Almost heaven, no reception

Summary

Podcast Summary: Click Here – “Almost Heaven, No Reception”

Host: Dena Temple Raston (Recorded Future News)
Date: March 31, 2026
Episode Theme:
This episode investigates the persistent digital divide in rural America, spotlighting the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Through the story of farmer and local leader Obie Riley, the episode explores the human, economic, and political barriers to broadband access—drawing historical parallels and highlighting the stakes for communities left behind.

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Episode Overview

The Internet is often considered a ubiquitous and essential utility—except in many rural American communities, where reliable broadband remains scarce or non-existent. Host Dena Temple Raston journeys to Philadelphia, Mississippi, to show how spotty connectivity disrupts daily life, stalls economic opportunity, and perpetuates cycles of exclusion. The episode traces the policy, business, and cultural dynamics that keep rural communities disconnected—and asks, what will it take to finally close the gap?

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Life Without Broadband in Rural Mississippi

• Obie Riley’s Struggle
  • Obie Riley, a farmer and auto mechanic, describes the lack of reliable Internet just beyond city limits.
    • “It's beautiful here. We're very southern and we are very rural here. And we do things really, really slow.” (Obie Riley, 01:04)
    • "When you pass a mile outside the city limits, the connectivity out there is terrible. It actually affected my business." (Obie Riley, 01:26)
  • The Internet gap impacts critical aspects of farm life and auto repair—car manuals can’t be downloaded, and equipment can’t connect to the cloud.
• Paradox of Connectivity
  • While most homes have access to satellite TV, Internet access lags far behind.
    • "You can pump all of the television that 100 people couldn't watch, but they can't pump any Internet.” (Obie Riley, 01:59)

Grassroots Efforts and Political Challenges

• Community Advocacy

  • Obie ran for office proposing three priorities: roads, a new hospital, and reliable Internet. The first two succeeded, the third did not.
  • He initially proposed microwave Internet, citing military use abroad. Despite a well-researched plan, costs were deemed too high, and politicians buried the proposal.
    • "They started to talk about microwave and how they set up entire grids over areas...in just a few months." (Obie Riley, 07:25)
    • "That was looked at, and then when they vetted the companies, they just took the information and buried it." (Obie Riley, 08:57)

• Economic Realities

  • Fiber optic cable is considered the gold standard but is 80% more expensive in rural areas due to long distances and sparse population.
  • Obie argued sustainable service was feasible and would generate residual funds for the county via advertising—but the idea fell on “deaf ears.”
    • “It wasn't a fact of can we afford it? It's a fact that how could you not afford it?" (Obie Riley, 09:42)
    • "Without that Internet, that's a whole segment of people that's just being overlooked." (Obie Riley, 10:17)

The COVID-19 Pandemic: Broadband's Urgency

• When schools and businesses went online in 2020, rural communities without Internet suffered.
  • "A whopping 16.9 million children under the age of 18 lack high speed Internet at home.” (Dena, 10:33)
• Kids and families gathered in parking lots for Wi-Fi, underscoring broadband as a lifeline for education, health, and work.
  • "All type of weather, kids gathered under streetlights to do their homework, fill out applications, write resumes." (Dena Temple Raston, 11:05)

Historical Parallels: Electricity, Redlining, and Policy

• The Rural Electrification Analogy
  • In the 1930s, electrification faced similar obstacles: cost, distance, and market disinterest. The government intervened, transforming rural life.
    • “Electricity changed what it meant to participate in modern life.” (Dena Temple Raston, 13:35)
• Digital Redlining
  • Nicole Turner Lee (Brookings Institution) draws a comparison to housing redlining: telecoms skipped low-profit, often minority communities, entrenching inequity.
    • “Digital redlining was…companies were essentially building in spaces where there was a return on investment...as a result, we've had a history of discrimination…” (Nicole Turner Lee, 16:04)

