Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:

• The Big Read: We know how Project Stargate begins

• The Top 5: The think tanks that matter to Trump and tech

• Plus, our Recommendations: Anne Frank in America; how to make a millennial LOL; and when heart cancer warms the heart 

In Washington, time is a malleable concept. In some moments, it seems like nothing there can ever happen fast. And then—zip, zip, zzzzip. The midterms are here! And the chessboard every macher in America has just painstakingly labored to set up in their favor gets reset. 

Sam Altman grasps this dichotomy. Altman has gone to some effort to befriend the current White House: He attended Donald Trump’s inauguration and the very next day appeared in a banner news conference with the president, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son to unveil Project Stargate (speaking of Stargate, more on that in this week’s Big Read!). But Altman, once a reliable Democratic donor who grew disillusioned with President Joe Biden, is now getting back to liberal fundraising, according to The New York Times. Later this month, he’ll host a shindig for Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, who faces an election race in 2026. It’s Altman’s first such event for a Democrat since 2022. 

Clearly, Altman realizes something a lot of Americans are seemingly struggling to remember amid the tumult of Trump’s reascension: As fast as the administration has swept to chaotic power, that momentum will diminish just as quickly—particularly if the president can’t hold up his end of the bargain with the corporate elite, and if the economy sputters.

Altman’s decision to boost Warner just months into Trump’s administration was one of several reminders this week that support for the Trump agenda could be brittle. A second was the stock market decline prompted by the confusion over Trump’s tariffs—and another was the public criticism of his proposal for a federal crypto stockpile from venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, a close Elon Musk friend and strident Republican. All together, it felt like one of the only weeks since January in which the president’s agenda didn’t advance totally unconsidered by the nation’s boardrooms. 

Sure, Altman is a canny opportunist. But his ping-ponging here is a reminder that the vibe shift in Silicon Valley—and nearly every other part of the country—toward Trump and conservatism perhaps isn’t as durable or as overwhelming as it has appeared. CEOs like Altman want economic consistency. If Trump can’t deliver that, they’ll start reenvisioning that proverbial chessboard sooner than later.—Abram Brown

The Big Read 

Inside the Start of Project Stargate—and the Startup Powering It

Chase Lochmiller sees the tens of billions of dollars being spent right now on artificial intelligence as a perfectly sensible reaction within an epochal moment: “It’s like when we split the atom: Who cared what that cost?” 

Lochmiller’s Crusoe builds, designs and owns data centers. Initially, it built data centers to mine bitcoin and sell cloud-computing services. But more recently, it pivoted to data centers for AI. In that vein, Crusoe’s profile has dramatically risen since it won a landmark deal with Oracle and OpenAI to construct a massive 300 megawatt data center in Abilene, Texas, which has become the first part of Project Stargate, the massive AI infrastructure initiative Oracle and OpenAI announced at the White House on day 2 of the new Trump presidency.

Lochmiller hopes the Abilene facility will be a model for all AI data centers, which are a matter of national interest as the United States races to keep up in the global AI boom. Fundamentally, data centers are as essential to this industrial age as Henry Ford’s assembly line was to a previous one. 

“We believe we’re playing in the biggest game with some of the biggest companies in the world, and we’ve really catapulted ourselves into that arena,” Lochmiller told me for this week’s Big Read. “And, you know, I think we’re doing pretty well.”

The Top Five

The Most Important New Think Tanks

As the strategic thinking in Silicon Valley and Washington increasingly merges, a different generation of think tanks is poised to have significant sway. Our Julia Black asked around Washington to assemble this list of the groups tech leaders should know. Many of them have direct connections to tech—with the backing of figures like Patrick Collison and Sean Parker—and all of the groups are working on policies that will affect tech. To understand what they want is to understand where the United States could be going.

Abram Brown, editor of The Information’s Weekend section, fears the eventual woolly mouse takeover of the planet. Reach him at [email protected].

Attending: Anne Frank Makes It to America  

If you’ve ever taken an unplanned visit to Amsterdam, as I did last summer, you may know it is almost impossible to just stop by the Anne Frank House: Visitors must purchase tickets months in advance. So when the Center for Jewish History in New York announced it would host a first-of-its-kind, full-scale recreation of the Franks’ secret annex this spring, I jumped at the chance to go.

As perhaps the Holocaust’s most famous victim, the Franks have a story familiar to many. But Anne Frank The Exhibition augments existing knowledge of Anne’s fate with a self-guided tour of her family’s photos, antiques and other artifacts. They’re guideposts to the Franks’ story, taking you from how Anne’s parents met to her father Otto’s liberation from Auschwitz and his discovery and publication of Anne’s diary. (Otto was the only Frank to survive World War II.)

Of course, the exhibit’s centerpiece is the annex. Its narrow confines give a staggering sense of the desperate conditions the Franks endured—including the single bathroom eight people shared (which they couldn’t use during the workday in order to keep their hiding place secret). I found the annex’s opening halls most resonant: They provide a step-by-step journey through Mr. and Mrs. Frank’s decision-making to relocate to the Netherlands from their native Germany, and their ultimate tragic fate. It prompts an uncomfortable thought: What do you do—and where do you go—when your government suddenly turns against you?—Sara Germano

Reading: A Twain of the TikTok Times

For much of “Glory Days,” Simon Rich, The New Yorker contributor, screenwriter and former “Saturday Night Live” scribe, effectively holds up a funhouse mirror to the culture and lifestyle of millennials. As a millennial, I found his short stories quite amusing; many of you are also millennials, and you too may find yourself laughing out loud on the F train, attracting many funny looks. 

In one story from the collection, Rich imagines a mother and daughter traversing a post-apocalyptic world. As they go, the mom shares memories about the social pressures of the past. Her daughter has questions. 

“So in the Before Times you had to read every critically acclaimed book that was published?” 

“Well, no, my child,” the mom answers. “When someone brought one up, you could say, ‘I just ordered that,’ or ‘It’s on my bedside table.’ And then you could move on to who had worn what on ‘White Lotus.’” 

Another story reimagines David and Goliath essentially as a pair of warring influencers. Goliath feels beaten down by money troubles: He’s divorced, and his daughter needs private school tuition. Unfortunately, he’s been hard pressed to win any lucrative brand endorsements ever since puny but lovable David showed up: “Kid’s got a production company, D Street, started as a vanity label for his raps, now the Saudis want to invest.”—A.B.

Watching: Fatalist but Funny 

Every now and then, a TV show surprises you with a plot line that isn’t the 50th version of the same familiar story. “Love You to Death,” a Spanish comedy from Apple TV+, is one of those surprises—such a laugh-out-loud-funny show that you’ll find yourself in stitches at times. (No, I’m not exaggerating.) On the face of it, the premise is deadly serious: One of the main characters, Raúl, has been diagnosed with “heart cancer” by a doctor who is as blunt with his prognosis as it is possible to be. But the show has a great sense of humor about Raúl’s grim situation, which is particularly evident in his interactions with his romantic interest, Marta. This is one show Apple should have done a much better job promoting.—Martin Peers

Final Thought

And Larry Summers is her uncle.