Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:01We were offered 26 million dollars, but this money will not
00:00:05replace 500 acres of land, everything on it. In
00:00:09the run-up to the midterm elections, this topic became a political
00:00:12battleground. There are communities that really want to have
00:00:16data centers, these are smart communities. This is what the drinking water in Morgan
00:00:19County, Georgia, looks like now, right after
00:00:23the construction of the Meta
00:00:24data center.
00:00:31America's AI boom, who pays for it?
00:00:34расплачивается?
00:00:37Ines
00:00:38Pol reports.
00:00:45We love this place for the land, for the countryside where our
00:00:49girls grow up, they love playing in the woods, they spend
00:00:52all their time
00:00:53outdoors.
00:00:58That's why Robin, Angus and...
00:01:30When Robin and her husband bought this property, they didn't know that
00:01:34the future of artificial intelligence was about to knock on their door.
00:01:38Robin joined neighbors opposing the zoning
00:01:42change and began regularly speaking at county
00:01:45meetings.
00:01:49These are gigantic scales, it's not just one building, one
00:01:53data center. These are entire campuses. We know of
00:01:56five such projects. The number of buildings they are assembling.
00:02:14Good evening, honorable members of the commission, Mr. Chairman,
00:02:17staff, thank you for giving me the floor. This site borders
00:02:21more than 400 acres of residential development. Nearly a thousand
00:02:24children attend nearby schools. The cancellation of the first condition
00:02:28will forever remain in memory.
00:02:37We asked members of the elected governing body of Coweta County who supported the project to explain
00:02:41their position, they refused to talk to
00:02:44us. No comment.
00:02:47The 2,650 acre
00:02:51data center complex will consist of five facilities, planned for construction on
00:02:54land that has long remained predominantly
00:02:58rural. Robin's house is very close by, in
00:03:01Georgia, the number of data centers is rapidly growing, with over 100
00:03:05projects planned across
00:03:07the state.
00:03:09This is also part of a much larger
00:03:12national boom. The US already has over
00:03:161,300 data centers, and over 2,0 more facilities
00:03:19are in development, with 2/3 of them located in
00:03:23rural areas.
00:03:26So why are all these data centers being built anyway?
00:03:30Because AI is no longer just a technology we use
00:03:34occasionally. It is becoming part of everyday
00:03:37life, from search engines and chatbots to medicine,
00:03:41business, and how we work. Every time we
00:03:44ask AI a question, generate an image,
00:03:47analyze data, or use an AI-powered service, that request
00:03:51has to be processed somewhere. Increasingly, that somewhere
00:03:55is a huge data center, filled with
00:03:58thousands of powerful computers. Georgia, he
00:04:30studies how technological changes transform
00:04:33society. They really require a lot of
00:04:36energy to perform calculations on these servers 24/7 without
00:04:40interruption. There's nothing new about this, it's just that these days
00:04:44the scale has become much larger. And it's not just about
00:04:47electricity. These machines generate a huge amount of heat,
00:04:50and cooling them can require a huge amount of
00:04:54water. Zen draws a parallel with another major source of
00:04:57water consumption.
00:05:00People don't complain about how much water is used for a golf
00:05:03course, but in fact it's comparable
00:05:07to the needs of typical data centers,
00:05:10at least on an annual basis.
00:05:16Moreover, thanks to the latest cooling
00:05:19technologies,
00:05:20охлаждения,
00:05:23in particular closed-loop
00:05:25systems,
00:05:28allowing water to be reused within
00:05:30the facility, water consumption in the future
00:05:34will significantly decrease.
00:05:37In Virginia, where more data centers are concentrated
00:05:40than anywhere else in the country, residents
00:05:42are already feeling the effects of such large-scale industrial facilities in their
00:05:46areas.
00:05:49The power plant emits a lot of pollutants,
00:05:52and people feel
00:05:54it.
00:05:59This affects our health. Personally, I
00:06:02developed dry eye syndrome because of it. The facility was
00:06:06built just 140 meters from the home of historian and writer
00:06:10Gregory Alonzo Pirio.
00:06:14The data centers began operation in February of last year, meaning
00:06:18in 2025.
00:06:22How did we find out about this? We heard all this noise and
00:06:25had no idea what
00:06:27it was.
00:06:32This noise gives me a headache,
00:06:36and because of it, I don't go outside as
00:06:38often now.
