The price tag of you

Summary

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Click Here – "The price tag of you"

Date: August 26, 2025
Host: Dina Temple-Raston (Recorded Future News)
Main Guests: Sam Levine (Consumer Law and Economic Justice at Berkeley, former FTC), Emerita Torres (NY Assembly Member, South Bronx)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the unsettling rise of "surveillance pricing"—where companies use AI and personal data to tailor prices to individual consumers, fundamentally shifting the balance of power in commerce. Host Dina Temple-Raston and guests discuss true-life examples, how AI and data brokers enable this practice, the collapse of consumer protections at the federal level, and New York’s pioneering response. The episode highlights the growing risk of predatory pricing and the urgent need for transparency and oversight in the digital marketplace.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personalized Versus "Surveillance" Pricing

• Emerita Torres's Experience:
  Emerita Torres, NY Assembly Member, recounts how she and her constituents observed different prices for the same products (e.g., diapers) depending on device and user, revealing that price inconsistencies are not random ([01:01], [01:39]).
• Host's Analogy:
  Buying everyday items now feels akin to buying airline tickets, where prices fluctuate and seem to punish urgency ([01:55]).
• Sam Levine on Surveillance Pricing:
  “Instead of having one product, one price. We're in a world of one person, one price.” ([03:27])
  Surveillance pricing leverages personal and behavioral data to set individual prices, making it difficult for consumers to comparison shop.

2. How It Works and Why It’s Spreading

• Behavioral Tracking and Price Optimization:
  Data brokers amass detailed consumer profiles and partner with "price optimizers"—firms specializing in extracting maximum profit via algorithmic pricing ([06:17], [07:20]).
• Industry Adoption:
  The FTC found that just eight pricing firms had over 250 clients, including major names: Amazon, Ticketmaster, Walmart, and even dating apps like Tinder ([07:41]).
  • Example: Tinder faced lawsuits for charging older users more; Princeton Review allegedly set higher prices for zip codes with higher Asian populations ([08:25], [08:44]).
• Granularity and Location-Based Pricing:
  Prices can adjust based on hyper-specific factors—where you are, whether you’re on the store’s WiFi, your age, race, or even how fast you’re walking an aisle ([09:22], [12:50]).
  • Target Example: Target’s app reduced item prices by hundreds of dollars when shoppers left the store ([10:19]-[10:29]).

3. AI's Role and Expansion of Surveillance Pricing

• AI Supercharges Pricing:
  AI can finally process the vast consumer data troves, predicting readiness to pay and enabling dynamic, personalized pricing ([13:35]).
• Digital Price Tags:
  New digital pricing screens (e.g., in Walmart, Kroger) are efficient for stores—but advocates warn they pave the way for surveillance pricing ([12:13]).
• Big Ticket Items:
  Beyond groceries, landlords use surveillance pricing (e.g., RealPage case) to coordinate rent hikes ([13:00]).

4. Consumer Protection on the Decline

• FTC’s Shrinking Power:
  Once, the FTC could hold companies accountable and expose market abuses using subpoena power ([17:30], [17:50]).
  • Past Wins: Fines and rules around social media mishandling kids’ data, subscription cancellations, etc. Now, the FTC is less proactive, especially after leadership changes that deprioritize algorithmic pricing oversight ([19:23], [19:33]).
• Broader Federal Retreat:
  Other watchdog agencies (e.g., Consumer Product Safety Commission, CFPB) have been “all but shut down” or had actions blocked, leaving consumers exposed ([20:43]).
  • Quote: “This is the wholesale decimation of consumer protection across the federal government.” – Sam Levine ([17:30])

5. State Solutions and New York’s Law

• New York Steps Up:
  Emerita Torres introduces a law requiring companies to disclose when algorithms and personal data set prices ([22:48]).
  • Resistance came from industry groups claiming it would be disruptive and confusing ([22:59]).
  • As of the episode’s release, the law is in effect—the first of its kind ([23:46]).
• Limitations of Disclosure Alone:
  Transparency is important, but Sam Levine notes that disclosure (as with online privacy) is not enough to protect consumers from algorithmic exploitation ([24:16]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Instead of having one product, one price. We're in a world of one person, one price."
  – Sam Levine ([03:27])

