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Daily Caller

US Ally’s Approach To Handling Drones Over Military Bases Is Vastly Different From Biden Admin

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Thomas English

The German Cabinet proposed an amendment Wednesday that would allow its armed forces to shoot down mysterious drones flying over military installations and critical infrastructure, while U.S. authorities took no such actions when faced with a similar threat over its bases in 2024.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandros Mayorkas dismissed calls to shoot down unidentified aircraft over northeastern military installations as “dangerous” in December. In contrast, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser proposed an amendment to the country’s armed forces to “engage” the drones, especially when they threaten lives or endanger critical infrastructure.

“It’s not as though anyone can just take down a drone in the sky — that in and of itself would be dangerous,” Mayorkas told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in December. “Our authorities are very limited … we can’t just shoot a drone out of the sky.”

Faeser, on the other hand, announced an amendment to Germany’s existing Aviation Security Act after authorities spotted drones over Ramstein Air Base, where Ukrainian forces are trained to use Abrams tanks, according to SWR, a German public broadcaster. They suspect Russian forces are using drones to spy on Ukrainian military developments. Authorities also reported drones over various chemical and technology manufacturing plants.

“Since Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine, we have seen an increasing deployment of drones that present growing challenges for the police and their current technology,” Faeser, translated from German, said in a statement Wednesday. Therefore, it is essential to create an authority within the Aviation Security Act allowing the Bundeswehr to intervene in severe threats, including the use of force to shoot down illegally operating drones as a last resort … It also sends a clear message: We will not be intimidated and will decisively confront current threats.”

The Department of Defense’s (DOD) Joint Staff released a statement on the drone sightings in December, writing that they too had observed drones flying over military installations. Authorities said they spotted unidentified aircraft over Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle, both in New Jersey.

“This is not a new issue for us. We’ve had to deal with drone incursions over our bases for quite a time now. It’s something that we routinely respond to in each and every case when reporting is cited,” a Joint Staff spokesperson said. “To date, we have no intelligence or observations that would indicate that they were aligned with a foreign actor or that they had malicious intent. But … we don’t know. We have not been able to locate or identify the operators or the points of origin.”

 

DJI, a Chinese drone manufacturer and the most popular drone brand in the U.S., announced Monday it removed software prohibiting users from flying over restricted airspace, such as airport runways, nuclear power plants and the White House. The update reclassifies what were previously “restricted zones” to “enhanced warning zones,” which DJI says will “plac[e] control back in the hands of the drone operators” who “bear final responsibility.”

The amendment to the German law, which has not yet passed the country’s federal parliament, would allow the military to fire on the drones if deemed a threat to lives or critical infrastructure. Under the current version of the law, German authorities are prohibited from shooting down the aircraft.

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Daily Caller

AI Needs Natural Gas To Survive

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

As recent studies project a big rise in power generation demand from the big datacenters that are proliferating around the United States, the big question continues to focus in on what forms of generation will rise to meet the new demand. Most datacenters have plans to initially interconnect into local power grids, but the sheer magnitude of their energy needs threatens to outstrip the ability of grid managers to expand supply fast enough.  

This hunger for more affordable, 24/7 baseload capacity is leading to a variety of proposed solutions, including President Donald Trump’s new executive orders focused on reviving the nation’s coal industry, scheduled to be signed Tuesday afternoon. But efforts to restart the permitting of new coal-fired power plants in the US will require additional policy changes, efforts which will take time and could ultimately fail. In the meantime, datacenter developers find themselves having to delay construction and completion dates until firm power supply can be secured. 

Datacenters specific to AI technology require ever-increasing power loads. For instance, a single AI query can consume nearly ten times the power of a traditional internet search, and projections suggest that U.S. data center electricity consumption could double or even triple by 2030, rising from about 4-5% of total U.S. electricity today to as much as 9-12%. Globally, data centers could see usage climb from around 536 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025 to over 1,000 TWh by 2030. In January, a report from the American Security Project estimated that datacenters could consume about 12% of all U.S. power supply. 

