Assad Ramzan Ali (2:23)

A series of farm fields along Highway 370 in St. Charles could soon be.

Dena Templewest (2:27)

Transformed into a Data Center. A 440 acre data center to be built on the edge of residential St. Charles. Unless Scott had something to say about it.

Scott Stratton Henderson (2:38)

I wanted to make sure that this thing didn't go up in St. Charles because I have always thought of St. Charles as a place worth fighting for.

Dena Templewest (2:49)

He didn't know it yet, but he was about to launch a small revolution against one of the biggest industries on the planet.

Scott Stratton Henderson (2:56)

Don't get me wrong, I think St. Charles, we would love to be open for business, but it really has to be smart development, not reckless development.

Dena Templewest (3:07)

I'm Dena templewest and this is Click Here we tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. This week, the cloud that far off place storing our data isn't in the sky at all. It's all down here in buildings filled with humming servers that gobble up power and land. As artificial intelligence explodes, those buildings are multiplying, and they're starting to make their way into places like St. Charles. And in many cases, big tech isn't getting a warm welcome, it's getting a fight.

Scott Stratton Henderson (3:42)

You know, I'm only 20 years old, but I've not seen something that has riled a community so much.

Dena Templewest (3:51)

Stay with us.

Erica Ga (3:53)

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.

Dena Templewest (4:20)

From recorded future news. This is Click here. Scott Stratton Henderson was 20 when the data center fike came to town. And it seemed absurd on the face of it that he could take on big tech and win. He didn't have experience or connections. What he did have, though, was passion. Passion for the place that raised him. St. Charles, Missouri.

Erica Ga (4:45)

For fun and adventure close to home, visit St. Charles, Missouri.

Dena Templewest (4:48)

Discover unique shops. It's the kind of place you'd expect to find on the Hallmark channel.

Scott Stratton Henderson (4:53)

A little cliche, but it's kind of what you'd see in the movies. You know, kids still go outside and whatnot, ride their bikes, all that sort of thing.

Dena Templewest (5:02)

It's all waiting for you. Shop, dine, stay, play.

Erica Ga (5:05)

Discover.

Dena Templewest (5:06)

St. Charles, Missouri. Strolling down Main street, you pass coffee shops, boutiques, a tavern. The town predates the country itself. It was once part of French territory.

Scott Stratton Henderson (5:19)

I think we're one of the first major towns ever created. So it's very old, but it's also very charming.

Dena Templewest (5:27)

So the thought of a massive data center landing in the middle of that, it just felt wrong to Scott. Not just that it was coming to St. Charles in the first place, but where in St. Charles they wanted to put it.

Scott Stratton Henderson (5:39)

The biggest controversy surrounding it and the biggest reason why I had a problem with it was the location.

Dena Templewest (5:46)

The proposed site was ringed by houses and small farms, the kind of place people move to when they've chosen quiet over convenience.

Scott Stratton Henderson (5:55)

About 500ft away from the data center. Literally, those people have to walk out every morning and see that massive thing right next to their house.

Dena Templewest (6:04)

What's more, data centers are notoriously loud.

Scott Stratton Henderson (6:08)

You get noise and sound pollution. Data centers are known to have that kind of low Humming sound.

Dena Templewest (6:15)

According to some reports, that sound can travel up to two and a half miles. And even if you could wave off the noise or the sight lines, what Scott said couldn't be dismissed was what lay beneath the proposed building site.

Scott Stratton Henderson (6:29)

St. Charles. We already have a hell of an issue with our water and our wellhead district, which is where they were going.

Dena Templewest (6:36)

To put this thing, their wellhead district. While other towns draw their water from reservoirs, St. Charles Drinks from the ground its aquifer. And that aquifer had already been through a lot. The city of St. Charles is taking action, conducting its own investigation into water contamination at the city's Elm Point well field. A few years back, toxic chemicals seeped into the groundwater from a nearby electrical plant, forcing the city to shut down six of its seven wells. Now residents were being asked to trust that the next big project wouldn't make things worse. And this one comes with a new kind of risk, diesel fuel.

Scott Stratton Henderson (7:16)

One of the parts of this proposal was supposed to put a million gallons of diesel fuel as a backup power option on top of the wellhead as well. St. Charles and Missouri in general is a huge tornado prone area.

