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Meta will pay for a total of 10 gas-fired power plants—enough to power more than 5 million homes—to electrify its rapidly expanding plans for its massive AI data center complex in northeastern Louisiana, dubbed Hyperion.

Meta’s agreement with New Orleans-based Entergy, announced March 27, is to build and finance seven new power plants in Louisiana. That comes on top of plans approved last year to build three gas power plants for the sprawling AI hub. The 10 power plants with 7.5 gigawatts of capacity would represent more than a 30% increase to Louisiana’s entire grid capacity, not even counting up to 2.5 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, including battery storage, that Meta also agreed to help fund.

Meta initially announced plans for a $10 billion investment in December 2024 for a 2,250-acre data center campus in northeastern Louisiana in rural Richland Parish. But Meta recently, and quietly, acquired an additional 1,400 acres, as Fortune reported in February. In October 2025, Meta entered a joint venture with funds managed by Blue Owl Capital to finance, build, and operate the Hyperion campus with up to $27 billion in total development costs, seemingly ensuring the mega campus will serve as a long-term, multiphase AI hub.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said Hyperion would cover a “significant part of the footprint of Manhattan.”

“Our Richland Parish data center serves as a symbol of the ambition and scale of next-generation AI infrastructure,” said Rachel Peterson, Meta vice president for data centers, in a statement. “We are building foundations for the future of AI innovation right here in the United States. We’ve been working closely with Entergy since early on-site planning to ensure our power needs are met and, importantly, so that Entergy’s other consumers aren’t paying our costs.”

The Louisiana Public Utility Commission will still need to approve the projects. The previous three power plants received regulatory authorization last year.

Entergy’s stock jumped 7% on March 27, lifting its market cap to a new record high of about $50 billion. The stock has risen almost 125% in two years.

Entergy is emphasizing that Meta is paying for the projects, rather than shifting the costs to other ratepayers. Entergy argues that the deals will save Louisiana taxpayers billions of dollars over several years.

The 10 power plants are estimated to cost nearly $11 billion. Critics contend ratepayers could be stuck with the bill after 15 years, which is the length of the contractual terms, if Meta no longer requires so much power after that span.

“This agreement reflects what’s possible when strong partners align around long-term growth and value,” said Phillip May, president and CEO of Entergy Louisiana, in a statement. “Working with our customers, regulators and state leaders, we are making targeted investments that strengthen reliability, support economic development and deliver meaningful benefits to customers—all while keeping energy rates affordable.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

When Meta opened its Ray-Ban smart glasses up for pre-order, it made clear of one thing: your privacy will be secure. “Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are built with privacy at their core,” read a statement at the time, released in September 2023. The marketing was unambiguous about your privacy, and as a result, you might have seen people wearing them around town, in a Super Bowl ad, or even in a court proceeding about child safety on Meta’s own platforms. ICE agents were even reportedly wearing them in the field.

What you might not have seen is, well, yourself caught in the crosshairs of the glasses’ camera. Now, a new study—and a federal lawsuit that quickly followed—alleges the company is even less transparent than those thick lenses, claiming the company is quietly routing users’ footage to human workers overseas instead of its AI models. These workers have seen everything from people undressing to sensitive financial documents, and it’s thanks to users who opt into data sharing for AI training purposes.

“In some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed. I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording,” a worker said he saw in the videos from the glasses.

In late February, Swedish publications Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten published an investigation into Meta’s AI training pipeline, finding Meta contractors in Kenya help train the artificial intelligence powering the glasses (comprised of the Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer (Gen 2), the Ray-Ban Display, and the Oakley Meta HSTNs models). What they saw was startling. 

“We see everything, from living rooms to naked bodies,” the workers were quoted in the study. “Meta has that type of content in its databases.”

Any user who opts into sharing data for AI training purposes effectively allows all parts of their life to be recorded, and then as a result, reviewed, either by the AIs it’s supposed to train or by the humans behind it. That includes footage of people in bathrooms, undressing, watching porn, and, in at least one documented case, a pair of glasses left on a bedside table that captured a partner who had never consented to being recorded. 

