March 10, 2026: US Customs and Border Protection officer walks through a busy airport terminal concourse with travelers in Miami, Florida. Shutterstock

March 10, 2026: US Customs and Border Protection officer walks through a busy airport terminal concourse with travelers in Miami, Florida. 

Circuit Court Ruling on Border Searches Deals Serious Blow to Privacy Rights

Metal full body height turnstile gates with a red X in the middle, above a narrow black panel. In the blurred background, between the bars, refugee housing containers, a mountain and the sunset can be seen in the distance. 

Biometric fingerprints and police screening are required upon exit and entry to the refugee camp on Samos Island in Greece. Photo from September 21, 2021 (Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto)

Human Rights Should Still Matter When Countries Buy Tech That Kills

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Why Social Media Platforms Should Adopt a 'Militant Democracy' Framework

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Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Disaster Management, District of Columbia, and Census Chair Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ranking Member Andy Kim (D-N.J.) confer before a hearing on rogue artificial intelligence (AI) on Capitol Hill on Sept. 30, 2026. (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images)

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Cloud Needs More than Fee Waivers to Be Competitive

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, stands with US President Donald Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) and others holds a press briefing with AI executives following a meeting on artificial intelligence outside the West Wing of the White House on September 29, 2026. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

September 2026 US Tech Policy Roundup

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A screenshot from an online video referencing a cooking oil safety scandal released on July 24 by Wei Chun-yu, a satirical video creator affiliated with opposition party Kuomintang (KMT). The text says “So I am still here” in Mandarin.

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Director Aaron Sorkin, from left, Mikey Madison, and Jeremy Allen White pose for photographers upon arrival at the gala screening for the film "The Social Reckoning" in London, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

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Mark Scott is a Contributing Editor at Tech Policy Press.

BRUSSELS — The European Union is having a Jekyll and Hyde moment on tech.

In the corridors of power within the 27-country bloc, two competing philosophies are vying for supremacy just as digital policy has become central to global geopolitics between Europe, the United States and China.

The EU has committed itself to a deregulatory agenda — epitomized by Mario Draghi’s 

 — that aims a bazooka at once-sacred cows like the Artificial Intelligence Act and General Data Protection Regulation to reduce red tape and jumpstart Europe’s sluggish economy.

Yet Brussels also continues to commit itself to new digital legislation, most notably the recent 

, that represent the bloc’s traditional regulate-first philosophy.

Confusingly, both of these opposing forces are playing out, in real time.

, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen name-checked both the push for deregulation and the new round of digital rules.

First, she boasted that “our 12 omnibus proposals are reducing the administrative burden by around €17 billion a year,” in reference to a series of red-tape-cutting initiatives, including those 

. Then, minutes later in the same speech, von der Leyen announced the EU Kids Act, telling lawmakers: “It is we who decide our rules, not Big Tech.”

For EU officials, this perceived contradiction — in which the bloc wants to cut digital regulation while also proposing new legislation — is not a contradiction. They point to how many of the new proposals, including the EU Kids Act and Digital Fairness Act, are aimed at simplifying oversight, especially for small businesses.

Under this worldview, the new legislation supports Draghi’s simplification agenda, and the review of landmark laws like the EU’s 

 and Digital Services Act is an opportunity to pare back oversight that may become too burdensome.

That may be an argument that holds water inside the 

. But for those outside the European Commission’s headquarters, Brussels’ love-hate relationship with digital regulation can come across as muddled — even confusing — just when European citizens 

In Brussels’ digital policy circles, the European Commission’s logic is under fire from both directions. Consumer and digital rights groups 

 the so-called Digital Omnibus is deregulation dressed as simplification. The tech industry 

 the EU’s simplification agenda into a weapon to attack its new legislative proposals, including framing the EU Kids Act as duplicative regulatory oversight already built into the bloc’s existing rulebook.

Europe’s leaders find themselves caught between two seemingly opposing priorities.

, particularly from US tech giants, many national leaders and EU officials believe Europe must pare back strict oversight of this emerging technology or face being left behind.

 of the world’s AI compute power compared to 75 percent of the global total from the US. 

