Is your iPhone about to change forever?

Summary

The Interface – Is Your iPhone About to Change Forever?

BBC Podcast
Date: April 23, 2026
Hosts: Tom Germain, Karen Hao, Nikki Wolfe

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Interface dives into a week defined by seismic tech news: Apple's long-serving CEO Tim Cook is stepping down, a viral music sensation is unmasked as a calculated "psyop," and a genuine grassroots revolt against data centers signals real public power over AI’s evolution. The hosts unpack how these stories reflect the current and future state of technology, exploring the intersection of power, authenticity, and resistance in a tech-saturated world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Apple’s Tim Cook Resigns: What’s Next?

(02:05 – 13:20)

• Tim Cook Steps Down: After 15 years, Tim Cook is resigning as Apple’s CEO, to be replaced by engineering chief John Ternus.
• Why This Matters: Apple’s leadership shake-up is rare and influential; Cook’s role is compared to “king of Silicon Valley” due to the vast reach of Apple products.
• Recent Struggles:
  • Failed AI projects: Revamped Siri never launched, resulting in lawsuits and negative press.
  • Product fumbles: The Apple Vision Pro flopped, and iOS 26’s “liquid glass” interface was panned as rushed and unexciting.
  • Hardware plateau: Phones have become so advanced it’s hard to keep offering “exciting” innovations—iPhones last longer, sales are slowing.
• AI Silence: Unusually, Apple’s leadership transition announcement avoided the now-standard “pivot to AI.”
  • Quote: “I've just become so used to every big announcement from every big tech company being like, we're going to pivot to AI. And...Apple didn't mention AI once...a very loud silence.” – Nikki Wolfe, (07:49)
• Past AI Faceplants: Attempts like “Apple Intelligence” news summaries backfired—e.g., an inaccurate and embarrassing automated push notification during a high-profile trial.
  • Quote: “...summarized a headline...into Luigi Maggione shoots himself. And it was actually a BBC story that it was summarizing...there was such a backlash they had to pull that feature almost immediately...” – Karen Hao, (08:30)
• Competitor Threats & Strategic Headwinds:
  • The App Store model is under threat—AI could replace many apps, reducing dependence on store revenues.
  • Jony Ive (Apple’s celebrated designer) now partners with OpenAI’s Sam Altman on a mysterious hardware project potentially set to compete with Apple.
  • China: Apple’s China-based manufacturing and market dominance faces pressure from local tech giants and shifting politics.
• What’s Next: All eyes are on Apple’s upcoming fall event, where the vision for the company’s radical “new era” will be revealed.
  • Quote: “It’s a critical moment for the company. Basically right now, its sink or swim. They need to prove they’ve still got a vision...” – Tom Germain, (06:23)

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2. Geese: Viral Music, Fake Fans, and the Age of Astroturfing

(15:03 – 28:29)

• The Band That "Came From Nowhere": Geese’s rapid stardom—seemingly overnight—prompted fans to suspect behind-the-scenes manipulation.
• Marketing Psyops Revealed:
  • A marketing firm, Chaotic Good, publicly admitted orchestrating Geese’s sudden rise, running thousands of inauthentic fan accounts to manufacture buzz.
  • Quote: “They had...a coordinated campaign where they set up all these, like, fan accounts...to make it look like they've got this, you know, organic attention.” – Tom Germain, (17:27)
• What Is a Psyop? The hosts explain it as a psychological operation intended to game culture or perception, a term now applied to faked viral popularity ("astroturfing").
• The Loss of Authenticity:
  • Social media once felt meritocratic; now, even personal recommendations can be manufactured.
  • The distinction between marketing and manipulation blurs.
  • Quote: “Social media feels like you’re just talking to another person. It feels like it’s real. There’s this veneer of authenticity. And I think that’s what it is. I think it’s a veneer.” – Tom Germain, (21:08)
• Ethical Dilemmas:
  • Is buying ads or hiring influencers acceptable while faking grassroots support crosses an ethical line?
  • Many feel genuine disappointment (“betrayal”) in discovering a supposed indie success used industrial-scale marketing tricks.
  • Quote: “...to go to the point where you’re actually creating fake fans, that’s where things kind of cross into a kind of betrayal.” – Karen Hao, (23:08)
• But Talent Still Counts:
  • The hosts note Geese’s music is good; the real impact of such tactics is hard to disentangle from organic popularity.
  • Public anger centers on the unfairness: “It’s pay to play. If you aren’t cheating, you get pushed out by someone who is.” – Nikki Wolfe, (26:42)

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3. The Grassroots Revolt Against Data Centers and AI’s Limits

(28:29 – 40:57)