• "When we're suddenly in a world where you can't look around for prices, where the price you're being offered is ... tailored to you, it's going to make life more expensive."
  – Sam Levine ([04:02])

• "They have dossiers on all of your listeners ... We call it the plumbing of the surveillance economy."
  – Sam Levine on data brokers ([06:17])

• "The holy grail for companies is charging consumers exactly what they're willing to pay and not a penny less ... That's capitalism."
  – Sam Levine ([14:26])

• "At least now we'll know our prices are being set by an algorithm. And of course, consumers will wonder, what does that mean?"
  – Emerita Torres ([23:16])

• "When companies have the ability to charge us the most that we're willing to pay ... we're gonna see much higher prices. And it's going to especially hit the people who are most desperate."
  – Sam Levine ([25:12])

• "If that efficiency is designed to find your breaking point, well, that breaking point just became your price."
  – Dina Temple-Raston ([25:30])

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Key Timestamps

• 00:36–01:34 – Emerita Torres’s first-hand experience with price discrepancies
• 02:09–03:38 – Sam Levine on the history and logic of surveillance pricing
• 05:52–07:41 – Data brokers, "price optimizers," and FTC investigations
• 08:25–10:29 – Age/race-based pricing (Tinder, Princeton Review), Target location-pricing exposé
• 13:00–14:59 – AI’s role, digital price tags, and big-ticket surveillance pricing
• 17:30–18:35 – Decay of consumer protection at the federal level
• 22:48–23:50 – New York’s algorithmic pricing disclosure law goes into effect
• 24:16–25:12 – Sam Levine on the limits of transparency and risk of widespread price gouging

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Tone & Style

The episode blends real-world storytelling with investigative insight, granting listeners a window into how digital commerce is being shaped by unseen forces. Jargon is kept minimal; personal anecdotes and policy analysis drive home how the issue hits everyday people.

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Takeaway

"Surveillance pricing" is rapidly emerging as a feature—not a bug—of an algorithm-driven economy. With federal consumer protections eroding, state initiatives like New York’s are the first step toward transparency, but deeper protections are needed. The price of convenience, it turns out, may be a digital world where the price you pay is set precisely at your breaking point.

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Transcript

[Dina Temple-West]

From Recorded Future News and prx, this is Click Here in the South Bronx, life still moves to a rhythm all its own. Bodegas on every corner, mornings that begin with sidewalk hellos and the news there, the real news still travels by word of mouth. That's how Emerita Torres first heard about this crazy thing.

[Emerita Torres]

I'm the assembly member from the 85th district in the state of New York, representing the South Bronx.

[Dina Temple-West]

And did you grow up in the South Bronx?

[Emerita Torres]

I did, born and raised.

[Dina Temple-West]

And recently, she heard a story from a constituent that stuck with her. A man from her district who had been out shopping with a friend. They pulled out their phones to double check the price on a product they both wanted, and they were shocked.

[Emerita Torres]

And they were sitting together on phones searching for the same for the same product. And he was being charged a different price at a clothing retailer from his friend.

[Dina Temple-West]

Why would two people shopping for the exact same thing be charged different prices? It sounded like a glitch. But then Emma Rita noticed something similar in her own life. She's a young mother, so her shopping cart has a consistent rhythm.

[Emerita Torres]

I buy a lot of diapers. I have two children under 3 years old that still use diapers.

[Dina Temple-West]

She started to notice something about what was usually the steady price of diapers.

[Emerita Torres]

I've noticed differences in the cost of diapers depending on when I order them, depending on if I order them through my iPhone versus ordering them on a desktop. My partner's ordered diapers, and sometimes there are different prices for him.

[Dina Temple-West]

All of a sudden, buying clothes or diapers, products with historically pretty consistent prices started to feel like buying a plane ticket, where the prices change moment to moment and get worse when you get more desperate.