 — in part because the technical standards necessary to enforce the bloc’s comprehensive rules were not ready — was seen as essential by European leaders to give Europe a fighting chance of creating firms to compete globally with the likes of OpenAI or China’s DeepSeek.

At the same time, von der Leyen, the European Commission president, is under intense pressure from EU national capitals to act on perceived online harms associated with children.

Ahead of the EU Kids Act, several countries like France, Spain and Greece had proposed their own versions of 

. Those efforts were driven by the perception that Brussels was not acting fast enough on a digital policy topic that 

Von der Leyen is half-way through her second term in Brussels, and she is a savvy political operative. Faced with growing vocal anger — and opposition to children’s online safety — from national capitals, the German politician 

 to review her options before pulling the trigger on the EU Kids Act.

move by a European politician who has centralized her power during her second five-year stint at the top of the European Commission.

Von der Leyen has been a vocal advocate for deregulation to boost economic growth. But the German politician also knows she must keep EU national leaders happy if she wants to pursue her wider political agenda before her term ends in 2029.

That has left a level of ongoing confusion within Brussels about the European Commission’s end-game when it comes to its digital policymaking agenda.

EU officials have doubled down, for instance, on regulatory enforcement, including recent online safety preliminary findings against 

 under the DSA, respectively. But they also have committed under existing legislation to review those same rules, 

, to ensure they don’t create overly burdensome oversight.

That dichotomy — where Brussels pursues both a deregulatory agenda and new legislative proposals — is almost certainly going to become the norm as the current European Commission enters the second half of its five-year term.

Petra Molnar is a fellow at Tech Policy Press.


A sprawling refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos is carved into a sun-baked hillside, far enough from the main port town of Vathy that reaching a lawyer or a doctor’s office can take most of a day. Officially opened in 2021, it is ringed by 

barbed wire, heavy police presence and airport-style security checks

. Despite its rustic appearance, this camp — as many others — is the site of high-tech systems to surveil and control residents. To enter or exit, people press a finger to a scanner and wait at a turnstile. Residents interviewed by the Greek nonprofit Homo Digitalis told of 

, with one person saying that the biometric checks discourage them from leaving at all. There are cameras above the housing containers in the camp, though 

The system watching the camp on Samos is called Centaur, and it feeds CCTV and drone footage through motion analysis software to 

Ministry of Migration and Asylum in Athens

. Two of the suppliers behind Centaur are Israeli companies: 

Viisights, whose behavior recognition watermark was visible on footage from the camp, and Octopus

, which makes command-and-control software for CCTV networks. Both are substantially owned or funded by AWZ Ventures, and 

both have supplied Israel’s ministries of defense and public security

 with Israel for an integrated air defense architecture called Achilles Shield, the largest defense agreement in its history. Greece’s announcement contained a detail that connects to this hillside. The munitions and missiles — David's Sling, Rafael's Spyder and Barak MX — made the headlines, but what Greece also bought from Israel is a new architecture of surveillance: multi-mission radars and an 

, which will supply Greece's Barak MX batteries, also builds the Maritime Heron drones that the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, flies over the Mediterranean to watch for people crossing.

Greece's deal comes at a time of regional conflict, which is 

 for Greece’s purchase of air defense systems. However, the deal is eyed with apprehension by states opposed to Israel's war on Gaza — and perhaps (were they to be consulted) also by its own population which, according to a Pew Research survey from June, is largely 

distrustful of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu

The core governance question is, should there be limits on an EU state's entitlement to buy weapons and surveillance systems from a government that a 

European human rights conditionality scrutinizes what weapons member states sell to others, but falls silent about purchases. The 

EU AI Act places military and national security systems entirely outside its scope, despite how much AI technology is on the line.

 In other words, the Israel-Greece contract is constrained by neither.

The rights of people held captive and under surveillance at Europe's borders are also determined in this same regulatory gap.