Dena Templewest (7:35)

Eastern Missouri isn't just tornado country. It also sits on a fault line. If one of those backup tanks ruptured by storm, quake, or simple human error, it wouldn't take much to turn a precaution into a catastrophe.

Scott Stratton Henderson (7:49)

You know, we're one natural disaster away from being a complete, complete and utter contamination event happening.

Dena Templewest (7:56)

And the risk didn't end there. Data centers can consume astonishing amounts of water to cool their servers, roughly up to 5 million gallons a day. And they gobble up huge amounts of electricity, driving up local bills and carbon emissions. Some local utility bills in states like Virginia jumped as much as 25% after data centers moved in. And Scott didn't want that kind of future for St. Charles. His first thought was to start a petition and get signatures door to door. But there wasn't time. The city council was set to vote on the center just a few weeks later.

Scott Stratton Henderson (8:33)

You know, there's no way I could have gotten a huge amount of signatures with just doing your traditional door knocking and paper and ink signatures, right?

Dena Templewest (8:43)

So he opted for a little 21st century technology.

Scott Stratton Henderson (8:47)

I started the petition against it with the Change.org petition.

Dena Templewest (8:53)

It was a shot in the dark because Scott wasn't sure anyone would care because as a general matter, St. Charles tends to be conservative and pro business. But he tried to push that out of his mind and he hit submit. Then he began to share the link to Trying to get at least a few signatures.

Scott Stratton Henderson (9:11)

I really just started with my parents. I shared it with them. They shared with their friends on Facebook.

Dena Templewest (9:18)

He stepped away from his computer, and when he came back a day later.

Scott Stratton Henderson (9:22)

It multiplies, multiplies, multiplies. And then I think within the first 24 hours, he got over 500 signatures.

Dena Templewest (9:31)

Two weeks later, more than 7,000.

Scott Stratton Henderson (9:35)

So it. It all happened really quick.

Dena Templewest (9:38)

A college kid had just sparked a movement. David versus Goliath, armed not with a slingshot, but a change.org wink. And the giant on the other side of the screen was about to take notice. Stay with us. Do you ever feel like you blinked.

Scott Stratton Henderson (10:11)

Your eyes and then woke up in some kind of sci fi movie?

Cara Price (10:15)

Suddenly it seems like the very existence of AI is changing everything, including our relationships.

Dena Templewest (10:21)

I would like to think that I.

Scott Stratton Henderson (10:23)

Could not fall in love with an AI companion, but I really think that anybody could. I'm OS Veloson.

Cara Price (10:29)

And I'm Cara Price.

Scott Stratton Henderson (10:30)

We break down the tech news. You really need to know, listen to tech stuff in the iHeartRadio app, Apple.

Dena Templewest (10:35)

Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When Scott put his petition online, the city council was weeks out from voting on the big question, to data center or not to data center. But in a sense, the people of St. Charles were already starting to cast their votes. Thousands signed that petition, and they started to gather offline, too.

Scott Stratton Henderson (11:12)

People reached out to me, and it kind of became a more organized effort with business owners and community members and people really working hard to have more of a unified opposition to it, as opposed to just a few ragtag group of, you know, citizens.

Dena Templewest (11:33)

As opposition grew, company representatives suddenly appeared in town to make their case.

Project Cumulus Lawyer (11:39)

We're going to end up becoming a significant part of the St. Charles and St. Louis economy, and it's exciting to start bringing that into the new digital economy.

Dena Templewest (11:49)

And that right there, that really is the main argument from tech companies trying to bring their data centers to towns like this. They say they're offering progress.

Assad Ramzan Ali (11:59)

This seems like an industry of the future. It seems like something that we would want to invest in. So let's do what we can to lure those data centers here.

Dena Templewest (12:07)

This is Assad Ramzan Ali, the director of AI and technology policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator.

Assad Ramzan Ali (12:13)

I don't think that's a bad instinct. I think governors and politicians who want to bring jobs to their states, that's a great thing. But in this particular case, it's. It's worth looking at. What exactly is the roi? What exactly?

Dena Templewest (12:26)

ROI Return on Investment things like jobs and tax revenue. And this other thing that's harder to pin down, the so called multiplier effect. The idea that if you bring one industry to town, others will follow. Like say if you brought in an auto plant.

