A (3:20)

There are other states or areas that are looking into similar legislation. Could you tell us a bit about those?

B (3:27)

Yeah. So the bill in Maine looks like the first one that will likely pass, but there are several other states, South Carolina, Oklahoma, New York state have seen these bills introduced in the last year. A similar bill in South Dakota, though, already failed. So many of those bills probably won't go anywhere. The expectation in the industry, though, is that some of them do end up passing in some form. And we've seen local governments like counties and towns enact their own temporary suspensions of data center construction and we'll probably continue to see more of that.

A (4:03)

And how are data center developers reacting to this push?

B (4:07)

As data center developers look across the country for new areas to expand, these kind of rules, proposed or real and swelling community opposition, kind of shrinks the map of where they are likely to try to and do business. So it's a mounting concern for data center developers. If this snowballs and starts to affect bigger states, I think you'll see much more of a response to that.

A (4:33)

What ripple effects could this bill have if it passes or not? Does it tell us anything about data center construction as an issue for voters?

B (4:42)

I think it might. I think it shows momentum. You know, the polling on voter opinions of data centers and AI is increasingly negative. And I think you're likely to see more politicians try to respond to that with various legislative proposals for the time being.

A (5:00)

That was WSJ reporter Will Parker. Are electricity costs rising in your area? We want to hear from you. If you're a listener on Spotify, leave us a comment with your thoughts. Coming up, how a new Russian super app is helping the Kremlin's efforts to restrict Internet freedoms and limit the influence of tech platforms that have built substantial user bases in Russia. That's after the break. Social engineering attacks come in disguise, but Doppel sees through them. Our AI native platform shuts down threats and turns employees into first line defenders. Learn more at.pp e l.com. Russia's got a new super app, Max. Modeled after Telegram and China's WeChat, the messaging and e commerce platform aims to be an all in one digital hub offering everything from taxi hailing services to electronic passport wallets and another thing the app has backing from the government. WSJ correspondent Matthew Luxmore joins us now to talk about the years long fight between the Kremlin and foreign tech giants and what the launch of Max means for that tug of war. Matthew, tell us more about why the Kremlin is backing this app.

C (6:24)

Many tech experts I've talked to for this piece say that because Max is not encrypted, it is a way of the Russian government being able to freely monitor what people are discussing online, but also to get their personal data, to get their health data, their financial data. Because people will be using this app not just for exchanging messages, but but also for making payments to banks, for booking appointments with doctors, for ordering food and retail online, and for all kinds of other services that would allow a government that is following what's happening on the app to get a very, very kind of comprehensive picture of its citizens.

A (7:04)

Can you tell us a bit about what paved the way for this app to come about?

C (7:08)

In many ways, the Russian government has been trying to get to this point for the past two decades now. After the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, Russia was a country that was very open to Western business presence inside the country. But when Vladimir Putin came into power as president in 2000, he understood that the Internet was something that could become a problem for Russia. And that really became clear to him when protests erupted against his return to power for a third presidential term in 2011. And his main opponent, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, began to really harness the Internet in a way that no other Kremlin critic had done before, using blogs, online and social media, Facebook and other things like that, to criticize the government. The Russian government started to look for ways in which it could replace Western apps that are popular inside the country. But what really accelerated this process was the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when the government understood how much of a threat foreign messaging apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp are for the government.

A (8:18)

What about the company behind Max, the tech giant vk?

C (8:22)

Yeah, VK was created initially as a Facebook clone. The Russian government took over VK and merged it into this bigger tech enterprise run by the son of the deputy chief of staff to Putin. So a highly placed government official is now running this company, and it's very much in with the Kremlin and backed by it.

A (8:43)

And we should note that VK declined to comment for this story. So every new smartphone in Russia must now come with Macs preloaded while Telegram and WhatsApp are blocked. How are people there responding to that.

C (8:58)

There's been a lot of grumbling about this, about the effort to foist Max on people. But we really have to look at max's emergence kind of in a broader context of the many different ways that the Russians are trying to censor the Internet right now. It's not just this new super app that they're trying to spread across Russia. It's also various Internet outages, mobile Internet outages, that have been happening across the country. Essentially right now in central Moscow, you can be walking around and you're not even able to use the mobile Internet on your phone. And it's not just in Moscow, it's all across Russia. Intermittently. The mobile Internet just goes off, sometimes for weeks at a time. And local authorities are citing the threat from Ukrainian drones, which sometimes use Russian SIM cards or Russian cell towers. But most Russians believe that this is simply a way of restricting people's access to information and also testing an Internet infrastructure, censorship infrastructure that would be crucial to the Russian government if ever. There's a time of major political upheaval.

A (10:00)

Zooming out, what is the broader picture here?

C (10:03)

People who follow the development of tech say that what we're seeing is the emergence of what they call a splinternet, which is an Internet that is now being kind of subdivided by authoritarian governments into separate fiefdoms or separate small sectors of the Internet that are being controlled and policed. Essentially, this technology that was once created to allow people to freely exchange information and instantly talk to people across the world is now being used by strongmen, leaders to surveil people and wall themselves off from information that's coming from the rest of the world that is deemed politically dangerous to those leaders. And that is really where Max fits in.

A (10:51)

That was the WSJ's Matthew Luxmore. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. If you're a listener on Spotify, be sure to leave us a comment. Today's show was produced by me. Julie Chang. Jessica Fenton and Michael Lavalle wrote our theme music. Our supervising producer is Katie Ferguson. Our development producer is Aisha Al Muslim. And Chris Sinsley is the deputy editor of audio for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back later this morning with your TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening. Social engineering attacks come in disguise, but Doppel sees through them. Our AI native platform shuts down threats and turns employees into first line defenders. Learn more at D O P P e L Com.