American Action Forum looks at AI Infrastructure and Policy in 2026
Susana Schwartz
Technology Editor
RCRTech
AI Infrastructure Top Stories
Subco, Nvidia, Zayo talk Edge AI: A panel discussed how AI workloads moving toward distributed inference make not only power and land major constraints, but also connectivity, latency, and scale in terrestrial and subsea fibre networks.
Test & measurement themes in 2026: Networks, security, AI, photonics, and sensing are converging and fundamentally changing the way industry designs, deploys, and tests networks, data centers, and critical infrastructure.
Cisco focus on ‘AI readiness’: The Cisco 360 Partner Program is a major ecosystem overhaul to consolidate legacy frameworks into a single program built around one priority — helping partners capitalize on AI infrastructure buildouts.
AI Today: What You Need to Know
American Action Forum AI outlook: In 2026, AI will move from generating text and images to autonomous models that execute and carry out entire tasks on their own. Agentic AI will move from experimentation to actual adoption in the enterprise.
Microsoft predicts AI water use: Microsoft is internally projecting that water use at its data centers will more than double by 2030 from 2020, with projections of 28 billion liters in 2030, as compared to 7.9 billion in 2020 and 10.4 billion in 2024.
Winter brings power, price surges: During the deep freeze, electricity prices topped $1,800 per MWh this past Sunday in Dominion Energy’s territory, up from $200 per MWh on Saturday. PJM and others also saw record-breaking surges.
Memory chip shortage: Sassine Ghazi, CEO of Synopsys, said the chip “crunch” will continue through 2026 and 2027, with most manufacturers aiming to expand manufacturing, which takes a “minimum” of two years to come online, he said.
Chip stocks surge: Nvidia climbed 1.9%, Micron surged 4%, and Microchip Technology jumped 6.5%, with experts citing SK Hynix and ASML as key drivers, as well as anticipation of the Federal Reserve’s impending rate announcement.
EPA fast-tracks reviews: The U.S. EPA is prioritizing a review track for chemicals used in data centers, aligning with the Trump administration’s 2025 Executive Order, “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure.”
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