Tech Policy & Regulation Weekly — Apr 23, 2026

Two huge compliance clocks started ticking in opposite directions this week. FERC set a June deadline to rewrite how AI data centers plug into the U.S. grid, while BIS rescinded the Biden-era AI Diffusion Rule without publishing its replacement — leaving every chip exporter, cloud provider, and sovereign AI sponsor operating in a deliberate legal gap. Meanwhile, FDA opened the generic floodgates on one of the world's biggest diabetes drugs just as the pharma tariff makes the price math uncomfortable, and federal judges kept quietly issuing sanctions against lawyers who cite AI-hallucinated cases. The regulatory state isn't getting smaller — it's getting stranger.

• BIS Rescission of AI Diffusion Rule (Department of Commerce): Under Secretary Jeffery Kessler instructed BIS enforcement officials not to enforce the rule pending formal rescission; a replacement framework has not yet been published.
• FERC Order in RM26-4-000 (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission): April 16 order committing to act on large-load interconnection rules by the end of June 2026.
• FDA Generic Approvals for Farxiga (Dapagliflozin) (U.S. Food and Drug Administration): Fourteen companies cleared to produce 5 mg and 10 mg tablets of AstraZeneca's Type 2 diabetes and heart-failure blockbuster.
• FDA Draft Guidance on Genome-Editing Safety (U.S. Food and Drug Administration): April 14 draft spelling out how sponsors should use next-generation sequencing to assess off-target edits and genome integrity.
• Cadence Design Systems Settlement (Bureau of Industry and Security): $95 million administrative penalty for illegal EDA exports to Entity List parties, plus a concurrent $45 million DOJ resolution.
• SPP Consolidated Planning Process (Southwest Power Pool): Effective March 1, 2026; first CPP window opened in April, covering the expanded two-interconnection footprint across seven new states.

If your company is building, financing, or supplying a data center anywhere in the United States, the most important regulatory document right now isn't an AI bill — it's a FERC docket number.

On April 16, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order in its large-load interconnection docket (RM26-4-000) committing to act "by the end of June 2026." The stakes are concrete: U.S. data centers drove a 22% increase in electricity demand in 2025, and electricity demand from data centers could triple by 2030, while the country is building only a fraction of the high-capacity transmission lines it needs, according to CSIS's analysis of the proceeding.

The sharpest edge is cost allocation. FERC's proposal adopts a 100% participant funding model — meaning hyperscale customers would pay the full cost of the network upgrades their projects trigger. Amazon and Google have already filed comments pushing back on that framing, arguing that "unused" transmission capacity shouldn't be billed to them.

What changes if it succeeds: A national template emerges for who pays for AI-era grid expansion. Developers get predictability, ratepayers get some protection, and siting decisions shift toward regions with cheaper interconnection costs.

What failure looks like: FERC punts by issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking instead of a final rule, pushing binding cost allocation into late 2026 or 2027 and forcing another year of co-location deals negotiated under regulatory fog. The observable signal: whether the June action is styled "final rule" or "NOPR."

Meanwhile, FERC separately rejected parts of PJM Interconnection's co-location compliance filing on April 16, meaning the full mechanism for 13 states likely won't be active until 2027, per White & Case's summary of the April meeting. And FERC approved updated NERC Critical Infrastructure Protection standards that explicitly reference data centers — a parallel cyber-compliance track tied to bulk-power reliability.

The most architecturally ambitious chip export control framework ever attempted is officially dead. What replaces it is, for now, a blank page.

The Bureau of Industry and Security announced the rescission of the Biden-era AI Diffusion Rule, which was set to take effect May 15, 2025. Under Secretary Jeffery Kessler instructed enforcement officials not to enforce the rule. BIS says it will publish a formal rescission regulation and issue a replacement "in the future."

That last phrase is doing a lot of work. The rule is not stayed by a court — it has been administratively rescinded by agency instruction. Companies that built compliance programs around the three-tier country framework, the data center Validated End User program, and the model weight controls are now operating in a deliberate gap.

But "gap" doesn't mean "relaxed." BIS concurrently issued four targeted updates on advanced computing controls, including immediate-effect clarifications on supercomputer parameters, expanded model-weight thresholds, and new Entity List additions. It also finalized the $95 million Cadence settlement — the agency's signal on EDA exports.