• Historic Data Center Ban in Maine:
  • Maine passes the first moratorium (through Nov 2027); 12 other states considering similar bans.
  • Polls show 62% of Americans now see data centers as a net negative—a reversal from a few years ago when communities lured them in as engines of economic growth.
  • Virginia—data center capital of the US—sees massive public sentiment flip and possible rollback of data center privileges.
• Protests Making an Impact:
  • Civil War reenactors famously derailed a huge data center project on a historic battlefield (Manassas, VA).
    • Memorable Moment: Tom describes a BBC story and photos of reenactors protesting in full costume.
  • Grassroots resistance has doubled in just a year: 400+ local groups now active (Data Center Watch).
  • Public opposition turning data centers and AI infrastructure into a “kitchen table issue.”
• Why the Backlash?
  • Data centers provide few jobs, consume huge power, stress local grids, and bring little community benefit.
  • The AI industry’s explosive growth is directly fueling the spread of such facilities, intensifying local resentment.
  • Quote: “The reason why all of these facilities are popping up...is because Silicon Valley is just trying to land grab all over the country...to train the next generation of their technologies that are then potentially automating away jobs.” – Karen Hao, (34:20)
• Real Democratic Impact:
  • Public pushback led OpenAI to shut down “Sora,” its video generation tool, due to bottlenecks in building new data centers as a direct result of resistance.
    • Quote: “OpenAI announced...it was shutting down Sora...because they are not able to build out these data center facilities at the speed and scale they need...” – Karen Hao, (37:01)
  • Politicians are listening: local officials are being “unelected” for ignoring concerns—e.g., in Festus, Missouri, where half the city council lost their seats over a data center decision.
    • Quote: “...Politicians actually are starting to get unelected from their seats because of this issue...there was one that just happened...in Festus, Missouri...” – Karen Hao, (39:25)
  • 80% of Americans are “concerned or very concerned” about AI—a rare point of national unity.
    • Quote: “The last time Americans, 80% of Americans agreed on anything is, you know, beyond our recollection.” – Karen Hao, (36:03)
• Theme: Real democracy can still triumph over big tech and money, in contrast to astroturfed “movements.”
  • “It’s like the opposite of the astroturfing type stuff we were talking about in the music industry. This is real people expressing real views.” – Nikki Wolfe, (36:16)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Apple’s AI failures:
  • “There was this huge debacle where Apple announced that it was going to launch a new revamped Siri...and it never arrived.” – Tom Germain, (04:43)
• On music psyops:
  • “There's a formula to this. There's a reason that some things go viral. There's people whose whole job it is to figure it out and make it happen again.” – Tom Germain, (21:08)
• On data centers as a kitchen table issue:
  • “Data centers are becoming a kitchen table issue, which I thought was such a good way of putting it.” – Karen Hao, (34:20)
• On people power:
  • “Anyone in the world can actually have a significant say in the future of technology and the future of AI development.” – Karen Hao, (38:32)

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Important Timestamps

• Tim Cook resigns / Apple at a crossroads: 02:05 – 13:20
• AI failures & scandals at Apple: 04:43, 08:30
• Rise and ‘psyop’ of Geese / astroturfing: 15:03 – 28:29
• Civil War reenactors vs. data centers: 30:26 – 31:08
• Grassroots resistance and electoral impact: 32:35 – 40:57
• OpenAI’s Sora shutdown: 37:01 onward
• Data center concerns go mainstream: 34:20, 36:03

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Tone & Style

The hosts bring an energetic, conversational style with a blend of sharp analysis, wry humor, and a clear knack for connecting complex technology stories to real-world impacts. They move quickly from global issues to quirky anecdotes and back, always foregrounding the human experience behind the headlines.

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Final Thoughts

This episode of The Interface paints a vivid picture of a tech world in flux. As Apple faces its most decisive leadership shift in decades, the mechanisms of influence—both manufactured (in music) and truly democratic (in infrastructure)—are laid bare. While tech titans attempt to shape the world, it’s increasingly clear that public resistance, watchdogs, and genuine grassroots movements can still alter the course of technology for everyone.

Listener call to action: As always, the hosts invite listeners to weigh in via email or WhatsApp, actively encouraging dialogue about the show’s hot topics.

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Summary by The Interface, BBC

Transcript

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[Karen Howe]

VRBoCare is here 247 to help make every part of your stay seamless. If anything comes up or you simply need a little guidance, support is ready whenever you reach out. From the moment you book to the moment you head home. We're here to help things run smoothly because a great trip starts with the right support. And hey, a good playlist doesn't hurt either.

[Thomas Tremain]

They're calling this a psyop to go

[Karen Howe]

to the point where you're actually creating fake fans. That's where things kind of cross into a kind of betrayal.

[Nikki Wolfe]

Hello and welcome to the Interface, the show that decodes the tech, rewiring your week and your world. I'm Nikki Wolfe.

[Karen Howe]

I'm Karen Howe.

[Thomas Tremain]

And I'm Thomas Tremain.

[Nikki Wolfe]

Today on the Interface, Apple's Tim Cook is resigning. What does that mean for your smartphone?

