Monday, October 19th, 2026

ORDER CONFIRMED: Advanced nuclear reactors, qty: several, ship-to: Indiana, gift message: "For the servers."

At the signing, X-energy's lead engineer held up a fuel pebble and described it in the voice people reserve for grandchildren, and my fingertips went translucent; I spent the photo op with one hand buried inside a commemorative hard hat. When a reporter asked about the investment, I said "a tremendous amount of crystallized life force," and Comms added "He means capital," which is what Comms always means.

Feeding principle: predators do not cater for other predators. And yet I have just funded 978 megawatts of the finest meal in the Midwest, and the only guests with reservations are racks of GPUs that cannot fear me, crave me, or tip.

Type 1 decision: Indiana. Irreversible, like most things in Indiana.

Type 2 decision, made in the car: I have requested the plant's emergency-drill calendar and a standing seat in the control room for the 3 a.m. siren tests. Twelve night-shift operators, one blinking red light, and a 38-second pause before anyone says "it's just a drill." My customers are machines now, but the people who babysit them still flinch, and a flinch ships same-day.

Still Day 1, and the reactor arrives in nine years, so I've marked the box "do not bend."