Welcome to the weekly degustation menu — curated, high-signal, and focused on what actually matters from Week 3 of January 2026.
Energy is now politics
Trump, Eric Schmidt (Davos), and Satya Nadella all circle the same point: the AI race is increasingly about megawatts, not just models. Data centers are becoming a national strategic asset, and Europe is being squeezed by energy prices, permitting timelines, and CAPEX realities.
The Tesla “secret data center” leak
A whistleblower claims xAI wants to distribute compute workloads to idle Teslas — your car receives a compute packet, processes it, sends results back… while you pay for the car, the parking space, and potentially the electricity.
Why it’s plausible: powerful onboard chips, always-connected vehicles, thermal management, and a globally distributed fleet that’s idle most of the time. If this idea lands, it’s a new model of cloud infrastructure: capex off Musk’s balance sheet, onto yours.
UK finance: 75% using AI, no AI stress tests
UK lawmakers wake up and realize most financial firms are already using AI — but there’s almost no AI-specific oversight or stress testing. The fear isn’t just “hallucinations.” It’s systemic risk: black-box behavior, herd effects, flash crashes, and prompt-injection style attacks on financial workflows.
Google makes SAT prep free
Google launches free SAT prep through Gemini in partnership with Princeton Review. This is one of the clearest examples of AI as a democratizer: expensive tutoring becomes a personalized, always-available coach at zero marginal cost. Education is about to be reimagined — whether institutions like it or not.
Anthropic opens the black box
Anthropic publishes an updated Claude Constitution — now ~23,000 words. Key idea: helpfulness is the lowest priority; safety/ethics/oversight dominate. Claude can even refuse requests that concentrate power in illegitimate ways — including internal pressure.
They also release it under Creative Commons, effectively offering a governance blueprint others can adopt.
Takeaway
The era of “magic demos” is over. What matters now is implementation, energy constraints, regulation, and governance. AI is not just a tool — it’s reshaping business models, infrastructure, and power.
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🎙️ Malcolm Werchota runs AI adoption programs for companies across Europe. After 15 years at Novartis and Schlumberger, he now helps leadership teams cut through AI hype. Faculty at ESADE & HSLU.
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