00:06:44We contacted the company operating these facilities
00:06:47to respond to residents' concerns.
00:06:51We received no response. What is happening here is part of
00:06:55a much larger struggle over how and where the US will build
00:06:58the infrastructure needed for artificial intelligence.
00:07:02In the south, the number of
00:07:04data centers is growing rapidly.
00:07:13Partly because we have the necessary resources,
00:07:17land, energy and water, but also because
00:07:20there is almost no regulation here, especially in environmental
00:07:23protection. We have almost
00:07:26no requirements for utility companies to ensure
00:07:29transparency in their work.
00:07:33There is a clear economic incentive, these massive facilities
00:07:36bring in billions of dollars in investments, tax
00:07:40revenues, and jobs.
00:08:02This provides a lot of jobs, but at the same time I hear that local residents are having problems. For communities weighing these benefits and potential risks,
00:08:06the discussion is becoming increasingly
00:08:07heated.
00:08:11The community is very indignant, and I
00:08:14think more and more of them are deciding to
00:08:18slow down,
00:08:21at least to introduce moratoriums,
00:08:25until additional laws are passed regarding zoning and
00:08:29regulation.
00:08:31Ber and her mother Ayda Hudleston raise cattle on
00:08:34land owned by their family since 1848,
00:08:38how can you eat concrete, no way. To me.
00:09:25our schools, and a project of this scale will bring local schools
00:09:29additional revenue related to this huge increase in
00:09:32energy consumption and will practically double their budget.
00:09:36The developer also promised to help finance a new water treatment
00:09:40plant costing 80 million. In
00:09:43addition, this location offers what data centers desperately
00:09:46need. It all comes down to the availability of
00:09:49electricity for our Spurlock Power Plant,
00:09:53located about 3 km north of here. It's
00:09:56over there, as you can see, a significant portion of
00:09:59the power line infrastructure is already
00:10:02built. Since their story made national
00:10:05news, Dalsiya and Ayda have been receiving letters of support from all over
00:10:09the country. The data center dispute has also put
00:10:12her in a difficult position, she says she voted for
00:10:15Donald Trump twice, but strongly opposes his support for this
00:10:19industry, let him put his money where his mouth is. If data centers are really that good and harmless...
00:10:23Let him build such a center at his Mar-a-Lago, his favorite place on
00:10:26Earth, and if he doesn't,
00:10:30then he's a hypocrite, because he wants to build it on my land. In
00:10:33the run-up to the midterm elections, the issue of data centers is increasingly becoming
00:10:37a national topic of discussion. There are communities
00:10:41that really want to have data centers. These are smart
00:10:44communities, because that means a huge number of
00:10:48jobs. Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria
00:10:51Ocasio-Cortez argues that local communities suffer from environmental issues.
00:10:57Look at this can,
00:11:00this is what the drinking water in Morgan County, Georgia,
00:11:03looks like now.
00:11:06Right after the construction of the Meta
00:11:09data center.
00:11:12Authorities state that they are investigating the causes of
00:11:14the pollution.
00:11:17Just as we were finishing our report, news broke that
00:11:21in Coweta County, the commission members voted against the project.
00:11:27We took this on not knowing how it would end, and this is just the most
00:11:31amazing news for us. However, I approach this with a grain of
00:11:35skepticism. We must be prepared for them to possibly
00:11:39return in six months. Across
00:11:41America, hundreds more data centers are planned,
00:11:45and resistance is growing. From Georgia to Kentucky, the fight is not
00:11:48just about land. It's about who benefits from
00:11:52America's artificial intelligence boom. Who pays for it?
00:12:42story diverged. For the State Duma elections, the authorities cleared
00:12:46the space as much as possible so that they would go as calmly as possible for the
00:12:49Kremlin. But at the same time as the federal voting, regional
00:12:53legislative assemblies are being elected.
00:12:55There, there's a different scale of campaign, different barriers, sometimes a different
00:12:58space for political competition. The topic will be continued by
00:13:02the host of the program Face to Face with the Event, Artem
00:13:04Radygin.
00:13:09It seems this year it died. All the
00:13:12intrigue in the elections: parties spend many times less on campaigning,
00:13:15candidates don't come to debates, and if they do come,
00:13:19besides a rehearsed phrase, they can't say anything.
