The mechanism
Everyone treats data center stocks as a GPU story. That's backwards. The binding constraint on AI buildout isn't chip supply — it's grid interconnection velocity, and that's a federal policy lever, not an engineering one. On June 18, 2026, FERC issued Section 206 "show cause" orders to all six U.S. RTOs/ISOs (PJM, MISO, SPP, CAISO, ISO-NE, NYISO), demanding they justify or rewrite their interconnection tariffs for data centers and other large loads — a direct follow-through on DOE Secretary Chris Wright's October 2025 directive ordering FERC to speed up hookups. Layer that on top of Order 2023's queue reforms, and you get a regulatory machine actively compressing the years-long wait between "we want to build a data center here" and "we can legally draw power from the grid." Every month shaved off that queue is a month pulled forward on capex spending for power and cooling gear. That's why Vertiv's backlog — not Nvidia's shipment schedule — is the cleanest real-time readout of permitting speed in the AI economy.