Meta’s subcontractors—who were data annotators teaching the AI to interpret images by manually labelling content—also reported viewing users’ credit card numbers and financial documents. At the time of the study’s release, Meta responded through a spokesperson, saying: “When people share content with Meta AI, like other companies we sometimes use contractors to review this data to improve people’s experience with the glasses, as stated in our privacy policy. This data is first filtered to protect people’s privacy.”

A class action begins

The report triggered legal action. On March 4, plaintiffs Gina Bartone and Mateo Canu filed a class action lawsuit against Meta Platforms Inc. (and glassesmaker Luxottica of America) accusing the company of violating federal and state laws by failing to disclose that videos captured by the glasses are transmitted to its servers and then to the Kenyan subcontractor for manual labeling.​ Referencing new privacy bills and regulations as result of the increase in AI and the surveillance economy, the suit reads that “Meta knows this” in reference to the public’s growing concern of their privacy and safety, and “against this backdrop,” Meta released the glasses with a “reassuring promise: the Glasses were ‘designed for privacy, controlled by you.’”

Brian Hall, a privacy and AI attorney at Stubbs Alderton & Markiles, says the revelations were as predictable as they were alarming. “That’s horrifying. It’s kind of exactly what we all imagined would happen,” Hall told Fortune. “I’m old enough to remember 10 or 12 years ago when Google had their glasses, and that was a concern about people going into restrooms with them on. We’re kind of right back there now.”​

(When Google unveiled its prototype Google Glass in 2013, it ignited a fierce public backlash over surveillance, consent, and the death of anonymity. Bars, restaurants, casinos, and strip clubs banned the device outright, and wearers were mockingly dubbed “Glassholes”).

Hall says the legal liability remains murky, partly because Meta’s own Terms of Service state that data annotators “will review your interaction with AI, including the content of your conversations with or messages to AI,” and specifies this review “can be automated or manual.” “If we went and did a close reading of their privacy policy, there’s not going to be anything explicitly that says they don’t do that,” Hall said. “In terms of their legal liability, I don’t know, but it’s certainly a PR liability. This is some of the most sensitive information and imagery that there is out there.”​

Hall says his biggest concern isn’t actually the glasses wearers themselves, it’s everyone else caught in the frame. “The bystanders, the people who are being filmed and identified, they’re the ones that are at risk,” he said. “Sadly, our privacy laws are not designed to protect those people. They’re designed to protect the people who are wearing the glasses and their ability to manage their own data.”​

In reference to reports of a man using the glasses in a U.K. court to help “coach” him through testimony, Hall said the risk compounds significantly as Meta reportedly considers adding facial recognition to the glasses. “It really is moving from a world where today you might be able to see somebody on the street, in a courtroom, in a bar, and you might be able to do some investigation on Facebook and Instagram and find them. But this is instant. It’s automatic, zero effort. You could be sitting in a courtroom identifying witnesses.”

Hall says existing law is simply not built for what Meta’s glasses make possible. “I don’t know that the existing laws are really sufficient to protect us from the risks of the kind of things that Meta and other social media companies are doing right now,” he said. “It’s sort of getting shoehorned into the privacy laws, but those are rarely enforced as it is,  and this is completely upending the whole framework that those were built upon.”​

“I’m not seeing that people are meaningfully addressing it in any way,” he said, saying current regulations are piecemeal and fail to address the concerns of privacy entirely. Once privacy is addressed, he said “everything else is just kind of window dressing.”​

Meta did not respond to requests for comment.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Airlangga Hartato was all smiles on Feb. 19 as he signed his name to what he called a “win-win” deal. After four trips to Washington, seven formal negotiating rounds, and nine meetings with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Indonesia’s economy minister had finally secured a reduction in U.S. duties on Indonesian goods—from a punishing 32% to a more tolerable 19%.

The agreement, grandly titled Toward a New Golden Age for the U.S.–Indonesia Alliance, promised tariff exemptions for key exports like palm oil, coffee, cocoa, and rubber. In exchange, Jakarta pledged to scrap barriers on more than 99% of U.S. imports and commit to some $33 billion in purchases of American energy, aircraft, and agricultural products.

The very next day, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs—including the original 32% levy that had forced Jakarta into the talks in the first place—as unconstitutional. (Trump has since followed up with two new trade probes on Indonesia, one on excess manufacturing and another on forced labor.)