As journalist Antony Loewenstein documents in 

, Israel’s export success is tied to its track record of using tech on a population under occupation. I have 

 how that logic travels from the checkpoints of the West Bank to the watchtowers of the Aegean and the Sonoran desert. Greece’s surveillance systems are pointed at people as well as aircraft.

In 2024, the Hellenic Data Protection Authority 

fined the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum €175,000 over Centaur and its biometric companion Hyperion

. It was the largest penalty ever imposed on a Greek public body for failures including an inadequate impact assessment and inadequate information to people being monitored. The fine was trivial against a system reportedly worth 

, and it changed little on the ground. However, for the people held in the Samos camp, the finding represented a route through which their rights could at least be represented in principle.

Greece’s data protection authorities could fine Centaur because it processes the personal data of people living in a camp. Meanwhile, EU authorities exclude defense and national security from their scope in 

. The border-industrial complex operates in this regulatory gap. Europe's most ambitious rights framework for AI 

, yet has nothing to say about a national system fusing sensor data and automated threat analysis, built by the architects of 

The vocabulary European institutions have built around AI, with its language of proportionality, impact assessments and human oversight, stops precisely where the state's coercive capacity begins — which is where it was always needed most.

, Canada and others have suspended or banned arms transfers to Israel. The European Commission proposed suspending trade concessions created under an 

 from 2000, a measure that as of April 2026, 

UN experts describing suspension as a minimum requirement under international law

UN Human Rights Council Commission having concluded

 in September 2025 that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

Every one of these instruments regulates what Europe sells and almost none regulate what Europe buys. It shows just how thoroughly the legal frameworks place the moral duty on the seller. In other words, whether it relates to Greece or any other EU country, human rights conditionality in European arms policy attaches to export licenses and not to procurement decisions.

In fact, Israeli defense exports reached 

$19.2 billion in 2025, with Europe purchasing 36 percent of the total

. Sales of observation and optronics systems used for surveillance 

rose from 6 percent of Israeli defense exports in 2024 to 22 percent in 2025

. Europe remains the largest regional buyer of the whole portfolio.

As a bare minimum, European states should apply human rights due diligence to defense and dual-use purchasing with the rigor they already apply to export licensing.

The two assessments ask different questions, which is why the criteria need adapting rather than copying across. Export licensing asks what a buyer will do with a weapon. Procurement due diligence asks what a purchase does for a seller, and in the case of Greece the answer is concrete: $3.5 billion flows to an industry whose systems are marketed on their performance in Gaza and Lebanon, at a moment when 

UN experts are urging states to confront their own inaction

 on the obligation to refrain from rendering aid or assistance in maintaining an unlawful occupation. European governments already demand this type of scrutiny of private companies under the 

UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

, which treat a purchasing relationship as a channel through which a buyer contributes to harm.

With a crate of ammunition, you could argue that a seller has no influence on who is harmed after the sale. With high-tech weapons, this argument falls apart entirely. Achilles Shield will be 

delivered to Greece in stages over 35 months

 and will depend on Israeli firms for spares, training, software updates and the tuning of whatever counts as a threat. Greece has essentially bought a relationship of decades with these companies. That is also why the software, data-handling and update terms of these contracts, currently protected as commercial confidences, should be published. A state that cannot tell its people what its command systems do, or who else can see what they see, has outsourced more than procurement.

In Europe, the AI Act’s military exclusion should go. There is no principled reason why the systems with the greatest capacity to kill are the ones the EU has agreed in advance 

 to regulate. Any case for the carve-out collapses the moment military AI quite literally 

generates kill lists and tracks people to their homes

 in Gaza. Reopening the AI Act is politically unlikely, so what is needed is a separate binding legal instrument covering military and national security AI — written with the enforcement teeth that Article 2(3) currently withholds.The greater a system's capacity to kill, the stronger the case for regulating it. On Tech Policy Press, Afsaneh Rigot has written that violent technologies cannot be improved by better design for the people at the margins, and that 

such tech can only be bettered by abolition

The people held behind biometric turnstiles on Samos; the Palestinians targeted by these systems in Gaza, and anyone else who may one day be targeted by the new Greek-Israeli defense tech are all at mercy of an apparatus that sorts people into ‘the watched’ and ‘the expendable’ in the 

. The question that should be facing every country is not 

 to buy this surveillance and military architecture more responsibly, but 

 to enter into these arrangements at all — especially with a government whose policies the International Court of Justice has found to 

breach the prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid

Amnesty International has documented as maintaining a system of apartheid against Palestinians

. There is no version of European technology policy worth defending that is selective about whose human rights are worth defending within its borders — and beyond.