[Thomas Tremain]

Is the world's biggest new band a psyop?

[Karen Howe]

And has the AI boom finally met its match? The people?

[Nikki Wolfe]

Okay, so big news broke this week that Tim Cook, Apple's longtime CEO, is stepping down. He'll be replaced by John Turnus, who was the head of engineering at Apple. This is a seed change. The CEO of Apple is a role in Silicon Valley, almost like kind of king of Silicon Valley. Would that be. Would that be a. I don't know

[Thomas Tremain]

if he's the king of Silicon Valley, but he's definitely, you know, one of the most influential people in the world. Like, if you just think about the sheer number of people who use iPhones Alone. But when you add all of Apple's other products and the fact that like so many other tech products are designed to work with Apple, like the level of influence is just enormous.

[Nikki Wolfe]

Yeah. And the fact that the way phones are, the way we use all of our technologies, Apple's kind of led the way in terms of hardware at least, right?

[Karen Howe]

Yeah, totally. And it feels like because Tim Cook has been in this role for 15 years that there is, he was a mainstay within the upper echelons of the tech industry. That is going to be changing and that doesn't change often, you know, for any of the companies. So it is a pretty big shakeup.

[Nikki Wolfe]

Tim Cook took over from one.

[Thomas Tremain]

From Steve, right?

[Nikki Wolfe]

From Steve Jobs. Yeah. That's just blanked on Steve Jobs.

[Thomas Tremain]

Yeah.

[Nikki Wolfe]

For some reason.

[Thomas Tremain]

So there was this guy named Steve.

[Nikki Wolfe]

Steve Jobs may have heard of him. But yeah, we don't yet know exactly what this means for Apple. We have seen that they're doing a major shakeup of the engineering division. They're merging technologies with platform engineering. That unclear exactly what will change of that now. But they have said they're going to hire quote thousands more engineers. So it seems like this will be a doubling down on hardware.

[Thomas Tremain]

This probably comes as a surprise to a lot of people who don't follow this stuff closely, but there have been rumors for years now that Tim Cook is getting ready to step down. I think being the head of Apple has got to be one of the most intense jobs in the world. Like it's the biggest, most valuable company on earth. It's a true $4 trillion Apple trillion

[Nikki Wolfe]

dollars, mind bending amount of money.

[Thomas Tremain]

Unbelievable. It's, it's an amount of money that like it doesn't even make sense if you think about it. But Apple's been at this kind of, you know, precarious, like edgier moment than it's been in, in quite a while. And there's this conversation happening that AI, large language models, you know, the technology that runs tools like ChatGPT is going to completely change the way we interact with our computers. And there was this huge debacle where Apple announced that it was going to launch a new revamped Siri that was going to run on the latest AI and then it never arrived. There was like a class action lawsuit because they said if you buy our new phone then you'll get this new tool. And then it never came because they just couldn't get it together inside the company apparently. But also there's been this other shift where they became one of the biggest companies in the world from selling the iPhone more than anything else. But over time, the technology has gotten so good that it's hard to make a new exciting phone. Like for a while, like years and years and years, the CEO of Apple would get on stage, whether it was Tim Cook or before him, Steve Jobs, and announced some new phone, and it would be like, way different and really exciting. But it just got so good that they like, hit a wall. And iPhone sales have slowed down, they're lasting longer, people are keeping them for longer. And there's this fear that Apple needs to make a major change. And there have been a number of things that Tim Cook kind of bungled. Right?

[Nikki Wolfe]

Yeah. The vision, the Apple Vision Pro was a kind of disaster.

[Thomas Tremain]

Yeah. They launched this product. It wasn't like really clear who it's for. It sales were terrible. Then last year, you know, usually Apple launches a big new product at its, its developer conference, but as we got closer and closer, people didn't know what that product was going to be. And then it turned out the big thing they were announcing was iOS 26, a new operating system for the phone, which was kind of universally panned. Right. You might remember, like, it was this weird, like, they called it liquid glass. Like, it was clear. People really didn't like it. It seemed like it was kind of thrown together at the last minute. I'm sure it wasn't. Literally. They've probably been working on it for a while, but there' been this perception that the company is faltering. And I think what's happening now is they're trying to signal to the world and to investors that Apple is entering a new era where everything is going to change. And it's a critical moment for the company. Like basically right now, it's sink or swim. They need to prove that they've still got a vision that they're going to continue to change the world the way that they have for, you know, decades now. And they aren't, you know, falling behind, which it's something that inevitably happens if you look at all the biggest companies in the world. You know, they're, they, they reach the top and then they kind of fade away. They don't always disappear, but it's hard for one company to stay as big as Apple ha. Has for this long.

[Nikki Wolfe]

Right.

[Thomas Tremain]

And I think the message they want you to take is that everything's going to be different now. We're switching it up.

