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MERIDIANAmerican Affairs & Technology
Meridian issue 214 cover
August 2026 · Current issue

No. 214
The Grid

Reported from fourteen states over five months.

132 pages11 featuresPhoto essayCover by Sela Amari
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Contents

The Cover Story18The Grid Can’t WaitData centers now request more power in a single county than Phoenix used in 2015. Inside the summer that forced fourteen states to choose between artificial intelligence and air conditioning.Dana Whitfield
Features46The Last MileRural broadband got $42 billion and a deadline. Four years on, the money has moved and the fiber has not. A report from three counties that were promised the same thing twice.Priya Raghunathan68The transformer shortage, in picturesNine photographs from the four factories still building large power transformers in North America.Marcus Oyelaran
Film94Inside the substation that AI is waiting onTwelve minutes inside a Virginia switchyard, with the engineers who decide what gets connected and when.Dana Whitfield
← Previous issueNo. 213 — The Quiet Owners