Jake Laperruque is a fellow at Tech Policy Press.

What are the costs of a trip abroad? There’s the price of airfare, lodging, perhaps personal leave from work. But what about privacy?

Because of an outdated legal standard, entering the United States brings with it the serious potential cost of forfeiting Fourth Amendment rights and having private electronic records on your devices searched. Unfortunately, this month an appellate court failed to remedy this issue. Instead, it issued a ruling that overruled protections established by lower courts and kept in place an archaic standard ill-suited for the digital age.

The border search exception is a long-running Fourth Amendment rule that permits warrantless searches of persons and their belongings when crossing the border. But while there is logic in applying such a standard to a barge entering port or a suitcase being carried on a plane, it makes little sense for the phone one carries in their pocket. For these devices, the risk of contraband being snuck across the border is low, but the dangers to privacy are extremely high.

Encouragingly, courts had begun to rein in the border search exception. In 2023, a Southern District of New York (SDNY) ruling in 

 held that searches of electronic devices when crossing the border must be based on reasonable suspicion. Another SDNY ruling that same year — 

 — went further and ruled that the border search exception did not apply to searches of electronic devices and that a full probable cause warrant was required. In 2024 the Eastern District of New York similarly ruled in 

 that a full warrant was required to search electronic devices of someone crossing the border.

Unfortunately, the Second Circuit (the appellate court which holds authority over these district courts) just wrenched back this progress. On September 17 the Second Circuit issued a regressive 

 in its review of the Alisigwe case, holding that border searches of electronic devices require neither a warrant nor even suspicion of wrongdoing.

This ruling comes at a time when warrantless border searches of travelers’ personal electronic devices are increasing at a perilous rate. The number of these searches Customs and Border Protection (CBP) conducts has increased almost every quarter (the timeframe data is released for) across the last several years. As a result, CBP warrantless searches of individuals’ devices have nearly doubled since the start of 2023, with nearly 20,000 conducted between April and June of this year:

Amid these high stakes, it is frustrating to see the Second Circuit roll back protections the lower courts had established, and fail to account for the high sensitivity of the data in modern smartphones. In arguing against prioritizing the privacy interests at hand, the court cites a 1971 case to argue “[A] port of entry is not a traveler’s home.” But — in a manner unimaginable over 50 years ago — a smartphone allows and encourages us to carry virtually all the sensitive records, photos, videos, documents, and messages of our entire life with us. Simply put, phones are the home we take with us in our pocket.

The Second Circuit’s ruling failed to properly account for how the 2014 Supreme Court case 

 should serve as guiding precedent. In Riley, the Supreme Court ruled that the 

 to the Fourth Amendment's warrant rule did not apply to phones. Although the exception at issue is different, the ruling established a foundation that electronic devices are in need of stronger privacy protections than other physical belongings, because “Cell phones differ in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense from other objects.” In making this point, the Supreme Court marveled that “The current top-selling smartphone has a standard capacity of 16 gigabytes (and is available with up to 64 gigabytes).” That was 2014; today the top-selling smartphone (the iPhone 17) has storage ranging from 256GB up to 2 terabytes.

Thus perhaps the Riley Court was ahead of its time in emphasizing that because smartphones contain so much sensitive information — libraries of photos, long-running text communications and emails, web browsing histories, detailed logs of location movements, calendars, “apps for alcohol, drug, and gambling addictions; apps for sharing prayer requests; apps for tracking pregnancy symptoms; apps for planning your budget; apps for every conceivable hobby or pastime” and so on — they create novel risks for privacy that require different treatment than other items we carry.