The Shifting Politics of Broadband

• Bipartisan Promises and Policy Whiplash

  • Under the Biden-Harris administration, tens of billions were earmarked for broadband (the BEAD program—Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment).
    • “In my lifetime of doing this...we had not seen the type of monetary investment..." (Nicole Turner Lee, 17:40)
  • The Digital Equity Act aimed to fund digital literacy; yet politics soon reversed progress. Under a new administration, grants were revoked and priority for fiber infrastructure was abandoned in favor of cheaper solutions.
    • “The only thing that seems to matter is who is asking for the least amount of federal money. Equity. Affordable bills no longer count for much." (Dena Temple Raston, 20:41)
    • "Providers once had to offer at least one plan a middle class household could afford. That rule has been scrapped." (Dena Temple Raston, 20:55)

• The Starlink / Satellite Shift

  • The policy shift favors “technological agnosticism”—in reality, channeling public money toward satellite Internet (most prominently, Elon Musk’s Starlink).
    • “What's so interesting about today is that the push towards neutrality and technology...is really trying to prefer...satellite that has the potential to solve the digital divide." (Nicole Turner Lee, 19:38)
  • Starlink installations come with hefty upfront costs and monthly fees—out of reach for many rural residents.
    • “Does a working mom that's working to put food on the table with one or two or five kids have 600 bucks that they could spend to get this thing? No, I would say not." (Obie Riley, 22:07)

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “High speed Internet isn't a luxury. It's a utility, like electricity.” (Dena Temple Raston, 13:08)
• “It always starts one way, it ends another way, and we just probably need to break that pattern.” (Nicole Turner Lee, 03:18)
• "That was a huge eye opening moment…individuals in this community change their own destiny." (Obie Riley, 23:47)

Looking Forward: Community-Driven Solutions

• The episode concludes with a hint at the next story: some communities are building their own networks, reshaping who controls and owns connectivity in America.
  • "So what happens when a community takes that power for itself?" (Dena Temple Raston, 23:55)

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Notable Timestamps

| Time | Segment | |-------------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:02–01:33 | Introduction to Philadelphia, MS and Obie Riley | | 03:18 | Nicole Turner Lee: “It’s pretty much like a soap opera...” | | 06:21–07:08 | Obie’s Coast Guard experience and early tech frustrations | | 08:05–09:42 | Business plan for rural Internet and political hurdles | | 10:24–11:05 | Pandemic exposes the consequences of digital divide | | 13:08–15:23 | Internet as a utility—historical context of electrification | | 16:01–16:23 | “Digital redlining” explained | | 17:40 | Bipartisan infrastructure funding (BEAD program) | | 18:58–19:58 | Policy reversal and shift toward satellite (Starlink) | | 21:52–22:07 | Starlink costs and access gaps | | 23:47–23:55 | Teaser: communities building their own networks |

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Conclusion: Why This Episode Matters

The story of Obie Riley in Philadelphia, Mississippi, is a microcosm of the nation’s digital divide—combining economic logic, political inertia, historical echo, and real human cost. The episode demonstrates that the fight for universal broadband isn't just about technology, but about equity, democracy, and the fabric of American life. As the debate over who gets access continues, this episode is an urgent reminder: connectivity is no longer a luxury or convenience—it's essential infrastructure.

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Memorable Moments

• “It wasn't a fact of can we afford it? It's a fact that how could you not afford it?” (Obie Riley, 09:42)
• “We've been here before, and each time the story plays out a little differently.” (Dena Temple Raston, 11:37)
• "So once again, the country is facing a familiar who gets in and who gets left out." (Dena Temple Raston, 22:27)

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Next Episode Teaser:
Coming up on Friday—grassroots efforts where communities build their own networks. What does local control over digital infrastructure mean for democracy, opportunity, and equity? Stay tuned.

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For listeners:
Whether you're in a city with blazing fast Wi-Fi or a rural area still chasing a signal, this episode offers vital context and insight into why the digital divide persists—and what's at stake in bridging it.