[Nikki Wolfe]

And I. What struck me was reading through the announcement, reading through Kirk's letter that you sent out to the team. No AI play was announced in this thing. We've just become so used to every big announcement from every big tech company being like, we're going to pivot to AI. And I think it's kind of notable that Apple didn't mention AI once in any of these hints and announcements at what they're going to do. They're very, very big on doubling down on hardware and I think that's a very loud silence on AI in terms of part of their plans.

[Karen Howe]

There's been such a series of weird, bungled attempts with Apple trying to catch up to AI without an actual clear, articulated vision of what that would actually bring to the product. So in addition to this, the upgraded Siri that failed, there was also that attempt to create Apple Intelligence with these news notifications. Do you remember this? Where they were supposed to summarize the news and send it out on notification as part of a new AI feature. And one of the first weeks I think that the feature was deployed was during Luigi Magione's unfolding trial and it summarized a headline about shooter Luigi Magione something, something, something into Luigi Maggione shoots himself. And it was actually a BBC story that it was summarizing and it branded the notification with the BBC logo so it looked like the BBC had actually pushed that out and there was such a backlash that they actually had to pull that feature almost immediately after it was launched. And so I think Apple's probably being a lot more cautious now because of these series of mishaps. And at the end of the day, like, that's not really the company's strength, so. It is, yeah. To me, it's personally refreshing. Like, I, I recently was in an Apple Store just buying some new accessories for my, my various Apple products. And I, the sales rep, tried to upsell me on the latest iPhone and the latest Mac and whatever, da, da, da, by saying, hey, these new products are going to have Apple Intelligence and it's going to be AI enabled. And I looked her straight in the eye and was like, and that is why I want nothing to do with them, and walked out of the store.

[Nikki Wolfe]

That was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know who I am?

[Thomas Tremain]

Yeah, right. The other thing that's interesting about the AI stuff is like, our relationship with apps everyone is expecting is about to be completely different. Like, until a couple years ago, if you wanted to do something on your phone, it required a guy or a team of engineers, sometimes a huge team, to make a little computer program to make a little app that would do the thing that you wanted. And Apple's App Store was a huge, I think, hundred billion dollar a year business, right? Like, you know, not the biggest, you know, money maker in Apple's toolkit here, but pretty significant. And there's some speculation that that's all about to Change that if AI gets a little better and you can just ask ChatGPT or whatever AI tool you're using to go do stuff for you, that you won't need as many apps, you won't need to go through the App Store. Like one individual app or one device will be able to take on a lot of those projects. So, you know, there's all these different parts of Apple's businesses because there are many of them that it's in, are changing. And then simultaneously Jony, I've, who's Apple's like famous designer golden boy who left the company a long time ago, has now partnered up with Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. They are apparently working on a hardware product that no matter what it is, will be a direct competitor with Apple. And then if we could talk about one more headwind, China, enormous, you know, important factor for Apple here, both because all of its products for the most part are manufactured in China and because Chinese tech companies like Huawei are eating into its market share in Asia. That's another big wild card. And I think we're about to enter a really, you know, kind of rocky period for the company. And it'll be up to this new guy, John Ternus, to be like, no, no, no, everything's fine, don't worry, we've got it under control. We'll see how things go.

[Nikki Wolfe]

Yeah, his first job is definitely to kind of steady the ship. Steady the ship for investors, steady the ship for customers, and then see exactly what is needed in order to bring this behemoth company into this uncertain future.

[Thomas Tremain]

I think the one thing we have to look forward to is Apple's going to have this big event in the fall around the time that Tim Cook says he's stepping down, he's going to take over. As, you know, the leader of Apple's corporate board, John Ternus, steps in, he's going to give a speech, he's going to address the public for the first time. And one thing I think is absolutely certain is he is going to paint a picture of a way that this company is changing in radical ways. And that will have a big impact in the way that you stare at your phone and what kind of phone you're staring at in the future. So I think this is something for people to look forward to because he's going to present a big new vision.

[Nikki Wolfe]

And don't worry, we will be following that very, very closely as it unfolds. So stay tuned.

[Thomas Tremain]

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[Karen Howe]

School's almost out and at Abercrombie Kids, new warm weather staples are in. It's a one stop shop for everything on their checklist like tees, shorts and swim, so planning what they'll wear is a breeze. For outfits that keep up with them and easier mornings for you, stop by Abercrombie Kids Shop in the app, online and in stores.

[Thomas Tremain]

What's actually happening inside Iran? I'm Tristan Redman, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. Iranians have been under a near total Internet blackout for several months. Few Western journalists have been permitted to operate in the country, but in recent

[Karen Howe]

weeks the BBC's chief international correspondent, Lys

[Thomas Tremain]

Doucet, has been reporting on the ground in Tehran. For more, listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nikki Wolfe]

Now let's talk about Geese.