This holds just as true when someone crosses the border as when someone is arrested. But rather than account for this risk, the Second Circuit court drew an overly general line around all belongings, reasoning the mountain of sensitive data stored in a phone is no more entitled to protection than a piece of luggage. In differentiating device searches from “non-routine” border searches that require suspicion of wrongdoing, the court stated this designation should be “reserved for intrusive border searches of the person (such as body-cavity searches or strip searches),

” (emphasis added). Of course, people’s phones can (and often do) hold photos, videos, and communications that are just as intimate as a strip search; according to a 2024 

, over one in five people keep explicit images of themselves saved on their devices. And phones also hold an array of other equally sensitive data.

Compounding this flawed reasoning, the Second Circuit contrasts how the search-incident-to-arrest exception “historically has authorized the ‘brief physical search’ of ‘a patdown of [the arrestee’s] clothing and an inspection of [items] found in his pocket,” whereas the border-search exception permits “much more extensive searches,” such as of luggage. But these differences are trivial compared to the privacy risks of searching a smartphone. Focusing on the privacy interest of the items in one's pockets versus the items in one’s suitcase when evaluating privacy interest of hundreds of gigabytes of data in one’s smartphone is to miss the forest for two blades of grass.

Perhaps most egregiously, the Second Circuit claims that searching smartphones does not present unique risks since “a similar combination of information could be discovered through a search of everything contained in a traveler’s luggage and vehicle.” This assertion ignores not only the precedent set in Riley, but also a basic understanding of the magnitude of information these devices contain. A modern smartphone can contain the intimate details of your entire life. It could literally store the entirety of the Library of Alexandria. Its contents cannot fit in a suitcase, and an argument equating them strains credulity. As the Riley Court directly said on point, to allege that “a search of all data stored on a cell phone is ‘materially indistinguishable’ from searches of these sorts of physical items… is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.”

The wiser course would have been for the Second Circuit to follow the path laid out in Riley: Given the unique privacy threats of searching smartphones, courts should, when evaluating whether a warrant exception should apply, as an initial matter assess whether the unique needs justifying that exception also apply to electronic devices. The search-incident-to-arrest exception is aimed at stopping two specific harms: preventing the risks of an arrestee either wielding a weapon or destroying evidence hidden upon them. Since those risks don’t apply to digital data on a phone in custody of an arresting officer, the Supreme Court reasoned the exception need not apply.

If we apply this Riley-test to border searches, it becomes clear that the reasons for this warrant exception also cannot justify search of electronic devices. The basis for the border search exception is stopping contraband and dangerous materials from being brought into the United States. This goal brings with it the need for some immediate and unfettered ability to conduct searches upon entry. After all, someone might carry into the country materials that pose immediate danger, or alternatively goods so mundane their status as illegally smuggled becomes practically impossible to trace after entry.

But these risks do not exist for digital data. An app on your phone might hold your most sensitive photos or texts, but it cannot hold a kilo of fentanyl or a box of Cuban cigars or an explosive. And while digital data can include dangerous and illegal materials — such as CSAM or malicious code — these items need not cross the physical border to enter the country.

The Second Circuit acknowledges this, noting expert academic commentary on point by 

. However, it then shrugs off the distinction by arguing that “the government is not precluded from barring some avenues of illegal importation because avenues exist that are more difficult to regulate.” But this misses the point: the dispositive issue is not whether a legitimate government interest exists, but rather whether the circumstances create a unique risk that requires a warrant-exception to remedy. And no matter how lax the rules for border searches are, it will not alleviate the risk of digital contraband entering the country via the internet.

More alarmingly, the Second Circuit also justifies its ruling by stretching the rationale for warrantless border searches to go far beyond a battle against contraband. Rather, the court claims the exception is based on a broad government interest in “preventing wrongful actors from entering the country,” “preventing the entry of unwanted persons,” and being able to “control who and what enters the country.” Proclaiming such a sweeping authority is disturbing in general, and especially so at a time when the government appears to have blocked individuals from entering the US because border searches of their phones merely revealed private messages 

. And of course, this “preventing unwanted persons” rationale makes little sense in the context of a border search exception that impacts not just visitors, but also lawful residents and US citizens.

