National Review put out a piece this week arguing that federal regulators, not absent capacity, are blocking the grid expansion the AI buildout needs. The thesis is straightforward. AI runs on electricity. The United States has generation it cannot connect, transmission it cannot permit, and interconnection queues that have stretched into multi-year delays at most regional operators. The most cited specific is PJM, the largest US grid operator, which has telegraphed a roughly six gigawatt shortfall against its reliability requirements by 2027.
A cooling vendor's order book is dependent on data centers actually getting built. Data centers getting built is dependent on interconnection, transmission, and generation. If federal and regional permitting elongates the interconnection timeline, cooling deployments slide right with it. The grey-space inversion means cooling and power are the largest non-IT capital line items, but the cooling line is downstream of the power line getting cleared.
That is the practical bridge between an opinion-page policy argument and the cooling industry's financial plan. Vendors who forecast against Nvidia and AMD shipment volume need a second forecast against utility interconnection clear rates by region. ERCOT, PJM, MISO, CAISO, and SPP each carry different interconnection timelines, and the cooling pipeline by region should look like the interconnection map, not the chip map.
Three items in the federal stack disproportionately drive the cooling vendor calendar. FERC transmission permitting rule changes determine how fast a new long-distance line clears, which sets the pace at which large generation can reach load centers. The Department of Energy's loan programs and grid-modernization disbursements set whether substations and transformers get upgraded on the operator's timeline or the utility's. And federal siting authority over critical transmission corridors determines whether NIMBY at the state level can stall a project the federal government has prioritized.
Each one is a real lever. Each one has been the subject of active legislative and rule-making fights through the first half of 2026. The opinion piece is not new in identifying these levers. It is useful in concentrating the argument into a single conservative-press framing that will reach Republican congressional offices and governors aligned with the Chevron-style power buildout for AI.
The same week Pennsylvania residents told Governor Shapiro he is losing his base over data centers. Erin Brockovich launched a crowdsourced map of community pushback at 2,700-plus reports. The federal grid argument and the local community pushback are pulling on the AI buildout from opposite directions, and both land on the cooling vendor's calendar. Vendors who can deliver a low-water and low-noise architecture and a credible plan to fit inside whatever grid clears earliest will get the design wins. The ones who cannot will spend the next twelve months explaining slippage to their own boards.