241GW of US data center capacity was announced, but only 33% is under active development, exposing a massive disconnect between industry hype and reality. Economist Paul Kedrosky's analysis reveals that while new capacity additions halved in Q4 2025, the overwhelming majority of projects are speculative. New Mexico's growth stems from a single, massive, speculative project by New Era Energy & Digital in Lea County, highlighting how a few giant bets drive the sector. PJM's power commitments now exceed available capacity three times over, creating a crisis where 58% of data centers rely on "wires-only" utilities that can't guarantee power. This gap between announced capacity and actual absorption means only 3GW of IT load came online in 2025, despite claims of $1 trillion in NVIDIA GPU sales between 2025-2027.

The core problem: physics and finance collide in the AI data center boom.