The Supreme Court’s ruling was the most visible example of bad timing in what has been a punishing few months for Southeast Asia’s largest economy, and an early test of President Prabowo Subianto’s high hopes for his tenure.

Since January, Indonesia has absorbed shocks from multiple directions at once. A warning from global index provider MSCI that Jakarta’s opaque stock market could lose its coveted emerging-market status triggered an 8% drop in markets over two days. Moody’s and Fitch both cut their outlooks on Indonesia’s sovereign debt to negative—the first step toward a possible downgrade. Trump’s tariffs, if they return, could threaten Indonesia’s export industries. Then came the Iran war, whose disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz threaten Indonesia’s fuel supply.

“The economy is heading into a perfect storm,” says Siwage Dharma Negara, co-coordinator of the Indonesia Studies Program at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “This is something we’ve never imagined before.”

Fabrice COFFRINI—AFP/Getty Images

So far, these back-to-back blows haven’t hurt Indonesia’s real economy. But higher commodity prices, a weaker rupiah, and a squeeze on government spending could hit affordability in a country where protests in response to rising fuel prices and the cost of living are already common. More broadly, analysts warn that Indonesia’s push to give the state a greater role in the economy could hit business confidence and investment, just at the moment when Indonesia needs capital to grow its manufacturing and mining sectors.

“We’re in an unusual period where Indonesia’s need for foreign capital is high, but its willingness to constrain itself in pursuit of that capital is low,” says Mattias Fibiger, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who covers the Southeast Asian country.

A “human capital” president

Prabowo Subianto took office in October 2024 with a bold target of 8% annual growth by 2029. He inherited a solid economy from his popular predecessor, Joko Widodo—better known as Jokowi—who had tried leveraging Indonesia’s abundant natural resources through a “downstreaming” drive: banning raw nickel ore exports and forcing investors to build smelters and refineries on Indonesian soil. That policy turned the country into a critical node in global battery and EV supply chains.

Prabowo has sought to expand the state’s role further still. “If you can think of Jokowi as a ‘physical capital’ president, then Prabowo is a ‘human capital’ president,” Fibiger explains.

Prabowo hoped to invest in expansive social programs, like a nationwide free nutritious-meals scheme—now budgeted at roughly 335 trillion rupiah ($20 billion) for 2026, almost 9% of the total state budget, targeting 82 million schoolchildren, infants, and pregnant women.

But it will take a long time for such programs to pay off, if they do at all. “Those dividends will be felt a generation down the line, not a year, not three years, not five years down the line,” Fibiger says.

Negara is blunter, noting these measures “are not really contributing to productivity growth.”

Fibiger traces Indonesia’s problems back to September, when Prabowo abruptly removed his widely respected finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, amid mounting protests over living costs and inequality. Sri Mulyani had served three presidents and was, in Fibiger’s words, “a personification of the Washington consensus,” or a champion of fiscal discipline and market-oriented reforms.

Her replacement, Purbaya Yudhi Sadewa, was more aggressive on spending, tapping some $12 billion of the country’s reserves to recapitalize state-owned banks and pledging to use more than half of the government’s “rainy day” fund by the end of 2025.

“Indonesia has been a victim of both bad timing and bad policy,” Fibiger says.

Ratings shock

Yet the first shock to the country came from a different source entirely. On Jan. 28, MSCI warned that it might downgrade Indonesia to a “frontier market,” citing a lack of transparency over company ownership. Indonesia’s markets have long featured companies with dominant controlling shareholders and limited public floats, allowing insiders to drastically move share prices.

The market rout eventually wiped out $120 billion in value and forced out not only the chief executive of the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX), Iman Rachman, but also the chair of the Financial Services Authority (OJK), Mahendra Siregar. Goldman Sachs downgraded Indonesian equities to “underweight” and estimated that a drop to frontier-market status could trigger another $7.8 billion in outflows. Some local brokers warned that, in aggregate, more than $60 billion of foreign holdings could eventually exit if Indonesia were reweighted toward existing frontier peers.

