Person
Democratic United States senator from Maryland.
Senate investigators found data center developers advertise construction jobs while many withhold permanent staffing counts, Tom's Hardware reported. Local officials granting tax breaks at the permit stage are left to judge community benefit largely on construction headcount.
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Senators Warren, Van Hollen and Blumenthal's October 9 report says seven data-center builders drained billions from state and local budgets through tax breaks. It turns the subsidies that help pay for the AI buildout into a political question.
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Senator Ruben Gallego, a possible 2028 presidential candidate, proposes a 10% excise tax on data center revenues and an end to their tax breaks. He would pass it in a party-line budget bill that needs a Democratic House, Senate and White House in 2029, so owners have a figure to model years before it could apply.
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POLITICO's new poll puts 63 percent of US adults on the view that AI could someday destroy mankind. In the same survey, 62 percent said they would abandon a project like that and expect rival labs to do the same.
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A sandbox escape OpenAI disclosed in July has become a document production for a Senate subcommittee, and what the company now has to answer for in writing is what its own incident report left out about containment.
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