governments to study the environmental impacts of discretionary actions they undertake, including zoning changes. Third parties are empowered by the law to sue if they believe a locality did not conduct a thorough enough review of a zoning change's environmental impacts.

As reported by Village News, No Skunk Butts alleges in its lawsuit that the county did not do enough to study cannabusinesses' potential impacts on water and air quality, as well as noise and odor.

This is hardly the first time that CEQA has been used to hamstring the expansion of California's legal cannabis industry. Local activists have frequently challenged individual permits for cannabusinesses and, as in San Diego County's case, cannabis zoning and licensing regimes.

In 2017, the California Legislature attempted to forestall some of this litigation by allowing localities to pass cannabis regulatory regimes without going through CEQA. But that reform merely shifted CEQA onto individual businesses, who'd have to do their own environmental analysis when applying for permits.

Despite legalization, California's heavy-handed regulation of the cannabis industry has enabled a large marijuana black market to persist. CEQA is a major, if underdiscussed, part of that story.

A Data Center Backlash on the Edge of Data Center Alley

Last week, the Board of Supervisors of Fauquier County, Virginia, passed a raft of new restrictions on data center construction.

The new rules eliminate by-right zoning for data centers, meaning new projects will be required to obtain special, discretionary permits. The reforms also limit data center construction to a single zone within the county, reports InsideNoVa.

Prior to the changes, data centers were allowed to be built by right in business parks countywide.

The country is in the middle of a massive backlash against data center construction. It's thus not inherently surprising that a county government would pass new rules on data center construction.

It is conspicuous that Fauquier County would do so. The jurisdiction sits just to the south of Loudoun County, home to the world's largest concentration of data centers. (It's been nicknamed "data center alley.")

Data centers have been a massive economic driver in Northern Virginia and a massive fiscal boon to the Loudoun County government, which has taken in so much revenue from these facilities that it's been able to cut property taxes on homeowners.

Loudoun County itself recently eliminated by-right zoning for data centers, which it once regulated like office spaces.

It doesn't bode well for the industry if jurisdictions that once welcomed data centers with open arms, and profited handsomely from them, are moving to restrict new facilities.

Quick Links

• Tim Carney on the surprising walkability of America's OG car-oriented suburb.
• The strange socialist-libertarian fusion that is Vancouver, Canada's First Nation housing developments.
• Texas landowners in the way of President Donald Trump's border wall fight the federal government's eminent domain efforts.
• A British charitable foundation calls on the government to use rent control to reduce the cost of affordable housing subsidies. Road to Serfdom, anyone?

The post Code Games 2.0 appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Drones struck a plant making fuel components for Russia's Kh-101 cruise missiles and a second Yandex data center overnight on 9 October, Russian officials and monitoring channels reported. The same night, fires were reported at a refinery in Russia's far north and an oil depot near Belgorod. Russia claimed it downed more than 500 drones, and Ukraine has not claimed any of the strikes.

Ukraine has spent months hitting refineries and arms suppliers deep inside Russia. Russia, meanwhile, keeps firing Kh-101 cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities, including the one that killed 22 people in Pryluky on 7 October.

The plant behind the Kh-101's fuel

The Redkino Experimental Plant in Tver Oblast came under attack overnight, Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported. It said the plant makes components of Decilin-M, a fuel for Kh-55 and Kh-101 cruise missiles, as well as additives for diesel and aviation kerosene.

Tver Oblast Governor Vitaly Korolev claimed a plant in Redkino caught fire as a drone attack was being repelled. He did not name the plant. No workers were hurt, he said.

The plant also makes ferrocene derivatives, which serve as burn catalysts in solid-fuel rocket motors, Militarnyi reported. The UK sanctioned it in September 2025. Drones attacked it in September 2023 and twice in one night in June 2024, the outlet said.

In February, drones of the Security Service of Ukraine's (SBU) Alpha unit struck the plant, sparking a large fire, SBU sources told Kyiv Post. The Kh-101 is the missile Russia used against Pryluky on 7 October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

Yandex loses a second data center

Part of Yandex's data center in Kaluga was damaged in the drone attack, and several modules were completely knocked out, the company's press service told Interfax, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported. Some Yandex services may run with interruptions, no one was hurt, and the company is still assessing the damage, Yandex said.

Kaluga Oblast Governor Vladislav Shapsha claimed nine people were injured in the overnight attack on the region. A day earlier, a drone attack forced Yandex to fully shut its data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast.

A refinery in the north, a depot near Belgorod

Locals reported an attack on the Ukhta refinery in the Komi Republic, followed by a fire, Exilenova+ said. The Lukoil-owned plant can process about 4.2 million metric tons of oil a year, making gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, and vacuum gasoil. The extent of the damage is unclear.

An oil depot north of Belgorod was also burning after the night's attack, the channel posted. Belgorod's regional headquarters claimed two people were killed and four injured, including a child, in the Belgorod district.

A large fire also broke out in Pushkino near Moscow, likely at a truck parking lot, Astra reported. The cause is unknown.