Jakarta moved quickly to try to head that off. OJK pledged to raise minimum free-float requirements to 15% and tighten disclosure of company owners. Danantara, Prabowo’s new sovereign wealth fund, was mobilized to buy equities; the investment ceiling for pension funds and insurers was raised from 8% to 20% of assets.

Pandu Sjahrir, Danantara’s chief investment officer, a coal tycoon turned venture capitalist before joining the fund, says the IDX has “improved significantly” since the MSCI’s warning.

“How do you find a good balance between being issuer-friendly and investor-friendly? You have to be in the middle,” he says. A new IDX management team is expected in the second half of the year, and Pandu says he is “encouraged” by the caliber of applicants.

But the market alarm proved to be only the first in a chain. Within weeks, both Moody’s and Fitch downgraded their outlooks on Indonesia’s sovereign debt to negative. Moody’s cited “reduced predictability and coherence in the policymaking process,” while Fitch pointed to “growing centralization of policymaking authority.” (While S&P hasn’t changed its outlook, it too is wary of increased spending, noting that interest payments likely surpassed 15% of government revenue last year.)

“The underlying concern is about imbalance between state revenue and the government’s spending plans,” says Negara. Indonesia’s 2025 budget deficit reached 2.92% of GDP—the widest in more than two decades, outside of the COVID-19 crisis—pushing the country uncomfortably close to the 3% cap it adopted after the Asian Financial Crisis as a hard-won symbol of post-crisis discipline.

A U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran in February and March, which led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, makes things even more complicated for Indonesia’s budget. (In another example of poor timing, Prabowo had just joined Trump’s “Board of Peace” to considerable fanfare, only to pause membership talks after the U.S. struck Iran.) Indonesia pumps around 608,000 barrels of oil a day, but surging domestic demand has made it a net importer since 2003.

The price of petrol has long been a political pressure point in Indonesia, where successive governments have used generous subsidies to keep prices artificially low. Rising fuel prices tend to lead to mass protests—as they did in 1998, eventually helping to topple Indonesia’s then-dictator Suharto, and in 2022, when protesters looted Sri Mulyani’s house.

Jakarta has vowed to keep fuel affordable without imposing the lifestyle changes—shorter workweeks, warmer air-conditioner settings—that some of its Southeast Asian neighbors have rolled out, but has offered few specifics on how it will pay for that stance.

In a mid-March interview with Bloomberg, Prabowo suggested he might lift the budget-deficit cap to deal with the short-term emergency of the Iran war and surging fuel prices. Pandu characterized the government’s approach as only breaching the cap in “special cases.”

Unease on Danantara

Danantara, the sovereign wealth fund Prabowo launched in early 2025 with an estimated $1 trillion in state assets under its umbrella, sits at the center of investor unease about Indonesia.

The fund was designed with a mandate to optimize returns from Indonesia’s sprawling state-owned enterprises and recycle capital into projects that accelerate national development.

“We have this dual role: How can we optimize assets from state-owned enterprises to create more value, and at the same time create quality jobs?” CEO Rosan Roeslani explained to Fortune last year.

Yet in practice, Danantara has been pulled deeper into Indonesia’s economy. Earlier this year, Prabowo ordered it to anchor the creation of a state-owned textile champion, backed by as much as $6 billion in capital, to rescue an industry hammered by cheap Chinese imports and trade disruption. That’s led to worries about confused objectives and mission creep. Others, like Negara, see Danantara as evidence “that the current administration is trying to strengthen the role of the state,” which is worrying the private sector, particularly as the government intervenes in strategic sectors like retail, mining, and energy.

“The market is asking us to be the anchor of confidence,” Pandu says, noting Danantara’s active engagement with MSCI and the rating agencies. “We’re investing in the stock market every day through fund managers,” he adds, helping to rebuild trust in a market that urgently needs it.

At the same time, he acknowledges that Danantara cannot act like a purely commercial investor. “If I had to choose between a project that offered a 7% return and created 100,000 jobs, or one that offered a 10% return but created no jobs, I’d have to take the 100,000 jobs option,” he says. “I have to make some profit, but I also have to generate high-quality work.”

Rather than the market turbulence or the fiscal squeeze, Pandu says his deepest concern lies elsewhere entirely—with AI. “My biggest fear is being left behind in terms of global trends happening today, both in the U.S. and China. Those two countries are developing things that are rapidly changing the world order in terms of the haves and the have-nots,” he says.