[Sam Levine]

Everyone knows that you can't just go to an airline website and see a list of prices. So whenever I'm booking an airline ticket, I'm trying to optimize what time of day should I book it, what browser should I use, how often should I check that price.

[Dina Temple-West]

Sam Levine used to work at the Federal Trade Commission. That's the government agency that looks for scams and corporate overreach. And these days, he's at Berkeley's center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice.

[Sam Levine]

That kind of gamesmanship where you feel like you constantly have to outgun the system. When I go and buy airline tickets, I feel like I'm going into battle. And that's because airlines are the early innovators in surveillance pricing.

[Dina Temple-West]

Emerita wasn't imagining random fluctuations. They weren't random at all. And she was also seeing into the future, a future in which you're being gamed every time you buy anything, from apples to diapers to a pack of gum. Companies call it personalized pricing, the cost of something tailored to you. But it also has a more menacing name. Critics like Sam call it surveillance pricing.

[Sam Levine]

Using personal data and behavioral tracking to set individual prices to individual people. Instead of having one product, one price. We're in a world of one person.

[Dina Temple-West]

One price, and it's a fundamentally different power balance. Right now, consumers have at least some power to bring prices down. If a price is too high, you can comparison shop and hopefully buy it cheaper elsewhere. If enough consumers do that, companies have to lower the price. But if that price tag follows you anywhere, you shop for the item.

[Sam Levine]

When we're suddenly in a world where you can't look around for prices, where the price you're being offered is a price individually tailored to you, it's going to make life more expensive.

[Dina Temple-West]

I'm Dena templewest, and this is Click Here, a podcast about all things cyber and intelligence. We tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. We've been giving away our personal data for years now, sometimes with our consent, sometimes without. And for a long time, the stakes seemed low. Most of that data just fueled targeted ads. Annoying, maybe, but easy enough to ignore. But now AI has supercharged those data troves, and suddenly they're not just tracking what you buy, but they're deciding what you pay.

[Sam Levine]

So if companies have really granular information on how much a consumer is willing to pay, they're going to see much higher profits, we're going to see much higher prices, and it's going to especially hit the people who are most desperate.

[Dina Temple-West]

Which means the cost of your personal data is about to hit your wallet. Stay with us.

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

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.

[Dina Temple-West]

For Recorded Future news, this is Click Here. I'm Dina Temple Ralston. Sam Levine didn't start his career worrying about the price of diapers. He spent nearly a decade at the ftc, and over his time there, he and his team started to feel edgy about data Brokers and all the power they seem to wield.

[Sam Levine]

They're these shadowy companies probably your listeners have never heard of, but they have heard of your listeners. They have dossiers on all of your listeners based on data they collect. We call it the plumbing of the surveillance economy.

[Dina Temple-West]

They got concerned about how invasive data brokers were getting, concerns we all have, but the FTC could actually do something about it. So they did. They sued some of the country's biggest data brokers, and they found that they were misleading people, even gathering their data without consent. And then it took an even more unsettling turn.

[Sam Levine]

And what we started to see as we dug more closely into it, is that while this data was currently being used primarily to target advertisements, companies were increasingly exploring using it to target prices.

[Dina Temple-West]

Targeted ads suddenly felt benign. So last summer, the FTC subpoenaed a small sample of these pricing firms. Just eight of them. They call themselves price optimizers.

[Sam Levine]

They use different terms, but it's a bit of a euphemism for we're gonna show you how to get away with raising your prices.

[Dina Temple-West]

Sam wanted to see is this really happening or is this just a Silicon Valley fever dream? What was the most jaw slacking thing that you discovered something you didn't know that you were surprised about?

[Sam Levine]

How many companies were already exploring or using AI pricing, surveillance pricing? We found that just these eight firms had more than 250 clients from a broad range of industries.

[Dina Temple-West]

Grocery chains, discount stores, beauty retailers, everyone from Amazon to Ticketmaster to Walmart. Pricing not so much person by person, but by a certain category of person. Like raising prices for anyone above a certain age. Tinder was sued for charging older users more for the premium option, perhaps on the assumption that they'd be more desperate to find a match, though Tinder denied that they were doing that.

