Politics de.indymedia
AI infrastructure and politics: The new power players at Meta
The tech company Meta doesn't want to waste any time in the race for AI infrastructure. But many projects also have to be pushed through politically. There should be a new management team with the best contacts
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The tech company Meta doesn't want to waste any time in the race for AI infrastructure. But many projects also have to be pushed through politically. A new leadership team with the best contacts to the Trump administration should help with this.
A major restructuring at Meta had already become apparent at the beginning of the year. There are new people in some top positions and some top positions have been newly created. A newly founded key department, “https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-build-gigawatt-scale-computing-c...Compute“, is intended to promote the expansion of the tech group’s AI infrastructure.
The restructuring comes at a critical moment for Meta. The company is in a race with other AI companies such as OpenAI and SpaceXSI for data centers, computing capacity and investors who want to benefit from the AI boom. There is also competition from China and Europe. It is estimated that almost one worldwide could this yearhttps://www.zdfheute.de/wirtschaft/ki-usa-china-kuenstliche-intelligenz-...US dollars into technologyflow, trend rising.
At the same time, it formshttps://netzpolitik.org/tag/rechenzentren/">notonly in the USA, increasing resistance to data centers. This was also one of the topics in the US midterm elections last week, in which thehttps://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/data-center-group-kansas-...republicansuffered a severe defeat.
Also on the ballot papers were:https://ballotpedia.org/Data_center-related_ballot_measures,_2026">manyStates referendums, which come in different shadeshttps://www.zdfheute.de/politik/ausland/usa-midterms-demokraten-ki-branc...Data centers mobilized. In almost all cases, these initiatives were successful. Although expansion has progressed rapidly in recent years, many questions remain unanswered, from electricity and water consumption to constant noise pollution.
Meta gets Democrats on board – and Republicans
But Meta obviously expected this headwind. Like the US mediumhttps://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/meta-builds-bipartisan-...recently reported, the company recently hired a number of employees who have a background as Democrats. There is Michael Hacker, once an advisor to the influential MP James Clyburn, who is switching from TikTok to Meta. Another new addition is Brian Rice, a former staffer for Democratic presidential candidate and Senator John Kerry, who is now Head of US Policy at Meta. According to Axios, Meta is about becoming a little more non-partisan than before.
The emphasis is on “a little”: Patrick Trueman, a former member of Donald Trump’s campaign team, comes to Meta’s US lobby office. The communications expert Josh Raffel, who worked in the White House during Trump's first term in office, is now, like the Democrat Hacker, also a vice president of “Compute Initiatives”.
And last but not least, sincehttps://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/06/meta-hires-microsoft-exec-former-trump-d...Curtis Joseph Mahoneynew chief lawyer of the company. As Deputy US Trade Representative, Mahoney played a key role in renegotiating the trade agreement between the USA, Mexico and Canada on behalf of Donald Trump.
New top manager Dina Powell McCormick
However, she is considered the new power player par excellencehttps://about.fb.com/news/2026/01/dina-powell-mccormick-joins-meta-as-pr...Powell McCormick. Since January, the manager has held the newly created position of Meta President and is also deputy chairwoman of the supervisory board. Your main task is to coordinate and advance the aggressive expansion of AI infrastructure.
It should enter into partnerships with governments and state actors (“sovereigns” in the English original) to build and roll out Meta’s infrastructure and ensure its financing,https://www.threads.com/@zuck/post/DTa39_ZEXeV">wroteMeta boss Mark Zuckerbergon the occasion of her appointment.
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Another greeting came from Donald Trump. Powell McCormick is a fantastic and very talented individual who served the Trump administration with strength and outstanding commitment,https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115882511750475574">congratulations...the US President: “A great choice from Mark Z!!!” He should know, after all he is well acquainted with the conservative Powell McCormick.
She earned her first political spurs in the Bush administration, where, among other things, she was a senior aide to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. After an interlude at the investment bank Goldman Sachs, Powell briefly returned to politics in early 2017 to work for the newly elected Trump.
She was there, among other things, for billionshttps://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/23/donald-trump-middle-east-visit...to Saudi Arabiajointly responsible. As deputy national security adviser for strategy and a fluent Arabic-speaking official, she also worked with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner to create ahttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/us/politics/for-uss-mideast-negotiato...for the Middle Eastto design. In addition to Kushner, her allies in the Trump universe are said to include Ivanka Trump.
