Source: NYT > Business
The term "bragawatts" captures a real credibility crisis: OpenAI, Google, and others are making massive energy commitments without binding timelines or verification mechanisms, turning infrastructure announcements into marketing theater. When a company can claim 5 gigawatts of future capacity with zero accountability, investors and regulators cannot distinguish genuine capability-building from competitive posturing—creating a race where whoever makes the biggest unsubstantiated promise wins attention. Energy constraints are one of the few remaining physical limits on AI scaling. If the industry's stated power requirements are largely fiction, then the actual bottlenecks, costs, and timeline pressures remain invisible to everyone making bets on this sector.