[Sam Levine]

What that does, it takes sort of all of the biases that we already know exist in the dating market. At least anyone who's been single in the last two decades would know this. Replicating those biases digitally and then using them to overcharge people who are the most desperate to find mates.

[Dina Temple-West]

A different company allegedly hiked prices based not on age, but race. Princeton Review. The test prep service was charging more for certain zip codes in areas with higher Asian populations. They were charged about $2,000 more for the same SAT class, although the company is denied pricing classes based on ethnicity. But companies are starting to get more granular, not just targeting whole categories of people, but individuals in a very personal way, based on things like where you happen to be at some precise moment in time.

[Sam Levine]

We're talking, I'm at a specific pharmacy. I'm in a specific parking lot. You're at a specific intersection, you're driving at a particular speed.

[Dina Temple-West]

And if you're still thinking, come on. Companies wouldn't actually do this. Consider what happened at Target. Target's app changes the prices on certain items, depending on whether you're in the store or outside. One shopper saw it for herself in store. She bought something for $100. But when she left the store and.

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

I noticed my app was still open.

[Dina Temple-West]

And it was still on that product. And when I got to my car, I noticed it said $69.99. A local news station decided to see if it was a fluke. They went into the local Target, opened Target's app, and added things to their virtual cart. Then they walked outside and watched the precise moment that the prices shifted once they were in the parking lot.

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

And if you pay close attention to the $351.99 there on the app, you'll see boom.

[Sam Levine]

Like a magic trick, it changes.

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

Hundreds of feet away from the store.

[Dina Temple-West]

At the far end of the parking lot, the same products were nearly $250 less. This helps explain why so many companies now insist you use their apps. The San Diego county district attorney's office filed a lawsuit, and Target settled, refunding millions of dollars back to consumers.

[Sam Levine]

Location information is one of the most powerful sources of data that companies can use to set prices. And when companies know, for example, that you're in a location where there's not a lot of competition, they can charge you more.

[Dina Temple-West]

But location tracking could get supercharged. Sam says if you paired it with even creepier technology like facial recognition. Let's say just before walking into a grocery store, you were looking at a recipe online.

[Sam Levine]

The grocery store knows they need some certain products, knows there aren't competitors in the area that sell that same product and gouge that consumer.

[Dina Temple-West]

So if that customer walks into the grocery store, facial recognition technology could identify who they are and pair it with their online searches. And when the customer goes to the shelf to pick up, say, flour or sugar, the price sneaks up a tiny bit higher. Digital price tags, which are already appearing in some stores, make this easy to do.

[Sam Levine]

Okay, so these are the new digital price screens.

[Dina Temple-West]

This is a video by a TikTok user. So the whole goal of these is.

[Sam Levine]

They'Ll fluctuate based off of demand. So it's pretty crazy.

[Dina Temple-West]

I'll come back later on in the day.

[Sam Levine]

And you'll see this go up and down in price.

[Dina Temple-West]

Walmart and Kroger both say digital price tags are more efficient than replacing those sticky tags. And Kroger said that they won't be using it for surveillance pricing. But advocates worry they're laying the groundwork for it in the future. Because if the store knows what you search for before walking in and how many competitors are nearby or even how fast you're walking down the aisle, those price tags could soon be changing just for you. Take that one step further. Maybe you're going to the store not because you want to bake cookies, but because your child is sick.

[Sam Levine]

I'm probably not going to be going around pharmacy to pharmacy comparison shopping. They're going to charge me $15 knowing that I'm really desperate for that medicine.

[Dina Temple-West]

Even worse, big ticket items seem to be getting into the game, too. Landlords have been accused of surveillance pricing. Tonight, the Justice Department expanding a lawsuit against RealPage now accusing the company of using tenant data to coordinate rent increases across the country. Of course, data brokers have been tracking us for years now. So why is this just emerging? Well, in some ways, there's just too much data. Companies didn't have enough computing power to process it. But that isn't true anymore for a very simple reason.