Assad Ramzan Ali (12:43)

The auto example is a good one where you have thousands of jobs being created in auto plant. You have the supply chain that springs up around it. And all of those people who work there also eat lunch. They also go to the grocery store. So you get all the kind of multiplier effects of the economy. When people move in with data centers, it's different.

Dena Templewest (13:01)

They bring in only a few hundred or as many as a few thousand construction jobs, but that's only for a year or maybe two.

Assad Ramzan Ali (13:09)

But those jobs disappear in 12 or 18 months when the construction's done. The permanent jobs inside the data center, you're talking about a couple dozen each.

Dena Templewest (13:19)

While data centers may sound futuristic, they're not hubs for innovation. They are quite literally warehouses filled with computers. So they only need a few dozen people to keep them running. So in the end, not much of a multiplier effect.

Assad Ramzan Ali (13:35)

That's not the same. You don't build a neighborhood for 30 people. You don't have new restaurants spring up because 30 people move to a certain area of the city. And so the multiplier effects are smaller for data centers and tax revenue.

Dena Templewest (13:49)

In some cities, tech companies bring in a ton, but in states like Missouri, not so much.

Assad Ramzan Ali (13:54)

Where in the state of Missouri, if you create 10 jobs and invest 25 million, you are exempt from all state and local use and sales tax.

Dena Templewest (14:04)

Tax breaks like that, Assad says, tilt the balance too far towards big tech.

Assad Ramzan Ali (14:09)

These are some of the most valuable companies in the history of the world. They can afford it. I don't think a local community in St. Charles, Missouri, or in Tucson or in Memphis should be on the hook for these kinds of things.

Dena Templewest (14:22)

Because while $25 million might be pocket change to a trillion dollar company, to a town, it's the difference between struggling schools and great ones.

Assad Ramzan Ali (14:32)

The schools, the hospitals, a lot of those are based on state taxes. What exactly are you getting for leaving all that tax revenue on the table at a time when a lot of states are struggling financially?

Dena Templewest (14:43)

Given all this, Assad says state and local government should think carefully before signing on. And if they do say yes, they should make sure companies pay their fair share of the costs, like that uptick in electricity bills locals have been shouldering.

Assad Ramzan Ali (14:57)

It is totally reasonable for a state to decide that if you're coming to our state For a data center that's really really energy hungry, you need to pay for the increased energy costs. Look, I'm not anti data center. I do believe that AI can have a lot of good and I think we will need a lot of data centers to be competitive geopolitically. But if I was a mayor I'd say how does this help or hurt your long term objectives?

Dena Templewest (15:25)

But the problem with the St. Charles data center is that no one knew who to ask about those things. Because as crazy as it sounds, no one actually knew who was behind Project Cumulus. How come nobody knows who it was for?

Scott Stratton Henderson (15:41)

Right, so that would tie into the non disclosure agreements.

Dena Templewest (15:46)

Everyone involved in the data center project, even the mayor and the city council had to sign NDAs just to get in the room to hear about it. So the only people citizens could question were the developers building it.

Scott Stratton Henderson (15:58)

But yeah, what they do is they take the developers and and then they create a fictitious name for the development. In this case it was Project Cumulus or what have you. But no, we do not officially know the Fortune 100 company that was wanting to settle here.

Dena Templewest (16:16)

Was it Google, Meta, Microsoft? Anyone who knows can't say. Tech companies argue the secrecy protects proprietary information and even national security. But critics say it just keeps the opposition quiet. But in St. Charles, all that secrecy had the opposite effect.

Scott Stratton Henderson (16:37)

That's something that frankly big tech companies are just going to have to swallow is that they're going to need to share some more information with the communities they want to do business with or else you're going to get a lot of pushback like they have been having.

Dena Templewest (16:52)

And that pushback came fast. The citizens of St. Charles put out yard signs, handed out flyers. There were raucous protests.

Scott Stratton Henderson (17:01)

Hey ho ho. The town center has got to go.

Dena Templewest (17:05)

Reporters began covering the fight. The city council meetings used to be sleepy affairs.

Scott Stratton Henderson (17:11)

This is local government, right? So you don't have a big, you don't have a big crowd.