What changes if the replacement is tighter: Commerce pivots from regulating chips to regulating AI stacks and ownership structures. An April 10 Federal Register notice on Commerce's AI Exports Program already requires 51% U.S. ownership and control for exportable consortia — CFIUS-style logic applied through program design.

What failure looks like: The replacement rule drifts into 2027, and the gap calcifies into a permanent patchwork of guidance documents, enforcement settlements, and interim updates. The signal to watch: an OIRA submission from Commerce on reginfo.gov. Until that appears, the replacement architecture is vaporware.

The FDA just handed the health system a meaningful cost-reduction tool — and then the trade war immediately complicated the math.

For the first time, the FDA approved generics for AstraZeneca's Farxiga, clearing 14 companies including Teva, Sandoz, Aurobindo, Biocon, Cipla, Lupin, and Zydus to produce dapagliflozin tablets, per Fierce Pharma's regulatory tracker. Dapagliflozin is an SGLT2 inhibitor used for Type 2 diabetes and heart failure — one of the most expensive chronic-disease categories in American pharmacy. Fourteen generic approvals at once typically drives prices down sharply within months.

The complication: many of those manufacturers run supply chains through India and China, and the pharmaceutical tariff that took effect this month applies to imported finished drugs and active pharmaceutical ingredients.

What changes if generics win the timing race: PBMs get the 70-80% price collapse they've been modeling within months, and formulary economics for the SGLT2 class reset. Heart failure patients get access to a drug class that's been prohibitively expensive.

What failure looks like: Tariffs dampen the price erosion curve, generics launch at 40% discounts instead of 80%, and plan sponsors who baked aggressive savings into 2026 budgets face a rough Q3 reconciliation. The observable signal: WAC pricing from the first three generics to hit pharmacy shelves.

In parallel, FDA proposed a rule targeting deceptive drug advertising by telehealth platforms, medspas, and compounding pharmacies — the agency's continuing crackdown on the compounded-GLP-1 gray market.

Chief Justice John Roberts used his annual report to urge caution on AI in courtrooms. That's a policy speech. Court sanctions orders are the operative document — and they're stacking up.

A federal judge fined three lawyers $5,000 in a Walmart personal-injury case after AI-generated fake citations appeared in a brief; one lawyer was removed from the case, per Spellbook's reporting. A Massachusetts lawyer was sanctioned for fictitious case citations, with Utah and California bar actions now part of a pattern.

What changes as this compounds: Written verification protocols for AI-derived citations become a baseline supervisory duty, not a best practice. Firm insurance carriers start asking about AI governance on renewal questionnaires. Local federal districts issue standing orders requiring AI-use disclosure in filings.

What failure looks like: Judges fragment on standards, some treating hallucinated citations as sanctionable misconduct and others waving them off as carelessness. The signal: whether SDNY or NDCal issues a districtwide standing order in the next 60 days.

The contrast is striking: the UK Ministry of Justice is actively legislating AI into courtroom administration, with online pleas and AI tools for judges in a formal law reform package. The US threatens sanctions; the UK writes statutes. Global litigators now face divergent playbooks.

This one flew under the radar, but it restructures how a third of the country's grid gets planned.

Southwest Power Pool completed its expansion into the Western Interconnection on April 1, 2026, becoming the only regional transmission organization spanning both the Eastern and Western grids. SPP now oversees utilities across Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. FERC also accepted SPP's Consolidated Planning Process in a March 13 order, replacing separate generator-interconnection and transmission-planning tracks with a single proactive three-year cycle. The first CPP window opened in April.

What changes: Renewable developers and data-center siting teams in the Mountain West operate under a planning framework that shifts network-upgrade costs away from individual interconnection customers toward coordinated regional planning. The old siloed study queues are gone.

What failure looks like: The transitional phase bogs down as legacy queue projects get re-sorted under new rules, creating a multi-year interconnection backlog that pushes gigawatts of planned renewables into 2029 or later. The signal: the clearance rate of the first CPP window's project list.

A chief justice pleading for caution while lawyers cite cases that don't exist; a chip rule rescinded into a vacuum while a $95 million penalty lands the same week; a diabetes drug going generic at the exact moment tariffs make certain import paths more expensive. The regulatory state is simultaneously loosening and tightening its grip, often in the same press release — and somewhere in Brussels, someone is drafting an energy label for GPT-5.

Stay sharp out there.

If you know a GC, compliance lead, or policy head who's trying to track all of this with a spreadsheet and a prayer — forward this to them. They'll thank you.

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