[Sam Levine]

AI is what's powering surveillance pricing. And what AI can do is be incredibly powerful in making predictions about consumers willingness to pay.

[Dina Temple-West]

We have very few restrictions on what companies can collect and how they use that data, so they can build vast dossiers on every individual consumer. And there are people you want to have that kind of insight into. You, your partner, your best friend, your therapist. They use what they know to help you spot patterns or understand yourself a little better. But algorithms don't hand you tissues or offer advice. They take what they know and they turn it into leverage. AI Systems that set prices are like therapists with a ledger, listening closely, nodding, and then billing you for your weaknesses.

[Sam Levine]

When companies are fighting restrictions on surveillance pricing, they'll say, oh, we just use surveillance pricing to give discounts. The reality is, the holy grail for companies is charging consumers exactly what they're willing to pay and not a penny less. And that's not some wild conspiracy theory. That's capitalism. Companies are in the business of maximizing profits, not maximizing discounts. So if companies have really granular information on how much a consumer is willing to pay, that's how much they're going to charge.

[Dina Temple-West]

And just as all of this is ramping up, the organizations tasked with protecting consumers. They seem to be powering down. That's when we come back. Stay with us. Foreign this episode of Click Here is brought to you by Tess Bros. A small business built by Tesla owners for Tesla owners. They know the quirks, the charms and the little frustrations, like that shiny chrome trim that feels so last decade. Every product starts with a conversation and with their community. What's bugging you? What do you wish you could change? Tess Bros. Listens and then makes it happen. So if you want to customize, protect, or just make your Tesla work a little better for you, check out Testbros. They're in the business of solving the problems that only Tesla drivers really understand. Test Bros are giving the Tesla community tools that add real value. To make your Tesla more personal, more empowering, and more yours, go to tessbros.com and use the code POD15 for 15% off your first order. That's tesbros t e s b r o s.com and use the code pod15 at checkout.

[Radiolab Host]

@ Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

[Dina Temple-West]

But. But we do do also like to get into other kinds of stories.

[Emerita Torres]

Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex of bugs.

[Radiolab Host]

Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers and.

[Dina Temple-West]

Hopefully make you see the world anew.

[Radiolab Host]

Radiolab Adventures on the Edge of what.

[Dina Temple-West]

We Think We Know Wherever you get your podcasts, by now you might be wondering if companies are quietly using our data to squeeze more out of us, isn't someone supposed to stop them? Someone in government? There is. Or at least there was, Sam Levine says. The protections we used to count on are crumbling.

[Sam Levine]

My sense is that this is the wholesale decimation of consumer protection across the federal government.

[Dina Temple-West]

The Federal Trade Commission, created back in 1914, was built for exactly this. Protecting consumers not just writing reports or issuing stern warnings, but taking on companies directly, with teeth.

[Sam Levine]

What the authority allows the agency to do is issue subpoenas to companies and require them to turn over information that would otherwise be non public to the ftc. So that the FTC can say, here is a trend we are seeing in the marketplace the policymakers and the public wouldn't know about. But for this subpoena power, over the.

[Dina Temple-West]

Past hundred years, the FTC has used that power to look into whatever issue was plaguing the country at the time.

[Sam Levine]

100 years ago, the FTC used this authority to really lift the hood on the meatpacking industry. In more recent years under my tenure at the ftc, we issued a major study on social media platforms and how they were mishandling children's data.

[Dina Temple-West]

They found that social media companies were collecting and keeping kids data and then selling ads against it, sometimes even after parents asked them to stop. So the FTC took them to task. They've responded with rules, regulations, and fines. They went after TikTok, GoodRx, Epic Games over consumer privacy protections. And they stepped in again when people started complaining about how hard it was to cancel subscriptions with companies like Amazon and Adobe.

[Sam Levine]

Consumers were complaining they were getting trapped, unable to cancel.

[Dina Temple-West]

The result, a new FTC rule, click to cancel. If it's that easy to sign up, it should be just as easy to get out. And then came the report on surveillance pricing.

[Sam Levine]

I think it's really important now to shine a light on what is happening and for lawmakers to act to make sure that people aren't being gouged by these practices.

