How AI data center concerns could sway the midterms

0:00It's 5 o'clock, your employees are heading home. But you're still updating spreadsheets, switching between software and wondering where the day went. There's a better way. Odo brings accounting, sales, inventory, CRM, and more together in one fully integrated platform. So you spend less time managing software and more time running your business because your work day should end. Eventually, try Odo Free at Odo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. New shoes, new clothes, brand new grade. Switch to Verizon to make sure their tech keeps up. This back to school season, buy or bring any Android phone and get a Samsung Galaxy tablet on us. Get your kids ready for the school year without breaking the bank. Visit Verizon.com or your local store today. Bring an Android phone or purchase a new phone with device payment on post-paid service plan required. $390.99 tablet device payment purchase with new mine on $20 per month tablet plan for 36 months required. Less $330 tablet per month credit applied over 36 months additional taxes fees in terms apply.

1:00Hey, I ride almost here. Are you ready? Just grabbing my shoes. That's what you said 10 minutes ago. I just wrapped a video call, uploading this giant file on my tablet, looking at my watch goop and Nana's with the group chat, and of course, still lining up tonight's playlist on my phone. All at once? Yep. Story of my life. That's why I switched to T-Mobile. They have the fastest 5G network. Okay, multitasker. I see you. Honestly, I never imagined I could do all this at once. It's awesome. Say no more, I'm totally switching. My post is taking way too long to upload. That's a sign you've got to get T-Mobile. So many reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours at T-Mobile.com. It has to space on analysis by Uglospeed Distant Intelligence, the data of national speed score results incorporating 5G download and upload speeds for the first half of 2026.

2:01This is on deadline, where the biggest stories, the smartest journalists, and the conversations that matter come together from audacity new stations across the country. When news breaks, the story doesn't stop there. I'm Christie Strasser. Let's get started. Let's start with a local issue that could weigh heavily on the midterm elections. Data Centers. Here's KCBS in the Bay Area. Mark Sandelo, Mark, good morning. What kind of bipartisan responsive we've been seeing on these AI data centers? The changes is remarkable, Steve. The Washington Post took a look at online posts, assuming they were created by AI of politicians over the last couple of years. What they have to say about data centers, they found it just two years ago in 2024, roughly 80% and 90% were positive. It's like, literally this great thing. Data Center is going to bring us artificial intelligence, jobs, high paying salaries. It's going to increase land values in the area.

3:02Now two years later, it's closer to Democrats, about 5% of their posts are positive. Republicans, it's much more, but still well under 50%. It is a combination of classic, not in my backyard fears. These from data center concerns will consume power and raise electricity rates and it'll destroy rural areas to outright panic over AI, which most people, including myself, only have a thin grasp of understanding. But with all the fears that you just mentioned out there, the idea that we ought to somehow ban these things, slow these things, stop these things, has become a huge issue. While not so critical in democratically controlled California, there are a number of swing races in Ohio and Virginia and Pennsylvania, where this may be the determining issue. Right now, Democrats is the more slow-go environmental party. Certainly have an advantage on this. There are some races that would otherwise go Republican, that could be, our toss-ups

4:07now could well go Democrat because of people's resistance to building new data centers. In some of these November races, it could come down to one candidate saying, I don't like data centers and the other candidate saying, well, I don't know. I don't like them even more than you. Exactly. I mean, Ohio, Sherrod Brown is a former senator, Democrat, who's running against John Hustead, who's the Republican who ousted him. Sherrod Brown has adds up right now saying, John Hustead, the face of data centers. Hustead says he's not in favor of data centers, but when he was in the state legislature, he did vote in favor of tax breaks for data centers. That may be enough. It's a complicated issue, obviously, but on its surface, for the way that most people pay attention to it, saying no seems like a smart thing to do. The only, I mean, President Trump is one person who's booking that trend saying, ah, this is ridiculous. It'll bring jobs. If he had some posts on the body, if he wanted to say, stay backwards and dumb, we

5:10cannot do data centers. Otherwise, I'm all in favor of them. They're Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio, Acastio Cortez, AOC. They introduced legislation for a more thorium data centers, which of course would be an extraordinary step to take because it would allow the rest of the world to advance an AI without us. It's something that still confounds people. And, you know, Steve, you've got a voice for radio. I'm not sure about mine. How hard would it be for AI to take over? You plug in Donald Trump, you plug in a few statistics. Next thing you know, you're talking to, you're talking to artificial intelligence and not me anymore. Yeah, we don't like to even think about that. Mark, thank you. AI has brought a seismic change to our lives, and so has this. Television. Here's Dave Cohen in New Orleans. So let me know. I'm curious. Do you consume, quote unquote, television now?