Repeated strikes on Redkino target a specialty fuel that Russia's cruise missiles depend on, while two Yandex data centers hit in two nights bring the war to services ordinary Russians use every day.

In a remote part of Utah, the world’s largest data center project—allegedly—is being fast-tracked in secret. Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank fame was brought in to hype the 40,000-acre complex. But the backlash among Utahns has been strong. Josh Dzieza reports from the front lines of the popular resistance to data centers:

[Brenna] Williams, a former government econometrician and college instructor, speaks methodically in a calm monotone as she enumerates the many reasons why the data center “doesn’t make sense”—a refrain. First among them is the water, an acutely sensitive issue in Utah in part thanks to Gov. Cox himself, who has declared repeated drought emergencies and urged residents to take shorter showers and cut back on watering their lawns. There is no more potent symbol of the state’s water crisis than the Great Salt Lake, which has been shrinking for years, exposing heavy metals on its lakebed that become airborne dust. Now here came a data center on its northern shore, or where its northern shore would have been if it hadn’t receded several miles.

“We have to report on our neighbors if they’re watering at the wrong times or on the wrong days,” Williams says. (There’s a hotline.) “But we have water to cool a power plant and cool the data center? It doesn’t make sense.”

A drone attack overnight on 8 October caused a fire that hit part of Yandex's data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, about 580 km from Ukraine, and the site is fully stopped, the Russian tech company told Russian media. The data center sits on the grounds of Sasta, a sanctioned machine-tool plant, Russian outlet Astra said, citing Wikimapia data. Astra's OSINT analyst found from eyewitness footage that the fire hit the plant.

Since late September, Russia has been striking data centers in Kyiv that keep Ukraine's internet and online services running. Now a drone attack has stopped one of the data centers that Russia's largest tech company relies on.

Yandex counts the damage

Yandex warned that some services may be unavailable, while its core services kept running and no one was hurt. Ryazan Oblast Governor Pavel Malkov claimed two drones were downed, a roof caught fire at an enterprise in the Sasovo district, and windows were blown out in several homes.

The power failure took down a wide range of Yandex Cloud infrastructure, including computing capacity, networks, data storage, databases, Kubernetes, cloud services, AI, and security and monitoring systems, Ukrainian outlet ZN.ua reported, citing Exilenova+.

Ukrainian monitoring channel Exilenova+ reported that the plant was hit, without naming an attacker. The channel said Sasta, which claims a place on Russia's register of defense-industry companies, makes computer-controlled machine tools, including five-axis machining centers, and previously supplied the Tactical Missiles Corporation (KTRV) and Roscosmos. The plant's value to the arms industry lies in machines that cut precision parts, not in finished weapons, the channel said.

Citing Exilenova+, Militarnyi reported that Ukraine's Defense Forces hit the plant. It also linked Sasta to Iskander missile supply chains. No source has said whether the plant or the data center was the target, and no Ukrainian official has claimed the Sasovo strike. Sasta has been under US sanctions since November 2023, UK sanctions since February 2024, and Ukrainian sanctions since April 2025, a sanctions database shows.

Salavat: Kyiv reports a hit

Ukrainian forces hit the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat complex in Bashkortostan, about 1,380 km from the front line, causing a fire, Ukraine's General Staff said. It said the complex processes up to 10 million metric tons of hydrocarbons a year and serves Russia's armed forces. Its key unit, the ELOU-AVT-6 primary oil refining unit launched in 2012, can process 6 million metric tons a year, Militarnyi reported. Astra's analyst placed the fire a few kilometers outside Salavat, possibly near the refinery.

Salavat Mayor Marat Zagidullin claimed that debris from several drones fell in the industrial zone that morning and started a fire.

"The enterprise continues to work," he said.

Astra noted earlier hits on the complex on 24 September 2025, on 14 July 2026, when refining fully stopped, and on 13 August 2026.

Russia's strikes on Ukraine's data centers

Russia has repeatedly hit data centers in Kyiv since 23 September. Strikes hit the COSMONOVA data center twice, the second time knocking it out, and the Parkovyi data center stopped working completely on 1 October after a series of strikes. In early October, Russia destroyed the dline.ua data center in Kyiv.

Southeast Asia’s growth next year will be decided at meetings its finance ministers won’t attend. A few executives in California will soon settle next year’s spending on data centers. Their decisions will do more to shape growth in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines than any budget those governments pass. The World Bank has just […]

The post Asia’s growth now belongs to Silicon Valley appeared first on Asia Times.

Paul Krugman is the greatest econ writer in the world, and also a legendary economist. But I sometimes feel that he has a blind spot when it comes to the value of new technologies. In 1998 he famously wrote: The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that […]

The post What the AI boom is actually doing for Americans appeared first on Asia Times.

The artificial intelligence (AI) race between the United States and China has accelerated in model protection, supply chains and talent controls, even as the two nations’ leaders agreed last week to open a new dialogue on AI safety. A string of moves announced or uncovered this week shows that both sides are now guarding their […]

The post US bans Chinese data center gear as Beijing grounds its AI talent appeared first on Asia Times.