[Dina Temple-West]

But instead of acting on the report, the Republican commissioners came out against it. They wrote a dissent and said the process was rushed. And in January, one of those dissenters was appointed to lead the agency itself. His name is Andrew Ferguson. And one of the first things he did with his new power was turn off the public comment section on that surveillance pricing report. It appears they're not looking at the issue anymore. And this is happening elsewhere, too. Trump fired the Democratic commissioners of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the people responsible for making sure your kids toys don't explode or that your phone charger doesn't catch fire. And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency created after the 2008 financial crisis to prevent a future one. Same story. It's been all but shut down, which means fewer protections for people like veterans. Last year, the CFPB sued Navy Federal Credit Union for charging bogus overdraft fees to military families and veterans. They got an $80 million settlement.

[Sam Levine]

And then this summer, the Consumer Financial.

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

Protection Bureau has dismissed the case. Now Navy Federal no longer will have to refund $80 million to for illegally charging them overdraft fees on their accounts.

[Dina Temple-West]

The veterans won't see a dime of the money owed to them. Even the click to cancel rule blocked in court. And instead of regulating AI, Trump has tried to insert a provision in his recent spending bill that would have prohibited states from regulating it. What's Trump's FTC doing instead? It's weighing in on what used to be fringe culture war issues. Things like running workshops on the dangers of gender affirming care. They also went after Social media sites, pointing to what happened after Elon Musk bought X. And there was this large uptick in hate speech and violent content. Advertisers fled the platform to avoid associating their brands with that content. And Republicans said the brands were trying to silence conservative content. So when the world's largest advertising companies.

[Sam Levine]

Wanted to merge, in an unprecedented move.

[Radiolab Host]

The FTC forced both companies to agree that they will not discriminate against clients based on political or ideological beliefs.

[Dina Temple-West]

It essentially forbade them from boycotting platforms like X, formerly known as Twitter, even if they hosted hate speech or disinformation. So the chance of the federal government stepping up to stop surveillance pricing, they seem to be shrinking by the day. So what now? It's falling to the states and consumers to pressure companies. In fact, Amarita Torres is trying to do just that. Remember the New York assembly member who noticed diapers cost more depending on the device she used? She read that FTC report, and she didn't wait. She introduced a bill that requires companies.

[Emerita Torres]

To disclose when a price was set via an algorithm using your personal data.

[Dina Temple-West]

Not surprisingly, industry groups weren't thrilled.

[Emerita Torres]

It was a lot of phone calls. How horrible this bill is going to be for industry and the ability to offer discounts. And how are we going to present this, you know, online? It's too much information for consumers, et cetera.

[Dina Temple-West]

But she kept pushing.

[Emerita Torres]

At least now we'll know that our prices are being set by an algorithm. And of course, consumers will wonder, what does that mean?

[Dina Temple-West]

In a way, restoring the power that personalized pricing takes away from consumers. If enough consumers see this, she hopes, they'll be so alarmed, they'll push back. Other states are looking at following suit, but for now, New York is the only state with an algorithmic pricing law. It's actually in effect today. The day we're talking, right?

[Emerita Torres]

Mm, yeah, absolutely. Today's the day.

[Dina Temple-West]

From now on, New Yorkers will see a quiet notice in their digital shopping carts. This price was set by an algorithm using personal data. So it's a start. But Sam says transparency isn't the same as protection after all. We've heard this logic before. It's the same thing the government said about Internet privacy. Just read the terms and conditions, and we all know how that went.

[Sam Levine]

That was a fantasy. It was a fiction. I think everyone would now agree it was a huge failure. What we've seen over the last couple decades is that companies will experiment what they can get away with. Once they realize they can get away with something, we see their competitors matching it, and Suddenly, it becomes widespread.

[Dina Temple-West]

We're repeating history. But this time, the price isn't just your privacy. It's your groceries, your medicine, your rent. And increasingly, you don't get to choose. Because when the price is set just for you, there's no way to know if you're getting a deal or just being taken. That's why emeritus law matters. It's not just about forcing companies to say what they're doing. It's about making the invisible, well, visible. Because what companies are doing isn't illegal. At least not yet. But that doesn't mean it's fair.