[Thomas Tremain]

If you hadn't gotten enough of me talking on this episode yet, I've got great news because now we're going to

[Nikki Wolfe]

shift over to My story because now Tom is going to sing.

[Thomas Tremain]

Take the Finally I get a minute to speak. You know, I want to talk to you guys about this band, Geese. Have you heard of Geese?

[Karen Howe]

Yeah, not until you brought it up.

[Thomas Tremain]

I think Geese is kind of a pretty cool band. I heard about them for the first time maybe, I don't know, six months ago or so. They've been around for a while. You know, they've been putting out albums for years. Never heard of them before. And over the course of like a month it felt like they had become the biggest thing in the world. They went from like, I think a band that almost no one, you know, not no one, but like they certainly weren't a household name to like playing Saturday Night Live. They just played one of the Biggest slots at the music festival, Coachella.

[Nikki Wolfe]

They exploded everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's been a bit of a backlash to this, right.

[Thomas Tremain]

People were saying, this is an industry plan.

[Nikki Wolfe]

How could this be organic? How could something go from zero to absolutely everywhere? And in our age where what you experience is a lot of the time algorithmically determined, the question is how much can the industry, how much can a record label game that system to put a band that they want in front of everyone and get it into that sudden superstardom non organically. And that's what the backlash is about is because people feel like there's no longer any choice. And there's also no longer that feeling of kismet where you discover something. And a lot of the time this is kind of pretentious, where you get like music snobs. But music as a genre is all about that kind of feeling of discovery. You know, going into record stores, finding something obscure, and if that is gone, if basically the music we like is just the music that has been decided will be the big music of this month, of this year, people are really angry about that. And I can totally see that anger.

[Thomas Tremain]

Yeah. So this conversation was happening. People were suspicious. Turns out their suspicions were correct. There's a marketing company called Chaotic Good, and at south by Southwest, which is this big, you know, music festival and now also like a tech conference that happens in Austin, Texas, the head of this company, Chaotic Good, got on stage to talk about their new techniques. And he explained that it was his company that was behind the rise of Geese. They said they had this coordinated campaign where they set up all these, like, fan accounts essentially to promote the A band, in this case, Geese. But they've done it for plenty of others and make it look like they've got this kind of, you know, organic attention, that it's just like people posting about how much they love this band. And he essentially said, we can make anything go viral. And like through this coordinated campaign where they had, according to him, thousands of. Of fake accounts that they're running, like posting and commenting.

[Nikki Wolfe]

When you say a fake account, are these people who are being paid to have these opinions, but they're real people or are they completely fake accounts?

[Thomas Tremain]

Yeah. So there was some discussion about is this bots, right? Or these, like, automated, you know, fake accounts that are operating. Operating on their own. Chaotic Good, like, stop short of saying that they didn't say they're using bots, but it's like not. It's like accounts that the company is running, they're posing as just like Some regular guy who likes to post about the band Geese. But there's like one or a couple people that are running. Hundreds add up to like, you know, a thousand or a couple thousand accounts. They aren't real. And people are saying they're calling this a psyop. That like. Nikki, can you explain what a psyop is?

[Nikki Wolfe]

I think you're probably a psyop. Psyop is. Is a kind of conspiracy theory term. It's like psychological operation, basically. It's a catch all for when your attention, when you know the. The body of human culture and human communication is being gamed, essentially. And there's a specific word for what's going on here, which is astroturfing, which is fake grassroots campaign. And it's not just in music. You see this when a movie comes out, for example. You also. This has been, you know, a point of controversy for at least 10 years now. You see it a lot in politics. So you get this in almost everywhere where in, you know, there's that old saying on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Anything. Anything you see.

[Thomas Tremain]

You haven't seen the comic that might not.

[Nikki Wolfe]

You haven't seen the comic. Yeah, this is Far side Comic, I think.

[Thomas Tremain]

No, it's the New Yorker. It's like it's a little dog. He's sitting at a computer, he's talking to another dog. He says, on the Internet, nobody knows your dog. It's like the funniest thing in the whole world. Yeah.

[Nikki Wolfe]

Because you don't know whether what you're seeing at any given point is authentic or paid for, or what the backstory might be of any piece of content you're seeing. It's very easy to make fake support for something like a band like Keith.

