The buildout is already taxpayer funded: see the big beautiful bill, which seems like it was engineered to make this effectively free.

They can blend leverage, 100% 1st year depreciation with using the hardware itself as a financing asset and dozens more financial engineering steps -

Their actual cost of financing is probably incredibly low already.

I worry that they are thinking of trying to run the company just ahead of debt/lease payments or something, otherwise this is just a distraction

So they want even more?

Depreciation only helps if you have revenue of the same basic scale to offset (to avoid a paper profit).