THE NEWS

First, on Thursday NATO chief Mark Rutte said from Berlin that Europe and the world should prepare for coming war, ominously warning that it could be “on the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured.”

Soon following this, President Donald Trump seemed to echo the warning while voicing frustrations of there being no current off-ramp to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. “Things like this end up in third world wars. And I told that the other day, I said, ‘You know, everybody keeps playing games like this, you’ll end up in a third world war.’ And we don’t want to see that happen,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. 

“I’d like to see the killing stop: 25,000 people died last month, soldiers—mostly soldiers, but some people also where bombs were dropped,” Trump continued.

While acknowledging that the conflict “doesn’t really affect the United States unless it got out of control,” he spoke on the obvious possibility of runaway escalation.

Trump said the United States is “working very hard” to resolve the conflict, but he also broke with Washington’s typical reluctance to finger-point at President Zelensky. But in this instance he unleased, saying:

“I thought that we were very close with Russia to having a deal. I thought we were very close with Ukraine to having a deal. In fact, other than President Zelensky, his people loved the concept of the deal.”

The US peace deal hinges on territorial concessions in the Donbas and Crimea, as well as Ukraine limiting the size of its armed forces and agreeing to never join NATO. These are precisely things which the Zelensky government has long rejected, and Europe has largely supported this unbending stance.

On this point, Trump said: “It’s a little bit complicated because you’re cutting up land in a certain way. It’s not the easiest thing. It’s sort of like a complex real estate deal times a thousand.” Zelensky and the Europeans having been forging a ‘counter-plan’ – but on which Russia has already declared its unwillingness to contemplate.

While Trump clearly named Zelensky as thwarting peace efforts, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to perhaps soften the anti-Kiev remarks. “The president is extremely frustrated with both sides of this war, and he is sick of meetings just for the sake of meeting,” she told a press briefing.

Zelensky on Wednesday tried to blunt the pressure coming from the Trump White House by declaring he will look into holding elections.

.@PressSec on peace talks between Ukraine and Russia:

“The President is extremely frustrated with both sides of this war. He’s sick of meetings just for the sake of meeting. He doesn’t want any more talk. He wants action. He wants this war to come to an end.” pic.twitter.com/f1oucZUQb1

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) December 11, 2025

He said: “Since this issue is being raised by the U.S. president and our European partners, I’ll be brief: I am ready. I ask the U.S., together with Europe, to ensure security for the vote. If that is done, Ukraine can hold elections within 60 days.”

However, Zelensky is calling on his international backers to ensure that such an election could be held safely and fairly. Likely this would mean getting Moscow to agree to a temporary pause in the war, to allow a peaceful vote.

Fermi America announced their first potential tenant for the Project Matador data center campus terminated their $150 million Advance in Aid of Construction agreement (i.e., lease). The stock has plunged as much as 50% in premarket trading in what is a wild overreaction with unprecedented demand for data center space (especially data centers named after the president) still offset with limited supply.

Several weeks ago, we documented Fermi’s difficulties with signing their first major tenant last month for their President Donald J. Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence campus in Texas, set to become the world’s largest mixed-use data center. Co-founded by former Texas Governor and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, the company has yet to close a deal with a data center developer for their massive 11 GW campus outside of the Pentax facility.

What is bizarre, is that the company is on track to bring hundreds of megawatts on line for the site by the beginning of next year, has 6 GW of gas turbine power already permitted, and is currently progressing with the NRC to allow the construction of 4 AP1000 reactors. Yet somehow there isn’t a line of potential customers around the block desperate for rack space. At least not yet, although we expect that will change one Trump tweets about it. 

Fermi is marketing their campus towards hyperscalers, with some tenants likely to include the biggest tech players such as Palantir. One of the government’s leading AI providers, Palantir was noted as currently being in discussion with Fermi about taking up a spot at Project Matador with a site visit expected to occur in the near future.

The company notes that negotiations on the terms of the lease are continuing with their first potential mystery tenant that has cut off the $150 million for construction advances, and Fermi is continuing discussions with other potential tenants.

We have noted multiple times the extreme difficulties experienced by other data center developers throughout the United States, and abroad, with overcoming local opposition from NIMBY activists. Locals are still struggling to welcome the large data center developments to their towns due to concerns about increased energy consumption and prices, along with water usage.

With some of the data centers consuming as much as an entire city’s worth of water on their own, many activists have been able to petition regional leadership to block data center development on those grounds alone. Fermi has already demonstrated that they are well ahead of this with pre-permitting already completed for new power generation and millions of gallons of water per day already secured from nearby towns with access to massive aquifers.