Dena Templewest (17:16)

But now citizens were packing the room, lining up by the dozens to speak.

Assad Ramzan Ali (17:21)

This non disclosure agreements are unacceptable to us.

Scott Stratton Henderson (17:30)

We have the right to know what's.

Assad Ramzan Ali (17:33)

Going on in our community.

Cara Price (17:35)

I do not want this over the water head where it might affect my.

Dena Templewest (17:41)

Children, my grandchildren and everybody in here.

Cara Price (17:45)

You can't buy back your health.

Scott Stratton Henderson (17:48)

I urge the city council to reject outright any plans for this data center. Additionally, I want to say I'm very proud of my son Scott for being so active at a young age and spreading awareness in a socially responsible way.

Dena Templewest (18:05)

That's Scott's dad speaking by the time the night of the vote arrived on August 19, there was so much local interest, the council had to move the vote from city hall to a nearby convention center just to accommodate the citizens who wanted to attend.

Scott Stratton Henderson (18:20)

The whole. The room was at capacity. There's people overflowing.

Assad Ramzan Ali (18:26)

I'd like to call to order the.

Scott Stratton Henderson (18:27)

Regular session of the city council of The City of St. Charles, Missouri, dated.

Assad Ramzan Ali (18:31)

Tuesday, August 19, 2025.

Dena Templewest (18:35)

Madam Clerk. As the crowd quieted down, a man stepped to the mic, a lawyer for Project Cumulus.

Project Cumulus Lawyer (18:41)

Mr. Mayor, members of the commission, you are well aware we are not voting tonight on the application. That's because we have withdrawn the application. Because over the past. Because over the past days and weeks, we have had significant feedback from you as members of the council and from the folks that were just cheering behind me, asking questions, questions about this project, about its impacts and, frankly, about the process to date and process matters in this community. And I'm here to say the process was poor. We did a bad job at it. We did not get out.

Dena Templewest (19:26)

They did a bad job. And the crowd knew it. Thank you.

Project Cumulus Lawyer (19:29)

Thank you.

Dena Templewest (19:36)

But that didn't end the night. For three more hours, residents stuck around, venting their anger, not just at developers, but at the city leaders they no longer trusted.

Assad Ramzan Ali (19:46)

Mayor Dan's corruption and incompetence has now been exposed to the entire world. With this data center debacle.

Dena Templewest (19:52)

Trust was fractured across the board, between citizens and city hall, between progress and the price of it.

Assad Ramzan Ali (20:00)

And I call on you to resign immediately so a real conservative can lead St. Charles County.

Dena Templewest (20:05)

No one betting on this fight would have predicted how it ended. A rare win for the little guy. And St. Charles wasn't alone. Other communities facing secretive tech deals have fought similar fights. Local networks have formed to share what they've learned. How to read the fine print, how to mobilize, how to make their voices count. But they don't always win the day. And even here in St. Charles, and it's not clear they really have. Developers withdrew their proposal, but the city council left the door open, saying they could come back in a year and try again. Some residents worry that's the strategy. To wait them out, to let fatigue do the work that persuasion couldn't. But before stepping away from the mic that August night, Scott had one final thing to say about that.

Scott Stratton Henderson (20:56)

The people of St. Charles, Miss. Have spoken. And even though they have withdrew their application, for the time being, they plan on coming back. My message to them is St. Charles does not want or need your data center. When you come knocking on our city gates again. The good people of St. Charles, Missouri will be waiting.

Dena Templewest (21:29)

This is Qlik here.

Erica Ga (21:46)

If you're looking for a daily guide to cybersecurity news and policy, sign up for the Cyber Daily from Recorded Future News. It serves up today's most interesting and important cyber stories from our sister publication the Record, and then aggregates all of the big cyber stories you might have missed from news outlets around the world. Just go to the Record Media and click on Cyber Daily to get all you need to know about the world of cybersecurity right in your inbox.

Dena Templewest (22:14)

Here are some of the top tech stories making news this week. It's Tuesday, October 28th. Last week's Amazon Web Services outage sent shockwaves across the Internet.

Scott Stratton Henderson (22:28)

It's really hard to pinpoint an industry that wasn't affected by this. We're talking aviation, dining, sports betting, social media, apps, gaming, even home security.

