Nuclear Family

Dear Citizens,

It’s been another week in techno-authoritarian paradise! But fortunately the resistance is strong! Jasmine Sun, a very sharp substack, has a terrific dispatch looking at the increasingly organized resistance to new data centres, not from anti-technology activists, but from ordinary communities.

Here’s what else to read, know and do this week.

☢️ ONE READ: How to Plant a Nuclear Plant in Iran ☢️

Sometimes the internet produces a piece that is impossible to summarize because the premise alone sounds like satire. This week’s winner is How to Plant a Nuclear Plant in Iran, a fascinating essay from Digital Digging about the strange collision of open-source intelligence, AI, satellite imagery, infrastructure, and the uncomfortable reality that governments, journalists and ordinary citizens increasingly have access to the same digital tools.

One recurring theme in AI is that information wants to be free. This piece asks a harder question: what happens when strategically important information is free?

👉 Read it here.

Bonus read: Popular Information reports that Meta plans to train future AI systems using content from far-right publications and personalities that have repeatedly trafficked in misinformation and extremism. The company says it is about ideological diversity. We're not convinced!

🍑 ONE WATCH: AOC to Deep Red Georgia 🍑

What happens when one of America’s most progressive politicians walks into one of its reddest counties? A surprisingly hopeful conversation.

More Perfect Union heads to rural Georgia where Republicans, independents and Democrats have found common cause opposing AI data centres. A reminder that resistance to Big Tech doesn’t have to fit neatly into left/right politics.

We Took AOC to a Deep Red Data Center Town

“If there’s a chance that anything can be done, I feel like she’s gonna be the one to do it.”

More Perfect UnionMore Perfect Union

✊ ONE ACTION: Child Safety Without Surveillance? ✊

Everyone agrees children deserve better protection online. The fight now is how we get there. Transformer has a thoughtful overview of the debate around AI age verification, where governments, platforms and civil society are wrestling with an uncomfortable trade-off: how do you verify someone’s age without creating yet another giant database of personal identity information?

This week’s action is a simple one: spend ten minutes understanding the debate before politicians tell you there are only two options — surveillance or chaos.

The better we understand these trade-offs, the harder it becomes for Big Tech, or governments, to pretend privacy has to be sacrificed for safety.

👉 Read the explainer, then share it with someone who is following online safety policy.

That’s all for this week,
Team Citizens

*PS - Join our Signal Chat if you haven’t already! 400+ people share practical advice on protecting your data, organising against Big Tech and staying ahead of what you need to know.