Phil Heller

Part I of this series described the various players in the AI infrastructure boom. Part II looked at why data centers became so attractive to the real estate and construction economy. Put the AI story aside for a moment, and the argument was simple: the building economy needed a new

The first article in this series looked at the players behind the AI infrastructure boom. This one looks at the simpler, less technical question underneath the buildout: why did data centers become so attractive so quickly? Put the AI story aside for a moment. Forget model benchmarks, frontier labs, Nvidia

The public story of AI data centers usually begins with the technology companies. The AI labs need more compute. The cloud platforms need more capacity. The chipmakers sell the GPUs. The models get bigger. The data centers follow. That story is true. But it is incomplete. The AI infrastructure boom

Lionel Messi broke the World Cup scoring record for goals scored today because the beautiful game still has room for what systems cannot optimize. On Monday, June 22, 2026, Messi scored twice in Argentina’s 2-0 win over Austria in Arlington, Texas, giving him 18 career World Cup goals

The Arrival of A New Model The first day of the Iran conflict in February 2026 looked like the arrival of a new model for the art of war. The model was clear and well-constructed: artificial intelligence had become essential to military and intelligence operations; the Pentagon needed access

The easiest way to read the G7’s AI lunch is as another elite photo op: presidents, prime ministers, cabinet officials, and AI leaders sitting around a table using the familiar language of safety, innovation, and global coordination. But the deeper story is that the AI leaders now have seats

SpaceX’s $60 billion deal for Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, gives the AI coding market its first true blockbuster acquisition. The buyer is the headline, but Cursor is the story. It became valuable because it sits in one of the few places where generative AI has already become daily

The AI industry keeps describing itself in world-historical terms. Some of that is earned. The money, compute, policy attention, labor-market anxiety, and security implications are real. But today’s news points to a more grounded version of the story: AI will change everything and nothing at once. It

Three AI models were asked to predict the outcome of the NBA Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Knicks, and to include specific details and reasoning for the picks. OpenAI ChatGPT picked the Spurs 4-2. Anthropic Claude picked the Spurs 4-2. Google Gemini picked

The frontier AI companies are increasingly the usual suspects being restricted, investigated, sued, and held responsible by lawmakers. What Happened this Week * Anthropic hit the export-control wall: The U.S. Commerce Department restricted foreign-national access to Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, forcing the company to