David Ward

🦔Satellite imagery from geospatial analytics firm SynMax shows nearly 40% of US data center projects may fail to complete this year as scheduled. The Financial Times cross-referenced satellite data with permit documents and found major projects from Microsoft, Oracle, and OpenAI are likely to miss completion dates by more than three months. Industry executives cited chronic shortages of labor, power, and equipment. OpenAI projects specifically lack enough electricians and pipe fitters. Tariffs on Chinese transformers are compounding existing equipment shortages. Maine legislators passed an 18-month moratorium on new data center approvals, the first such statewide action in the US, pending the governor's signature. My Take The satellite imagery puts a number on what was already visible in the supply chain data for months. Nearly 40% failing to complete on schedule is a fundamental challenge to the timeline that hundreds of billions in AI infrastructure investment was underwritten against, and the trajectory isn't improving. The AI buildout requires physical tradespeople, electricians, pipe fitters, civil engineers, none of whom can be replaced by the technology being built. The same companies announcing plans to cut 20% of their knowledge workers cannot train or conjure skilled tradespeople on demand. Community opposition is hardening simultaneously, Maine's moratorium is the first statewide action of its kind, and Virginia's shift in public opinion signals that even the most data-center-friendly states are reaching a limit. What has been announced and what is actually being built are increasingly different things, and that distance sits underneath the valuations of every company whose growth story depends on this infrastructure arriving on schedule. Hedgie🤗

What do I think really happened with Mandelson and vetting? In October, November and December 2024, No10 indicated it wanted to appoint Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to Washington. It was presented with an array of people telling them not to: Cabinet ministers, spooks, officials in a vetting report. All raised major red flags. Starmer and McSweeny made clear they weren’t interested in any objection, and this must go ahead at all costs. So Mandelson’s appointment was announced mid December 2024. The vetting we are focussed on today came later, in January 2025. Vetting of ambassadors is the responsibility of the FCDO and Olly Robbins. One bit of the system said no - the UKSV agency said don’t appoint Mandelson. We don’t know on what grounds, but probably the grounds No10 had seen and rejected as a reason to block. Olly Robbins cleared Mandelson. Very quietly, Mandelson didn’t get the very highest level of clearance when he got the job, but he got the overall OK because of Robbins. Robbins did No10 a favour. This is because Olly Robbbins knew that going to No10 post announcement, and saying the Mandelson appointment can’t happen, was politically impossible. And civil servants want to deliver for their political masters. So Olly fixed it for Keir: and is now paying a price. Olly Robbins has - incidentally - done No10 a second massive political favour. The really really toxic claim doing the rounds last night was that surely someone - anyone - in No10 DID know the UKSV agency turned down the vetting Olly Robbins is making clear he didn’t tell people the UKSV verdict because that would be inappropriate as part of the process he followed. It’s not even clear he saw it. No10 don’t seem to realise he’s done them a favour, and are releasing documents to challenge alternative versions of events. Let’s see how it plays out. The bottom line is No10 wanted Mandelson come what may. They rammed it through. One quango; post appointment announcement, was never realistically going to be allowed to stop Mandelson taking the job because the top of Government had publicly committed to it. They hadn’t wanted to heed the warnings earlier; and were in too deep That’s where I think we are

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