Crypto in Kentucky: The next extraction

Summary

Podcast Summary: Click Here

Episode Title: Crypto in Kentucky: The Next Extraction
Air Date: January 6, 2026
Host: Dina Temple-Raston, Recorded Future News

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Overview

This episode delves into the transformation of Eastern Kentucky’s economy through the lens of digital extraction—namely, the rise and fall of cryptocurrency mining in a region long defined by coal. Host Dina Temple-Raston and her team explore how the promise of jobs and prosperity from crypto has unfolded, drawing parallels to coal's historical influence and its boom-and-bust legacy. The episode also explores the emerging hype around artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and whether Kentucky's cycle of hope and exploitation is set to repeat itself.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Kentucky’s Emotional Connection to Mining

• Crypto mining arrives in Kentucky, finding a unique resonance in a region defined by generations of coal mining.
  • Anna Weitz (lawyer):
    “Mining. This is a different kind of mining, but that’s a very emotional word for eastern Kentucky because of the generations of coal miners.” [06:56]
  • The culture and historic identity tied to mining primes locals to be receptive to new forms of “extraction.”

2. Coal Legacy and Economic Decline

• The heyday of coal: bustling towns, economic activity, relentless extraction by outside companies often at locals’ expense.
  • Commodore Long (Wolf County News editor):
    “All these companies came in, stripped the coal, stripped the hills, tore them up and by an acre of ground that was probably would produce I don’t know how many tons of coal for a dollar an acre.” [08:40]
  • Trust betrayed, land and communities left damaged post-boom.

3. Crypto Mining as the "Next Big Thing"

• Crypto’s promise: jobs, investment, a reason for young people to stay. The community’s hope gets tied up in the hype.
  • Dina Temple-Raston:
    “Crypto mining swept into eastern Kentucky with the swagger of a tech boom. It promised jobs, investment—a reason for young people to stay.” [03:55]
  • Speculative mania spurred by celebrities and quick-rich stories (Super Bowl ads, rapid money success stories)
• Crypto miners seek places with cheap, abundant power—Kentucky’s coal-powered infrastructure makes it ideal.
  • Explanation of bitcoin mining’s power intensity and the logic behind Kentucky’s appeal.

4. The Gold Rush... and Bust

• Arrival of foreign crypto companies, facilitated by locals like Anna Weitz.
  • Anna Weitz:
    “Some Chinese company called me and said, we’ve seen that you do this…would you help us talk to the county and negotiate?” [12:19]
• Mohawk Energy: a poster-child for the dream turned sour—promoting jobs and training for ex-coal miners and veterans, only to leave people unemployed amidst lawsuits and accusations after a brief period of success.
  • Anna Weitz:
    “The plan with Mohawk was to employ retired coal miners and disabled veterans…28 families did very well for the 18 months it was open.” [14:55, 15:20]
  • “I believe most of them are unemployed again.” [15:27]
• Rate hikes, persistent poverty, and allegations of “false promises” remain as crypto companies move on.

5. Cycles of Extraction and Disappointment

• Economic booms—coal, hemp, crypto—tend to benefit outsiders over the locals, echoing a repeated pattern.
  • Anna Weitz:
    “That land, those hills have a long, deep history of being abused and pillaged. I hate that.” [16:13]

6. AI Data Centers: The Next Promise

• Crypto gives way to the AI boom as the next economic hope.
• Local economic leaders weigh the potential benefits and risks:
  • Colby Kirk (One East Kentucky):
    “Maybe a data center or something is part of the puzzle.” [21:25]
  • AI data centers promise high-paying tech jobs but require massive infrastructure; questions remain about sustainability and long-term benefits.
  • Colby Kirk:
    “Are these data centers going to keep taking up million square feet…or are we going to be left with an abundance of warehouse or industrial-scale buildings that we won’t be able to keep up? …He was honest with me and said, I don’t know.” [22:03]

7. Local Skepticism and Environmental Concerns

• Residents like Nina McCoy express deep skepticism, seeing a pattern of exploitation and environmental degradation.
  • Nina McCoy:
    “If they’re putting it here, then that means it’s bad. You put those things that you don’t want in your neighborhood in a place like this. … You put it in a place where the people are poor, desperate, and they just have to live with it.” [22:53]
    • “We’ve allowed these people to be called job creators... They're not job creators. They're profit makers.” [23:33]
• Environmental worries: AI centers’ voracious appetite for electricity and water, with infrastructure possibly unable to cope.
  • Dina Temple-Raston:
    “AI queries are estimated to require 10 times the electricity of traditional Google ones. … Rural areas with aging infrastructure have seen rate hikes. … And then there’s water.” [24:05]

