Trump's new 'AI Force' skips federal data center rules — here's what that leaves for your next bid

President Trump said on September 19, 2026, that he's forming an "AI Force" modeled on the Space Force and will soon name an AI czar — while explicitly ruling out new federal AI regulation. For anyone bidding or building AI data center work, that means the patchwork of state and local rules governing where and how those projects get built isn't going away. It's the only rulebook that exists.

Trump made the announcement in a Truth Social post, writing that the industry would not be "hindered or stifled" but that the government would go after "BAD" actors using the "already existing Criminal and Civil Justice System" rather than new guardrails. He offered no details on the AI Force's budget, authority, or place in the federal government.

What happened to the "one rulebook" push?

This is a reversal in tone from where the administration stood less than a year ago. In December 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing work toward what his then-AI czar David Sacks called "One Rulebook" — a national AI framework meant to preempt what Sacks warned was becoming "a patchwork of 50 different regulatory regimes" as states passed their own AI and data center laws. Sacks left the AI czar role in March 2026. The September 19 announcement doesn't revive that preemption push; it just adds a promotional office and an enforcement posture built on existing courts, not new federal rules.

What's actually governing data center construction right now?

State legislatures, not Washington. At least 27 states are advancing data center bills in 2026 covering energy cost allocation and usage reporting, and California, Ohio, and Utah have already enacted laws that go further than the industry's voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge. Congress's own contribution — the Ratepayer Protection Act, which passed the House 417-3 on September 16 — only standardizes how utilities bill large data centers for grid costs. It doesn't touch permitting, siting, or a state's ability to slow projects down.

Maine shows how far that state-level authority can go. Its legislature passed L.D. 307 in April 2026, a first-of-its-kind moratorium blocking any data center over 20 megawatts until November 2027. Governor Janet Mills vetoed it, and the veto held — but the bill got through a legislature at all, which is the signal worth tracking, not the outcome.

What does this mean for a GC pricing this work?

The practical takeaway: don't build a bid or a schedule around Washington resolving this. Treat every data center site the way you'd treat a site with unresolved zoning risk — because in the regulatory sense, that's what it is. Pull the specific state's current data center statute and any pending bills before precon, budget schedule float for permitting fights that state law doesn't yet settle, and flag water- and energy-disclosure requirements as design inputs, not afterthoughts. The rules aren't converging. They're multiplying, one legislature at a time — and until that changes, project-by-project diligence is the only real risk mitigation on the table.