This rationale also does not comport with history or precedent: The Supreme Court’s seminal case formally establishing the border search exception (

) focused on the dangers of contraband. It justified its ruling by noting the founders enacted customs enforcement powers at the same time as the Fourth Amendment. 

 assuming existence of this exception described it as based on stopping inflow of contraband. Even the Supreme Court case that the Second Circuit directly cites to assert its “preventing unwanted persons” rationale (

) states that authority for warrantless border searches is provided “in order to regulate the collection of duties and to prevent the introduction of contraband into this country.” That case was not a broad grant of authority to look inside someone’s heart and mind; it was an approval of customs agents looking inside a driver’s gas tank to find contraband in the form of 37 kilograms of marijuana.

If there is one silver lining to the Second Circuit’s ruling, it is that in a footnote the court declares its ruling only applies to manual review of a phone, rather than the “advanced searches" that involve fully copying, retaining, and subjecting to potential forensic analysis the contents of the device. As I’ve written, these advanced searches raise 

 given the power of AI mobile device analytics. There is also a convoluted 

 as to what extent the border search exception applies to them. This split may prompt the Supreme Court to engage on the issue. And hopefully if such review does occur, the Court will apply its rationale from Riley and shield electronic devices from warrantless searches. But for now, international travel will continue to come with significant costs to privacy.

Pennsylvania offers a particular case study in which to consider the political battle over data centers that is playing out across the United States and beyond. A 

 from Data & Society, "The AI Factory: Data Centers, Power, and Resistance in Late Industrial Pennsylvania," draws on a year and a half of fieldwork across the state. It examines how boosters sell data centers by invoking Pennsylvania's industrial past, and why so many communities aren't buying the promises made by industry and politicians. 

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

My name is Maia Woluchem. I am the program director of the Trustworthy Infrastructures team at Data & Society.

I'm Ana Carolina de Assis Nunes, and I'm a postdoctoral fellow on Maia's team, the Trustworthy Infrastructures team at Data & Society.

I'm Hannah Sassaman. I'm the executive director at People's Tech Project. We're based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

And we're going to turn our eyes to Pennsylvania during this conversation and catch up a little bit about what's happening there, but also look at the results of this report that Data & Society has just put out called the 

AI Factory: Data Centers, Power, and Resistance in Late Industrial Pennsylvania

 []. I feel like I've been following this project for some time, been kind of around it, had the opportunity, Maia, to talk to you of course, and have you on the podcast even in recent months as we've been studying this issue alongside you. But I want to just start off by asking you about the title, where it comes from. I know you've borrowed this from an activist, The AI Factory, what does this phrase mean to you?

Yeah, it was such a great turn of phrase that came up in one of our early interviews with an organizer who's been doing incredible work around the state. But yeah, the thrust of the report was really trying to connect data centers to this long history of industrial re-imagination in Pennsylvania. It is a state that has meant so much to the country and to the global economy for its contributions and coal and steel and iron and many other things. And that idea of the factory is still really present in this conversation around AI. We were very lucky that one of our interviewees really made that connection. I believe that full quote was something like, "This here is an AI factory. It is as extractive as mining instead of mining for coal or mining for tokens." And I think that has really played out in many of the interviews that we had over the two years that we were crossing the state.

I think when a lot of boosters come to town and they sort of pull on these ideas of industrialization to try to win favor for this idea around data centers and AI, what it pulls on for people is this deep history mining of steel. And for many people that is not so much about the future, but that's about the past. And that's about, in some ways, some very traumatic experiences of the past.

And this might be a place to bring in Hannah too, but I think of Pennsylvania as a place that is contested. I often feel like it's the number one swing state whenever we talk about American politics. And as you say, it is somehow stuck between past and present. There's so much history and so much runs through the state, but maybe bring us up to speed. What's the picture right now when it comes to data centers in Pennsylvania? What does that look like?