00:13:23The state, them. will support,
00:13:26support for large families begins with supporting one
00:13:30child,
00:13:33essentially that's all, that's all, yes, we have to, we have to
00:13:37wait, and this is your time, suddenly something will come to mind, no, nothing
00:13:40else, political scientist Alexander Kynev
00:13:44calculated that out of a hundred candidates not from parliamentary
00:13:47parties, the CEC registered only about a dozen,
00:13:50the reason is signature collection, their quality the election commission interprets
00:13:54very... freely, these are the most uncontested
00:13:58elections in the entire history of modern Russia, the political scientist
00:14:01Denis Levin comes to the same conclusion.
00:14:05Self-nomination in 2026
00:14:07has rather disappeared as a real working way to
00:14:11get into the ballots.
00:14:14And in the 2021 elections it was already rather
00:14:17a nonsense. Around 10
00:14:21people passed the signature barrier across the country then. But that's all, kind of.
00:15:06received money from abroad, posted on
00:15:08social networks that other parties don't use, and without
00:15:12asking showed the Sberbank logo. These are all pretexts
00:15:16under which Yabloko candidates were removed in
00:15:19Bashkortostan, Karelia, Tatarstan, Kaliningrad,
00:15:22Sverdlovsk regions. In the latter, by the way, on the seventh.
00:15:38This is right, this is law, and this is
00:15:40justice. Unfortunately, lately our courts
00:15:44are associated with other words. This is fear, this is
00:15:48phone law, and so on. Konstantin Kiselyov,
00:15:51the leader of Yabloko in the Yekaterinburg City Duma, was detained by police on
00:15:54his way to the debates. At the station, he was charged
00:15:57with an administrative article for displaying extremist
00:16:00symbols. His colleagues in the Sverdlovsk region were accused of the same
00:16:04thing. The risk of continued
00:16:08pressure on the party is undoubtedly there, of course, it's there, we
00:16:11see it, including in the pressure on our candidates daily,
00:16:15but dear friends, I want to say once again that our
00:16:18position is known, it is unchanged, we will do everything
00:16:22possible to ensure that, so that
00:16:25peace returns, so that people stop dying, although the fine for so-called
00:16:28extremist symbols is
00:16:32only 200 rubles, for a politician it means
00:16:35that for another year in...
00:17:07much simpler. According to Verstka, almost 40
00:17:10regional candidates for the State Duma have already dropped out of
00:17:14the race due to Facebook logos, owning
00:17:16foreign shares, and posts about Navalny.
00:17:19The latter, in fact, takes away the right to run for a whole year.
00:17:23Therefore, in these elections, with rare exceptions, of course,
00:17:27there are no well-known opposition members. Elections are
00:17:30not about, well, in Russia in 206 year, yes, it's not about achieving some
00:17:34numbers, results, but about inflicting the greatest damage. The party in
00:17:37power is creating a point of some social and political
00:17:40tension, in this sense, it seems to me, yes, indeed many people understand
00:17:44it this way and do exactly that, in this
00:17:47sense, perhaps the Yabloko party can also be singled out, because
00:17:49well, the party's top
00:17:53, most media-visible figures, are simply imprisoned, this is
00:17:57like the strongest Moscow, so, comrade Kruglov,
00:18:00the second strongest is
00:18:03Shlosberg, yes, on Emilia Slabunova in Karelia, also, yes, also. There are
00:18:07constant some disputes
00:18:09- so I understand that
00:18:13some other VIPs
00:18:17also chose not to run in the elections. Social tension
00:18:21is expected by research fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
00:18:24Andrei Pertsev. According to him, the Kremlin has never found it so difficult to
00:18:27draw a confident majority for United Russia.
00:18:30To be sure to win more than half the seats in the State Duma,
00:18:34the presidential administration even lowered the unofficial.
00:19:30falling ratings of United Russia, growing demand for the end of
00:19:34the war, and among all parliamentary parties, even...
00:20:07include some of these rebellious regional
00:20:11CPRF members, but this is a bad decision, right, so
00:20:14of course the CPRF to a certain extent is a controlled party, like all parties in
00:20:18Russia, but I would say that along with Yabloko
00:20:22it is one of the most uncontrolled controlled parties. Moscow,
00:20:26Komi, Irkutsk, Krasnodar, Perm, Altai
00:20:29Krai, Khakassia and Buryatia. In these regions, says
00:20:32the political scientist, there are still candidates who do not
00:20:36support the war.
