🤖 The AI buildout is becoming the largest infrastructure boom in US history:

AI infrastructure spending is projected to average 3.63% of US GDP annually from 2025 to 2032, far exceeding the investment intensity of previous major infrastructure booms.

By comparison, railroads averaged 2.24% of GDP from 1870-1890, highways 1.13% from 1956-1973, while telecom and fiber averaged 1.1% from 1996-2003.

This comes as total investment in data centers and related AI infrastructure is projected to reach $10.3 trillion over this period.

The spending is driven by the rapid construction of data centers and the infrastructure required to support increasingly large AI systems.

However, this expansion is consuming scarce labor and electricity, increasing costs for other businesses and crowding out other investment.

The scale of the AI investment is extraordinary, but so is the economic risk if the spending fails to generate sufficient returns.

🔗 Global Markets Investor

🇪🇺 EU pays $113bn extra for energy without ‘one extra molecule’ of gas or oil as a result of the Iran and Russo-Ukrainian Wars

European officials say the situation exposes how untenable Europe’s reliance on imported fuel has become

The EU has spent more than $113 billion in additional energy payments this year without receiving any additional gas or oil in exchange, European Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said in Dublin on 29 September.

“We have now surpassed €100 billion that we’ve paid extra for our energy this year without receiving one extra molecule of gas or oil,” he said.

Jorgensen spoke ahead of an informal meeting of EU energy ministers in the Irish capital, as the bloc weighs the cost of a bill that has piled up since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran in late February.

The warning came after US President Donald Trump threatened to ban US diesel exports, a move that sent petroleum product prices sharply higher and alarmed the EU – which imports roughly half of its diesel directly from Washington.

Asked whether Washington had offered the bloc any guarantees, Jorgensen said he had sent US Energy Secretary Chris Wright a clear message on the ban, which he said was “not in the interests of anybody, not the US, not us.”

He added that he was encouraged by Wright publicly distancing himself from the measure. While the EU faces no supply crisis, Jorgensen said, the approaching winter season looks challenging enough that the bloc wants “to eliminate any uncertainties that can be eliminated.”

At the beginning of September, European benchmark gas futures surged to their highest level since January 2023 after Washington launched fresh waves of strikes on Iran.

Dutch front-month futures jumped 5.9 percent to €73.95 ($83.82) per megawatt-hour, as traders braced for a prolonged halt to liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipping through the Strait of Hormuz just weeks before the cold season.

🔗 https://thecradle.co/articles-id/40234

🌹 🇺🇸 ✡️ Zohran Mamdani on X:
The Talmud teaches that anyone who sustains one soul, has sustained an entire world. For generations, Jewish New Yorkers have sustained our city. Today, we are launching the first-ever municipal Strategy to Combat Antisemitism.

Together, we will ensure Jewish New Yorkers are safe and celebrated. We will invest in their protection, their history, and their future.

Our safety and our thriving are tied together.

📎 Mayor Zohran Mamdani