After leaving politics in early 2018, Powell took a stint at Harvard Kennedy School and returned to Goldman Sachs. From then on, she used her political contacts to help Saudi Aramco, one of the largest oil companies in the world, go public. But politics didn't let her go: As an advisor, she helped her conservative husband, the investment banker David McCormick, win the Senate seat in Pennsylvania two years ago.
Use conservative connections
At Meta, Powell initially sat on the board of directors for a few months until Zuckerberg persuaded her to move to a top position at the company in December of the previous year. "It became clear to me that she could play a larger role in the next chapter of Meta," the quotedhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-16/meta-ceo-zuckerberg-l...Bloomberg the tech oligarch. What this role consists of: using their relationships with conservative politicians to support gigantic construction projects in, for example, Texas and Louisiana.
The AI data center currently being built in Richland Parish, Louisiana, one of the largest of its kind, is expected to deliver around 5 gigawatts of computing power, which is what the project could cost in totalhttps://www.heise.de/news/Metas-groesstes-KI-Rechenzentrum-soll-mehr-als...to $250 billion. For comparison: the capacities of all data centers throughout Germany should be added up to 2030https://www.bitkom.org/Presse/Presseinformation/KI-Boom-treibt-Rechenzen...come to the same value.
According to an investigative report in the New York Times, Meta is supposed to be therehttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/technology/meta-data-center-louisiana...Backroom deals and hastily rewritten lawsused to expand in the impoverished Gulf Coast state - all before Powell joined the company, of course.
But Powell will have to support that. This will not be easy everywhere after the recent Republican election defeat. Last Wednesday, a day after the election, vacatedhttps://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta-president-says-midterm-results-will-mak...because also at an eventstated that it would be “very challenging” to build data centers in the future.
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Although probably not in Louisiana, where, unlike in most other states, the current Republican state government was not re-elected and where no citizens' initiative raised the mood against data centers. But it's completely different in Ohio and Texas, where Meta toohttps://cleanview.co/data-centers/us">Mega data centersplans and where citizens' initiatives and newly elected Democratic governors are putting the brakes on.
There will be “significantly more inspections” for new construction projects, Powell warned at the Wall Street Journal event, but was emphatically optimistic about existing data centers. The business newspaper quotes them as having a track record of success over several years and the benefits have reached the affected communities. "They didn't feel the costs. In fact, they felt the benefits," Powell claimed.
A nod was also a must: According to her own statement, the top manager spends around 80 percent of her time securing computing capacity. They are therefore also looking at other countries where the environment is more favorable for companies like Meta. “I can tell you that every hyperscaler is currently asking themselves the question: ‘Do we have to build outside the USA?’” After all, these are enormous investments. It is only wise to secure this.
Joel Kaplan is leaving the company
So Powell McCormick has his hands full. And there are more tasks ahead of them. Just before the midterm elections, Metas had top managershttps://x.com/joel_kaplan/status/2112588544288133468">JoelChaplain announcedto leave the company after 15 years. Kaplan, who is well integrated into conservative circles, was most recently the tech company's Chief Global Affairs Officer and an important interface to the capital Washington, especially to Republicans and US President Donald Trump.
It will be a few months before Kaplan's final departure. But the conservative leaves behind a relevant legacy: at Meta he was the driving force behind the restructuring of the company's social serviceshttps://netzpolitik.org/2020/die-rechte-empoerungsmaschine/">rechtenOutrage machine, including Facebook and Instagram.
To favor conservative media, to abolish fact-checkers or to weaken the moderation rules to such an extent that they are now backhttps://netzpolitik.org/2025/zuckerbergs-kehrtwende-meta-goes-maga/">moreAllow hate speech against minorities: Kaplan had a hand in all of these measures. At the same time, the clever politician made sure to avert regulation of Meta or to delay it for as long as possible, for examplehttps://netzpolitik.org/2026/political-werbung-mit-ihrem-ban-help-...Advertisements.
According to the New York Times, his previous tasks will be two until further noticehttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/20/technology/meta-joel-kaplan-policy-ch...Take over the lengths at Meta: Chief Counsel Mahoney and President Powell McCormick.
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