Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-10-15 Thursday

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Democracy Now! Thursday, October 15, 2026

From New York, this is Democracy Now. If they under these feelings be the party that lifts of those who have entered of the conversation. With the midterms less than three weeks away, we'll look at how the backlash against data centers to power AI projects has become a political flashpoint. We'll speak to Democratic congressional candidate Justin Pearson in Memphis, Tennessee, where Elon Muddy, is building massive data centers. We'll also talk to the tech journalist Paris Marks, author of the new book, Hyperscale, the ambition and excess of big techs data empires. Data centers have become a huge issue in the midterms because people are paying higher power bills because of them. They're seeing the effects of all these AI tools that are proliferating

through our society at the moment. But also beyond that, you know, they're feeling the impact in their communities. But first, we look at the Trump administration's sweeping new sanctions against the International Criminal Court. We'll speak with war crimes prosecutor Reeve Brody. The same administration that bombs water plants and girls schools in Iran that blows up boats in the Caribbean, that arms a genocide in Gaza, is trying to destroy the international criminal court that could hold it and its ally Israel accountable.

All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. United Nations warn some 800,000 people have been cut off from life-saving assistance due to heavy fighting between Houthi militias and Saudi-backed forces. The World Food Program says shifting front lines, blocked roads, growing insecurity of severely hampered access to the city of Tice, which is in circled by Houthi militias. Medical officials at Tice's main hospital warn stocks of life-saving supplies will run out in less than two weeks. We have more than 650 patients with kidney failure who risk losing their lives, as well as infants

and incubators and patients in intensive care. These disasters we're facing, and this situation, necessitate international and humanitarian intervention to find safe passages for medicines, fuel, goods, and food to enter the besieged city. Taze is one of the most densely populated cities in Yemen, especially at city center. Earlier today, the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen claimed its forces intercepted a cruise missile in the Medina area. The Houthis have denied carrying out any attacks on Saudi Arabia today. The conflicting claims come after Saudi officials said one person was wounded by falling debris Wednesday by an intercepted Houthi ballistic missile launched towards Riyadh. A Houthi spokesperson said the group had successfully struck King Khalid International Airport following deadly attacks there over the weekend.

Two cargo ships sank near the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday after they were struck by unknown projectiles. The Cape Dow had been badly damaged in a September attack that killed a sailor. The GFS Pride sank a day after it suffered an explosion off the coast of Oman. Kru members were safely evacuated as the massive vessel sank littering the ocean with some of its 2,500 cargo containers. This comes amidst a recent surge of attacks on civilian ships by Iran's military in response to the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and economic sanctions. Meanwhile, the United Nations is urging the U.S. and Iran to agree to a plan to move fertilizer through the Strait of Hormuz to prevent a global food crisis. About one-third of the world's fertilizer shipments normally pass through the waterway. On Wednesday, a top U.N. official warned that unless a deal is put in place ahead of the planting season, commodity prices of food staples will soar, triggering a massive food security crisis affecting parts of Asia and Africa. In Ukraine, at least nine civilians were killed overnight and hundreds of thousands left.

without power. After swarms of Russian drones attacked the capital Kiv and Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv. Russia's defense ministry said it targeted plants supplying power and heating as well as a data center in Kiv. The attacks came days after. President Trump unilaterally announced Russia and Ukraine had declared an energy ceasefire. An announcement both sides denied. This is a Kiv resident who survived a Russian attack on our apartment. complex Wednesday. I want to say to America and the whole world, please help us. You said you would help us, but you've left us alone to face a great tragedy.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian officials said SpaceX's satellite internet provider, Starlink, had cut bandwidth to objects traveling faster than 100 miles per hour, severely limiting drones, airplanes, and helicopters used by Ukraine. SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, said in response that any limits to Starlink's service in Ukraine are decided by the U.S. military and ultimately President Trump. That prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to say in an interview that he helped betrayed by Trump, who he said was on the wrong side of history. Zelensky also said Ukraine would resume attacks on Russian energy sites. Ukrainian drones later struck an oil refinery south of Moscow, while another attack targeted a data center in Balakovo belonging to Russia's largest state-controlled bank.

Elsewhere, Romanian officials say seven sailors are missing after fire broke out on a chemical tanker in Romanian territorial waters. This follows drone attacks on at least five other cargo ships in the Black Sea that some Romanian and Bulgarian officials have linked to Russia. Meanwhile, in Germany, a trial got underway Wednesday for a Ukrainian military officer accused of leading a secret state-sponsored operation to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines, which designed to deliver natural gas from Russia to Europe. The suspect, identified only as Sir Riquet, was a captain in a Ukrainian Special Forces Unit at the time of the bombing in September 2020. The U.S. is sending hundreds of soldiers to Latin America to train local forces to supposedly tackle drug trafficking.

Soldiers from a 600-member battalion reportedly began deploying to a new jungle training facility in Panama. The troops are set to train with local forces in Colombia and Honduras. The Pentagon recently moved several MQ9 Reaper drones from Africa to Colombia and to Ecuador, where the U.S. military personnel and special forces are already operating. The commander of U.S. Southern Command, General Francis Donovan, has said the U.S. plans to expand operations from strikes on boats to strikes on land. The U.S. has killed at least 239 people in boat strikes that legal experts had denounced as extrajudicial killings. Costa Rica's opened a new high-security prison. designed to hold more than 5,000 prisoners.

It's modeled after the notorious Seccat mega-prison in El Salvador, where prisoners are denied due process and face torture, violence, medical neglect, and other serious human rights abuses. On Wednesday, Costa Rica's right-wing populist president, Laude Fernandez, inaugurated the High Containment Center

Against Organized Crime near the capital San Jose. An investment of more than $35 million, precisely to contain the most dangerous convicts and cut off once and for all the power they have held within the prisons for decades. We are going to use a firm hand, yes, because those who commit crimes must pay the price. The Costa Rican President Fernandez campaigned as a tough-on-crime candidate favoring harsher criminal sentencing and mandatory prison labor for convicts. She's a close ally of El Salvador's far-right president, Naïbe Buckele, and President Donald Trump.

The Irish author Sally Rooney says she's been forced to stop selling her book in the UK because of her support for Palestine action, which the British government designates a terrorist organization. In a statement to the Guardian, Rooney says, ever since she declared her support for the direct action group. She could no longer receive royalties from UK sales. She wrote, quote, the fulfillment of contracts to publish my work in the UK could now constitute a serious criminal offense. After a process of consultation and deliberation and with my full agreement, my publisher, Faber, has therefore determined that it can no longer supply my work within the UK, unquote. More than 3,700 people have been arrested in the UK.

for allegedly supporting Palestine action since the group was banned last year. Here in the United States, a federal judge in New York has granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from enforcing sanctions against two U.S.-based groups that support the international criminal court's work, the taxpayer alliance against genocide and dawn democracy for the Arab world now. The Trump administration sought to sanction the groups after the 2020. Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to former ICC Judge Navi Pillay, who chairs the UN's Independent Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, which concluded Israel, has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, New York City controller Democrat Mark Levine says New York will not be investing its pension funds in Israeli bonds since the quality of the bonds have deteriorated amidst the wars

in Gaza and Iran. New York City mayors are on Mamdani, welcome the decision. I welcome the controller's decision. It is something that I've said in the past that I don't believe that our city should purchase Israel bonds. We don't purchase the bonds of any other sovereign nation. I don't think that we should make an exception when it comes to Israel. U.S. inflation ticked up to 3.7% in September up from August gain of 3.4% prices rose faster than wages, which have increased 3% from a year ago,

economists attribute the rise in inflation to higher energy prices, as critics say the U.S. war in Iran and President Trump's tariffs are contributing to increased costs. President Trump is continuing his tour of deep red, that's traditional Republican strongholds ahead of November's midterm elections, with plans to rally MAGA supporters in Northern Kentucky Saturday. On Wednesday, Trump traveled to Montana to support Republican congressional candidate, Aaron Flint, who's polling even with Democrat Sam Forstad.

Earlier Wednesday, Trump traveled to a campaign event in Arizona aboard the new Air Force One, a luxury 747 jet given to him by the Quddery royal family. When they give you a 747, you say two words. Thank you. He plans to take that jet with him when he leaves the White House. Meanwhile, the mayor of Youngstown, Ohio, has condemned political violence at a campaign rally headlined by President Trump Monday. Footage shows Trump mocking a protester wearing a shirt reading, release the Epstein files,

as she's repeatedly punched by at least two members of the audience to cheers and chants of USA. Uniform officers then remove the protester from the venue. No charges have been filed. The Trump administration's investigation of Minnesota Congress member Ilhan Omar is aimed at building a case to strip away her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her. That's according to officials who spoke with the Wall Street Journal. The efforts focused at least in part on how Omar obtained her citizenship after she was brought to the U.S. as a child in 1995 following the outbreak of civil war in Somalia. Congressmember Omar's office said in response, quote, President Trump would love to eliminate one of the most effective progressive voices in Congress. There's no basis for this, unquote.

Among items seized by Homeland Security agents from Omar's Washington, D.C. Home Monday, where cell phone, notebooks, personal computers, and her passport. In Houston, Texas, Harris County District Attorney Sean Tier said his office will investigate an immigration agent running his vehicle over. 48-year-old Miguel Para Hernandez during an enforcement operation over the weekend. An ICE spokesperson said agents were trying to stop a vehicle carrying Jose Mendoza-Servantes, the person the operation was targeting as well as Padra Hernandez. But a lawyer for Padra Hernandez said her client doesn't know Mendoza Servantes and that he was not with him on Saturday. In the footage, the ICE vehicle can be seen running over Parra Hernandez. Harris County District Attorney Shantir spoke with Fox 26 Houston.

They struck and ran over with a vehicle, someone who didn't even have an alien number yet, who had no history with ICE, who ICE wasn't even looking for, much like Lorenzo Salgado, who was driving to work, who had never gotten as much as a speeding ticket in over 20 years here, and they shot and killed it. This is continuous behavior that he was. only designed to put fear in a large percentage of our population. And the Wall Street Journal reports the new White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia, never passed the bar exam, despite President Trump referring to her as an attorney. Zacharia reportedly sat for the California bar exam in 2011, but failed it.

The campaign for accountability is formally asked the California bar to investigate whether Zacharia broke state law by falsely identified. herself as a lawyer. Meanwhile, during campaign rally in Arizona, President Trump suggested those who leak information to the media should be shot. My opinion, leakers should be shot. In the old days, we used to shoot leakers, you know, when they leak, what time you're going to attack a country. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report.

Court. I'm Amy Goodman. And I'm Narmine Sheikh. Welcome to our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. The Trump administration has placed sweeping sanctions on the International Criminal Court. The sanctions target the institution as a whole. This comes on top of earlier sanctions targeting individual ICC judges and personnel. The Trump administration announced the sanctions on Friday just hours after former ICC judge Navi Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Pellate criticized President Trump's new sanctions. So I think it's very unfortunate. However, the plans of targeting international criminal justice through the ICC was brewing all

the time. We all heard these threats against the court. So the timing of how they announced the threat and made it official is curious. can't be coincidental when they're so angry with the court. And that's why the first thing I did when I returned from Nuremberg to the Hague is to go to the staff of the ICC to show solidarity for their work in promoting international criminal justice and to protect those who've already been sanctioned. The Trump administration's been escalated.

its attacks on the International Criminal Court ever since the ICC issued arrest warrants in 2024 for Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former defense minister, Yoav Galant. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the new sanctions on the ICC on Friday. And President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans. And that's why today the United States is sanctioning. the International Criminal Court. We will ban transactions with this rogue court

cutting off their resources and crippling their ability to operate against us because our message is clear. The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC. Both parties agree on this, but only President Trump has the resolve to take the action needed to end this threat once and for all. Either the ICC will end its threats, where we will end the ICC.

And we expect our allies, many of whom are part of the ICC, and that rely on American service members for their defense to rein in this rogue court. If they do not, the United States will continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC piece by piece until Americans are threatened no longer. The U.S. Secretary of State Mark Rubio made these comments just after it was announced who won the Nobel Peace. Prize, Navi Pillay, not President Trump, who has been seeking it actively and publicly for years. For more, we're joined here in New York by Reid Brody, War Crimes, Prosecutor

Member of the International Commission of Juris Reed. We spoke on Friday. You talked all about Navi Pillay and the significance of who she is and what it means for her to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, Trump said right afterwards nobody knows who she is. But this announcement, right after that announcement. Talk about the significance. We've seen individual members of the ICC have been sanctioned. But the whole court, could the U.S. take it down? Well, you know, the juxtaposition is amazing.

I mean, the Nobel Committee, when they awarded the prize to Navi Pillay, they said international law is under unprecedented attack. And a couple of hours later, the Trump administration proved them right with these sweeping sanctions on the ICC. As you say, up until now, the Trump administration has sanctioned the prosecutors, individual judges. But this is an attack on the entire court. And it basically prevents American or U.S.-based banks, insurance companies, any company from transacting with the court. And, you know, these are existential, this is an existential attack on the court.

In addition, non-American companies tend to over-complly. I mean, we saw AXA, the main Dutch insurer of the court and court personnel, withdrawing, even though they were not subject to sanctions. And so really, I mean, the 125 countries that are members of this court are now going, you know, to have to step up. You know, Marco Rubio talks about American sovereignty against a runaway court. I mean, this is really an insurance policy against accountability for crimes that the United States and its ally Israel are committing in plain sight. I mean, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Galant have been indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity. The United States is involved in an illegal attack on Iran that constitutes probably the crime of aggression,

bombing water plants and girls' schools in Iran that could be war crimes, blowing up boats in the Caribbean without due process and trial. as we speak, Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, is facing trial in the Hague for the alleged extrajudicial execution of suspected drug dealers. Sending migrants to a prison in El Salvador, a notorious prison, where they were in fact tortured, can create criminal liability. And so, you know, not unsurprisingly, the Trump administration is doing abroad what it does at home. You know, trample on human rights, trample on the rule of law, and then attack the very institutions, the courts, the journalists, the NGOs that try to hold it to account. I mean, it's interesting, Reed, because, as you pointed out, the U.S. has never been a member of the international criminal. Court, the U.S. provides no funding for the International Criminal Court. And as you've also said,

I mean, there are a number of very powerful countries that are not members of the ICC, which includes also three of the five permanent members of the Security Council. And indeed, also, you know, you mentioned Iran. If you could explain, because you were involved in the establishment of this court, helping to lobby governments to exceed to the treaty, you know, what was the resistance that you face then. Indeed, Iran is not a member of the International Criminal Court. And then how the structure works, that you have to be a party to the treaty in order to be able to claim jurisdiction. So, for example, in the case, Israel is not a member of the ICC, but Palestine is. Right. I think that's the key point here. I mean, Marco Rubio talks about American sovereignty.

Well, yeah, if an American, I mean, the ICC does not have jurisdiction over crimes committed in America by America. It doesn't have jurisdiction over ICE violence, over, you know, deaths in custody. But if the United States commits crimes on the territory of a country that has ratified or given its jurisdiction to the ICC, there's no sovereignty question. I mean, I'm an American citizen. If I go to Paris and start shooting people, the French courts can prosecute me. That's their sovereign right. And they can also give that right to the international criminal court. So the U.S. has no sovereign right to commit war crimes on the territory of countries that have given its jurisdiction.

The same way. I mean, Vladimir Putin, let's remember, Russia hasn't signed up to the court, but Vladimir Putin has a warrant outstanding for alleged crimes committed in Ukraine. And in fact, when that happened, the U.S. applauded. And Lindsey Graham marshalled a 100 to zero vote in the Senate applauding the indictment of Vladimir Putin, who is not a member of the International Criminal Court. The same thing with Israel.

Israel is not a member, but Palestine is. And you have no right, you mean, you have a sovereign right within your own country. you don't have a sovereign right to go and commit war crimes on other people's territory. And that was, in fact, the objection back in 1998 when we were in Rome to the international criminal court. That is why the Clinton administration was one of only seven countries to vote against the ICC statute because they wanted an iron-clad guarantee that no American, they usually put in terms of soldiers, but really what they mean is officials, you know, that. no American soldier or official could ever be held accounted to the ICC.

Did Clinton sign the Rome statute in 2000 at the end of the year? So the U.S. voted against that there was a lot of, you know, back of what, as his term was ending, or I think it was on, it was the last day that he could actually sign the treaty. He did sign the treaty. He said he wasn't sending it to the Senate for ratification, but he was signing the treaty as a measure of good faith. Then, of course, Bush came along, and under John Bolton, they unsigned the treaty, and they pushed through a legislation, the American Service Members Protection Act, or colloquially known as the Hague Invasion Act, and is still enforced, that actually authorizes the United States to take any means necessary to extract,

to prevent an American or an ally from being tried before the ICC. Reid, before we end, I want to ask you about a related story. On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily block the Trump administration from penalizing two groups from working with the ICC. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by your group, Dawn, and the taxpayer alliance against genocide. Reid, you serve as a board member of Dawn. explain the significance as we begin to wrap up.

So, you know, the ICC is the Palestinian organizations, because the sanctions that were in effect before last week included sanctions against the UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, on the occupied territories, and four Palestinian human rights organizations. Now, my organization, Dawn, has been very active in cooperating with the ICC. We actually presented a petition to the court detailing the evidence showing the complicity of U.S. officials of the Biden administration with the court. We also work very closely with the sanctioned Palestinian organizations, including Raji Serani's organization, who's been on your show many times. So we brought, and we asked the Treasury Department four times or three times, is this okay? are we in, and the Treasury Department never got back to us.

And so we had to stop working with the court, stop working with the sanctioned Palestinian organizations. And so we brought this lawsuit on First Amendment grounds. And, you know, this week we got this ruling from a district judge enjoining the administration from applying the sanctions or from the secondary sanctions to Dawn and to TAG. There are actually seven lawsuits going up against these sanctions. Lawsuits brought by law professors, lawsuits brought by judges of the court themselves, a lawsuit brought by CCR and Human Rights Watch, all of which have so far been, at least for those brought by American citizens, have been successful. So I just want to mention very quickly before we conclude, read, that in fact earlier this year when Marco Rubio, Secretary of State talked about the court, Trump actually said explicitly, he's not doing this to defend me, but he is doing it to defend

BB. He said this explicitly in a press conference. But I wanted to ask, we have 30 seconds. You said people who are countries that are signatories to the court members of the court, they have to step up in order to save the court from the effects of these sanctions. What do you think the Europeans will do? Well, they have a blocking statute. Basically, that says to Dutch companies, companies to European companies, you cannot comply with these sanctions. Now, it's not a silver bullet because people are as afraid of, you know, U.S. sanctions as they are of European pushback. But I do want to say that, you know, the Gallant and Netanyahu arrest were a watershed in international just, the arrest warrants, were a watershed in international justice.

I mean, up until then, going back to Norenberg, the instruments. of international justice had only been used against defeated enemies like in Tokyo at Noremberg, impotent Africans, enemies of the West like Vladimir Putin and Slobodan Milosevic. And people in the global South and people like me were arguing that these are double standards. And when the court finally in the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants, you know, issued, showed that it could be even-handed, that is when the United States moved to strangles. this court. Reid Brody, were Crimes prosecutor, member of the International Commission of Juris.

Coming up, we'll look at how the backlash against data centers to power AI has become a political flashpoint in the midterm elections. We'll go to Memphis to speak with Democratic congressional candidate Justin Pearson, where Elon Musk is building massive data centers. Then we'll talk to Paris Marx, author of Hyperscale, the ambition and excess of big text state empire. Stay with us. Or this wide extended country,

hear the solemn echoes low. For every century, those cries have gone from pole to pole. See the white man sway his says In one hand he holds their arms.

In the other hand, the scripture and says that he's a man of God. To the white people of America from the album, Songs of Slavery and Emancipation. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Nermin Shea. We turn now to an issue that has become a major bipartisan flashpoint. in the midterms this year, pitting local communities against multi-billion dollar technology companies,

AI data centers. The energy needs of the AI boom and the construction of massive data centers and state after state have created a backlash from both Democratic and Republican voters. New data shows that 75% of data centers under construction and 80% of those in the planning stages are located in predominantly Republican states. This is an ad from Texas by Democrat Gina Hinojosa running against Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Why is my electric bill going up? Absolutely. I'm happy to help.

Data Center production and energy use in Texas is skyrocketing to meet AI's needs. For your future. What? Who authorized that? Greg Abbott. Abbott took 20 million in campaign donations from data center executives and companies, and he gave them billions in tax breaks. For your future.

My future? How does this help me? Absolutely. Absolutely. Great question. Happy to help. And it's not just Democrats who are opposing data centers in Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate. Congress member Tom Tiffany has run this ad criticizing his Democratic opponent, David Crowley. Meet Data Center, David Crowley. There's an opportunity for us to really become AI and a data hub for not only for the entire country, for the entire globe. And he wants you to pay for it. Data Center David Crowley won't roll back data center tax incentives. Our lakes run dry. Family farms paved over. Why? Because Crowley's campaign is funded by the people building them. President Trump, however, has remained adamant in his

defensive data centers and the big tech owners. In August, he wrote online, quote, the only reason communities throughout the USA should not want data centers if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let data rain, President Trump wrote. Well, the battle against data centers is at the heart of one campaign in Tennessee. We're joined now by Democratic State Representative Justin J. Pearson, who's opposed the Colossus data centers built by Elon Musk's X-A-I in the Memphis area. Pearson is running for Congress against Republican State Senator Brent Taylor and Tennessee's recently redistricted 9th congressional district,

which includes parts of Memphis as well as rural and suburban counties. Justin Pearson, thanks so much for being with us again. Talk about the significance of this battle. We're seeing all over the country. We're going to talk about that in a minute with Paris Marx. But in Memphis, what are you up against? Listen, Elon Musk built the world's largest data center three miles away from our home. And the idea was that we were just supposed to accept that and the little bit of dollars and taxes that we receive and be silent about the harm of formaldehyde, the harm of nitrogen oxide, the illegal gas turbines that he's operated in Memphis.

And now he has 59 illegal gas turbines in North Mississippi that are polluting the air of people in Memphis and Whitehaven and Westwood and Boxes. town. But across the 15 counties that I've traveled, I have yet to meet anyone, including folks who are Republicans who are voting for us who want data centers. It's the clearest example of the billionaire class versus the rest of us in exploiting our natural resources so they can make more profit. Well, indeed, as you said, if these things were so good, they would be built at Matarago. I'd like to ask you, Justin, about the Memphis City Council members having passed two ordinances earlier this month about data centers. Could you tell us what those are about? Yes, sir. Right now, the Memphis City Council has a moratorium vote coming up on the 20th, as well as

other regulation that they're looking at as well. That'll be going through the process over the next several weeks. But I'm advocating alongside other members of our community for a data center moratorium in Memphis and also in Shelby County. In the House of Representatives, I represent a town called Millington, and just yesterday they passed a data center moratorium. But I believe local governments have a responsibility to protect the air, to protect the water of our constituents and our communities that are being inundated by hyperscale data centers that are seeking to pollute and harm our communities without any input given by the people who live there.

And a lot of the people who live in our rural towns and communities that I'm visiting and talking with, they don't want these hypersale data centers either. And could you talk about the lawsuit the NAACP has sued, Musk's X-A-I earlier this year in June. Yes, so the NAACP, alongside Young Gifton and Green and Southern Environmental Law Center, are suing X-A-I because they're illegally violating the Clean Air Act, operating over 59 gas turbines that are making them the largest producer of nitrogen oxide, which is smog, a ground-level ozone pollution in our entire region.

And they have not at all gotten permission to do that via the Clean Air Act, through the Environmental Protection Agency and instead are exploiting their relationship with the governor and Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality to allow them to hurt, harm and kill the people who live in our community. And even the Department of Justice, Trump's Department of Justice, has tried to enjoin the lawsuit, which they've been denied, saying that GROC and XAI, the trapbought, is necessary because it's being used to kill people in the Iran war. And so what's being powered in our neighborhood is killing and hurting people all across this world. And we, in our community, want it. And it is taking community resistance and community building in order to show our

disdain for this, but also the power that we have to stop it. Justin Pearson, you're well known for taking on the powers at B.E.U. And another state legislator, another Justin, Justin Jones, you were sanctioned by, you were thrown out, expelled from the Tennessee legislature for taking on the gun lobby after a horrific massacre, gun massacre that took place in Nashville. Now you're taking on the, the most power, the wealthiest person on earth, Elon Musk, with his X-A-I data centers. And it's just been revealed in investigations of dark money by the New York Times that he has poured over $300 million into the midterm elections.

You are trying to win a seat in Congress for the first time from Memphis. Why have you decided to take on Elon Musk? And how much money do you know is he pouring in against you in your congressional race? Yes. I am never afraid to take on the richest person in the world financially. I'm not afraid to take on the President of the United States who just mentioned us in his rally two days ago because I will do anything that I possibly can to improve the quality of lives for people in Tennessee. The truth of the matter is gas is high. Grocers are high. Healthcare costs are high. Wages are low. Yet the billionaire class continues to profit off of our pain and pillage. our communities and our pocketbooks. Look, we know he's spending over $300 million. I believe he's going to start spending millions in our race because it is so extremely close. You know, they drew this district to be plus 21 for Trump and most recent polls have us within just four points of winning

this. I just learned yesterday that Donald Trump's Super PAC is starting to spend money in our district. They are terrified about the multiracial coalition that we're building, about the fact that we're getting rural folks together and people live in urban areas together to fight back against the tyranny of government and against the billionaire class. But they're not going to prevail because on election day, we all just give one vote. And we're going to have more votes at the end of the day. Justin J. Pearson, Democratic State Representative from Tennessee running for Congress to represent Memphis and Shelby County. Up next, Paris Marx, author of the new book, Hyperscale, the ambition and excess of big text data empires.

Stay with us. High Fly by the late legendary legend. Derry pianist and composer, Randy Weston, to see our interview and his performances, go to Democracy Now.org. This is Democracy Now. I'm Amy Goodman with Nerman Shea. With the midterms, less than three weeks away, we continue to look at how AI data centers have emerged as a political flashpoint. We're joined now by the Canadian journalist Paris Marks, host of the award-winning Tech Won't Save Us podcast, writes the Disconnect newsletter, author of the new book, Hyperscale, the ambition and excess of Big Tech's Data Empires. He's joining us from St. John's New Finland. And we just talked to Justin

Pearson, taking on Elon Musk X-A-I data centers in Memphis. In fact, though, the largest concentration of data centers is in Northern Virginia, as you write about. And Nermaine and I are speaking to you from New York, which has the only state moratorium on the building of data centers? Can you give us, can you put that battle in Memphis in the global picture? Why Northern Virginia, for example, is there this massive concentration of data centers? It's not one of the poorest areas in the country. No, certainly not. It's much more for historical reasons, right? Because a lot of that early work on the internet was happening in Northern Virginia, you know, obviously a lot of military spending that went into that. And of course, for that reason, a lot of infrastructure, a lot of, you know,

fiber infrastructure, connectivity infrastructure, data centers certainly over time, were built out in that area. And that, you know, kind of that legacy continues to this day. And so, you know, the people who live there in northern Virginia have really felt the effects of all of these data centers having been built out. And especially, you know, they have had data centers for a long time, right? But one of the things I try to get to in the book is really the shift from, you know, data centers as they used to be, you know, in industrial areas, maybe not so much large.

than other tenants that would be in those, you know, kind of industrial parks and things like that, to the hyperscale data centers that are just on a whole other scale. You know, the resource demands are just immense, as of course, you know, Representative Justin Pearson was just talking about in Memphis where they have really been feeling this firsthand. And I think, you know, because Elon Musk was involved, this really brought it to the attention of a lot more people, you know, seeing the effects that come with one of these major data centers. But obviously in Northern Virginia, people are feeling a lot of that. But as we have seen this significant escalation in the construction of these hyperscale data centers, particularly in the past four to five years, and certainly since the generative AI boom really started to take off in 2023, we have seen not just many more communities in the United States seeing data centers planned or being constructed next to them and feeling what comes with that, whether that is the increases in their electricity prices, the pressures on their water system, or just the kind of the noise and light.

pollution that can come from living next to one of these infrastructures, but many more communities around the world are feeling that too. And I think that's part of the reason why, you know, we're seeing this kind of collective backlash, you know, throughout the United States, but in many other parts of the world, against these data centers. So, Paris, let's just, you know, to give people a sense of the scale of these data centers, there are 3,000, more than 3,000 operational data centers in the U.S. now, and about 1,500 that are being. planned. So why don't you explain if you could why? Why so many and why so quickly? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we need data centers to process the types of things that we do

online, you know, the digital services that we use. You know, of course, I'm connected to you digitally. That is likely going through a data center somewhere, right? So it's not to say that we need absolutely no data centers. We need to get rid of them all. I think there have certainly been benefits from the digital technologies that have arisen over the past few decades. But we have seen this continued escalation in the amount of computing power that the tech companies and the tech industry are demanding, right? And they make the products that they're that they're offering to people more computationally intensive. And so the real reason, you know, one of the key reasons, at least, that we have seen this significant escalation over the past few years in the construction of data centers. Because we really saw this start to take off in 2023, 2024, which is why it has become such a political flashpoint over the past 12 to 18 months.

is really because of generative AI, right? Because of the chatbots and image generators that companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, but also Google, Microsoft, Amazon have been pushing for the past few years because, you know, for regular people who are not really into the technical side of things, it might just be like, oh, okay, this is a new service that these companies are offering. But the reality is that these are much more computationally intensive than what, you know, these companies were offering before. It takes a lot more computation to kind of create a text response to a prompt that you're putting in or to generate an image or a video based on some prompts that you're putting into the system. And that has meant they have needed to build so many more data centers,

so much more quickly and make those data centers even larger than they have in the past, which again is why so many people are seeing data centers arrive in their communities, just because these tech companies are looking for so many places to be able to locate them. places that are willing to, you know, have them become their neighbors, and they're finding that increasingly a lot of communities are saying no to that. Well, one of the chapters in your book, Paris, is devoted to the climate impacts, which we heard about earlier from Justin in Memphis. But so the question, you know, obviously America, the U.S. has exponentially more data centers

than any country in the world. Now, China, which is also building, you know, massively, data centers, though, again, nowhere near the number of what the U.S. has. They have been attempting to employ renewable energy to diminish the climate impacts of these data centers. In your research, do you see any indication that these tech companies are looking for more sustainable sources of energy? Not in any significant way, right? Like, if you listen to what the tech companies, say they will certainly tell you that they're investing a lot of money in renewable energy.

You know, in the past, you know, last year in particular, they made a big push into nuclear energy, which, you know, obviously is very debatable whether it can be considered clean, but in their ledger, they would, they would claim it is, right? Which is part of their way to say like, you know, look, we're trying to do this, you know, efficiently, we're trying to do this sustainably. And, you know, they will certainly talk about how, you know, they have, they will reduce kind of the intensity of water use at a data center. right? So, you know, kind of the total quantity that a data center itself will use, but then when you look across the total number of data centers that they're building out, their water use and their electricity use as well is just absolutely soaring. But the real story here, if you think about the climate impact is really their dependence on fossil fuels and their dependence on natural gas in particular. And so, you know, in the kind of 23, 24, we saw this real push for them to try to get connections to the grid in the various places where they were building out these data centers, right? But in many of those places, they have now exhausted those connections, right?

The demand on the grid was so great that it became much more difficult to connect a data center in the kind of amount of time that they would need to connect it for it to come online to, you know, benefit their generative AI ambitions. And so what we have seen over the past year is a real pivot toward building on-site gas plants. You know, obviously when we look at Memphis, there was the use of a lot of generators on-site in order to power the data center. We have seen other data centers using that model as well. But now, of course, increasingly they're moving toward actually just building dedicated gas

plants for the data centers such that there was a report out recently that it's something like 189 gigawatts of new gas capacities in the pipeline in the United States just to power these data centers, which is just staggering to imagine, right? You know, we have already seen our governments rollback on their climate ambitions. We have seen the tech companies that back in 2019, 2020 wanted us to see them as climate leaders and, you know, as though they cared about climate change and taking action on that, completely throw their targets out the window in order to pursue generative AI and the data center buildout, regardless of the consequences

that come of that. And of course, you know, those are consequences that will be felt by everybody through, you know, how it's going to make climate change worse. But again, as Representative Pearson was saying, we also see very clearly the local impacts of local, local, air pollution, you know, on the people who live next to these data centers as the people in Memphis are feeling, but also in many other communities where this is happening. Paris, Marks, I want to ask you about your critique of the legislation Senator Bernie Sanders is putting forward, certainly seen as an AI critic, a deep concern about what's happening and what's happening so fast. Senator Sanders and Congress member Greg Kassar announced the ban artificial

Super Intelligence Act to stop AI oligarchs from building machines humans cannot control. It would permanently ban the development and deployment of superintelligent AI and temporarily pause advanced AI development until a federal regulator has established safety rules. They would also direct the U.S. to pursue international agreements to prevent super-indeliorals. intelligence from being developed anywhere in the world. You are critical of this approach. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I certainly welcome Senator Sanders' work on the data center moratorium and trying to move that forward on a national level. I think that's very important. And, you know, even when we look at the kind of superintelligence legislation and, you know, the discussion of,

you know, kind of limiting or rolling back the further development of these AI models, I would also be on board with that as well, but probably not for the same reasons that are being laid out in this legislation. And so to me, this feels like a response to these narratives that we have had for the past couple months now about the power and the threat that these AI models compose to humanity, right? You know, we have seen these tech companies and people who work at them come out and talk about how they feel or they believe and, you know, they want us to believe as well that, you know, these models are getting to a place that they are starting to learn on their own and they're starting

to become so powerful that within 10 years they could decide that they want to wipe out humanity or a significant chunk of humanity. And that is a real threat to our collective species, right? And to me, quite frankly, I feel that that is a mix of science fiction and delusion on the part of the people who are running these companies. And it is also a very effective way to distract from the real harms that we're seeing from these generative AI products, from the chatbots and image generators today. For me, I think that, you know, kind of this future-focused stuff is an attempt to make sure that regulation is not targeting the things that people are actually feeling, and that would actually restrict what the chatbots and the AI companies are doing right now.

