How should AI be regulated, and who gets to decide? These are questions that seem certain to become dominant stories throughout 2026.

To this point in its development, the AI industry and its datacenters have been able to expand in a wild west regulatory atmosphere in which almost anything goes. That explosive expansion created a set of impacts that resulted in the public complaining to policymakers. Now, policymakers on both sides of the aisle are starting to respond.

Like it or not, this is how the American political system works. It’s exactly the same process the U.S. shale industry dealt with during the first 15 years of this century, one which resulted in the implementation of strong new regulations at all levels of government.

By contrast, the wind and solar industries largely avoided effective scrutiny due to the eagerness of politicians to virtue signal their green energy credentials. As a result, states with heavy wind and solar development lack the regulatory infrastructure needed to properly govern development and retirement of these massive industrial installations, a reality to which local communities have only recently awakened and begun to push back hard. (RELATED: Bernie Sanders Repeats Call For Data Center Moratorium As Pushback Against ‘Oligarchs’)

Now, it’s the AI........

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