6:12Are you watching it on a big 65 or 75 inch screen in your living room? Are you watching it on a little six inch screen on your smartphone? Do you watch broadcast television channels? Do you watch mostly streaming? Are you watching shorter content? Let me know. How do, what is mostly speaking? And we can include sports in the conversation. What do you consume? And what do you consume it on? To help us kind of understand the current state of what we have historically called television, we have a media historian and the director of sports studio at University of Colorado, Professor Jared Browse joining us. We're seeing the major networks now carrying things like soccer and more tennis and other sports we didn't use to see. Alternative cable channels or something or another. And now it's interesting to see how during particularly on weekends, but even on weeknights,

7:16more and more of the main broadcasters and streamers content is sports. And it's not just baseball, basketball and football. No, I mean, ESPN handed over their Sunday to incredible women sports at the end of WSL and then WMBA are occupying ESPN Sundays because they don't have baseball anymore. And so it's just shuffling and everyone is falling over themselves because sports are one of the few areas that actually bring people to TV at a certain time where everything else is being driven by viewer choice and time shifting technology and things like that, which have been around for a since the 80s and some sort, but not this kind of agency by the audience to really just choose what they want and sports being one of the few things we still all watch

8:21at the same time. Yeah, that's interesting. You point that out that appointment television. Other than sports and maybe local news is really becoming a thing of the past because no people aren't motivated to go sit down and watch a new episode of a program that comes on on a certain day at a certain time. More and more, you know, I like to wait till an entire series or an entire season is done. So I can watch as many episodes in a row as I want. It takes a really unique, very good show. And right now that would be like, Reacher would be one good example of a show that I actually started watching before the entire season was over. But I feel like Neanderthal having to wait until the next Wednesday for a new episode. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the worst feelings is when you're streaming a show you really like and realize that you have a week until the next episode comes out. And I mean, that and it's interesting too because it's also in a way impacting the way we stream

9:26television. And I know a lot of my students are 18, 19 years old and they're watching shows from the 90s like friends in the office because those shows had 23 episodes seasons. There's so much more to watch for so many shows now. It's eight episodes seasons and then it's very easy to consume an entire season in a day. And then you're kind of left without anything to watch, which leads so many people back to these old comfort shows like the office. I know last year Big Bang Theory was one of the most popular shows on streaming because of the amount of episodes and the fact that people can keep watching it without worrying that they'll run at an episode easily. And so it's this really interesting time where we're not getting that kind of large mass produced show. And it's more kind of focus on these

10:27niche audiences that leads to a lot less content being produced for each individual show. And also so many shows are now spin-offs or connected to intellectual property. I know I was watching Sun and I football last night and then when the game ended it went straight to the paper which is on peacock and it's been off of the office. And so it's really impacting also how shows are being produced as well. And you know what, one of the nice things about especially the older sitcoms is once you take all the commercials out it's like a 22-minute watch or something. And so you can watch an entire episode in the blink of an eye really. So if you just you know got to get a fix of your favorite show, some of those formerly half-hour shows on television because most of the new streaming stuff like Ted Lasso is another one that I actually am now waiting for a new episode for. But those shows can be anywhere from you know 45 to an hour

11:31or 20 in life. Exactly and there's no kind of restrictions like we used to have around commercials but we're kind of getting back to commercials being a part of our viewing experience because so many streaming services up here we have free ads supported networks like Pluto and platforms like that. And so advertising is creeping back into our viewing habits unless you pay for that higher tier or you're watching certain programming. And so it's again we're kind of in this era where kind of in the beginning of streaming people were so glad to get that rid of advertisements and now people are kind of weighing with their wallets whether they're willing to sit through an advertisement to save a little money but that's another thing as well

12:32because those advertisements are now targeted to us versus these kind of general advertisements for maybe laundry detergent or other products. Now it's it's using the same data that we get with social media advertisements to advertise directly to us. And so someone might be watching the same show on on peacock or another platform they're getting completely different commercial so even that experience has shifted significantly. But when it comes to ads being targeted to you what happens when there's a data breach and your private data ends up everywhere. Here's Tommy Tucker in New Orleans. Jason Shields we go chief operating officer for Gulf Coast Bank and Trust tell me what we're talking about. Yeah so today we're going to talk about something that's interesting. It's a it's about a recent breach that they had an IV verification service so I'll give you a little background on it. So imagine finding out that someone is selling copies of your driver's

13:34license online and that your driver's license was the free sample that they were using to prove that they were selling legitimate driver's licenses and it's crazy that that's out that is an exact thing that happened a couple weeks ago right. There's a there's a cybersecurity journalist out there that goes by an in-brying crebs and this guy's the real deal man he reports on some big stuff the target breach and whatnot and he got a tip from someone that said hey I just found your driver's license on sale of the free sample for cyber crime forms. And so then he starts digging into this and then he finds his mother's license and then he you know dig into it a little more and ultimately what this did the reporting pointed him towards a Louisiana based company called idscan.net and what that is it's basically a company that provides identity verification services and you've probably never heard of the company no one really has but the numbers that we're hearing from this are kind of staggering. I mean 153 million drivers license records were in that

14:36that sale on the dark web and so someone says well I've never heard of this idscan and I've never used them how does this even happen their services were were basically used by tons of large companies hurts the rental car company was a big one you have targets that X several other folks have been reported as clients of this and so while you're not working with idscan that directly what ends up happening is it's one of those places that says hey I need your driver's license to verify you they put it to a scanner you know that scanner bounces would across your or just things through you are who you say you are you don't have a fake ID all of those other things right and so in essence that's kind of what happens 153 million of the number that we're hearing right now and what was interesting was a lot of people always tell me oh I'm really safe with my info and I have strong passwords and I do all the multi factors this reporter lives in cybersecurity Tommy and he does everything that he should and still his driver's license

15:38ended up now in there for sale so you can be as careful as you want your information still I would expose elsewhere and so the take away from this is that's a pretty important stuff right we always put trust when someone calls up and they start giving us information that someone shouldn't know okay this is the person who's you know this is a bank call in here this is someone calling me because they have information I wouldn't get anyone else this was kind of open that door and you know another thing I like to talk about not that it was a good thing but it's always a reminder that I tell everyone and we the analysts and which we all are remember the the office of motor vehicles breach back in 2023 where pretty much everyone in the state three years ago had you know all of our information our names addresses birth dates false of security numbers driver's license numbers all without their and so this isn't something new but it is something that I like to continue to remind people that it's just going to keep happening and so rather than you know pull out pitchforks and get upset when it happens we all just need to take a defensive

16:42posture to make sure the folks that we're dealing with no non-public information so what I'm what I'm really getting at is we should stop assuming that a stranger knowing our address or birthday or something like that makes them trustworthy right so you know and I know we talk about this a lot Tommy but I felt like this was a good time to remind everyone so I'll give you a perfect example yeah right someone called you and they say hey I'm with your bank fraud department right they know your name they know your address maybe because you just reached out your driver's license number your birthday right all of a sudden that's all somebody starts rattling that stuff to you feel pretty trustworthy you're like okay you know they know I'm bank with XYZ I have all of this information I'm this sample legitimate right and so what they do is they'll say hey I'm calling you because you have some suspicious activity and that's kind of the entry way and then they'll ask you to do something right oh I want you to read back that code even though those codes always

17:42say don't give this code to anyone including the person from the bank not read back to code that they sent you read back a code that you would have gotten already from somewhere else correct right and so or they'll tell you something you know scary that call to ask hey your account has been compromised you to transfer money to some more states and and all of these other things right in essence what they're trying to do is they're just trying to get your attention use information that they've gathered from you know is where to try to gain your trust to do the fairs things right now a lot of people will tell me in these instances because I talk about this still I'm blue in the face time and they'll say well I'm going to start arguing with the person on the phone or challenging them you don't have to win an argument with the caller right you don't have to catch them doing a mistake you're right you know the most powerful thing you can do time and hang up just end the call yep that's it that's it you know and by the way yeah well not it's rude I don't want to upset my banker or whoever's calling in my credit card

18:44company we don't care Tommy right we're in the people business um and so you do not ever offend anyone who calls you up and says hey I um you know I just hung up on somebody I just want to verify this is legitimate now look at you and that Paul you don't want to call back the number they call from because that's what they expect you to do I always tell everyone you go to the website actually type in the website Tommy we've gotten in a world where we're we just google things instead of actually typing that address in the bar type in the actual website of the place you want to talk to get the phone number off that website and then give them a call you know if it's that urgent you know the 30 seconds that you did do that will just be extra insurance that you'll have out there um and so you know another thing that recently came up this one surprised me uh when I was doing my research was the FBI put out a notice in july that uh there's a their internet crying division ic3.gov scammers were actually impersonating that website so think

19:49about this time you've been scammed you've been scammed the website you go to to to deal with these scams people were spoofing that and then re-scanning the people by acting like the FBI right uh it was it was a fairly sophisticated hack they used AI generated videos they used fake websites and nothing's they were like hey we think we found your money we just need you to give us this information so we can transfer it and then they end up taking more money from you let's shake off the technology concerns and reflect on an old-fashioned wholesome pleasure leaf peeping here's what to expect this fall from w w j in Detroit we start to see the colors running a business shouldn't feel like a juggling act one app for accounting another for inventory one more for sales and somehow they never work together or you can use odoo one fully integrated platform with all the business applications you need

20:51crm inventory accounting marketing and more all working together seamlessly stop juggling software and get back to growing your business try odoo for free at odoo.com that's odoo.com bring an android phone or purchase a new phone with device payment on post-paid service plan required 3.29.99 tablet device payment purchase with new mine on 20 dollars per month tablet plan for 36 months required less $330 tablet per mo credit applied over 36 months additional taxes fees in terms of apply hey alright almost here are you ready? just grabbing my shoes that's what you said 10 minutes ago i just wrapped the video call uploading this giant file on my tablet looking at my watch gopan nana's with the group chat and of course still lining up tonight's playlist on my phone all at once yep story of my life that's why I switched to

21:55demobile they have the fastest 5g network okay multi-tasker i see you honestly i never imagined i could do all this at once it's awesome say no more i'm totally switching my post is taking way too long to upload that's a sign you've got to get to mobile so many reasons to join team mobile find yours at teamable.com fastest based on analysis by uglow speed test intelligence data of national speed score results incorporating 5g download and upload speeds for the first half of 2026 change this time of year why do the colors and the trees and the leaves change? well the colors change mainly in response to the shortened day length so as the the days get shorter the trees tend to photosynthesize less it begins to slow down and that results in a reduction of chlorophyll which is the green pigment that we see normally throughout the summer and as the chlorophyll

22:58reduces the other pigments in the leaves begin to be more visible. I always enjoy seeing i think a lot of people enjoy seeing the color change it's a nice little Michigan tradition going for a dry even looking at the leaves and things so what does it look like for this year when can we start to expect to see the major colors changing? i think it's going to be a little bit later than normal this year i think we'll be seeing it toward the end of september in the up into the first weeks of october and then kind of working its way down south to the southern border by mid-october. why does it start north and go south what's the reason for that? that's has to do with the way that our sun moves around so at this time of year the sun is at full summer i should say the sun is for this north and we get those really long days if you ever have a camping trip in the up and in june my goodness it doesn't get dark until about 11 o'clock at night but as as the time goes on

23:59and the summer goes on the sun begins to shift more to the south and on september 21st the sun is directly west coming up directly wet in the east and setting in the west meaning that there's a little bit less sunlight in the up and a little more sunlight here so those days and it gets shorter in the up a lot faster than they do in our area why do you see i guess variations in colors in the same tree you would think they would all uniformly change the same color at the same time but why do you see variations? it has to do with the way that the tree is sort of reducing that chlorophyll and it has to do with the amount of sunlight that each leaf is receiving and so trees have sun sun leaves and shade leaves that sort of act differently they both photosynthesize but they're both a little bit different in color the sun leaves usually have less chlorophyll and they'll start to begin changing sooner and then those shade leaves usually have that deeper green color so they that's more chlorophyll and that'll take a little bit longer for that chlorophyll

25:05or the green pigment the deep inside of those shade leaves you know i was reading two of the soil moisture plays a role can you explain that? Sure the soil moisture moisture can play a role in that if trees are experiencing drought stress or drought conditions the color may be a little bit less vivid just because they're not operating with full moisture content it can also cause the trees a little bit more stress and maybe the leaves might just get brown shrivel up and just fall off without actually changing color them falling off without changing color can also happen if we get a hard freeze early on in the fall months what happens if there's some sort of traumatic event for the trees during the summer so let's say we have high winds or we have you know earlier in the year there was a you know a big ice storm that came through does that play a factor into the fall colors when there's those type of events that happen over the course of the year? It can it depends on how much the tree was stressed by that individual event if they lost numerous branches if they lost

26:11a half of the trunk something along those lines and the tree has continued to be stressed throughout the summer then it can kind of mute the colors or the leaves might just fall off yeah it depends on the injury on what will happen with that. Is there ever a chance the trees don't change colors can that happen? That would happen. Hmm I think we would always see just a little bit of color change if we had a severe drought and then a hard hard freeze at the beginning of September that could result in very little fall color as the leaves would have fallen off in that freeze. Okay. Not likely to happen though. Yeah it would be a pretty rare event of something like you can't think of that ever happening though nothing comes to mind. Nothing comes to mind for me now. Okay I'm going to have to write that down for a short story. You know they always say like all of the bees disappear you're in trouble. Well if the trees don't change colors you're in real trouble then you know kind of like some short story in the future. Is there anything else that we haven't

27:12discussed that comes to mind or anything you would like to mention that you know people should know. The only thing I can say is you know it's always like you said wonderful to go out and take a drive and enjoy the fall colors. Down south we have the majority of hardwoods in our forests in the southern part of Michigan and so you're going to get a variety of brilliant colors in the fall and then as you get a little bit north maybe north of US 10 where the we get more conifers in our forests you're going to have that contrast between the vibrant colors and the green of the conifers which is kind of my favorite and so anywhere you go I think take a drive go see and enjoy the fall colors in Michigan. Thank you for listening to On Deadline your radio news from Odyssey. On Deadline is written and produced by me, Kristi Strosser and by Lauren Berry. Subscribe wherever you get podcasts.

28:40Watching software and more time running your business because your work day should end eventually try O2 free at O2.com that's O-D-O-O dot com. Heading back to campus timed web grades your entire tech setup switch to Verizon buy or bring a qualifying smartphone and get a smartwatch and a tablet on us that's all your essential gear for zero extra dollars. Ace your classes track your fitness and stream your favorite shows visit Verizon dot com or your local store today. Bring an eligible phone to purchase a new phone with device payment on post-paid service plan required up to $649.99 watch and tablet device payment purchased with new line on $20 per month tablet plan and $15 per month watch plan for 36 months required. Less up to $650 promo credit applied over 36 months per device additional taxes fees in terms apply. Hey, all right almost here. Are you ready? Just grabbing my shoes. That's what you said 10 minutes ago. I just wrapped the video call uploading this giant file on my tablet looking at my watch group and Nana's with the group chat and of course still lining up tonight's playlist on all at once. Yep, story of my life. That's why I switched to T-Mobile. They have the fastest 5G

29:43network. Okay, multi-tasker. I see you. Honestly, I never imagined I could do all this at once. It's awesome. Say no more, I'm totally switching. My post is taking way too long to upload. That's a sign you've got to get T-Mobile. So many reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours at teamable.com. Fastest based on analysis by UglospeedTest Intelligence data of national speed score results in cooperating 5G download and upload speeds for the first half of 2026. Girl, let's get real. Some pads are just diapers with a good PR team, but not the new Cotex BioCare. That's because Cotex BioCare helps defend against odor and irritants. And it's the first and only pad with this pH proactive system that helps optimize the pad's pH. Just think of it as self-care for down there. Check out Cotex.com for more details

30:44on the all-new Cotex completely redesigned to meet your needs. You asked, we heard. What you're listening to presumably doesn't suck, so neither should your sound system. Sonos lets you listen seamlessly from room to room. Same great sound, expertly tuned, astonishingly clear. It's not magic, but it's not not magic.