8. Crypto’s Lingering Ghost

• Ongoing lawsuits and arbitration over failed crypto ventures; hope persists despite setbacks because bitcoin’s price continues to climb.
  • Anna Weitz:
    “Since we talked...the price of bitcoin has gone up. … Some people are hopeful that President Trump’s crypto obsession might be the extra nudge bitcoin mining companies need.” [27:02]
• The sound and presence of mining persist—the Artemis Power facility continues to operate.
  • Zach Hirsch, measuring noise:
    “70 A-weighted decibels. That’s loud, like standing next to a taxiing airplane loud. … Imagine what that’s like, 24/7.” [27:37]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Mining...that's a very emotional word for eastern Kentucky because of the generations of coal miners."
  — Anna Weitz [06:56]

• “We trusted people... We usually trust people till they prove it to us otherwise.”
  — Commodore Long [09:04]

• “Everything that's popular and valuable gets stolen away. That land, those hills have a long, deep history of being abused and pillaged. And I hate that.”
  — Anna Weitz [16:13]

• “If they’re putting it here, then that means it’s bad...You put those things that you don’t want in your neighborhood in a place like this...”
  — Nina McCoy [22:53]

• “They're not job creators. They're profit makers.”
  — Nina McCoy [23:33]

• “We don’t know what the future is going to hold when it comes to this stuff.”
  — Colby Kirk [22:39]

• “The Artemis Powertech miners in Campton never stop. Not at night, not on Sundays...to some, it is the sound of a new digital future. For others, it sounds like history repeating itself.”
  — Dina Temple-Raston [28:08]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Mining & Kentucky’s Identity: 03:49–07:14
• Coal Legacy & Economic Impact: 08:02–09:12
• Crypto Comes to Kentucky — the Hype: 10:02–12:08
• Foreign Crypto Investors & Local Facilitation: 12:08–13:55
• Mohawk Energy & Failed Promises: 14:27–15:30
• Patterns of Exploitation: 16:13–16:34
• AI Data Centers: Kentucky’s New Hype: 16:46–22:03
• Local Skepticism & Environmental Impact: 22:53–25:10
• Ongoing Crypto Legal Disputes & Hope: 26:01–27:02
• Artemis Power Facility — Measuring the Noise: 27:33–28:08

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Tone and Style

The episode weaves field reporting with a reflective, empathetic tone. The hosts and interviewees speak candidly and often emotionally about community, loss, hope, and skepticism—eschewing tech jargon for accessible storytelling grounded in place and history.

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Conclusion

"Crypto in Kentucky: The Next Extraction" vividly captures a region’s search for relevance and resilience in the face of rapid technological and economic shifts. Drawing stark lines between past and present, the episode questions whether new waves of “extraction”—first coal, then crypto, now AI—will finally bring prosperity to Eastern Kentucky, or merely repeat old cycles of exploitation and disappointment.

Transcript

[Dina Templewrest]

From recorded future news and prx, this is click here. Hey, it's Dena. So we've been hinting at it for months, but here's the big reveal. Starting this week, public radio stations across the country from Minnesota to Kentucky to Michigan will begin airing a new show from our team. The Click Here show is a once a week hour long program built around everything you've come to expect from us. Deep reporting, driveway moments, and more stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. We're genuinely thrilled to be bringing Click Here to a wider audience. And if you don't hear us on your local NPR station yet, you can help let them know that you'd like them to pick us up. The podcast, by the way, isn't going anywhere. What you miss on the radio will still show up in the feed starting next week. One of the inaugural public radio stations is Weku in eastern Kentucky. And last spring we traveled to that part of the state to report on the region's crypto mining boom. Since the collapse of coal, eastern Kentucky has lived through a long line of promised revivals. Crypto mining was supposed to be the next one, but now the mines are powering down and investors are hoping AI data centers will fill the void. Take a listen. We're about 60 miles east of Lexington, Kentucky, deep in the Red River Gorge north. It's after dark and we're walking along this little creek at the bottom of a hollow. Tall hills dense with blue green shadows of the trees. It smells like moss. And bats are flying overhead. This little bat.

[Colby Kirk]

Yeah, of bats.