The metronome economy

Prabowo, a former army general, has been characteristically punchy in his response to foreign investors’ jitters. “The markets are not understanding me,” he griped to Bloomberg, insisting that analysts had “got it wrong” and that domestic regulators had mishandled the MSCI warnings.

The hard data give him some cover. Indonesia’s economy grew 5.11% in 2025, its fastest pace in three years and above most analysts’ expectations, supported by robust household spending and investment.

Negara agrees there is still a solid floor beneath the current turbulence. Indonesia’s growth has long been anchored by domestic demand rather than exports; a young, increasingly urban population; and a large, expanding middle class. “If domestic consumption is still growing, it means that there’s still an opportunity for the economy to grow at 4% or 5% per year,” he argues.

“The consumer is still relatively strong and wealthy, and they’re here to spend, especially the middle, upper middle class,” says Pandu of Danantara. He thinks global investors are ignoring opportunities in everyday Indonesian consumption.

Indonesia has been remarkably consistent. “The astonishing thing about Indonesia is that it grows like a metronome,” Fibiger says. He points out that since the end of the Suharto era, Indonesia has posted roughly 5% growth year after year “when commodity prices are high, when commodity prices are low, when the rest of the world is facing a financial crisis, or during boom times.”

“It doesn’t seem obvious to me that today’s problems will prevent Indonesia from growing around that number in the future,” he adds, even if Prabowo’s dream of 8% looks possible only with reforms.

Beyond consumption, Indonesia also offers opportunities in mining and metals, an increasingly hot sector as the world realizes the importance of critical minerals for industries like EVs and semiconductors. And then there’s AI and data centers, which can take advantage of Indonesia’s cheap and abundant energy supply, particularly as the country continues to invest in renewable energy.

“This is a great opportunity to tell Indonesia’s story,” Pandu says. “We haven’t done a great job at it, to be honest.”

This article appears in the April/May 2026: Asia issue of Fortune with the headline “Indonesia’s market meltdown.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Apple will celebrate 50 years on April 1, and over the last half a century, it has developed the eight-bit personal computer Apple I, the Macintosh, the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods, putting its technology into the pockets of about 1.5 billion people. 

Cofounder Steve Wozniak, who made his mark on this new age of technology, would rather just touch grass.

“I really have disconnected from the technology quite a bit,” Wozniak said in a recent CNN interview. “And I believe that nature is much more important than what humans do.”

Wozniak was the innovator behind Apple, serving the company until 1985 and developing its first two computer models as well as the first Macintosh, which popularized the graphical user interface.

The breakthrough made PCs more accessible to non-technical users, opening the doors to a mass audience. Despite the Woz’s contributions to the ubiquity of devices, he does not see the same value in the current big trend in technology.

“I don’t use AI much at all,” he said. “I often read things [AI produces], and they just sound too dry and too perfect, and I want something from a human being, and I’m disappointed a lot.”

Apple has largely sat out of the AI arms race occupying much of the tech sector. It spent just $12.7 billion in capital expenditures in fiscal 2025, a figure that pales in comparison to the $300 billion that AI hyperscalers Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet collectively spent. 

And instead of developing an in-house AI, Apple is powering its virtual assistant Siri with Google’s Gemini, taking advantage of another company’s tech. 

Tech’s big names advocating for the analog life

Woz’s skepticism of AI is shared by a number of leaders. A survey of more than 6,000 senior executives in the U.S., UK, Germany, and Australia led by Stanford future-of-work whiz Nicholas Bloom, found nearly 70% of CEOs, CFOs, and other C-suite members use AI at work for less than an hour a week—and 28% don’t use the tech at all. About 7% of respondents reported using AI more than five hours in a typical work week.

Still, AI use among top executives in the workplace is on the rise, with a January Gallup poll finding 69% of leaders used AI in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from less than 40% in mid-2023.

But even as AI gains momentum, a cadre of tech entrepreneurs—even those who are responsible for proliferating the increased uses of AI tools and devices—are setting boundaries on screens at home. 