Transcript

[Dena Temple Raston]

From recorded future news and prx, this is click here. Hey there, it's Dena. Every week on this podcast, we look at the waves. Technology is reshaping everything, and this week we're returning to a gap that is casting a shadow over the digital world. The Internet is supposed to be fast, always on everywhere. Except it isn't. In places like Philadelphia, Mississippi. It's still out of reach. And that's where we met a farmer chasing a signal and found a story that goes back nearly a century. Philadelphia, Mississippi, isn't anything like its namesake up north. No traffic, no cheesesteaks, just rolling hills, live cows, and the sweet and sour smell of southern pine.

[Obie Riley]

It's beautiful here. We're very southern and we are very rural here. And we do things really, really slow.

[Dena Temple Raston]

That's Obie Riley, farmer, auto mechanic and a district supervisor for Neshoba County. And here, the scenery is abundant. The connection is not.

[Obie Riley]

When you pass a mile outside the city limits, the connectivity out there is terrible. It actually affected my business.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Ob has an auto shop, and to fix a car, you need manuals, but he can't download them. And out on his farm, a lot of the equipment won't sync with the cloud, which is weird because it's not like Philadelphia doesn't embrace other kinds of technology.

[Obie Riley]

Direct TV and the Dish TV, they probably cover 70, 80% of the households in the rural areas.

[Podcast Sponsor/Announcer]

Right?

[Obie Riley]

You can pump all of the television that 100 people couldn't watch, but they can't pump any Internet.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Back in 2007, Obie decided to do something about it. He ran for office on three campaign. Better roads, a new hospital, and a super reliable Internet.

[Obie Riley]

We were able to get a new hospital, roads have improved, and then how

[Dena Temple Raston]

did Internet turn out? I'm Dena Temple Raston and this is Click Here, a podcast about the people making and breaking our digital world. So this story starts in a field in Mississippi with a farmer holding up his phone, trying to catch a signal. At first, it seems like a simple problem. Spotty Internet, rural area, case closed. But then you start asking a few more questions, like why here? Why now? And why does this just keep happening in places like this? Because the more we looked into it, the less this felt like a one off. It started to feel like a pattern, one that goes back a long time. Nicole Turner Lee has been watching this play out for years, and she put it to us like this.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

It's pretty much like a soap opera. It always starts one way, it ends another way, and we just probably need to break that pattern.

[Dena Temple Raston]

So today, the story of Obie Riley and what his fight for Internet access reveals about how progress actually works in this country. Stay with us. Support for Click Here comes from CleanMyMac. CleanMyMac helps you clear space, reduce background strain, and maintain steady performance without constant interruptions. It's not about cleaning files or fixing machines, it's about removing the friction that breaks momentum. CleanMyMac is the quiet presence that keeps creativity uninterrupted, so that when you're finishing up a pitch deck at midnight or exporting a huge project, you can trust your Mac to keep up. Personally speaking, when I'm working late on deadline for Click Here, the spinning wheel of death is the last thing I need. Get tidy today, try seven days free and use the code clickhere for 20% off. Support for Click Here comes from Quince I've been doing a little spring reset with my closet lately, focusing on quality over quantity, building a wardrobe of pieces that are well made, versatile and easy to reach for every day. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. The fabrics feel elevated, the fits are thoughtful, and the pricing actually makes sense. Quince uses premium materials like 100% European linen, organic cotton and super soft denim with style starting around $50. Their spring pieces are lightweight, breathable and effortless, the kind of things you can throw on and instantly look put together. And they have a great lineup of accessories too, like leather bags made of 100% hand woven Italian leather that honestly look way more expensive than they actually are. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middleman so you're truly paying for quality, not brand markup. For me, there's still enough of a nip in the air to wear my quarter Zip Fisherman cashmere sweaters. They're super soft and they didn't cost what I thought something of this quality would. Refresh your spring wardrobe with quince. Go to quince.com clickhere for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. Go to quince.com Clickhere for free shipping and 365 day Returns. Quince.com Clickhere for recorded future news. This is Click Here. I'm Dena Temple Rouston. Obie's frustration with bad connections started long before he settled in Mississippi, 22 years

[Obie Riley]

I spent in the United States Coast Guard.