[Dina Templewrest]

Out here, the city falls away. There are no street lights, no traffic, just us and the geese. Then we drive a little way down the road where the quiet begins to fray. So we're walking along Little Bend Road and there's a big substation here. And then just around the corner maybe you can start to hear it. There's the bitcoin mining. A bitcoin mining center. It's a hundred yards ahead of us, tucked into the velvety folds of the Kentucky hills. A half circle of shipping containers, eight of them, and they're wrapped in chain link. And there are two guards and pickup trucks outside. This is one of many bitcoin mining centers in the area. They've popped up all over eastern Kentucky in the past few years, drawn here by something unexpected, something buried in the state's past. It turns out this part of the country is ideal for crypto mining because it was once ideal for coal mining. Same infrastructure, same power lines, just a different kind of extraction going on not in the hills, but in these centers. But this isn't a story about noise. It's about signals. Signals of a new industry, one that claims it's here to save what coal left behind. This is the sound of a region known for mining falling in love with it all over again, though this time the pickaxes are algorithms.

[Anna Weitz]

People are happy with mining, comfortable with mining, see mining as a savior.

[Dina Templewrest]

There's something seductive about that idea. It's like the past didn't die, it just updated its software. I'm Dena Templewrestin, and this is Click Here. We tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. Today, a story from the hills of Kentucky, where coal is mostly gone, but the idea of extraction never really left. Four years ago, cryptocurrency mining swept into eastern Kentucky with the swagger of a tech boom. It promised jobs, investment, a reason for young people to stay. We spent four days chasing that promise, past shuttered mines, empty storefronts, and towns where the post office doubles as a community center, and we were chasing what sounded like a fairy tale. But what we found felt more like a parable. Stay with us. Support for Click Here comes from Quince. Quince has you covered with luxe essentials that look polished and feel effortless at prices you can actually afford. From the stitching to the fit to the fabrics, the quality is clear, so you'll be able to wear their styles season after season. My Quince suede slip ons have become a staple for me. They're comfortable, attractive, and I get compliments on them all the time. But Quince isn't just about shoes. They have everything soft mongolian cashmere sweaters, 100% silk top tops, perfectly cut denim and Italian wool coats. All premium materials produced in ethical, trusted factories and priced far below other luxury brands. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com clickhere for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com clickhere to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com clickhere taking care of your eyes.

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[Dina Templewrest]

For more to future news, this is Click here. I'm Dina Templewrest. The promise of crypto mining lands in a different way in Kentucky than it might somewhere else.

[Anna Weitz]

Mining. This is a different kind of mining, but that's a very emotional word for eastern Kentucky because of the generations of coal miners.

[Dina Templewrest]

This is Anna Weitz, she's a lawyer in Frankfort, Kentucky.

[Recorded Future Narrator]

Wow.

[Dina Templewrest]

I hadn't even thought of the emotional resonance of mining.

[Anna Weitz]

It is, it is so important to people. It is. The tradition is I was a coal miner. I am a coal mining family. Even though this is by a computer, they understand the idea of using resources to make something that helps people for money.

[Dina Templewrest]

For generations Kentucky coal miners worked underground, often in danger, all to keep the lights on for the rest of us. And in the process, they became a kind of American archetype, a symbol of grit, of muscle, of the industrial machine that built America. Appalachian coal was king right up until the 1990s. At its peak, it was one of the biggest industries in America.

[Commodore Long]

The roads were lined with trucks, coal trucks, 18 wheelers, 12 what we call tri axles. And it's all the way from here to hazard either coming down or going back to to get another load or come a down with a load.

[Dina Templewrest]

This is Commodore Long, the 79 year old editor of the Wolf County News.

[Commodore Long]

It's a boom town as far as coal was concerned. It was really booming.

[Dina Templewrest]

Booming most of all for the coal companies. They seemed to know what Kentucky's hills were worth far better than the people who actually lived on them. And they took advantage of that.

[Commodore Long]

All these companies came in, stripped the coal, stripped the hills, tore them up and by an acre of ground that was probably would produce I don't know how many tons of coal for a dollar an acre.

[Dina Templewrest]

A dollar in exchange for land that would go on to mint millionaires and leave the people who sold it with little more than dust.

[Commodore Long]

We trusted people, that's one thing in my view anyway. We usually trust people till they prove it to us otherwise.