“I think TikTok is entertainment, but it’s purely entertainment,” Chen said. “It’s just for that moment. Just shorter-form content equates to shorter attention spans.”

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel said in 2024 he allowed his two children only one and a half hours of screen time per week. Bill Gates, Snap’s Evan Spiegel, and Tesla’s Elon Musk have all similarly limited their children’s tech usage.

Their caution was backed up this week, when a jury found YouTube and Meta liable for the harm of young users in designing platforms with addictive features.

These concerns were even shared by Apple execs. When the iPad was released in 2010, then-CEO Steve Jobs, who founded the company alongside Wozniak, said his children had never used the device.

“We limit how much technology our kids use at home,” he told the New York Times.

Current Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this month he was concerned about how much people use AI. He warned it’s neither positive nor negative, but is in the hands of the inventor and user to determine its value. 

“I don’t want people using them too much,” he said in an interview with Good Morning America. “I don’t want people looking at the smartphone more than they’re looking in someone’s eyes, because if they’re just scrolling endlessly, this is not the way you wanna spend your day. Go out and spend it in nature.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

President Donald Trump convened what he called the single largest gathering of American farmers at the White House on Friday, bringing together more than 800 cowboy-hat-wearing men and women. They filled the South Lawn alongside a shiny golden tractor as the president touted his support for the agricultural industry. “I just gave you $12 billion. I don’t know if you know that or not,” Trump boasted, referring to farm relief provided through the USDA’s Farmer Bridge Assistance Program. Apparently that wasn’t enough, as he then told the crowd he’d asked Congress to approve additional relief in the next funding bill.

But much of the president’s support is actually falling into the hands of the wealthy, and a recent post from libertarian think tank the Cato Institute demonstrates that disparity. The data seems to challenge the notion of a struggling farmer: The national average income of a U.S. farm household in 2024 was $159,334. That’s roughly 32% above the national mean household income, and nearly double the national median of $83,730.

And that’s not even taking into account the majority of subsidies, which data shows are going to the top 10% of farms. The post cites a 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that revealed over 1,300 farmers with an adjusted gross income of more than $900,000 have received subsidies from the federal crop insurance program. 

The federal crop insurance program was established in 1938 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt to help the agricultural sector recover from the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Since its inception, the program has evolved into a key support pillar to provide producers with financial protection against losses from natural disasters and economic downturns. While it began as a recovery measure, the program now covers more than 120 unique commodities, representing the vast majority of the value of U.S. crop production.

“The subsidies are not an emergency safety net for poor farm families but rather permanent welfare for high-earning businesses,” Chris Edwards, an editor at the Cato Institute, wrote in the blog post. “The government often calls crop insurance ‘market-based,’ but that cannot be true because the program costs taxpayers billions of dollars a year.” Edwards added that because there are no income limits on crop insurance, the top 10% of farmers capture 56% of all subsidies in the program.

A safety net—or welfare for the wealthy?

Even some billionaire farmers receive subsidies. A 2015 GAO report, for example, cited that four individuals—who earned their wealth through a variety of sources in addition to farming, such as mining, real estate, sports, and information technology—with a net worth of $1.5 billion or higher participated in the federal crop insurance program and received premium subsidies. The USDA withholds the names of certain farm subsidy recipients, so it’s not exactly clear which wealthy farmers received the subsidies.

Graeme Sloan—Bloomberg/Getty Images

Tariffs and the rising cost of inputs are placing much of America’s breadbasket into an increasingly precarious financial position. The Iran war is driving up energy costs and fertilizer prices. On top of that, some farms are facing pressure from the AI industry as firms look to convert farmland into data centers. Trump claimed Thursday that U.S. farmers have been mistreated by some countries, and said he was taking action to support an industry battered by rising fuel and fertilizer prices caused by the Iran war.

In total, taxpayers are expected to pay $14.7 billion in 2026 for the federal crop insurance program, still just a fraction of the $7 trillion the U.S. spent in 2025, but a sizable sum, comparable to the size of federal agency budgets such as the EPA’s. Out of that $14.7 billion, about $9.6 billion goes to farmers, the other $5.1 billion to insurance companies. Spending on the program is only expected to rise, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

That growth has drawn critics, like Edwards, who argues the program benefits insurers as much as it does farmers. “The crop insurance program is like the government giving you $900 a year for your $1,500 car insurance premium, all while paying billions of dollars to Geico, State Farm, and other insurance firms to boost their profits,” Edwards wrote.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Microsoft is taking over a data center construction project in Texas after OpenAI declined to pursue it, in a move that will make the two companies neighbors at one of the nation’s largest complexes for running artificial intelligence.

