Us Halts Work on Almost Finished Wind Farm Because National Security

If I was pharma I would think twice before investing In a factory that can be taken by the state just like that.

EDIT: I was not aware that something was paid. Every time I saw trump on TV he said he got it for nothing. Yeah I know he lies a lot and I should have checked more into it. This is dangerous however as internationally you don't always get the details right away and generally one believes what a head of state says.

Government will argue that executive power can decide if the contracts are "suggestions" or not.

If that doesn't work, try to reduce the scope of the injunction such that it applies to specific set of contracts. And then stonewall those contracts.

If the case is still lost, government will quickly appeal and file for temporary relief. If temporary relief is not coming in the short term, chose to ignore the court because executive power is above everything else.

Repeat this till it gets to SCOTUS and get a specific carve out and go to step 1 - stonewall these contracts.

I'd say given the on again, off again tariffs, courts acting like this and government retroactive actions like against Intel (CHIPS grant money was withheld to take 10% stake) it can be safely said it is no longer place for many long-term investment.

Some don't like their dear leader being shown in a negative light here.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo

The proximate cause is that the fossil fuel lobby went all-in on getting Trump elected. They paid big miney [1] and they expect a payback for that. Moves against renewables, electric vehicles, regulation, etc. are part of the transaction.

More widely, renewables occupy an adjacent space in the conservative worldview to environmentalists and the liberal left. Being seen to destroy them reinforces Trump's leadership of his base. And emphasising use of traditional, domestic, fossil-based energy sources appeals to nationalist/traditionalist sentiment.

So its money and ideology.

[1] https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/01/the-fossil-fuel-i...

You'd think a "drill baby drill" attitude would be more in line with his platform but a tiger can't change its stripes. Waspy east coast democrats all hate wind farms because they and their buddies all own waterfront property.

Personally, I think he's missing a great opportunity to really stick it to people who deserve to have it stuck to them (for a variety of reasons somewhat tangential to red/blue politics) while furthering the energy, economic and industrial goals of the nation.

They got cheaper earlier than solar, and while both are still declining in cost solar is now pulling ahead and is likely to be the majority threat to fossil fuels going forward.

He's mostly just repeating half remembered lies from Fox News and allied media.

You aren't, and your post hasn't even existed for a tenth of one day, give it at least a week or so to settle out before raising your blood pressure about a score you might've had for a fraction of a moment before it changed.

That said, regardless of the (imo probable) correctness of your theory, commentary about being downvoted runs contrary to HN's posting guidelines, so you might expect downvotes in the future for that alone.

It isn't so different from the previous administration's regulatory uncertainty around drilling permits. The allegedly pro-biz anti-regulation Republicans like gov regulation here, while the pro-regulation Democrats don't like it. If anything, it lays bare the hypocrisy of both sides. NPR is just along for the ride to once again tell us, "Trump bad".

The problem with these partisan sources is that even if there were a deeper rationalization for killing the project with regulations, such as a valid national security situation, we wouldn't expect NPR to cover it. Looking elsewhere I didn't find much.

>"The bureau is seeking to protect U.S. national security and prevent "interference with reasonable uses of the exclusive economic zone, the high seas, and the territorial seas," Giacona said.

It’s how industrial economies of scale work. The more of something you do the cheaper it is. Bootstrapping an industry is analogous to overcoming the activation energy for a chemical reaction.

The rate of scaling is different for different tech, and it’s actually quite good for renewables. That’s because solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries are incrementally deployable and subject to rapid iteration. It looks more like the electronics industry or, in the case of windmills, the car and truck industry, than the conventional power plant industry. Look up the rate at which these technologies have gotten cheaper. For solar annd batteries in particular it’s almost like Moore’s law.

It would never have gotten started without subsidies. Most things are deeply unprofitable at first.

Fossil fuels also require massive subsidies to bootstrap until they could scale. Look into the history of Standard Oil, the railroads, and electrification. The two world wars also helped.

One of the things that deeply challenged the minarchist libertarianism I held when younger was seeing that virtually nothing happens in tech or industry without state bootstrapping. Someone must be prepared to set huge piles of money on fire to start anything.

Once things get going they can be profitable in a free market. Solar is there in markets with high sun exposure. Battery storage is there in markets with a high power cost arbitrage spread. Both are still getting cheaper. Solar may be the cheapest source of power in a decade in most of the world.

Computing and the Internet is the same. The latter was originally called DARPAnet.

BTW the biggest disadvantage of nuclear vs renewables is that it is much more of a slog to scale. It doesn’t get cheaper as quickly due to slow iteration time and capital intensive large projects.