[Dena Temple Raston]

He figured he'd join the most high tech military in the world until he sat down to start logging flights.

[Obie Riley]

Then I would log the personnel that was on the flight, the position that they flew and how much time the flight was.

[Dena Temple Raston]

And he'd do that for 20 flights

[Obie Riley]

a day, which is not a lot of data. But the computer would just freeze.

[Dena Temple Raston]

At first, his bosses thought he was stalling, but it wasn't him. It was the connection. It was his first real glimpse of how much the Internet could shape a career and how quickly things fall apart without it.

[Obie Riley]

So that's what I was trying to work ahead of when I got back to Mississippi.

[Dena Temple Raston]

When he ran for office, he made high speed Internet a priority. His first idea, microwave Internet. He knew people in the military who had used it to connect entire bases in the Iraqi desert. And he figured if it works there, it should work here.

[Obie Riley]

They started to talk about microwave and how they set up entire grids over areas that was as large as the county, and they done it in just a few months.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Microwave doesn't require phone lines, satellites, or cables. Not as reliable as fiber optic, but better than nothing. Oh. Kobe worked up a business plan and started sharing it. But as he lobbied locals, some people told him, we're worried about putting food on our table. High speed Internet, that sounds like a luxury. And he argued, no, actually, that will help you afford food and a lot more.

[Obie Riley]

There's just a ton of work at home, jobs that, if you got good connectivity, you can sit right here in Philadelphia, Mississippi, or Neshoba county and have a job that pays you, you know, 60,000 dol to six figures.

[Dena Temple Raston]

And when he took it round to companies and politicians, he had an argument for them, too.

[Obie Riley]

I had a whole plan on how to monetize it, which is really the

[Dena Temple Raston]

crux of the problem. Bringing high speed Internet to rural areas is notoriously expensive. The towers you need to connect these microwave signals, each one can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes well over half a million. Then multiply that by 2, 4, and 6, and suddenly it's an enormous investment for a small county. Which might explain why lawmakers ultimately declined.

[Obie Riley]

That was looked at, and then when they vetted the companies, they just took the information and buried it.

[Dena Temple Raston]

So Obie went back to the drawing board and turned to what many consider the gold standard of rural connectivity. Fiber optic cables. But he ran into the same. Upfront construction costs in rural areas can be up to 80% higher than in cities because homes are far apart, requiring more cable, more trenching, and more labor for every single connection. Still, Obie did the math. If the telecom company and local government covered construction, he believed residents could sustain the system by paying about $100 a month to a local provider.

[Obie Riley]

And that would have been more than enough to service the debt. And not only that, but there's so much advertising dollars that goes over the Internet and it would probably be bringing the county some residual funds. It wasn't a fact of can we afford it? It's a fact that how could you not afford it?

[Dena Temple Raston]

Right. How could you not make it a priority?

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

Yeah.

[Obie Riley]

Yes, ma'.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Am.

[Obie Riley]

We can help our community and we can be the poster child for all the other rural and poor communities.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Right? But that somehow didn't win the day.

[Obie Riley]

Deaf ears. But without that Internet, that's a whole segment of people that's just being overlooked.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Then in the spring of 2020, Covid hit and the whole world moved online. But for millions of Americans, that was impossible. A whopping 16.9 million children under the age of 18 lack high speed Internet at home, a problem that has hit rural students in our country especially hard. Yesterday, I didn't enter our class and neither did the teacher because she didn't have Internet connection. And in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Internet at home wasn't a given. So people gathered where it was places like the library parking lot, especially our

[Obie Riley]

junior college kids and high school kids,

[Dena Temple Raston]

all type of weather kids gathered under streetlights to do their homework, fill out applications, write resumes. And the pandemic made clear Internet access really wasn't about streaming Netflix. It was suddenly the difference between school or no school. Telehealth or getting sick, remote work or no work. And for a moment, it felt like everyone could see it. How much of life depends on being connected? It took a global pandemic to make all that clear. But here's the thing. This wasn't the first time a crisis forced the country to reckon with who gets access and who doesn't. We've been here before, and each time the story plays out a little differently. That's when we come back. Stay with us.