Data center developer Crusoe said Friday it is working with Microsoft to build two new “AI factory” buildings and an on-site power plant in Abilene, Texas, right next to where Crusoe has been building an even larger computing campus for OpenAI and Oracle.

OpenAI’s existing project, the flagship of a broader initiative called Stargate, is so massive that President Donald Trump was the first to officially announce it just after his inauguration last year to signal AI investments he called a “resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential.”

Microsoft was once OpenAI’s exclusive cloud computing provider and still holds a roughly 27% stake in the ChatGPT maker, but the two companies are increasingly pursuing AI development separately, even though they are on the same tract of land.

OpenAI’s dropped plans

Crusoe has already completed two buildings for OpenAI and its other cloud partner, Oracle, supplying a surge of computing power that helps build and operate technology like ChatGPT. SoftBank was also an investment partner. Crusoe is still completing six more buildings for OpenAI and Oracle due to be completed by the end of this year.

OpenAI said earlier this month that it dropped plans to expand its Abilene project even further.

“Our flagship Stargate site is one of the largest AI data center campuses in the United States,” said Sachin Katti, OpenAI’s head of compute infrastructure, in a post on X. “We considered expanding it further, but ultimately chose to put that additional capacity in other locations.”

Katti said OpenAI has more than half a dozen sites under development across the United States, including one it is building with Oracle in Wisconsin.

Microsoft’s additional two Abilene facilities announced Friday will bring the total number to 10 data center buildings, expected to supply a stunning 2.1 gigawatts of computing capacity from what was once a vast tract of mesquite shrub lands, home to coyote and roadrunners.

‘We’re burning gas to run this data center’

Originally planned as a facility to mine cryptocurrency, developers pivoted and expanded their designs after ChatGPT sparked an AI boom.

Crusoe co-founder and CEO Chase Lochmiller said in a written statement that a new power plant attached to the Microsoft project will be able to generate 900 megawatts to “continue building the industrial foundation for American AI — at a velocity the industry has never seen.”

That will be larger than the existing 350-megawatt, gas-fired power plant attached to the OpenAI and Oracle project. Oracle has previously described that on-site plant as a backup source of power, since the data centers primarily draw from the region’s electricity grid, which includes power supplied by nearby wind farms.

The AI race has been complicating tech companies’ commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, most of which come from the burning of gas, oil and coal and drive climate change. “We’re burning gas to run this data center,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said while visiting Abilene last year, adding that “in the long trajectory of Stargate” the hope is to rely on many other power sources.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Iran’s nuclear facilities came under attack Friday, state media reported, just hours after Israel threatened to “escalate and expand” its campaign against Tehran. Israel claimed responsibility for the attacks and Iran quickly threatened to retaliate.

Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said the Shahid Khondab Heavy Water Complex in Arak and the Ardakan yellowcake production plant in Yazd Province were targeted, IRNA reported. The strikes did not cause any casualties and there was no risk of contamination, it said. The Arak plant has not been operational since Israel attacked it last June.

Yellowcake is a concentrated form of uranium after impurities are removed from the raw ore. Heavy water is used as a moderator in nuclear reactors.

The Israeli military later hailed its attacks on several Iranian targets including “missile production capabilities, infrastructure remaining from its nuclear program, and terror regime targets.” It said raw materials are processed for enrichment at the Yazd plant and that the strike was a major blow to Iran’s nuclear program.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned Iran would retaliate for the attacks, IRNA reported. Seyed Majid Moosavi, IRGC’s Aerospace Force commander, posted on X that employees of companies tied to the U.S. and Israel should abandon their workplaces.

“You tested us once before; the world has once again seen that you yourselves started playing with fire and attacking infrastructure,” he said. “This time, the equation will no longer be ‘an eye for an eye,’ just wait.”

