Big Tech Asked for Looser Clean Water Act Permitting. Trump Wants to Give It to Them

New AI regulations suggested by the White House mirror changes to environmental permitting suggested by Meta and a lobbying group representing firms like Google and Amazon Web Services.

Last week, the Trump administration announced a set of sweeping AI policy recommendations to “usher in a new golden age of human flourishing.” Among the suggested environmental rollbacks laid out in both an executive order and a corresponding AI Action Plan is a set of specific recommendations to essentially loosen Clean Water Act permitting processes for data centers. They mirror suggestions made to regulators earlier this year by both a major data center lobbying group and Meta.