[Dina Templewrest]

But that trust came at a cost. By the time the coal boom went bust and companies left town, the hills were stripped bare, flattened, gouged and left for dead. Streams ran orange with mine runoff. Some of the trees never came back. The economy unraveled, most of the jobs, the pensions the future coal promised, gone. Which may explain why when crypto came Calling about four years ago, promising something new that sounded familiar people around here listened to. And they weren't the only ones to be taken in by this new new thing.

[Colby Kirk]

Have you ever heard of bitcoin?

[Dina Templewrest]

It's a digital currency that's gaining popularity.

[Zach Hirsch]

It exists only online.

[Dina Templewrest]

Celebrities like Matt Damon were pitching it during the Super Bowl.

[Zach Hirsch]

Fortune favors the brave.

[Dina Templewrest]

Ftx.

[Colby Kirk]

It's a safe and easy way to get into crypto.

[Zach Hirsch]

Working with crypto has never been easier.

[Dina Templewrest]

Come on, granny. People were getting rich off it.

[Unidentified Local Expert]

Dylan Fine is living the dream.

[Zach Hirsch]

I turned $350 into $12,000.

[Dina Templewrest]

And then at the height of all this buzz, a totally unexpected thing happened. Countries started banning crypto mining because of the amount of energy it consumed. Even China, which at one point was the source of almost 70% of the cryptocurrency mining in the world, banned it in 2021. So what exactly is bitcoin mining? It's basically a race between thousands of computers competing to solve a kind of math puzzle. They're all trying to guess a secret number one that unlocks the next block in something called the blockchain, which is bitcoin's immutable digital ledger. The thing about bitcoin mining is that it's pure trial and error. Guess, wrong, guess again, wrong. And this happens millions of times until the first computer that guesses it right in return wins some bitcoin. And then the whole thing starts over. This process keeps the bitcoin system running, but it uses a ton of electricity, which is why crypto miners are always chasing the cheapest power they can find. And this is where, quite unexpectedly, Kentucky came in. In a million years, did you think that you would get involved with cryptocurrency cases?

[Anna Weitz]

I did not. In fact, I'm a skeptic. I did not understand how it worked and how it made money. But anything that would provide jobs and training people for careers that they could do, I'm very passionate about that.

[Dina Templewrest]

This is Anna Weitz again, and she has become a kind of go to lawyer for crypto in Appalachia. Foreign companies found her by googling on two occasions.

[Anna Weitz]

Some a Chinese company called me and said, we've seen that you do this. We see that you have a translator available in your office. Would you help us talk to the county and negotiate?

[Dina Templewrest]

Funny thing about progress, it doesn't always blaze a new trail. Sometimes it follows the old ones, wires and all. Kentucky, it turns out, was practically pre wired for a crypto boom, thanks to the ghosts of coal back in the Days of coal. When a company discovered a promising seam, it didn't just dig. It built a town. Houses, stores, schools, all orbiting around a single mine. And because coal requires so much energy, they built power lines, too. Big ones with substations and transformers, which, as fate would have it, crypto miners need too. By some estimates, to mine a single bitcoin, you can burn through as much energy as an average US household uses in about 47 days. When China banned crypto in 2021, effectively outlawing more than half the global bitcoin market overnight, bitcoin miners had to move fast. They needed land, they needed power. And Kentucky had both. But it also had something else, something hard to quantify, A kind of brand recognition rooted in American mythology. A place where bourbon flows and horses run. Kentucky was part of America that Chinese bitcoin miners thought they understood.

[Anna Weitz]

Kentucky is heavy into tourism because of the bourbon, because of the horses. And so I think it was a state that people abroad thought of. When they thought of America, they thought Kentucky. Oh, yeah, we've seen a horse or the derby or bourbon. And so it felt more familiar to them.

[Dina Templewrest]

That was the X factor. So companies came, some small, some splashy, and at least one with a pitch that sounded more like satire than strategy. What if we burned trash to power the bitcoin mining?

[Anna Weitz]

Unfortunately, incinerating the garbage did not produce as much power. Shocking. No one did not produce as much power as they needed.

[Dina Templewrest]

And then there was Mohawk. A new company focused on technology repair has opened its doors in Jenkins, Kentucky. Mohawk Energy is training people to repair everything from iPads to bitcoin mines. Everything about it sounded like happily ever after.

[Anna Weitz]

The plan with Mohawk was to employ retired coal miners and disabled veterans who were back in eastern Kentucky and couldn't find work and train them.