And, you know, rather having the discussion being about something that might happen 10 years down the line that I would argue is actually very unlikely and doesn't reflect how the the technology really works. You know, what I would like to see from a regulatory perspective is not this focus on the super intelligent stuff, but, you know, the effects that, you know, as we're seeing more reports, the effects that dependence on chatbots can have on people's mental health, where we see them have mental health spirals because they have become dependent on these technologies, you know, the kind of deepfay crisis that we have seen and really saw very clearly on Elon Musk's platform and with the GROC chatbot at the beginning of the year. The questions about what

dependence on chatbots and use of chatbots means for people's ability to learn, to think critically, to kind of have these cognitive skills and to develop them properly. You know, we can even go beyond that to the environmental impact of the data centers themselves or, you know, the various other ways that we have seen chatbots use for people to try to harm themselves or to harm others, of course, in the case that we're seeing here in Canada, where the shooter out in British Columbia earlier this year in one of the worst mass shootings in our history was actually, using chat chbtee for eight months to help plan violence scenarios and that attack in particular,

right up until the morning of the attack when the shooter asked the chat bot what time school shootings tend to occur and then of course went to carry out that act of mass violence. And so these are the things that I think that regulation should really be targeting, not these kind of more fantastical ideas of super intelligence that, you know, I think are really the product of kind of delusional and deceptive tech people. So, Paris, would you say that there is a distinction between your critique, which is a political economic critique of the technology in addition to, of course, these horrifying incidents that you've recounted of present-day harms, and the scientific and technological potential of this, say, generative artificial intelligence. or do you think even that potential that has been touted to us is misleading or an exaggeration? Yeah, in my view, I do think the potential is severely overstated.

You know, I think that when we look, especially at how the tech industry tends to operate, it operates on exaggeration, right, in order to drive investment, in order to drive hype cycles, to get people interested in its products to, you know, get a lot of media attention on what it's doing, which is not to say that, you know, at the end of a shakeout, of course, there's a lot of talk of whether there is an AI bubble and whether there's overinvestment into generative AI and into data centers right now and what might happen when there is a kind of market correction, you know, in that sector. And I think that what we'll find is that a lot of the places where the tech industry said

that generative AI would be useful is actually not going to pan out in the long run. I think that there will certainly be some instances where, you know, certain sectors, certain companies find that it's useful to use generative AI products. And even then, I think their use of the products will look very different than what we have today. You know, there's obviously a big reliance and push to use centralized tools like ChatGBT, BT or Claude from Anthropic. But actually, I think we'll see much more kind of use of the open weight models, the kind of smaller models that are targeted to certain use cases that are obviously also less resource demanding. which I think is how things are going to shake out. But even then, I would say that, you know, I think that the usefulness of generative AI as a technology has been overstated.

I think that the pursuit of it comes out of certain kind of ideological ideas that the tech companies have. You know, they want to build this, you know, kind of human brain within the computer. And to do that, you need larger and larger models. But that's not necessarily the best way to actually develop AI for, you know, kind of benefiting the public, right? And one of the things that I took away from Karen Howeswork, who I know you've had on the show as well, in her book, Empire of AI, is that there are a lot of other ways you can approach AI, right?

But a lot of the money that goes into AI development right now is focused on generative AI, rather than these, you know, many other techniques or approaches that could actually be much, much better for the public, you know, be using far less resources, but the industry is not very interested in that right now. And finally, if you could talk about, because it seems to me that a number of people in medical profession are very hopeful about the changes that generative AI will make possible in many, many different fields. And already, you know, the discovery of Google Deep Mind's Alpha Fold, which is considered one of the most significant scientific achievements in the history of artificial intelligence. We have 30 seconds. Your response. I'm quite skeptical of

many of these claims. You know, I think that we have actually a history of, of thinking that new technologies are going to make big changes in medical advances and then they don't deliver. And I would just point to, you know, in Canada, the auditor general in Ontario looked into these AI medical scribes, you know, the tools that transcribe conversations between patients and doctors and found that in over half of cases. They were insorting false information, recording the wrong drugs, you know, and if this is kind of the basis of, you know, how a patient's medical history, that can really have some significant effects on, you know, how they are treated going forward. if their medical file is filled with false information about their history. So again, I'm a bit skeptical on that point as well.

Paris Marks, want to thank you so much for being with us, author of the new book, Hyperscale, The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech's Data Empires, host of the award-winning tech won't save us podcast. He writes the Disconnect newsletter. A very happy birthday to Juan Gonzalez. Tomorrow on Friday, I'll be at the Woodstock International Film Festival, we're moderating a panel at two. On Monday at the Eileen Norris Cinema Theater at USC, the University of Southern California, will be screening, steal a story, please, about Democracy Now.

And on October 26 and 7th in Colorado, first at CU Boulder, then at Fort Collins, check our website, DemocracyNow.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Lermyn Cheikh.