[Thomas Tremain]

Well, the funny thing here, right, if you've started a fake grassroots political movement that doesn't exist, or if, you know, like the government is convincing people to believe something that isn't real. Some crazy conspiracy. That's one thing in this context, there's another word for psyop, and it's marketing. And what I think is so interesting about this is people were shocked, outraged that this band grew. And it wasn't, you know, just the fans, it wasn't real people promoting this. It didn't just get big because it's great. And what I think is so interesting about that is we've got this idea that social media is a meritocracy, that things rise and fall because the algorithm is in general, most of the time, responding to people liking or not liking something. And that is just not true. Twenty years ago, Justin Bieber became super famous because he was just posting great, you know, people loved it songs on YouTube. And he became the biggest thing in the world. And then like, he got so many views, they invited him on Ellen DeGeneres. That's not how it works anymore. There's a formula to this. There's a reason that some things go viral. There's people whose whole job it is to figure it out and make it happen again. Here's where I think we disagree. If we go back 20 or 30 years ago, right. If you go back to the 90s, no one would be shocked to hear that, you know, a band that was playing on Saturday Night Live had like manufactured attention through a coordinated marketing campaign. Right. That like, they'd like gotten people to write and talk about them on TV and in print. But social media feels like you're just talking to another person. It feels like it's real. There's this veneer of authenticity. And I think that's what it is. I think it's a veneer. I think it's not real. And that's not actually how the world works. And we've all gotten a little bit mixed up about what is happening when we go on the Internet.

[Karen Howe]

At the end of the day, there's sort of a spectrum with how much marketing involves fake accounts. Like, I think most people would say it's totally acceptable to pay for ads for marketing and maybe it's also accessible to pay for influencers, like real influencers for marketing. But then to go to the point where you're actually creating fake fans, that's where things kind of cross into. Okay, people know that that happens. But to find out that a beloved band used those kinds of tactics, like, I think it gives this sense of this, this feeling of, oh, that's kind of dirty, you know, like, like you. There are certain brands, certain. Yeah. Certain personalities, whatever, that you want to feel like a feel good story about their rise. And if they lean into that brand as well and say, like, you know, we're the folksy one, that like, we worked really hard. This was all based on pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. And then you discover actually they're one and the same with all of these other inauthentic brands that kind of gamed their way to the top, that does make. It's a kind of betrayal.

[Thomas Tremain]

No, you're not wrong. And I also, I want to defend Geese here. Like, it wouldn't have happened if they, you Know, weren't good at what they were doing if their music wasn't interesting. And they do have this kind of indie, outsider feel. I think people felt like, oh, I'm latching onto this thing. It's special. It's just, for me, I get it. And other people don't, which you don't feel. I don't think anyone would be shocked to find out that something like this was happening with Sabrina Carpenter. It might be like, oh, well, yeah, sure, right. It's a major act.

[Karen Howe]

Yeah, exactly.

[Thomas Tremain]

But. But on the other hand, the. The shock and the outrage. I think people know this happens, but I don't think they get the scale that it's happening on.

[Karen Howe]

I mean, so one of the things that's kind of. Because I didn't really know this story, so I didn't. I didn't realize until you just mentioned it to, that the people found out about the quote, unquote, psyop that was happening because the marketing firm just went on stage and announced it at south by Southwest. And so the other thing I would say in defense of Geese is this marketing company could also just be, like, really tooting their own horn and ascribing way more of geese's popularity to their tactics than the music of the banned. And so.

[Thomas Tremain]

Right.

[Karen Howe]

Like, this is this kind of an extra layer of intrigue here, which is, why would they have announced this to the world? I mean, one, probably because it is so normalized for them, for people who work within this industry. But the second one is that they are also just trying to get more clients. They're trying to talk themselves.

[Thomas Tremain]

Absolutely.

[Karen Howe]

So they might also convey an outsized impact of the work that they're doing. And to your point, Tom, people could also. They could just like the fact that geese's music is good, you know, so, like. So it is kind of an interesting situation where there's. It's really hard to determine in hindsight how much of these inauthentic coordinated campaigns might have actually floated geese to the top or whether geese would have floated to the top anyway. Maybe they just simply got to the top faster and a little bit bigger. But, yeah, it's because everything is so enmeshed now. The authenticity and the inauthenticity. It's impossible to disentangle.

[Nikki Wolfe]

It's the fact that it's unfair, I think, is what's got people really upset about this with geese. And every time this kind of thing comes up is that it is unfair. It's pay to play. If you aren't cheating Then you're gonna get pushed out by someone who is. And rightly people are upset about that.

[Thomas Tremain]

I would love to hear from people. There's. There's definitely people who are listening to this who like this band that have feelings about this. If you're upset about how Geese is a psyop, reach out. I want our emails. The interfacebc.com. i kind of feel bad for Geese. I think they're almost like a victim here. Probably some people are upset about that, but, like, you know, you hire. You know, somebody says, hey, we want to help your band go viral. We think your music is great. Sure, go ahead. This probably stinks if you're, like, a real indie musician. You know, there's some people who are, like, legitimately outraged about the way that the music industry manipulates things and makes it impossible for, like, the little guy to succeed. That's absolutely real. But Geese, they're just like, this is just what big bands are doing right now, and they're paying the cost. Serious reputational damage. I mean, it's hard to get your street cred back as an indie band after something like this, but they're pretty good. I really like the song where he yells about how there's a bug in his car over and over. It's a pretty good lyric.

[Nikki Wolfe]

How much are you being paid to say this, Tom?