[Podcast Sponsor/Announcer]

This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out odoo@o d o-o dot com. That's o d o o dot com.

[Dena Temple Raston]

How are weight loss drugs changing our world? In the span of just a few short years, weight loss jabs have become so prevalent in our culture that they've transformed the way we live, move and eat. Restaurants are serving smaller portions and there's more protein rich food in grocery stores. Does all of this speak to a renewed obsession with skinniness? Listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Obie Riley]

It is called Internet.

[Dena Temple Raston]

I use the world wide web information superhighway. Cybersecurity. Why do things go viral? Click here. Obi and people like him have been saying it for years. High speed Internet isn't a luxury. It's a utility, like electricity.

[Podcast Sponsor/Announcer]

Can't we ever have electricity?

[Dena Temple Raston]

In the 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression, most cities had electricity. But on the farm, fewer than 1 in 10 homes did. American farms face disaster. Electricity could be a big step in saving these farms. Money was scarce, and the arguments against expanding electricity across the country sounded familiar. Rural Americans said, without it, we're left behind. And utility companies said, it's too expensive to serve so few people so far apart. Eventually, the government and private industry joined forces. In 1985, a rural electrification program was signed by President Roosevelt. Thus was created the Rural Electrification Administration, commonly known as Rea. In 1936, the federal government began offering loans to bring power lines to places the market had ignored. FDR framed it not just as a quality of life improvement, but as an investment in the nation's future. And by 1950, rural America was quite literally lit. Electricity changed what it meant to participate in modern life. Nicole Turner Lee is the director of the center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. And she says, we've never taken the same comprehensive approach to broadband.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

We have this ping pong that we play when it comes to getting people connected to the Internet. Democratic administrations give more money towards programming. On the other side, we see Republican administrations pay more attention to infrastructure.

[Dena Temple Raston]

The result is a start stop strategy that never quite closes the gap. Because the Internet isn't treated like a public utility, companies tend to build where returns are fastest and most predictable. Like big cities, where customers are plentiful and infrastructure costs can be spread around many households. Which could explain why about a third of rural Americans don't have a home broadband subscription.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

And when you add on demographic characteristics, black Latinas, disabled, older Americans, the numbers just get increasingly larger with regards to who's not connected.

[Dena Temple Raston]

And there's a name for this. Digital redlining.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

Digital redlining was sort of based on the premise, much like housing redlining, that companies were essentially building in spaces where there was a return on investment. Companies could pick and choose where they wanted to build. And as a result, we've had a history of discrimination, particularly when it comes to black Americans.

[Dena Temple Raston]

For years, the gap persisted. And then when Covid hit, the problem was impossible to ignore. And it inspired a kind of urgency the country hasn't seen since the New Deal.

[Obie Riley]

We're back now with a push from

[Dena Temple Raston]

the White House to give every American home access to high speed Internet. The White House says providing high speed

[Obie Riley]

Internet is a necessity in today's society.

[Dena Temple Raston]

With rare bipartisan agreement, Congress set aside tens of billions of dollars to expand broadband nationwide. The program is known as beat, short for Broadband Equity Access and Deployment. And the goal is to extend high speed fiber to the last mile, reaching communities long bypassed by the digital economy. Places like Philadelphia, Mississippi. Another $3 billion, that's with a B was allocated to help people learn how to use the web safely. And additional funding was designated to make monthly service affordable for households that still couldn't pay the bill. Nicole has been working on this issue for decades now, decades of promises made and broken. But she says this felt different.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

