Aware of the immense controversy surrounding data centers, officials are trying to get ahead of community concerns by requiring the centers to generate their own power and mitigate their water usage, while meeting with local residents to address their questions directly, an official told Defense One.

Six weeks ago, the Army’s deputy undersecretary went down to Fort Bliss, Texas, to hold a listening session with the commander of 1st Armored Division and community members, along with El Paso Water and El Paso Electric, as well as Carlisle, the company that would fund the data center the Army hopes to build on nearly 1,400 unused acres.

“So I think the difference between us, the Army, doing a data center, and say Meta or Google, is we're part of the communities that are there, and we are going to engage with them on a routine and regular basis to look for solutions that work for everyone, right?” said Col. John Oliver, executive officer for Deputy Army Under Secretary Dave Fitzgerald. “Because, yes, we understand that there's been consternation with data centers.”

It’s a solid strategy, according to Darrell M. West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has been researching the future of data centers. Though pushback against data centers has made headlines recently, some communities have more readily accepted them. Those tend to be places where tech companies made the effort to inform residents about the costs and benefits ahead of time.

“People want to know up-front, you know, where the energy is coming from, how much water is being used, how much the overall cost is going to be, and what the noise levels are,” West said.

They also want to know the benefits, he added, whether it’s new jobs or better internet connectivity in remote areas.  

“So if the Army can be transparent about both costs and benefits, that would go a long way to soothing any possible community concern,” he said. 

As far as noise, the Army has the benefit of vast real estate that is purposely out of earshot of neighborhoods. A second proposed data center site is at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, a testing range an hour’s drive from the nearest community. The solicitation also includes Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Bragg, N.C.

The proposals must include net-zero water usage and a power plan that does not draw on the local energy grid, Oliver said. 

Power generation is a major consideration for data centers, and many communities near data centers are being squeezed by higher electricity costs as the grid struggles to keep up with demands. 

“There are a few places where the tech companies have quote-unquote ‘solved this problem.’ So for example, Microsoft is building a data center next to the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, and they're going to bring that back online, so you know that's a new energy source, that's really not competing with other community needs,” West said. ”So that's kind of a success story, but that's very idiosyncratic—most communities don't have an unused nuclear power plant sitting next door.”

On the other hand, the Army has been working on ways to be more energy-resilient, with microgrids built or planned for dozens of installations already.  

Another idea is to have Carlisle build a new well on Fort Bliss to feed its desalination plant, which is its main source of water, to offset the water used to cool the data center.

“We are encouraging Carlisle to do that, so actually make it net-positive,” he said. “We don't know if that's an engineering solution that we can actually get to yet, but we're actively working toward that as a part of the process.”

New construction also comes with the promise of job creation, but West cautioned being too optimistic.

“I think the jobs issue is one of the best arguments behind data centers, because in the construction phase they really need a wide variety of skilled labor,”he said, including electricians, plumbers, welders and pipefitters. “There’s a whole range of workers who are needed for this, but the problem is almost every one of those kinds of workers are in short supply.”

Longer term, Oliver said, the Army is planning something like a data-center ecosystem, with both a commercial side and a classified military data side, along with the power-generation component.

“Our data centers are not going to be just big buildings that are out in the middle of nowhere that are run by 10 people,” he said. “It becomes kind of a campus that we can work on.”

200 ideas

Beyond the data centers, the Army’s Strategic Capital Initiative is working on dozens of other projects that came out of the RFI.

They started with more than 200 responses to its request for information, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told reporters May 28, and have since been narrowed down to about 120 that are executable, with about 20 in various stages of execution.

More than 95 percent are from vendors the Army has never worked with, Oliver said, making the SCI an opportunity for not only fresh ideas but fresh partners. 

“FedEx came back, a bunch of private capital partners came back that we don't normally work with, like Apollo,” Oliver said. “We got all kinds of mineral processing, manufacturing companies that we've never ever worked with before. We also got industry organizing around themselves, too—they kind of built some consortiums of companies that we'd never thought about.”