[Dina Templewrest]

Mohawk promised training and technical skills that they could use beyond just crypto pay that exceeded expectations. They built a 42,000 square foot facility. And for a time, it was as good as it all sounded.

[Anna Weitz]

28 families did very well for the 18 months it was open.

[Dina Templewrest]

And what are they doing now, do you know?

[Anna Weitz]

I believe most of them are unemployed again.

[Dina Templewrest]

Wow. After a little more than a year, the dream began to crack. Accusations flew. There were electrical problems, unpaid rent, questions about who owned the bitcoin mining machines. Lawsuits followed. There were whispers about false promises about whether Mohawk could ever do what it said it would do. Other crypto mining facilities followed them out the door, leaving only higher electric bills in their wake. Rates driven up by power hungry crypto machines. All that hype and hope finally died down until the Kentucky night sounds were all you could hear again.

[Anna Weitz]

I think that not just in terms of coal, but in every resource eastern Kentucky has ever had. I think that has happened over and over. Everything that's popular and valuable gets stolen away. That land, those hills have a long, deep history of being abused and pillaged. And I hate that.

[Dina Templewrest]

But then in recent months, a familiar tune started to play in Kentucky. Same song, different words. Not coal, not crypto. People started talking about AI.

[Unidentified Local Expert]

Bitcoin is a one trick pony. You know, you create it. The only person that gets paid is the owner of the machines. Okay, there's no benefit after that. But AI is in everything that we do. Siri, like chat, GPT, like robotics, like everything you can imagine has to have AI. If you can create a key bunch of data centers in Eastern Kentucky, all the AI people in the world will want to relocate their businesses in those areas. And boom. It just creates a euphoria. A perfect deal for everything to start growing.

[Dina Templewrest]

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[Recorded Future Narrator]

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[Dina Templewrest]

Chatgpt AI Machine. Satellite Engine ignition. Click here and lift up. Colby Kirk has been in eastern Kentucky long enough to recognize the sales pitch. He's the president and CEO of One East Kentucky. It's a regional nonprofit focused on economic development.

[Colby Kirk]

We serve a nine county area here in the far eastern part of Kentucky, formerly kind of the heart of the coal fields.

[Dina Templewrest]

He's watched ideas come and go. Hemp farming, auto parts, solar farms, prisons, and yes, bitcoin. They all promised jobs, stability, a future. And then back in April, at a statewide economic conference, a new promise took center stage. Artificial intelligence.

[Colby Kirk]

I had some site selection consultants that were on a panel and they were talking about data centers, and they talked about, you know, could our communities prepare for some of these kinds of investments? And the consultant was like, here's kind of what it takes.

[Dina Templewrest]

The consultants explained what a data center could mean for towns like Hampton or Iness. If built out properly, they said it could mean tech jobs that pay over $100,000 a year. With the AI boom, data centers are in high demand. So this could mean steady and even growing local investment. And for Colby, it clicked.

[Colby Kirk]

You know, maybe a data center or something is a part of the puzzle.

[Dina Templewrest]

Kentucky already had the bones of data centers from crypto. So just like coal mining paved the way for crypto, crypto seems to be paving the way for AI. And data centers don't just need software engineers. They need welders, H vac techs, electricians, all of which Kentucky has in spades. While it all sounded so promising, Colby has seen this movie before. So he sat through the pitch, and when the Q A time came, he.

[Colby Kirk]

Took the mic and I asked, you know, what are the long term trends of this? Are these data centers going to keep taking up million square feet, buildings with 30 and 40 foot ceilings, or are we going to be left with an abundance of, you know, warehouse or, you know, industrial scale buildings that we won't be able to keep up? And so he didn't really have a great answer for that question. He was honest with me and said, I don't know. You know, and that's the thing. We don't know what the future is going to hold when it comes to this stuff.

[Dina Templewrest]

And that uncertainty is exactly why people like Nina McCoy are skeptical. Nina lives in Ines, and she was Colby's high school biology teacher. She still teaches in a way, though. Now it's about patterns.

[Nina McCoy]

This is going to sound awful, but if they're putting it Here, then that means it's bad. We've lived here long enough to see that that is how it works. You put those things that you don't want in your neighborhood in a place like this, you put it in a place where the people are poor, desperate, and they just have to live with it.

[Dina Templewrest]

To some people here, the boom always seems to belong to someone else.