During the Biden Harris administration. We saw the introduction of some of the largest amounts of resources committed to this issue. I mean, in my lifetime of doing this, of 30 plus years, we had not seen the type of monetary investment in both infrastructure as well as digital literacy and training than under the Biden Harris administration.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Democrats and Republicans worked together on the bill. But then just a few years later, somehow technology, just zeros and ones, got caught in the culture wars. They've canceled it. I got a termination notice. Angela Seifer is director of the National Digital Inclusion alliance. And she thought she had $25 million in a digital equity grant to help get rural Americans online. We thought we were getting this grant. So then you make plans around it, of course. But then President Trump called the Digital Equity act woke handouts based on race. So where were you when you found out that your grant had been canceled? I was at a tech group meeting for my local school district and I get a text from somebody in D.C. saying, Did you see the post? And Angela said, what post? And I didn't know what she was talking about. So I leave right away and call her and find out this terrible news. And then I went back to the group and I used some curse words and I left right away. The money was gone and so were some of her staffers. And that wasn't all. In June 2025, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick rewrote the rules. He said fiber optic cable was no longer a priority.

[Obie Riley]

If your state is willing to just be technologically agnostic, meaning produce the right

[Dena Temple Raston]

access at the lowest price or at the if it's technologically agnostic, it sounds fair. But Nicole Turner Lee at Brookings says it isn't.

[Nicole Turner Lee]

What's so interesting about today is that the push towards neutrality and technology has very little to do with meeting people where they're at. It's really trying to prefer that there is a technology called satellite that has the potential to solve the digital divide.

[Dena Temple Raston]

What she's talking about is a shift towards satellite Internet, and that shift has a clear winner. Nicole says it disproportionately benefits one company, Elon Musk's Starlink. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Starlink could win nearly half of all the available bead funding. So far, it's on track to receive more than 700 million. The change has left states scrambling. Many spent years planning for fiber networks, and now they're forced to go back and revise their plans. And Starlink, already in orbit, is ready to move immediately. We reached out to the Trump administration for an interview about this and they declined our request. Satellites might work for individual households, but Nicole says they can't sustain an entire community. And satellites weren't the only change the commerce secretary introduced until now. When Internet providers applied for federal funding, the government weighed a whole list of factors, like whether their plans were affordable. Now the only thing that seems to matter is who is asking for the least amount of federal money. Equity. Affordable bills no longer count for much. In fact, providers once had to offer at least one plan a middle class household could afford. That rule has been scrapped. Experts worry the result will be a two tier system satellite for those who can afford it and nothing for those who can't. And affording satellite. Obie Riley in Mississippi knows something about that. When he couldn't get fiber into his area and his Verizon plan wasn't working, he shelled out $1,500 to set up Starlink connections.

[Obie Riley]

One for home, one for the farm.

[Dena Temple Raston]

And he pays another $120 per month for this subscription. For now, that's his only option. But it's an option many people in Philadelphia, Mississippi simply can't afford.

[Obie Riley]

Does a working mom that's working to put food on the table with one or two or five kids have 600 bucks that they could spend to get this thing? No, I would say not.

[Dena Temple Raston]

And when you zoom out, this starts to feel less like an isolated problem and more like a pattern. We've seen it before with electricity, with telephones, and now with broadband, a new technology arrives. It changes everything. But access to it, that comes later. And not for everyone. Because the Internet isn't just a convenience anymore. It's infrastructure. It's how you go to school, how you see a doctor, how you apply for a job or keep one. Which means the cost of being disconnected keeps going up. So once again, the country is facing a familiar who gets in and who gets left out. Coming up on Friday, there may be another way to answer that question. Not just a better version of what we have, but something different. Because in some places, people aren't waiting for the Internet to arrive, they're building it themselves. And that raises a different set of questions. Not just about access, but about control. Who gets to build the network? Who owns it? And who decides who gets connected? Who?

[Obie Riley]

That was a huge eye opening moment for this whole group of people, like watching the individuals in this community change their own destiny.

[Dena Temple Raston]

So what happens when a community takes that power for itself? That's coming up on Friday. This is Qlik here.