Some of the first proposals they approved were to the organic industrial base, Oliver said. Corpus Christi Army Depot in Texas will get a turboshaft engine modernization plant; McAllister Army Ammunition Plant in Oklahoma will get an additive energetics load and assembly packing facility; Red River Army Depot in Texas is going to be a hub for servicing heavy-duty forklifts; and Pine Bluff in Arkansas will enter into some public-private partnerships to manufacture energetics and explosives.

Three weeks ago, a request for proposals on critical mineral refinement went out.

“The next thing we ought to look at is probably energy resilience and dominance, based on the RFIs we got back,” Oliver said. “Let's go after those next, because we know we're going to see increased power load across our installations as we work on this.”

The Army is planning a June 15 RFP for power-generation ideas, he said.

“We're not looking for a specific type of power,” Oliver added. “It could be geothermal, it could be small, modular nuclear. It could be gas turbines. It could be anything.”

Then there are some logistics management ideas to sift through.

“We're probably going to pick an organization or two that kind of help us modernize our supply chain in the next month or so,” Oliver said. “Where we work with them, use some of their current logistics that they already have set up, distribution to help us manage supply, and they come on post and, and help us manage our supply warehouses on post.”

“And then we'll see how it goes after the summer,” he added, referring to a hundred other ideas the service is reviewing.

Hours after the 218-198 vote on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — which was fraught with bipartisan objections to Bill Pulte’s appointment as acting director of national intelligence — Trump said he would name Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to serve in the role permanently.

Section 702 allows the NSA and FBI to collect communications of foreigners abroad without a warrant, but the calls, texts and phone calls of Americans communicating with foreign targets can also be gathered, a caveat that has long raised constitutional concerns with privacy advocates.

“Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Thursday. “I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible.”

An impasse between the White House and Democrats has persisted, with Democrats warning that Pulte’s role in mortgage-fraud reviews last year could foreshadow an abuse of intelligence tools to target the president’s political opponents. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump praised Clayton, and said Pulte would only be in his post “for a short while.” 

It’s unclear how the appointment of Clayton, who like Pulte appears to lack national-intelligence experience, would affect the outcome of a 702 extension. After Thursday, the House is scheduled to recess until June 23, making it likely that the spying power would statutorily lapse for at least a week.

In a statement, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that he has “known and respected Jay Clayton for many years” and believes “he is a capable public servant.”

But Warner said the timing of the announcement is suspicious, noting that “the president could have put forward a qualified nominee from the beginning. Instead, he waited until the House of Representatives went out of town, choosing a path that raises the risk of an entirely avoidable lapse in a critical national security tool.”

Warner added that the Senate would not take up a FISA extension unless the administration guarantees that Pulte will not serve as acting DNI. 

“Either Director [Tulsi] Gabbard must remain in place or the administration must designate the Senate-confirmed Principal Deputy DNI as the acting head through any transition,” he said, referring to Aaron Lukaas, a number-two official in that office.

“I have known Jay Clayton for decades and worked with him during his time as Chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission,” Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. 

“During that time, he had the independence of mind and respect for the law that are necessary for any Director of National Intelligence,” Himes said. “I am hopeful that he will maintain that independence and provide apolitical high-quality intelligence to policymakers. The Senate should evaluate and confirm his nomination quickly. It is critical that we have a permanent DNI in place and move past the Bill Pulte disaster.”

Section 702 of FISA, enacted in 2008, codified parts of the once-secret Stellarwind surveillance program created under the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 2013, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed documents detailing how the authority was used, fueling a global debate over privacy and mass surveillance. The program is frequently used to track myriad national security threats.

In March, the Trump administration notified Congress that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court renewed certifications for the surveillance program, letting it operate for another year even amid an expiration. The certifications can cover broad categories of national security risks, such as nuclear weapons and cyber threats.

But the split between the court’s recertification process and Capitol Hill’s role in extending the authority itself can create uncertainty for providers — such as AT&T and Microsoft — who are required to comply.

A congressional aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity to communicate private discussions, said staff on the House intelligence committee are assessing how the spying authority can still be used in the event of a lapse. One concern, said the aide, is that data collected under the 702 authority could become increasingly out-of-date, and, therefore, be less effective. 

Civil liberties advocates contend that Section 702 collection can continue even after a statutory lapse because of the way annual certifications are approved, and that other authorities remain available to support national security operations.