Well, I'm sure Maia and Ana can add a lot more, but I think just building on what you laid out, there was a storied announcement, I believe last year from our governor, Governor Josh Shapiro. He's in the middle of running for reelection for his second term. And the announcement was, I think he did it in the middle of the Lehigh Valley, which is a traditional sort of eastern side of the state, industrial part of the state, like Allentown and places like that. And he was ready to say that they were going to bring $20 billion worth of investment from Amazon into the state, building starting with two data centers, I believe one in Salem Township and then the other basically on the other side of the river from Trenton. And that was supposed to be the harbinger of tons and tons of data center development.

And he was also fast tracking permitting. He was making it possible for many different communities to try to get these data centers. And these were often in places where there had been brutal disinvestment over decades and generations. I believe the Salem Township one is in an area where the last sort of major hospital had closed a couple of years before, for example. So that's an interesting sense of the contradiction. But I think to answer your question directly, there is a robust, organic, deeply activating, incredibly diverse resistance to this kind of development in big cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in smaller cities and towns like Harrisburg, like Erie, and in the more rural counties of the Commonwealth, because there is a lot of clarity about in relationship to the union beauty that built the infrastructure of the working class of the state about what these data centers actually offer and promise.

What they offer and promise isn't much. In most places, they're situated near water that would be prioritized for the data center rather than prioritized for communities. The jobs that they offer are only in relationship to the construction jobs during the building, but after they're up, there was 

 by the Philadelphia Planning Commission, and we can talk in more detail about the organizing, the beautiful diverse resistance to data centers in my city. But the Philadelphia Planning Commission found that for every 5,000 square feet, there would only be one job. And then there's obviously a deep impact on everyone across the Commonwealth that relies on a variety of the electrical grid and infrastructure. They've already been impacted not just from data centers built in Pennsylvania, but also in Virginia, also in Maryland in the PJM territory where there's been about a decade of data center mass boom expansion starting and centering in Virginia that's impacting the electrical rates of our residents.

Here in Philadelphia in the southeastern part of the state, the PECO, which is the major sort of electrical company had to grant an amnesty basically of $10 million last year, and I think they're doing something similar this year for community members who just couldn't afford their electrical bills. So they literally had to offer charity for those bills. And so what we're finding is that the promises that the governor, the promises that Amazon, the promises that Microsoft, which is actually trying to reopen Three Mile Island, the big nuclear reactor site, which was the cause of the biggest natural nuclear, not natural, biggest nuclear meltdown disaster in United States history, what they're finding is deep resistance, not just to the electrical costs, not just to the lies about development, not just to the water damage, but also around what's happening inside those buildings. There's a lot of deep concern about what AI is doing to our kids, AI is doing to our families, AI is doing to our democracy.

Our report as well, of course we are talking about Pennsylvania, but in the report, Pennsylvania kind of emerged as a microcosmo of America because this data center fight is happening in other states as well. And in the second part of our report, we explore in depth how industries in Pennsylvania, but in other parts of the US as well, they're trying to really convince folks to welcome them into their spaces by leveraging nostalgia, by trying to tell stories of a different industrial era, by trying to appeal to especially blue collar families. Oh, remember the good times when you had a stable job as in a factory is exactly what Hannah is saying. And then when the data center is in place, yeah, we are seeing other reports about the employment numbers and there are not too many. And just to highlight this fact that we focus in Pennsylvania, but also because Pennsylvania allows us to tell a bigger story about the country, there's a 

 by the Data Center Watch that came out about the second quarter of 2026.

So there are a lot of projects that have been blocked. But there are new reports showing too that beyond Pennsylvania, this is happening in different parts of the US. And when Pennsylvania merges a microcosm of this larger opposition data center, we can also see that these strategies used in Pennsylvania and in different states are pretty similar in terms of appealing to this industrial past in terms to say that data centers and AI kind of a continuation of this golden days of American industrial as well.

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