US pushes diplomatic solution

Word of the attacks came after U.S. President Donald Trump claimed talks on ending the war were going “very well” and that he had given Tehran more time to open the Strait of Hormuz. Iran maintains it has not engaged in any negotiations.

With stock markets reeling and economic fallout from the war extending far beyond the Middle East, Trump is under growing pressure to end Iran’s chokehold on the strait, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil is usually shipped.

A Gulf Arab bloc said Thursday that Iran has been exacting tolls from ships to ensure safe passage.

Trump envoy Steve Witkoff said Washington delivered a 15-point “action list” to Iran for a possible ceasefire, using Pakistan as an intermediary. It proposes restricting Iran’s nuclear program and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran rejected the U.S. offer and presented its own five-point proposal that included reparations and recognition of its sovereignty over the vital strait.

Trump has said if Iran doesn’t reopen the strait to all traffic by April 6, he will order the destruction of Iran’s energy plants.

U.S. stocks fell further on Friday, lengthening Wall Street’s longest losing streak in nearly four years, and oil prices rose again. The price for a barrel of Brent crude rose 2.9% to $104.81, up from roughly $70 before the war began Feb. 28. Benchmark U.S. crude rose 4.4% to $98.61 per barrel.

Israel targets Iran’s weapons production

Air raid sirens sounded in Israel and the military said it has been intercepting Iranian missiles on a daily basis. Defense Minister Israel Katz said Iran “will pay heavy, increasing prices for this war crime.”

“Despite the warnings, the firing continues,” Katz said. “And therefore attacks in Iran will escalate and expand to additional targets and areas that assist the regime in building and operating weapons against Israeli citizens.”

Israel’s military said its attacks Friday targeted sites “in the heart of Tehran” where ballistic missiles and other weapons are produced. It said it also hit missile launchers and storage sites in Western Iran.

Smoke rose over Beirut after a pre-dawn strike, and Lebanon’s Health Ministry later reported two people were killed.

Saudi Arabia’s Defense Ministry meanwhile said it shot down missiles and drones targeting the capital, Riyadh.

Kuwait said its Shuwaikh Port in Kuwait City and the Mubarak Al Kabeer Port to the north, which is under construction as part of China’s “Belt and Road” initiative, sustained “material damage” in attacks. It appeared to be one of the first times a Chinese-affiliated project in the Gulf Arab states has come under assault in the war. China has continued to purchase Iranian crude.

Diplomatic wrangling endures even as US sends more troops

Diplomats from several countries including Pakistan and Turkey have tried to organize a direct meeting between U.S. and Iranian envoys. Separately, G7 foreign ministers meeting in France adopted a declaration calling for an immediate halt to attacks against populations and infrastructure.

Meanwhile, U.S. ships drew closer to the region carrying some 2,500 Marines, and at least 1,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne — trained to land in hostile territory to secure key positions and airfields — have been ordered to the Middle East.

Nevertheless, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during the G7 meeting that most U.S. objectives in Iran are “ahead of schedule,” and that “We can achieve them without any ground troops.”

Israel deployed the 162nd Division into southern Lebanon to support efforts to protect its northern border towns from Hezbollah attacks and uproot the militant group, the military said.

The U.N.’s International Organization for Migration said Friday that 82,000 civilian buildings in Iran, including hospitals and the homes of 180,000 people, are damaged.

“If this war continues, we risk a far wider humanitarian disaster,” Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said in a statement. “Millions could be forced to flee across borders, placing immense pressure on an already overstretched region.”

Death toll climbs, primarily in Iran and Lebanon

Eighteen people have died in Israel, while four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Lebanon. Two Israeli soldiers were severely injured in Lebanon on Friday during an “operational accident,” the military said.

Authorities said more than 1,100 people have died in Lebanon and over 1,900 people have been killed in Iran.

At least 13 American troops have been killed and four people in the occupied West Bank and 20 in Gulf Arab states have also died.

In Iraq, where Iranian-supported militia groups have entered the conflict, 80 members of the security forces have died.

Rising reported from Bangkok. Associated Press writers Giovanna Dell’Orto in Miami; Fay Abuelgasim in Cairo; Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel; Sam McNeil in Brussels; and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com