Good morning. The new era underway at the Federal Reserve could have  some interesting implications for the way companies think about their technology investments and we will be following it closely.

The central bank has a big impact on the tech sector at every level, from the value of tech stocks to the timeframe in which companies demand a return on their internal investments in technology.

A new Fed chairman who prioritizes lowering interest rates more quickly could awaken appetites for risk assets such as tech stocks. In a lower-yield world investors have traditionally turned to tech, given limited options for places to park their capital. That mindset can have an indirect impact on the ways in which company leaders think about tech  investment and returns.

President Trump said Friday he would nominate Kevin Warsh to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. Warsh, who served on the Fed’s board of governors from 2006 to 2011, played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in Washington’s rescue of Wall Street during the financial crisis, the Journal reports. If confirmed, he would succeed Jerome Powell in May. Key points from the Journal’s coverage:

Warsh gained a reputation for being an inflation “hawk” during and after leaving the Fed because he spent years warning that easy monetary policy would fuel rising prices.

More recently, he has said the Fed should cut rates faster.

His view of the current economy is that “money on Wall Street is too easy, and credit on Main Street is too tight,” Heard on the Street notes.

As the WSJ’s Heard column notes, saying that you want to end an easy money era for Wall Street and doing it are two different things. One way or another, the effort will  shape the way companies think about their return on tech spending.

In May 2023, Mike Burns of investment management company Murray Hill Group told me that the steep interest-rate rise from historic lows made longer-term investment horizons more difficult to justify.

“Debt is more expensive, making it difficult to use for growth without a significant near-term return,” Burns said at the time. Companies were looking, he said, for ways to grow with more limited marginal costs, and without the need to spend against a long-turn return on investment.

If interest rates fall this year at a faster pace, that mindset could shift again. Companies could extend their investment horizons, especially when it comes to AI, an area where they are already investing capital. The nature and scope of those projects could become more ambitious if the cost of capital falls.

America is united in hating AI data centers. Across Red and Blue America, citizens are voicing concerns about having an AI data center in their backyard, citing rising electricity rates, but also fears tied to AI itself, including job losses and privacy violation, WSJ reports. “There’s not a lot that unites people anymore,” said Lauren Prebenda, a resident of Howell Township, a conservative farming area in Michigan. "This does." Across the county line, residents in Saline Township have fought a data-center proposal tied to Oracle and OpenAI. 

Some Big Tech firms are listening. Microsoft recently promised to pay its way on power for its data centers. ChatGPT maker OpenAI made similar pledges.

“We don’t think taxpayers should be asked to pay the burden, especially at the local level, for something that instead should be providing benefits,” Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith said in a recent interview.

Apple is getting squeezed. The company's long-standing leverage with suppliers is under threat as AI outmuscle Apple in the electronics supply chain, the Journal reports. Nvidia, not Apple, is now manufacturer TSMC’s biggest customer. Meanwhile, surging AI-data-center spending is causing memory shortages. DRAM prices are set to quadruple and NAND to triple from 2023 levels. Apple may adjust product configurations but isn’t expected to raise iPhone prices, Ming-chi Kuo, an analyst with TF International Securities, tells the Journal.

20. The number of data center projects around the country blocked or delayed by locals, representing nearly $100 billion in combined investment in the second quarter of last year, according to Data Center Watch.

178,000. The forecasted shortage in workers, including drillers, linemen and splicers, involved in building out high-speed internet across the U.S., according to a 2024 report by the Fiber Broadband Association and the Power & Communication Contractors Association. 

$500 million. An investment by an Abu Dhabi royal for a 49% stake in a crypto firm with connections to the Trump family. 

French IT firm Capgemini will sell its US-based subsidiary after scrutiny over the unit’s contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, WSJ reports. "The nature and scope of this work has raised questions compared to what we typically do as a business and technology firm,” CEO Aiman Ezzat said in a LinkedIn post last week. The sale comes after the French government took a step to distance itself from U.S. tech companies: forbidding government agencies from using U.S. videoconferencing services such as Zoom or Microsoft’s Teams.

Oracle plans to raise $45 to 50 billion through a combination of debt and equity sales.in 2026 to expand its cloud infrastructure, Bloomberg reports. Oracle shares declined more than 2% Monday premarket on the news, the WSJ reports. 

A KKR consortium is nearing a deal to buy Singapore-based global data center provider ST Telemedia Global Data Centres from its parent company, ST Telemedia. The deal would value the company at more than $10 billion and comes as foreign companies, including private-equity firms, snap up data centers, WSJ reports.

Inside Moltbook: the social network where AI agents talk to each other (FT)

Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery Is Reshaping Mealtime (New York Times)

The tragedy of Supernatural (The Verge)

Disney said its streaming profit surged in the December quarter, while warning that fewer foreigners are visiting its U.S. theme parks, as investor attention turns to an expected announcement of its next chief executive as soon as this week. (WSJ)

Many home shoppers have given up on the depressed housing market, where sales are stuck at a 30-year low. But those buying are enjoying discounts at the highest rate in years. (WSJ)

President Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the government that he runs presents a mind-bending minefield of conflicts that could end with the president’s appointees approving a federal payout to him. (WSJ)

The Justice Department exposed the names of dozens of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, including many who haven’t shared their identities publicly or were minors when they were abused by the notorious sex offender. (WSJ)

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The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and