House Republicans allege the Chinese Communist Party is using tax-exempt organizations and social media to wage an influence campaign against American AI infrastructure data centers.

Andy Burnham once kept Palantir out of Greater Manchester. His first test as prime minister is whether to cut the company's £330 million NHS contract--and risk a rupture with Big Tech and Washington. When Andy Burnham sat in his office in Manchester as the regional mayor, building an unrivaled power base on Britain's left that ultimately catapulted him into the prime minister's office, he did so in the only region of England that refused Palantir access to its data. Now, as Burnham enters his first parliamentary session as British leader, Palantir could prove to be his first major test in office, as sources in Westminster tell WIRED the prime minister is under significant pressure from his new colleagues to break the company's contentious contract with the National Health Service. The dispute could become the first major crisis of Burnham's premiership, with those sources saying pressure is mounting on him to decide the future of Palantir's growing role across the British state in the coming weeks.

Is the war entering a new phase? Polls have closed in Russia's first wartime parliamentary elections, with the ruling United Russia party on course to win the tightly controlled vote. The Kremlin wants the elections, the first parliamentary vote since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, to showcase popular support for the war and legitimise its action. The drone strikes on Sunday killed at least three people in the Moscow region and two more in the Russian-held part of Ukraine's Kherson region, including an election official, according to the region's governor and the election commission. Russian authorities also reported attacks on the country's electronic voting systems and communication lines during the polls, but said the electoral process was mostly smooth.

Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has resigned after his ruling right-wing bloc was narrowly defeated by the centre-left opposition in the country's general election. He made the announcement in a post on X on Thursday afternoon, after preliminary votes from Sunday's election showed about 50,000 votes separated the two blocs in the country of about 10 million people. Opposition parties led by Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats look set to win 176 seats in the 349-seat Riksdag, Sweden's parliament. Kristersson, a conservative, had been supported in government by the anti-immigration hard-right Sweden Democrats (SD), and had promised them cabinet jobs if he won the election. His right-wing bloc looks set to win 173 seats in the Riksdag, according to data from the Swedish Election Authority.

There is an eerie low hum that emanates from data centres, where tens of thousands of chips make trillions of computations a second to help drive the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. These chips power the text, images and video generated by the queries made by the world of the advanced AI models. Their computations, which are in effect the switching on and off of microscopic silicon transistors that make up a chip, are actually silent. But, as with all computers, almost every watt of the significant electricity powering this process leaves as heat, and the sound you can hear is the slow whir of thousands of fans required to prevent the heat from frying the racks of servers. Depending on the size of the site, you may also hear the thrum of transformers in substations channelling electricity.

China is racing to build data centers and energy infrastructure to close the AI gap with the US. Donald Trump warns that data center protests could benefit Beijing.

The opposition to datacenters has crossed party lines. The opposition to datacenters has crossed party lines. Tue 1 Sep 2026 08.19 EDTLast modified on Tue 1 Sep 2026 09.08 EDT I was lucky enough to see her in concert a decade ago in California, in the same arena where Google now hosts its annual I/O conference. It's been a long time, and all my iPhone 4 photos are so blurry you can barely tell it's a musical performance, but my memory is clear enough to compensate. She told many stories about her childhood, which led into a trio of fabulous songs: My Tennessee Mountain Home, Applejack and Dr Robert F Thomas.

More than 15 politicians from across the country have signed on to the AI Pact, vowing to regulate data centers and AI. "We've got to get this right," says Senate candidate Dan Osborn of Nebraska. Dan Osborn was finishing up his fourth town hall last Sunday, he says, when a "hardcore MAGA" guy approached him. Osborn, who is running for the US Senate in Nebraska as an independent against Republican incumbent Pete Ricketts, said that he and the man didn't have much common ground--at first. "Then I said, 'Hey, what's your take on AI and data centers?'"

Anthony Albanese will tell national cabinet his government will legislate next year to ensure the benefits of AI and datacentres are shared among states. Anthony Albanese will tell national cabinet his government will legislate next year to ensure the benefits of AI and datacentres are shared among states. Albanese seeks to quell datacentre disquiet as climate expert warns'we've got one shot to get the rules right' Anthony Albanese will seek to use Wednesday's high-stakes talks with premiers to quell growing unhappiness about national controls on datacentre developments, promising new approval laws will complement state rules. Faced with growing opposition from conservative governments in Queensland and the Northern Territory, Albanese will tell national cabinet he plans a major piece of legislation next year to ensure the economic benefits of AI are shared widely. The meeting on Wednesday will come after the latest forecast from the Australian Energy Market Operator showing datacentre power use is projected to increase seven-fold over the next decade.

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