Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Friday, April 3rd. I'm Julie Chang for the Wall Street Journal.

In Maine, a battle is brewing over the future of AI and tech. We'll tell you about a bill that could

put a pause on new data center construction projects, driven by fears of soaring electricity costs and pollution.

Then in Russia, the Kremlin has long tried to reign in the influence of Western platforms,

and that goal may now be within reach.

That's thanks to Max, a new Russian super app that could help cement state control over the digital lives of millions of Russians.

First up, Maine is set to make history as the first U.S. state to put the brakes on data center construction with a temporary moratorium.

The proposed bill aims to freeze all large new data center projects

until November 27. Why the drastic measure? Maine already grapples with some of the highest

residential electricity prices in the nation, and elected officials fear a wave of data center

power demand will push those costs even higher.

WSJA reporter Will Parker joins us to break down this landmark power struggle and which

areas it could pop up in next. So Will, can you give our listeners just a brief rundown of this bill?

What are the highlights we should know? Yeah, so Maine has a bill that would temporarily

freeze the construction of large data centers for more than a year. And this is a bill

proposed by a Democratic legislator in the House where there's a Democrat majority. And the plan

is to pause data center construction while the state studies the impacts on the environment and the electricity grid.

And which data centers would be impacted by this?

So this bill targets data centers that would be more than 20 megawatts, which is the power load cut off.

It's the data centers over that size where you start to start talking about artificial

intelligence, hyperscalers, which is the kind that is growing really fast and that have the largest

demands for power and water. It's also the kind that is not proposed for Maine at the current

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