Dena Templewest (22:38)

Even smart beds went down.

Scott Stratton Henderson (22:40)

Specifically, eight sleep beds went down too. They were apparently overheating, turning on and off, and some even got stuck in.

Assad Ramzan Ali (22:48)

An incline decline positions so people literally couldn't use them.

Dena Templewest (22:52)

It all started at one of Amazon's data centers in Virginia when a technical update took down part of its domain name system, the Internet's version of a phone book. By the time it was resolved Monday Evening, more than 100 services had been disrupted, and it was a reminder when one domino in the cloud falls, the rest tend to follow. Experts say the outage exposed just how dependent we've become on a handful of tech giants known as hyperscalers, and why diversifying cloud providers may no longer be optional. In Washington, a surprise move from the White House.

Scott Stratton Henderson (23:30)

Some breaking news in the past half hour, US President Donald Trump has pardoned the founder of the crypto exchange, Binance, President Donald Trump.

Dena Templewest (23:40)

Donald Trump pardoned Chungpan Zhao, better known as cz, the billionaire founder of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to money laundering and violating the Bank Secrecy act, and he served a four month sentence before his release last September. The pardon now clears the way for him to return to Binance's board, something he was barred from doing as a convicted felon. The Trump administration says the move reverses what it calls Biden era overreach. But critics point out that CZ had lobbied heavily for the pardon, even hiring lawyers tied to Trump, and that Binance's partnership with the Trump family's World Liberty Financial could bring in tens of millions of dollars. The timing also raised eyebrows. Several major crypto companies, including Coinbase, Gemini Ripple and Tether, have recently donated to Trump's $300 million plan to build a new White House ballroom. On social media, CZ thanked the president and pledged to help make America the capital of crypto. Meanwhile, at Meta, Meta announced it's laying.

Erica Ga (24:52)

Off 600 employees in its artificial intelligence wing.

Dena Templewest (24:55)

The company says it's trying to become more nimble in the AI arms race, trimming 600 positions across its fair research, product, AI and infrastructure teams. In a leaked memo, Meta's chief AI officer Alexander Wang wrote that a smaller team means fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and that each person will be more load bearing. Laid off workers can reapply for other roles, especially in Meta's new superintelligence division, known as the tbd. Lab executives say the reshuffle will cut bureaucracy and hopefully spark bigger breakthroughs. And finally, just in time for Halloween.

Assad Ramzan Ali (25:38)

I can't believe I'm saying this, but.

Dena Templewest (25:40)

Apparently AI can get brainwashed.

Assad Ramzan Ali (25:42)

That's right.

Dena Templewest (25:42)

According to research, researchers from Texas A&M, Utah, Austin and Purdue say artificial intelligence can suffer from a kind of digital decay, a version of what doom scrolling does to humans. They fed large language models, a steady diet of clickbait and misinformation, and watched as the system's reasoning and memory started to break down. Meta's llama model was found to be the most vulnerable to what the team called dark traits, things like narcissism and experts warn that if future AI systems keep learning from low quality web content content, they could start to mirror our worst online habits. Turns out robots can catch a brain eating bug too.

Cara Price (26:32)

Today's episode was written and produced by Dena Temple Raston, Megan Dietri, Sean Powers, Zach Hirsch and me, Erica Ga. I was the lead producer for this episode. It was edited by Karen Duffin, Fact Checked by Darren Ancrum and contains original music by Ben Levingston with some other music from Blue Dot Sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley and our illustrator is Megan Gough. Jesse Niswonger and Jake Cook are sound designers and engineers. Special thanks to Nicole Sugarman from the Kairos Fellowship. Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and prx. Join us Friday for Click here's Mic Drop when we get an inside look at a Google Data Center. When you walk into the Google Data center, the hum hits you immediately. It sounds like you're walking into a wind tunnel. Just sounds like you're on another planet. That's Friday on Click Here. We'll see you, then.

Erica Ga (27:37)

If you're looking for a daily guide to cybersecurity news and policy, sign up for the Cyber Daily from Recorded Future News. It serves up the day's most interesting and important cyber stories from our sister publication the Record, and then aggregates all of the big cyber stories you might have missed from news outlets around the world. Just go to the Record Media and click on Cyber Daily to get all you need to know about the world of cybersecurity right in your inbox.