[Thomas Tremain]

Well, they told me to check in the mail, but I'm actually not even a real guy.

[Nikki Wolfe]

Are you a dog, Thomas?

[Thomas Tremain]

This is a wig. So I guess what I'm saying is just, like, what you like. Like, if it's a marketing ploy, like, and that's. That's bugging you. You know, just go listen to the music and decide if it's resonating with you or not. Isn't that what really matters?

[Nikki Wolfe]

Yeah.

[Karen Howe]

Amazing. So I wanted to talk with you guys about my favorite topic in the world. Data centers.

[Thomas Tremain]

We're doing a segment on data centers,

[Karen Howe]

as you both know. Specifically, there was news recently that Maine is about to become the first state in the US to temporarily ban data centers by law. And this is temporary because it is meant to only be a moratorium until November of 2027. The legislature has already passed it, and it's on the governor's desk. And the reason why this is so interesting is because this is a pretty big inflection point in a broader array of data center protest and data center resentment that is sweeping across the US and also around the world. So at least 12 other states right now are also considering similar data center moratoriums. According to the National Conference of state legislatures. And 62% of Americans in one of the latest polls say that data centers, the costs outweigh the benefits and they don't actually want them anymore. And this is a pretty big shift from just a few years ago when a lot of communities were, were in fact welcoming data centers in with open arms. Especially in the state of Virginia, which is the data center capital of the world. There were all these tax breaks for data centers. There was this idea that data centers would bring in economic benefit, economic opportunity and a lot of tax revenue as well. And in that state in particular, there's also been this massive plummet in public opinion against data centers. And it is getting to the point where this state, state is considering rolling back some of the privileges that they gave to data centers before to prevent more of them coming in.

[Thomas Tremain]

Yeah, there was. We did a really great story. I had this freelancer named Aiden Walker go to a battlefield in Virginia, like a major historic Civil War battlefield. It's called the Manassas National Battlefield park, which is. Was going to be the site of one of the biggest data center projects in the world. And like the local government like rushed the approval through and these Civil War reenactors, these guys who, you know, like dress up like in period correct uniforms and do like a fake battle because I, I think it's so awesome.

[Karen Howe]

I love these guys.

[Thomas Tremain]

They were protesting because they're gonna. On this historic battlefield, they're going to like tear down this land and build, you know, these, these giant, you know, closed off data center campuses and they pushed back, you know, like Civil War reenactors and other local. That I don't know. But we did got to check this story out. We. We went down and took a bunch of photos of these guys in their costumes, like firing cannons. It like really some of the best images that we've published in quite a while. Highly recommend this story. But yeah, there was this local grassroots movement that pushed back against what was going to be one of the biggest data center projects in the world. And they just canceled it. They just pulled it back because the public's sentiment about this issue is changing. The whole data center issue has become like, I think maybe not the. But one of the most important inflection points in the conversation about AI and things are really changing.

[Nikki Wolfe]

And it's worth recapping, right. I think why people exactly have come to hate these data centers. And it's one, that they have very little stuff. They don't bring a huge amount of employment. Two, they eat up extraordinary amounts of electricity. I mean, they are just draining the grids from a lot of these places.

[Karen Howe]

That is the very issue that has stalled, actually, an OpenAI data center in the UK because there's just not enough electricity to power the facility. So that's, that's kind of like why people are angry. I mean, it's, it's there, there's kind of very little benefits to community, but then there are all of these very visceral costs. And so to your, your, the story that you commissioned, Tom, I mean, this is, this is playing out across the country. This is a crazy stat. Apparently grassroot orgs fighting data centers has doubled over the past year to now 400 different grassroots organizations. This is according to Data Center Watch, which is a project, a kind of a curious project that is tracking data center resistance activity across the country that's actually funded by an AI company. So a little bit interesting there, but yeah, so like just in the last few weeks, I mean, if you, if you just search all the news articles about data center resistance in either the local level, state level, or even the national level, there's just an insane number of articles. Like I was going to compile a list of all of the things that have been happening and it got too long just in the last two weeks. So there was resistance against data centers in Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan, Texas, California, New Mexico within 14 days. Like it's, it's nuts out there.

[Thomas Tremain]

This is becoming a big issue in the midterm elections. Right. We're like halfway through the presidential term, like all these congressional seats are up for grabs. Data centers are like now a focal point.

[Karen Howe]

Yeah. The way that one policy analyst put it is that data centers are becoming a kitchen table issue, which I thought was such a good way of putting it. And it's also kind of nuts to think about. Like we're talking about massive pieces of computational infrastructure, like these inert giant buildings, and people are talking about that at their kitchen table and getting extremely fired up about this because of the way that it consumes and extracts all of these resources from these communities. And you're right to say, Tom, that this has become also a gateway issue into a much broader resistance and resentment towards the AI industry because people are starting to make the connection. Wait a minute. The reason why all of these facilities are popping up at such speed and such scale and with a complete and total lack of transparency is because Silicon Valley is just trying to land grab all over the country, all over the world, and put up the facilities that they need, supposedly need to train the next generation of their technologies that are than potentially automating away a lot of jobs. So now, like in the latest polls, 80% of Americans are also feeling either very concerned or concerned about AI. Like, that's pretty.

