Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 23. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset is 4:45 for 9 hours 22 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 15.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1911, Roald Amundsen‘s South Pole expedition makes landfall on the eastern edge of the Ross Ice Shelf.
Yesterday’s post concerned Wisconsin gubernatorial candidates’ views on data centers. There’s reporting today on Microsoft’s view of Wisconsin data centers:
One of Microsoft’s top executives said he would support a new state law to regulate and set standards for data center developments across Wisconsin.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and vice chair, also said he supports a proposal from We Energies for a “Very Large Customer” rate for data centers in the state.
“We want to pay a higher price so that our data center does not increase the price of electricity for consumers,” Smith said in an interview with WPR. “That’s the right thing to do for the state and for our business.”
See Evan Casey, Microsoft president says he would support a Wisconsin law to regulate data centers (‘Microsoft released a new ‘Community-First AI Infrastructure’ plan Tuesday’), January 14, 2026.
While this libertarian blogger argued yesterday for “as little state regulation as possible, leaving counties and cities with the choice of whether they’d prefer a data center in their community,” Microsoft, the vast corporation, seems to be more amenable to regulation than one libertarian resident would be.
Why? A few reasons come to mind. First, there are different possible regulations. Some regulations might involve rates for electricity (the ‘very large customer rate’) and some regulations might address the very presence of a data center in a community (regardless of the electricity rate it might pay).
Second, Microsoft might calculate it would be able to bear state regulations more easily than competing data centers (from smaller companies that were less well-financed). In this way, Microsoft would benefit from regulations that, in effect, inhibit data-center competition from smaller companies.
Third, the statement from Microsoft’s president and vice chair is only an opening offer, not a final one, from that corporation.
Fourth, of course, Microsoft might simply believe in regulation for the hell of it. That fourth possibility, however, would sit alongside the belief that small flying creatures live on the moon.1
Regulation of data centers in Wisconsin is an evolving discussion; more twists and turns lie ahead.
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- They don’t. ↩︎
Dog rescued from ice-covered Danube in Budapest: