Elon Musk has never been shy about grand declarations and funding Iranian dissidents, but his latest announcement landed with particular force in Washington last week. Standing beside Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Saudi Arabia’s communications minister Abdullah Alswaha, Musk revealed plans for a 500-megawatt xAI data center to be built in the Kingdom — a facility nearly twice the size of xAI’s Colossus 1 in Memphis.

Saudi Arabia is investing a trillion USD in the US economy and pulling companies over to Riyadh is part of the plan. This rivals Dubai which for the last 15 years has been the Middle East investment capital. Saudi Arabia normalizing with Israel and the New Middle East is taking the UAE example to diversify its economy when oil is no longer a viable business. It’s not a question if, it’s a question of when.

“It’s going to be one of the most powerful clusters ever built,” Musk said, adding that the project, developed with HUMAIN AI, represents “a massive leap forward for global computation.” HUMAIN AI, a newcomer created with backing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, fueled by ARAMCO, Saudi’s oil company will anchor the joint venture.

As with most of the world’s current AI arms race, the beating heart of the center will be Nvidia chips, which have become the gold standard for training frontier models.

Huang, who has spent the year bouncing between Silicon Valley, Singapore, and the Gulf, announced a separate 100-megawatt data center for Amazon Web Services powered by Nvidia hardware. “This is just the beginning,” he said. “We’re aiming for gigawatt scale. The demand for accelerated computing is rising faster than any of us predicted.”

These kinds of deals can be run on solar power and possibly green hydrogen which Saudi Arabia is pioneering.

“Humanoid robots will be the biggest product ever,” Musk said: “Perhaps in the four or five-year time frame, the lowest-cost way to do AI compute will be with solar-powered AI satellites.”

All this unfolded one day after the U.S. and Saudi Arabia unveiled a Memorandum of Understanding on AI, designed to give the Kingdom access to advanced American systems while “protecting U.S. technology from foreign influence,” according to the White House. In diplomatic speak, that means Washington wants to ensure Riyadh remains on the Western tech grid rather than drifting toward Beijing’s orbit.

Related: Is your company investing in Riyadh or Dubai? 

Yet behind the spectacle lies a more grounded story: Saudi Arabia is betting its post-oil future on computation. The Kingdom has land, capital and political will — and it wants to become indispensable to the world’s AI supply chain.

Environmental analysts, however, are asking harder questions. A 500-megawatt data center is effectively a new industrial city. “Where is the clean power coming from?” “If this is fueled by oil or gas, it simply shifts the carbon problem upstream.”

Saudi officials insist renewable capacity is accelerating. The Kingdom has sunlight in abundance, and giga-scale construction and solar projects are rising across the desert and into the sea.

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At the end of last week, more than 1,000 employees at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received distressing news: they could be dismissed immediately. Workers with less than one year of service were notified via email that they had been identified as “probationary/trial period” employees and were at risk of immediate termination.

According to the email, “As a probationary/trial period employee, the agency has the right to immediately terminate you.” The unsettling message has left many EPA employees uncertain about their futures and has sparked widespread fear across the agency.

Related: Cheryl Crows sells her Tesla to protest Elon Musk

Marie Owens Powell, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, which represents approximately 8,500 EPA staffers, confirmed that about 1,100 employees received this notification. While no probationary employees have been let go yet, Powell emphasized that the email had caused significant anxiety among staff. “It was scary for people to receive the message, as you can imagine,” she said. “The agency obviously can dismiss probationary employees, but it has to be for cause.”

The decision to send out these termination notices comes as part of a broader push by the Trump administration to downsize the federal government.

In line with President Trump’s “energy dominance” policy agenda, the EPA is undergoing a reorganization aimed at reducing regulations and realigning resources to focus on energy production and deregulation efforts. This includes a reevaluation of agency functions and staffing, with a particular focus on programs that do not align with the administration’s priorities.

In addition to the layoffs, nearly 200 employees involved in environmental justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives have been placed on administrative leave. These programs, which focus on supporting communities disproportionately impacted by pollution, have been sidelined in the new direction of the EPA, raising concerns about the future of environmental justice within the agency.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who was confirmed last week, has been tasked with leading the agency’s efforts to roll back regulations enacted under the previous administration, including those aimed at reducing carbon emissions and promoting environmental equity. The restructuring and layoffs are expected to further weaken the EPA’s capacity to address climate change, pollution, and public health issues, particularly for vulnerable populations who rely on the agency’s protective regulations.

The atmosphere within the EPA has become one of fear and uncertainty, as employees are left unsure of their job security and the future of the agency’s work. With critical programs in jeopardy and a shift in focus away from key environmental issues, many are questioning how the agency will continue to fulfill its mission of safeguarding public health and the environment. As these changes unfold, the long-term impact on U.S. environmental policy remains uncertain, and the ripple effects could be felt across the country and beyond.

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This disconnect from helmets being essential has spurred people at the international advertising giant DBB to devise a playful solution.

They’ve developed a prototype bicycle helmet based on an artifact instantly recognizable to most of their targeted demographic – it looks exactly like the plastic hair on LEGO figures. Truth be told, the helmet copies the head of a Playmobil figure, arch-rival of the LEGO brand.

Two remotely located DDB colleagues designed the helmet, Clara Prior in Copenhagen and Simon Higby in Stockholm office and Clara Prior from Copenhagen.  The pair were collaborating on an MBA thesis that explored whether kids would voluntarily wear bike helmets if there were helmets available that kids would actually want to wear.

The duo turned to design company MOEF to make a model for them last year. They popped a head off one of their Playmobil figures, and put it through a 3D scanner. They tweaked the proportions and played with color-matching to create a comical outer shell for some serious inner safety kit.

You can see their entire design process, including 3D printing and paint job, below:

The picture of the helmet appeared on Imgur, and in UK free commuter newspaper Metro, and soon went viral. No surprise, most adult bike enthusiasts know to use a helmet.

And while new variations do occasionally appear (like the inflatable Hövding Invisible Bike Helmet), who wouldn’t want to sport the greatest “helmet hair”?

People contacted the designers asking if it came in different hairstyles and colors. A few specifically requested “The Trump”. And people just wanted to know how they could buy one.

Unfortunately, this helmet is only a prototype. Asked by Metro if they were planning to go into commercial production, co-designer Higby said, “I would love to do that. We just don’t know who [to approach] right now.” That said, the pair are petitioning for LEGO to take a look at mass-producing the helmets.

A major study of global bike helmet usage by Australian statisticians Jake Olivier and Prudence Creighton from the University of New South Wales looked at more than 64,000 cyclists and found helmets reduce risks of serious head injury by nearly 70%.

The study also found that while helmets are not associated with preventing neck injuries, cyclists who wear helmets reduce their chance of a fatal head injury by 65%.

Previous studies have indicated helmet use encourages risk-taking behavior or does not reduce serious injury to the brain. But this latest review collated data from more than 40 separate studies found helmet use did dramatically reduce odds of head injuries. They presented their findings in Finland last September at Safety 2016, the world conference on injury prevention and safety promotion.

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