San Diego startup Firestorm Labs signed a cooperative research and development agreement with the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of War for Materiel Readiness and Fleet Readiness Center East to test the Digital Manufacturing Exchange using its xCell containerized factories. Atoms Not Bits reports the mobile units 3D-print drones and defense parts off-grid and air-gapped, moving by C-130, truck or ship. The post gives no throughput or unit-cost figures, but secure design-file handoffs to container cells mirror where remote industrial spare-parts production is headed.
Nick Lynch compares DCD Intelligence and Uptime Institute staffing and outage surveys, where 59% of surveyed operators with human-error outages cited failure to follow procedures, against mandatory task-qualification rules in gas pipelines, nuclear plants, airlines and the Navy. While utilities and oil and gas operators sign technicians off task by task on a specific facility, data centers hire crossover trades fast without a site-specific qualification card. He outlines how a per-site task list and supervised sign-off could pair with the new $34M Jobs for the Future apprenticeship incentive fund.
Stanley Lee argues that divided Washington keeps 100% bonus depreciation intact for GPU sale-leasebacks, while state post-election pauses, tariffs and curtailment rules stretch interconnection timelines and raise ready-for-service risk. Slowing new megawatts lifts residual values on clusters already built and powered, even as tighter credit strands unfinanced developers between equipment deposits and delivery. For infrastructure builders and buyers, power contracts and firm energization remedies now drive financing as much as the tenant's credit.
As Virginia State Corporation Commission hearings opened Thursday on the proposed $66.8B NextEra-Dominion merger, the utilities accepted 101 of 117 staff and consumer-counsel conditions and added a five-year, up to $5B Virginia Supplier Program, while rejecting six-year and three-year rate freezes. T&D World pairs Virginia's biennial rate-review fight with Pennsylvania's consumer-advocate challenge against PPL over data-center cost shifts. With closing targeted for the second half of 2027, large industrial and data-center loads are pushing state commissions to rewrite how grid upgrades get billed.
