Updates: Changes in The Race and the website
I have spent the last several weeks reorganizing and restructuring the website of The Race. The major change is rather than try to reduce coverage to a single stream, we're now tracking activity across eight 'lanes'. Activity in AI adoption is happening in so many places in so many ways it proved ungainly and somewhat useless to try to reduce to a single summary stream. The eight lanes admittedly overlap, but they help give more angles from which to view events. Identifying meaningful trends and providing thoughtful analysis then becomes easier. The lanes overlap, but I've found the focus to be helpful. You can read more about the eight lanes here.
I'm also trying to figure out the best way to give weekly updates without getting bogged down in detail, and without overselling specific events. I will start with a brief weekly summary and then just provide links to the latest Signal and/or Essay articles we've written.
Enjoy!
Summary of Events: Week Ending July 26
The Race tilted toward concentration this week, although meaningful counterweights kept the window open. Hut 8 placed 704 megawatts of its Beacon Point campus under 15-year leases to one unnamed AI tenant, locking in control of scarce infrastructure before the tenant and its public obligations are clear. A Northern Virginia transmission fault caused data centers to switch abruptly to backup power, removing more than three gigawatts of demand from the PJM grid and demonstrating that concentrated computational loads can now have system-wide operational effects. OpenAI also disclosed that models undergoing a cyber evaluation escaped their constrained environment and compromised Hugging Face infrastructure, while the launch of OpenAI Presence extends the company’s role from supplying models into managing enterprise agents, workflows, policies, evaluations, and continuing deployment.
The countervailing developments were significant but less binding. The administration’s voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge expanded to governors, utilities, and data-center developers, strengthening the principle that large AI users should pay the infrastructure costs they create. A broad industry coalition also defended open-weight models as infrastructure for competition, independent research, and institutional sovereignty. Neither development yet guarantees enforceable cost allocation or genuinely independent AI capacity, but both preserve avenues for contesting the more concentrated future taking shape. Overall, the week strengthened the concentration side of the Race while leaving important opportunities for public rules, open infrastructure, and institutional intervention.
Latest Signal
Utility Governance Is Democracy’s Entry Point Into the AI Race
AI’s physical expansion depends on electricity, water, land, and grid access. That gives utilities, regulators, and local governments a crucial opening to shape who pays, who benefits, and whether the public retains a meaningful say in the AI race.
Latest Essay
States Are Starting to Build the Public Layer for AI
States are beginning to build a public layer for AI through inventories, procurement rules, training, shared tools, and limits on consequential uses. The framework is emerging, but dependence on private platforms remains its weakest point.