They’re Turning Your Public Land Into AI Data Centers

On June 26, 2026, the Bureau of Land Management approved the first commercial AI data center on public land in American history. No new environmental review. No public comment. The city of Boulder City, Nevada voted against it 6 to 1. It's being built anyway. The most recently disclosed rent on the roughly 80 acres of federal land being used: $1,207.67 a year. The city's own deal for the same project would have paid it over two million annually. This episode walks through exactly what happened, how a 19-megawatt solar farm's environmental review was used to approve a 167-megawatt data center, the executive order that made it federal policy, the former Interior Secretary whose lobbying firm was paid $160,000 by the project's financial backer during the approval window, and what the data center industry has lined up behind this first approval. Nevada's entire electrical grid peaks at 8,500 megawatts. The industry has submitted inquiries for 22,000 megawatts in that one state alone. The system wasn't built for you. Build your own.