Obviously, the situation calls for innovative solutions. A pair of big players in the natural gas industry, Liberty Energy and Range Resources, announced on April 8 plans to diversify into the power generation business with the development of a major new natural gas power plant to be located in the Pittsburgh area. Partnering with Imperial Land Corporation (ILC), Liberty and Range will locate the major power generation plant in the Fort Cherry Development District, a Class A industrial park being developed by ILC.   

“The strategic collaboration between Liberty, ILC, and Range will focus on a dedicated power generation facility tailored to meet the energy demands of data centers, industrial facilities, and other high-energy-use businesses in Pennsylvania,” the companies said in a joint release.  

Plans for this new natural gas power project follows closely on the heels of the March 22 announcement for plans to transform the largest coal-fired power plant in Pennsylvania, the Homer City generating station, into a new gas-fired facility. The planned revitalized plant would house 7 natural gas turbines with a combined capacity of 4.5 GW, enough power 3 million homes.  

Both the Homer City station and the Fort Cherry plant will use gas produced out of the Appalachia region’s massive Marcellus Shale formation, the most prolific gas basin in North America. But plans like these by gas companies to invest in their own products for power needs aren’t isolated to Pennsylvania.  

In late January, big Permian Basin oil and gas producer Diamondback Energy told investors that it is seeking equity partners to develop a major gas-fired plan on its own acreage in the region. The facility would primarily supply electricity to data centers, which are expected to proliferate in Texas due to the AI boom, while also providing power for Diamondback’s own field operations. This dual-purpose approach could lower the company’s power costs and create a new revenue stream by selling excess electricity.  

Prospects for expansion of gas generation in the U.S. received a big boost in January when GE Vernova announced plans for a $600 million expansion of its manufacturing capacity for gas turbines and other products in the U.S. GE Vernova is the main supplier of turbines for U.S. power generation needs. The company plans to build 37 gas power turbines in 2025, with a potential increase to over 70 by 2027, to meet rising energy demands. 

The bottom line on these and other recent events is this: Natural gas is quickly becoming the power generation fuel of choice to feed the needs of the expanding datacenter industry through 2035, and potentially beyond. Given that reality, the smart thing to do for these and other companies in the natural gas business is to put down big bets on themselves. 

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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Business

Scott Bessent Says Trump’s Goal Was Always To Get Trading Partners To Table After Major Pause Announcement

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

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Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent told reporters Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s goal was to have major trading partners agree to negotiate after Trump announced a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for many countries after dozens reached out to the administration.

Trump announced the pause via a Wednesday post on Truth Social that also announced substantial increases in tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States, saying 75 countries had asked to talk. Bessent said during a press event held alongside White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that Trump had obtained “maximum leverage” to get trading partners to negotiate with the April 2 announcement of reciprocal tariffs.

“This was his strategy all along,” Bessent told reporters during an impromptu press conference at the White House. “And that, you know, you might even say that he goaded China into a bad position. They, they responded. They have shown themselves to the world to be the bad actors. And, and we are willing to cooperate with our allies and with our trading partners who did not retaliate. It wasn’t a hard message: Don’t retaliate, things will turn out well.”

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China imposed retaliatory tariffs on American exports to the communist country Wednesday, imposing an 84% tariff on U.S. goods after Trump responded to a 34% tariff by taking American tariffs to 104%.

“Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately,” Trump said. “At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable.”

“They kept escalating and escalating, and now they have 125% tariffs that will be effective immediately,” Bessent said during the press conference.

Bessent said that China’s actions would not harm the United States as much as it would their own economy.

“We will see what China does,” Bessent said. “But what I am certain of, what I’m certain of, is that what China is doing will affect their economy much more than it will ours, because they have an export-driven, flood the world with cheap export model, and the rest of the world now understands.”

The Dow Jones Industrial average closed up 2,962.86 points Wednesday, with the NASDAQ climbing by 1,755.84 points and the S&P 500 rising 446.05 points, according to FoxBusiness.

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