[Sam Levine]

When companies have the ability to charge us the most that we're willing to pay, they're going to see much higher margins and much higher profits. We're gonna see much higher prices. And it's going to especially hit the people who are most desperate. And that's why I think surveillance pricing is so risky.

[Dina Temple-West]

The thing about algorithms is they don't have to be malicious, just efficient. And if that efficiency is designed to find your breaking point, well, that breaking point just became your price. This is Click 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.

[Dina Temple-West]

Here are some of the top cyber and intelligence stories from the past week. It's Tuesday, August 26th. Palm coast man linked to a massive cyber criminal gang has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison and must pay back millions of dollars to his victims. A federal judge in Florida has handed down one of the harshest hacker sentences yet. It went to a member of Scattered Spider, the hacking collective behind some of the most disruptive cyber attacks of recent years. 20 year old Noah Michael Urban was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, two years longer than prosecutors had asked for. And he was ordered to pay $13 million in restitution. Investigators say Urban admitted to using SIM swapping and phishing attacks to steal employee credentials, corporate data and cryptocurrency. In fact, when the FBI raided his home, agents found some $3 million in stolen digital currency. Scattered Spider has been linked to some pretty epic attacks, like the 2023 ransomware assault on MGM casinos in Las Vegas. MGM had to shut down slot machines and hotel systems for days. And more recently, the group has been linked to attacks that crippled a string of major UK retailers Mark Zuckerberg's high roller offers are coming to an end. Meta is hitting the brakes on AI hiring after aggressively hiring over 50 engineers and researchers in recent months. After months of splurging on AI talent, reportedly offering hundred million dollar pay packages to lure engineers from OpenAI, Apple and Google, Meta said it's restructuring its superintelligence labs, splitting the teams into four groups, including one that will focus exclusively on building a machine capable of surpassing human intelligence. Analysts are now warning that Meta's spending could pose risks for shareholders, drawing comparisons with the dot com talent wars when companies burn through billions chasing hype only to see it all collapsed. Some industry watchers say the real problem may be that despite all the cash, Meta is late to the AI party. Russia overnight launched its largest attack on Ukraine in weeks, striking as Russia steps up its attacks on Ukraine and President Trump positions himself as peacemaker. The Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard has quietly moved to limit information sharing about the talks with some of America's closest allies. In a classified directive issued earlier this month, Gabbard blocked the Five Eyes partners that's the uk, Canada, Australia and New Zealand from accessing intelligence tied to the negotiations with Moscow. The move is sparking quiet concern among intelligence officials who warn it could erode trust in the decades old partnership. Others say the decision is routine, standard compartmentalization that happens during sensitive negotiations. And finally, in Washington, the Trump administration has struck a deal that will give the US government a 10% equity stake in intel, one of the country's largest chip makers. It's a dramatic shift. Instead of handing out grants under the Biden Era Chips act, the government will now take partial ownership of the company. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick defended the move, saying why should the US Give grants without getting something in return? Why are we giving a company worth $100 billion this kind of money? And the answer Donald Trump has is we should get an equity stake for our money. At the White House, President Trump framed the deal as a partnership. I think it would be good having the United States as your partner, he agreed. The plan is meant to boost U S based semiconductors manufacturing, but it's also raising questions about whether government ownership could distort private industry. And for some, it's deja vu. The last time the US Government took a sizable equity stake in a major company, the auto industry bailout during the 2008 financial crisis. That move saved the industry, but also set off a fierce debate about how far Washington should go in backing a American giants.

[Radiolab Host]

Today's episode was written and produced by Dina Temple Rastin, Sean Powers, Megan Dietre, Erica Gaeda and me, Zach Hirsch. I was the lead producer. The episode 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 our sound designers and engineers. 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.

[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 Kiev, among others, and you'll see for yourself why it attracts hundreds of thousands of page views every month. Just go to the Record Media.