Trump promises nuclear datacenter permits in 3 weeks, calls Greenland 'big beautiful ice'
- Reference: 1769018294
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/01/21/american_genius_says_dont_panic/
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In a delayed and wide-ranging speech, the American president tilted at windmills, expressed his love for Europe while lamenting its demise, impersonated Emmanuel Macron's voice, and suggested he wouldn’t use military force to take Greenland, which he described as a “big, beautiful piece of ice”.
Palantir CEO claims AI will mean western economies won't need immigration [1]READ MORE
“We won’t get anything unless I use excessive strength and force, when we would be unstoppable. I won’t use force,” he said. But he added, the US would remember if it didn’t get what it wanted.
“[It’s] very important we use it for national and international security,” he said in a Q&A session afterwards, adding: “We’ll see what happens.”
Zeroing in on AI, Trump said, “We're leading the world in AI by a lot. We're leading China by a lot. I think President Xi respects what we've done.”
[2]
In part, he said, this leadership was because “I've allowed these big companies building these massive buildings, to build their own electric capacity.”
[3]
[4]
Companies wanting to build out datacenters had run into the challenge of the US’ aging grid, Trump said. But the president claims he invented a solution. “And I came up with the idea. ‘You know, you people are brilliant. You have a lot of money. Let's see what you can do. You can build your own electric generating plants.’
“And they looked at me, they didn't believe me,” said Trump.
[5]
But he told the tech titans, that “Not only am I not kidding, you're going to have your approvals within two weeks.” At least for electricity. “Nuclear will take three weeks.”
This was the complete opposite to what is happening in Europe thanks to the “radical left” he said. “The United Kingdom produces just one third of the total energy from all sources that it did in 1999. Think of that. One third and they're sitting on top of the North Sea, one of the greatest reserves anywhere in the world, but they don't use it.”
Towards the end of his long, long speech, Trump returned to the theme of defending Western Culture, and the need to “Rediscover the spirit that lifted the west from the depths of the Dark Ages to the pinnacle of human achievement” in a rapidly changing world.
Microsoft CEO: AI sovereignty isn't where it runs, it's who controls it [6]READ MORE
AI was part of that change, he said. “I mean, AI, two years ago, nobody ever heard of the term, and now everybody's talking about it,” he told the audience. “And it can have some very good purpose. It could also have some dangerous purpose, and for that, we have to watch out.”
Trump was speaking shortly after Nvidia boss Huang sketched out the latest iteration of his view of AI, pushing back on suggestions of an AI bubble, and also raising the energy issue.
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Huang said AI was a five layer cake, with the need for energy at the bottom, with value created at the top, application layer.
At the same time, he touted the promise of agentic AI, and of robotics and physical AI.
Huang insisted that the technology was not destroying jobs. Rather, he said, it was increasing the demand for skilled labor around chip manufacturing, power, and datacenter construction. He added that Europe was arguably better placed in terms of “trades” than the US.
At the same time, AI is helping address skills shortages in key areas such as medicine, lowering the admin burden on nurses, or speeding up diagnoses by radiologists.
But while Trump focused on the US dominating the AI world, Huang touted its adoption by other countries, not least through open models.
“I really believe that that every country should get involved to build AI infrastructure, build your own AI, take advantage of your fundamental natural resources, which is your language and culture.”
[8]Trump wants big tech to pay for big beautiful power plants
[9]Trump says Americans shouldn't 'pick up the tab' for AI datacenter grid upgrades
[10]Trump may hate renewables, but AI datacenters still fancy cheap solar
[11]Datacenters feel the Bern as Senator Sanders pushes bit barn building pause
[12]Google and Westinghouse lean on AI to speed US nuclear plant builds
Asked if there was a bubble, Huang suggested that there was not enough VC investment in AI. More to the point, he said: “If you try to rent an Nvidia GPU [in the cloud] in these days, it's so incredibly hard, and the spot price of GPU rentals is going up, not the latest generation, but two generation old GPUs.”
Huang’s internationalist approach was not shared by fellow AI big wigs. As The Reg revealed yesterday, Anthropic boss Dario Amodei [13]railed against Nvidia and the White House for OK-ing the export of H200 chips, as well as AMD parts, to China.
The US was ahead of China in its silicon capabilities, he said. So it was a "a big mistake" to ship those parts, one with "incredible national security implications".
