For the first time, California has placed its sprawling data center industry under formal regulatory oversight, as the governor signed a comprehensive package of bills addressing energy consumption, water use, and environmental accountability. The move reflects a broader reckoning with the hidden costs of the digital economy — the vast physical infrastructure that powers cloud computing and artificial intelligence has grown faster than the rules meant to govern it. In a state shaped by both technological ambition and hard lessons about resource scarcity, this legislation marks a deliberate cho