The Tech Policy Press Podcast

Access to affordable, reliable high-speed internet is a prerequisite for nearly every part of modern life, from finding work and finishing schoolwork to seeing a doctor or staying in touch with family. Yet millions of American households remain stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide.
That's the starting point for "The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation," a report released in May from Public Knowledge, UnidosUS, and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. Rather than beginning in Washington policy circles, this report centers the lived experiences of low- and moderate-income households to find out what's actually standing in their way and what should be done about it. Justin Hendrix had the chance to dig into the findings with the report’s authors: Alisa Valentin, broadband policy director at Public Knowledge, and Claudia Ruiz, senior civil rights policy advisor at UnidosUS.

In this second of three episodes on xAI's data center buildout in Memphis, Tennessee and Southaven, Mississippi, Justin Hendrix speaks with Amanda Garcia, senior attorney and data center project leader at the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), about the fight over Colossus and Colossus 2 and what it means for disputes over the AI infrastructure boom across the country.

In June 2024 the Greater Memphis, Tennessee Chamber of Commerce announced Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, would build its "Colossus" data center in an old Electrolux factory. Two years on, the story continues to expand alongside the company’s growing footprint, with a second campus, Colossus II, across the state line in Southaven, Mississippi; a contested gray water recycling plant; an ever-rising count of gas turbines; multiple lawsuits; and communities in South Memphis still pressing for straight answers.
Few people have tracked all of it more closely than Neil Strebig, a reporter with The Commercial Appeal in Memphis who has covered the xAI story daily from the beginning. He’s attended community meetings and hearings, filed right-to-know requests, parsed the differing interpretations of the Clean Air Act by the EPA, the Shelby County Health Department and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, counted turbines, and spent time with residents living alongside the facilities. The result is a level of detail that few can match.
In this conversation, Strebig brings us up to speed on the latest developments — including a newly updated lawsuit citing unpermitted turbines in Southaven, the implications of the SpaceX IPO and the impending IPOs of other AI firms, and the stalled water recycling plant Memphis leaders had counted on. And, he reflects on what it has been like to chase facts as the story spread across two states and a thicket of jurisdictions.

Late on Friday, June 12, Anthropic announced it had received a letter from the United States Department of Commerce notifying the company that the government had issued an export control directive forcing it to suspend all access to its AI models Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including Anthropic's own foreign-national employees. To comply, the company disabled access to both models for all its customers. The Wall Street Journal called the episode "one of the most powerful examples yet of US government intervention in the AI race."
The White House move has left many experts baffled. And, it is raising alarms in foreign capitals about the wisdom of relying on American AI, suggesting the US will operate ad hoc, with access to advanced models revoked on a case-by-case basis. Against that backdrop, a group of cybersecurity leaders organized by Alex Stamos has urged the administration to reverse course in an open letter. Currently, Stamos is chief product officer at an AI security startup called Corridor. Previously, he was chief security officer at Facebook, before he left to found the Stanford Internet Observatory. Justin Hendrix caught up with him on Tuesday, June 16.

On June 4, Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) released a 269-page bipartisan discussion draft of a bill called the Great American Artificial Intelligence Act of 2026. On the same date, they published an opinion in Bloomberg Law calling for feedback on the draft. “This discussion draft isn’t a final product,” they wrote. “It’s the start of a serious national conversation with workers, researchers, startups, frontier labs, educators, civil society, state leaders, and the American people.” Rep. Trahan joined the podcast to discuss the draft and some of the early criticism levied against it from civil society groups.