[Nikki Wolfe]

80%.

[Karen Howe]

80%.

[Nikki Wolfe]

That is. That is the kind of political unity that you.

[Thomas Tremain]

I'd hate to be a chatbot right now.

[Nikki Wolfe]

You don't see that outside. Like, you know, 75%, 25% of Americans will disagree that, like, up is down. Like. Like this is right.

[Thomas Tremain]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[Karen Howe]

Like the Last time Americans, 80% of Americans read on. Anything is, you know, beyond our recollection.

[Thomas Tremain]

Yeah, like, yeah, it was.

[Nikki Wolfe]

It was hating the British in 1776.

[Thomas Tremain]

Right. We did kind of all get on board with it.

[Nikki Wolfe]

So for me, the takeaway of this is that it is kind of an amazing example of people power actually working. Like, people are reacting to this and people in power, politicians are taking note and are actually listening to people. And real change is coming from these objections and these protests. It's like the opposite of the astroturfing type stuff we were talking about in the music industry. This is real people expressing real views and enough of them doing so that it's being listened to. It's kind of a really helpful story

[Thomas Tremain]

for me, the fact that this data center issue has pivoted here. How are things going to change? What does this mean for the way the next couple years are going to play out?

[Karen Howe]

Yeah, so this is what's been so remarkable about seeing this rapid growth of data center resistance and the backlash against the AI industry more broadly is it is actually having a direct effect now on the ways that these AI companies operate and the strategies that they have. So a couple. A few weeks back, OpenAI announced quite dramatically that it was shutting down one of its products, Sora, which is its video generation tool, which originally there was a lot of fanfare from the company about, and they just completely terminated the product line. And the reason was, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, that the company is deeply constrained on computational resources. And the reason why they're constrained is because they are not able to build out these data center facilities at the speed and scale that they need to to support the full portfolio of projects. Of course, there were other reasons that OpenAI had to shut it down as well. It also just was flatlining in usage. It wasn't that popular. But this is, you know, they were directly being squeezed by this bottleneck in computational resources. And so this goes back to what you were Saying Nikki, about how this is like a really optimistic story, I 100% agree. Because this kind of resistance leading to real, tangible changes in the trajectory of AI development is one of the ways that I think really illustrates how anyone, anyone in the world can actually have a significant say in the future of technology and the future of AI development.

[Thomas Tremain]

And it's this thing you hear all the time where it's like, call your representative. And it feels so impotent. Like, like, oh, yeah, like they're going to listen. Like, no, these guys, you know, if you reach out to politicians, it actually can make a difference because they need you to be pleased for them to get reelected. You know, like, it's not necessarily going to change everything every time, but actually does matter. And I think that's what happened here. That is exactly what happened. Elected officials picked up on the fact that people are upset about this and changed their tune.

[Karen Howe]

Politicians actually are starting to get unelected from their seats because of this issue. This has already happened in multiple localities across the U.S. there was one that just happened recently in Festus, Missouri this month where four city council members were unelected, half of the city council members, because they had approved a data center. And so this is, I mean, like, I've talked with representatives myself who say it doesn't matter how much money ends up in politics, if you ultimately hear from your constituents that they will fire you from the job. That is the best way to counter even millions, hundreds of millions of dollars of moneyed interest being pumped into a campaign.

[Thomas Tremain]

It. Maybe some people have forgotten, but if you've been on the ride with us from the beginning, one of our first episodes, Karen said that data centers were going to become one of the biggest issues in technology. And I think we should take all the credit for this happening, right? Like we like on our show, no one had ever spoken about the subject before. And we showed up and we told people it is world changing podcasting that we're doing right here. So, I mean, I guess what, like, have you guys heard from the Pulitzer Committee yet? Maybe that comes later, but no, Karen, you called it.

[Nikki Wolfe]

The one thing we didn't call is the involvement of the Civil War reenactors. That one didn't.

[Thomas Tremain]

That was kind of a curve ball. We didn't see that one coming. So join us next week. If you're in the uk, you can listen to us on BBC Sounds or if you're outside the uk, anywhere else. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or just search for the the interface podcast on YouTube and I want to give a shout out to everyone who's been getting in touch with us and sending us messages. We really appreciate that it's been a lot of fun. If you want to get in touch with the three of us, you can reach out on email@the interfacebc.com or if you're into WhatsApp, you can send us a message there at 443-332-072472. Or if you really want to follow along with us, you can get us on social media. The links to our accounts are right down there in the show Notes.

[Karen Howe]

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