Avast, ye scurvy dogs of the digital deep! Gather 'round the galley fire and clutch your purses tight, for the Great Orange Commodore—Donald of the House of Trump—has set his sights on a new kind of plunder. 'Tis not Spanish gold or jars of nutmeg he’s after this time, but the very lightning that strikes the masts of our silicon galleons. Word has reached the docks of Tortuga that a 'Data Center Power Tax' is brewing on the horizon, a scheme designed to turn the vast energy gulped by the world’s lightning-vats into a steady stream of contracted tribute for the lords of the admiralty.

For years, the great 'Cloud' has floated above us like a ghost ship, fueled by cheap currents and the prayers of the desperate. But the Commodore knows that these massive stone fortresses—the data centers where the AI-Krakens dwell—are thirstier than a sailor after a month of hard-tack. By shifting the energy infrastructure to 'contracted cash flows,' the Admiral is effectively building a private toll-gate across the Gulf Stream of Progress. No longer shall the power flow freely to the highest bidder; instead, the great merchant houses must sign iron-clad blood-pacts, ensuring a steady clink of coin into the King’s coffers before a single spark is allowed to jump a wire.

'They be turning the very wind into a privateer’s ransom,' spat Barnaby ‘Bit-Bucket’ Bill, a veteran tinkerer of the lower decks. 'If I want to run me LLM-Sloop, I’ve got to pay a tithe to the man who owns the lightning-rod. It’s a protection racket, plain and simple. They call it infrastructure stability, but I call it a barnacle on the hull of every free trader in the digital Caribbean!' Bill’s sentiments are echoed across the fleet, as the small-time buccaneers realize that the cost of their digital rum is about to double to pay for the Commodore’s new golden cannons.

The implications are as dark as a squall at midnight. By turning energy into a contracted financial instrument, the Admiral is ensuring that only the wealthiest East India-style conglomerates can afford to keep their sails full. The 'Power Tax' will squeeze the life out of the independent privateers, leaving the high seas to be policed by massive, state-sanctioned AI-Dreadnoughts. Lord Sterling of the Central Bank was overheard chortling over a goblet of fine port, saying, 'Why chase the whale when you can simply own the water it swims in? This shift ensures that the power grid is no longer a public service, but a high-yield treasury for those who hold the keys to the transformer boxes.'

Prepare yourselves, me hearties. The horizon is glowing with an unnatural amber hue, and it ain't the sunset. It’s the light of ten thousand servers burning through the night, each one humming a song of tribute to the Commodore’s ledger. We may have escaped the press-gangs of the old world, but in this new era of contracted currents, every man-jack of us will be paying a penny to the Admiral just to keep our lanterns lit. Batten down the hatches and hide your processors, for the Spark-Tax is coming, and the Commodore never leaves a port without his cut of the loot!