"It’s a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and [bragging that] Boeing made the casings." ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/21/palantir_ceo_karp_claims_ai/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aXFamE7lnxrSRDd2pRnw_QAAAAM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aXFamE7lnxrSRDd2pRnw_QAAAAM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aXFamE7lnxrSRDd2pRnw_QAAAAM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aXFamE7lnxrSRDd2pRnw_QAAAAM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/21/nadella_ai_sovereignty_wef/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aXFamE7lnxrSRDd2pRnw_QAAAAM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/17/trump_wants_big_tech_pay_power_plants/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/13/trump_datacenter_power_costs/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/13/renewables_ai_datacenters/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/17/datacenter_ai_bernie_sanders/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/20/westinghouse_google_ai_reactors/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/20/anthropic_nvidia_china/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Pity the poor journalists who have to listen to this demented ranting
… almost none of what he says nowadays is even remotely true.
Re: Pity the poor journalists who have to listen to this demented ranting
But just imagine if he had the stamina to bang on as long as Fidel used to.
Re: Pity the poor journalists who have to listen to this demented ranting
At least Fidel's stuff was coherent, trump does an hour and it's gibberish
Re: Pity the poor journalists who have to listen to this demented ranting
Grandad's not very well these days, one mental lapse after another.
All so his fascist techbro friends can [1]build their digital country over Greenland (by the way, [2]Europe did it first with Estonia ).
[1] https://www.popsci.com/technology/billionaire-freedom-city-greenland/
[2] https://estonia.ee/100-digital-0-bureaucrazy-estonia-retires-government-paperwork/
Re: Pity the poor journalists who have to listen to this demented ranting
He's demented, in the truest sense of the word, I'm not even sure he knows what he's saying any more.
Can't wait for the last cheeseburger to hit
Re: Pity the poor journalists who have to listen to this demented ranting
The orange Putin's poodle has received second hand Nobel price, just like Goebbels back in the day.
As they used to say, tell a lie 100 times...
(The UK is) sitting on top of the North Sea
> one of the greatest reserves anywhere in the world, but they don't use it.
Oh gawd, he is going to try and annex the UK now, isn't he? For the sake of "protecting the US".
Must have been a surprise when Starmer almost stood up to him this week; that'll put the invasion^^^^^^^^^^friendly policing action back at least a day.
Re: (The UK is) sitting on top of the North Sea
It certainly sounds like he's got eyes on the north sea fields.
Re: (The UK is) sitting on top of the North Sea
He can't. The UK is surrounded by a ring of wind turbines that will chop his invasion force to pieces. Any who survive that, will be lured in to Hinkley C and never see the light of day once they encounter a crack team of EDF prevaricators and British regulators
Fix your bubble with more venture capital?!
Isn't excess speculative capital spending, not backed by any value product of value, how you made the bubble in the first place?!
What is that? Spend all that VC money on Huang's hardware? Ok. Will that get rid of the bubble?
No. But it will mean that Huang has even more actual, real, money and won't have to worry about surviving the burst, which is the most important thing.
"Towards the end of his long, long speech"
If he dropped "big" , "beautiful" , "amazing" , "fabulous" , "incredible" ... etc it would over in a minute
Dropped
Dropped dead
YFTFY
Corruption
Imagine that corruption in the West is so normalised, they even create events where all crooks can meet and do "deals".
I wonder what brilliant new policies Labour will come home with.
Open the pod bay doors HAL
AI was part of that change, he said. “I mean, AI, two years ago, nobody ever heard of the term, and now everybody's talking about it,
Or perhaps just close the pod bay doors over Davos. I still want to know who persuaded the Don that taking Greenland was ever a smart idea.
For someone who apparently doesn't like communism....
...he isn't half like Castro.
Just talks bollocks for hours at a time, best pals with Russia's leaders and...oh wait, Cuba didn't go around invading and blowing up other countries.
My bad.
It's remarkable, and troubling, for a major country to go from one senile leader to another.
To slightly misquote Douglas Adams: "The President's job - and if someone sufficiently vain and stupid is picked he won't realize this - is not to wield power, but to draw attention away from it. (Donald Trump)........is supremely good at this job"
Of course, Douglas Adams satirical reference in the third episode of the second series of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was cocking a leg at Jimmy Carter, who was giving an appearance of being a slightly bumbling and confused US President at about that time, and of course it applied even more so to the next President (Ronald Reagan), but it applies equally well now I think.
" AI, two years ago, nobody ever heard of the term"
Except Kubrick and then Spielberg who shot the movie. A quarter century ago.
Huang said AI was a five layer cake
A five layer cake made of dog's ordure, I assume he means.