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

Looking for more of the cybersecurity and intelligence coverage you get on Click here, then check out our sister publication the Record. From Recorded Future News. You'll get breaking cyber news from reporters in New York, Washington, London and Kyiv, among others. And you'll see for yourself why it attracts hundreds of thousands of page views every month. Just go to the Record.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Here's what you need to know about the tech world this week. It's Tuesday, March 31st. Meta is facing a major legal blow over child safety. Meta has been ordered to pay $375 million for child safety violations in New Mexico. It's the first standalone case by a state against the social media giant. A jury in New Mexico found that Facebook and Instagram failed to protect children from predators and misled users about how safe their platforms really are. The case began with an undercover investigation. The state's Attorney General's office created a fake profile posing as a 13 year old girl. They say it didn't take long for that account to be flooded with explicit images and messages from a adults. Jurors concluded that Meta knowingly violated consumer protection laws. The penalty? Nearly $400 million in damages. Meta says it plans to appeal and this isn't happening in isolation. Just one day later, a separate jury in California found that Meta and Google designed their platforms in ways that intentionally encourage addiction. Both companies are are appealing that ruling too. Taken together, these cases are starting to feel like something bigger. Some say it could be a public reckoning for social media. Echoing the lawsuits that were leveled against Big Tobacco decades ago. Next, lawmakers are taking aim at the infrastructure behind AI.

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

We are announcing legislation to impose a moratorium on the construction of new AI data centers until strong national safeguards are in place.

[Dena Temple Raston]

Place A new bill from progressive lawmakers would put a hold on AI data center construction across the country. The idea is simple. Slow things down long enough to understand the risks and put guardrails in place. Because demand for AI is exploding, so is the need for massive data centers to power it. But communities are pushing back. So far, at least 36 projects have been delayed or canceled amid concern about rising electricity costs, strain on local power grids, and environmental impact. The White House, meanwhile, is signaling a different approach, encouraging innovation and cautioning against heavy regulation. That divide makes the bill a long shot in Congress. For now, it's less about a policy that will pass and more of a signal of growing anxiety in the country about where AI is headed. It's been a busy week for Iranian hackers. Just into the newsroom, FBI Director Kash Patel targeted by Iranian back hackers. The Department of Justice confirming that Patel's emails and photos have been published online. Federal authorities say a pro Iranian hacking group breached the personal email account of FBI Director Kash Patel. The group, known as Handela, posted private emails, photos and other personal information online. They say it's in retaliation for U.S. moves against their network. The FBI said no classified or government systems were compromised. Still, the incident has raised alarms. The US is now offering a $10 million reward for information on members of the group and on an Iranian tech company believed to be supporting their operations. Handela is also claiming responsibility for a series of recent cyber attacks, including one targeting a major medical device company. Those claims haven't been fully verified, but officials say this kind of activity was expected. As tensions with Iran rise, so does the likelihood of cyber attacks. And finally, an outage that left thousands of drivers stuck. Intoxalock is investigating a cybersecurity event that was recently identified impacting our ability to service customers. A cyber attack on Intoxalock, one of the largest providers of court mandated breathalyzer devices, left drivers across 46 states unable to start their cars. These devices require users to pass a breath test before the ignition will work. But when the company's systems went down, so did their ability to calibrate those devices. And without calibration, the cars simply wouldn't start. Some drivers had to tow their vehicles. Others risked falling out of compliance with court orders. The company says no personal data was compromised and it's offering deadline extensions and waiving certain fees. Still, the disruption highlights a growing issue. As cars become more connected and more dependent on software, they also become more vulnerable. And when those systems fail, it's not just inconvenient, it can leave people stranded. Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and prx. Today's show was written and produced by Megan Dietre, Sean Powers, Erica Gaeda, Zach Hirsch, and Casey Giorgi. It was edited by Karen Duffin and and Sarah Covedo, and Fact Checked by Darren Ancrum. Original music is by Ben Levingston, with additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley, our illustrator is Megan Gough, and our sound designers and engineers are Jake Cook and Jesse Niswonger. Find us on X or Facebook at Click Here. Show or leave us a voice message at 6615CHTalk. Sometimes we'll turn those moments into reporting, sometimes into a conversation, and sometimes into a future story you'll hear on this show. I'm Dena Temple Raston, and thanks for listening.

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