A former intelligence official told Nextgov/FCW that, while collection activities would immediately, lawfully continue, firms may enter an “odd legal space” where providers mandated to comply with the law could argue that they don’t need to supply information. If access under 702 is curtailed, the intelligence community would likely explore ways to lean on other lawful collection authorities, the former official added.

Glenn Gerstell, former general counsel at the NSA, echoed these points. 

“Companies may say they are not 100% certain the authority still applies,” he said in an interview.

Two areas — terror attacks and cyberattacks — might present a higher risk with the authority having lapsed, Gerstell added, because they are fast-moving developments that often rely on single tips that intelligence analysts must run down. 

“702 is a great way to find and pursue that tip. It’s a great tool for quickly getting an answer,” he said. “If the FBI hears a ransomware attack has been made, and they believe it to be foreign-generated, they’re going to want to move with lightning speed to figure out where it’s coming from.”

“It feels like we’re playing Russian roulette with national security,” he later added.

The NSA, CIA, FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — which all have authority to access Section 702 data — did not return requests for comment.

The Senate Armed Services Committee wants the Defense Department “to adopt the future of warfare by permitting the establishment of the Robotic and Autonomous Systems Combatant Command,” according to the group’s summary of the National Defense Authorization Act. A committee staffer told reporters on Thursday that senators were inspired, in part, by Ukraine’s creation of a drone-focused military service. 

“It’s not a new domain. Uncrewed, unmanned, whatever you want to call them, are in every domain, sub-surface, surface, and aerial, and probably more in the future,” the staffer said. “What we ended up with was a four-star combatant command that we think will help to integrate, and go fast, and transition the force generation of unmanned systems to the services sometime in the future.”

Another staffer told reporters the command would also have “special kinds of test and evaluation authorities, and limited acquisition authorities” to experiment with emerging weapons. 

It was not immediately clear how the group would operate and interact with other military efforts, such as U.S. Southern Command’s new autonomous warfare group. In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the Pentagon would create a sub-unified command, similar to the Joint Special Operations Command, focused on autonomous warfare. 

SASC’s version of the NDAA passed 18-9, staffers told reporters on Thursday. The full text of the committee’s markup bill has not been released yet, and spokespeople did not immediately respond to follow-up questions asking for more details.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told reporters on Thursday that “with deep regret” he voted against the NDAA bill for the first time in his career, and said it turned a “blind eye” to the Trump administration’s military pursuits across the globe. He said he did, however, support the amendment that would probe the creation of the new combatant command.

“I supported the amendment, but the amendment is permissive, not mandatory,” Kaine said. “It does allow the DoD to sort of work with the committee to kind of flesh out what this might look like.”

Feeding the DAWG

As part of the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion 2027 defense budget request, the Pentagon has asked for nearly $55 billion for the Defense Autonomous Working Group, or DAWG. The vast majority of that, more than $53 billion, would come from a yet-to-be-approved reconciliation bill. 

President Donald Trump called for Republicans to back a third spending package to fund the $350 billion in top defense priorities such as the DAWG, Golden Dome, and shipbuilding. Top Senate appropriators oppose the move, which sidesteps their authority and would only require a simple majority to pass. 

This week, House appropriators backed the administration’s $1 billion in its baseline budget request for the DAWG, a fraction of what they’re asking for. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s NDAA also backs the administration’s $1.15 trillion discretionary funding request.

Kaine said he’s worried that repeated reconciliation funding for defense needs sets a dangerous precedent and undermines appropriators.

“I worry about a trend that says ‘well, let's just put more and more of it in a reconciliation bill that can be done by the majority without minority input and bypass the appropriations process altogether,’” Kaine said. “We started down this path last year. This takes it to a different level, and it is a trend that I think we should nip in the bud by requiring this stuff to be part of the defense appropriations bill, and not separate in a reconciliation package.”

The first SASC staffer told reporters that Sen. Roger Wicker, the committee chairman, expects a successful discretionary appropriations process, but was less definitive about other budget maneuvers. 

“We expect to be sent, and debate, perhaps process, a supplemental, and then we will look to reconciliation,” the first staffer said. “The members are definitely committed to staying in very, very close coordination with the administration and the appropriations subcommittees as we all go into what will be a very uncertain six months.”