[Nina McCoy]

You know, they call it boom and bust, but. But it's just a little boom for a few people. We've allowed these people to be called job creators. And I don't care if it's AI or crypto or whatever, we bow down to them and let them tell us what they are going to do to our community, because they are job creators. They're not job creators. They're profit makers.

[Dina Templewrest]

And even the profits come with a cost. AI data centers are power hungry. Goldman Sachs did a study on just how much electricity these large language models use. And AI queries are estimated to require 10 times the electricity of traditional Google ones. And all that consumption has ripple effects. Rural areas with aging infrastructure have seen rate hikes. They could face rolling blackouts. Because when it's AI versus the local gym or bakery for power, the algorithm tends to win. And then there's water. To stay cool, the centers draw hundreds of thousands of gallons a day. And what goes back isn't what came out. It's warmer, sometimes chemically altered. So when it leaves the data center and goes back out into the wild, it might change the streams, the fish, the soil. And Nina says the water systems they have now already aren't that great and might not be able to stand the strain.

[Nina McCoy]

I am trying to get safe, affordable, reliable water for our community.

[Dina Templewrest]

And is there not safe, reliable water in the community?

[Nina McCoy]

I'd say reliability and affordability are our biggest problems. There are a lot of breaks in the water system. There's. The system is old. The system was put together very quickly during the time that mining was going on. And a system that was built in 1968 for about 600 homes within this small town, which is the county seat now has been expanded to cover the entire county with 3,400 homes.

[Dina Templewrest]

And while some parts of Kentucky are considering a new AI future, the crypto past isn't really past. It's still working its way through the court system. That big Mohawk crypto project, it went into arbitration in May, and a single.

[Anna Weitz]

Arbitrator decides whether they breach the contract. We breach the contract, Nobody breached. Everyone breached. And then which damages go to which side?

[Dina Templewrest]

And do you get the sense that, because when all this sort of went down, I think the value of bitcoin was around 64,000.

[Anna Weitz]

Yes.

[Dina Templewrest]

And now it's about 80,000. Do you get the sense that they might be more interested in restarting things here?

[Anna Weitz]

I am hopeful. I always feel like you have to get to the very eve of trial or hearing before the parties will meaningfully negotiate. I am very hopeful that they sit down and say, mighty nice plant you have there. Let's just go ahead and turn it on and start.

[Dina Templewrest]

Since we talked to Anna Weitz, the price of bitcoin has gone up. It's now trading at a little over 100,000. And some people are hopeful that President Trump's crypto obsession might be the extra nudge. Bitcoin mining companies need hope. After all, is is what gets sold here over and over again. Just outside Campton, the Artemis Power mining operation. Those shipping containers with the computers inside continues to roar.

[Recorded Future Narrator]

Do you have your phone?

[Commodore Long]

Got it.

[Anna Weitz]

Okay.

[Colby Kirk]

Yeah.

[Dina Templewrest]

That's producer Zach Hirsch. He downloaded an app so we could measure just how loud the data centers are. We take a measurement, 70 a weighted decibels. That's loud like standing next to a taxiing airplane loud. We're about 100 yards away from it and you can still hear it. Imagine what that's like 24.

[Anna Weitz]

7.

[Dina Templewrest]

The Artemis Powertech miners in Campton never stop. Not at night, not on Sundays. And to some, it is the sound of a new digital future. For others, it sounds like history repeating itself. Because for all their efforts to create jobs in these hills, the future keeps arriving in eastern Kentucky. But it never seems to stay. This is Click here.

[Zach Hirsch]

Today's episode was written and produced by Megan Dietry, Sean Powers, Erica Gaeda, Dina Temple Rastin and me, Zach Hirsch. I was the lead producer. Field reporting by Dina Temple Rastin and me. The episode was edited by Karen Duffin, Fact Checked by Darren Ankrum and contains original music by Ben Levington with some other music from Blue Dot sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley and our illustrator is Megan Gough. Martin Peralta and Jesse Niswonger do our sound design and engineering. Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and prx. Tune in Friday for Mic Drop, which features our favorite interview of the week. We'll see you then.

[Nina McCoy]

Support for this program comes from Recorded Future. In cybersecurity, the biggest risk isn't what can be seen, it's what gets missed. Recorded Future analyzes billions of signals to help organizations stay ahead of threats. Recorded Future Know what matters.

[Recorded Future News Promoter]

Act first 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 therecord Media.