00:20:38Yes, they are running for the Duma and legislative assemblies with a pro-war CPRF
00:20:42campaign, but they try not to talk about the war, that
00:20:45is, in the so-called victory program
00:20:48it talks about victory in...
00:21:21Yes, in Kamchatka it's still good, in Kamchatka you can also watch, there's a strong
00:21:24branch, they were dispersed for several years, dispersed, but not
00:21:28completely dispersed. In Buryatia, the leading region in terms of losses from
00:21:32mobilization, the CPRF nominated a candidate with
00:21:35the slogan Peace to the World. Bair
00:21:38Tsirenov's campaign video even begins with the words, when will
00:21:41the SVO end? The politician actively criticizes United
00:21:45Russia, but Tsirenov himself
00:21:48explains why. He scolds the ruling party.
00:21:52To defend in honor of United Russia, which does not need defending, which
00:21:55has already failed everything possible in this country. I urge
00:21:59Doshibal to come to the next debates, to participate in them,
00:22:02to honestly discuss the problems of our republic together, otherwise we will
00:22:06not be able to get out of this mire, otherwise we will not be able to help our
00:22:09thousands of fighters who are at the front and their families. Although
00:22:13it is difficult to call registered candidates fully anti-war,
00:22:16politician Mikhail Labanov sees in regional
00:22:20campaigns a chance for anti-war, or at least
00:22:24simply opposition sentiments, to be somehow
00:22:27represented in the Duma or in legislative
00:22:30assemblies. In Buryatia, this is possible, it generally characterizes
00:22:34the entire regional organization, in general, because since he was
00:22:37nominated, understanding what he is capable of, there is also
00:22:41Marhaev as a leader, yes, therefore, in principle,
00:22:45so to speak, on average across the region, it is
00:22:48rather anti-war.
00:23:20doesn't always know the details of regional campaigns, but
00:23:23if regional politicians cause problems for
00:23:26the leadership, then the party itself will remove the undesirable ones from
00:23:30the elections. What
00:23:33exactly has the eighth convocation of the State Duma changed in 5 years and
00:23:36what legislative legacy does it leave to
00:23:39the next convocation, will be told by the host of the program "A Person Has the Right,"
00:23:43Maryana Torocheshnikova. Starting its work in the pre-war
00:23:472021, the eighth convocation of the State
00:23:50Duma became the first convocation of wartime and a shock worker of
00:23:54legislative production, with a result of
00:23:562980 federal laws,
00:24:00an absolute maximum among all convocations. Perhaps this is no longer
00:24:03a mad printer, but a full-fledged printing
00:24:06press. SVO defense and security became the central
00:24:10theme of the eighth convocation, it was this Duma
00:24:13on February 15, 2022
00:24:16that appealed to Vladimir Putin with a request to recognize.
00:24:33after which the Federation Council authorized the use of Russian
00:24:36armed forces outside the country. We will strive for the demilitarization
00:24:40and denazification of Ukraine. And Vladimir Putin
00:24:43announced the start of a special military operation, which has been going on for the fifth
00:24:47year and which Russians are not allowed to call
00:24:51a war, for
00:24:53which they can be fined or
00:24:56for this too, citizens should be grateful to the Duma, which in
00:25:00March 2022 adopted amendments in a package,
00:25:03establishing responsibility for so-called military fakes,
00:25:07discrediting the army and
00:25:08authorities.
00:25:13Deputies prescribed social guarantees and payments, benefits for
00:25:16military personnel, veterans, and their families, and amended laws
00:25:20related to military service, in particular, made conscription
00:25:23year-round and expanded the boundaries of conscription age,
00:25:27introduced a unified military registration system and various
00:25:30sanctions for draft dodgers, allowed prisoners to exchange
00:25:33prison for war and generally escape investigation to
00:25:37the front without waiting for trial. One can face trial, thanks to new laws, for example, for voluntarily
00:25:41surrendering in captivity,
00:25:44punishments for disobeying orders and for unauthorized abandonment of a
00:25:47unit have significantly toughened. The terms for sabotage
00:25:51and high treason have increased, and now criminal responsibility for sabotage
00:25:54begins at 14 years old, and almost everything can
00:25:58be considered high treason, from photographing gravestones to
00:26:01participating in a conference. In general, deputies spent
00:26:04a lot of time fighting external and internal enemies.
00:26:08They passed laws on numerous restrictions for
00:26:12foreign agents, opposition-minded relocators, and
00:26:15expanded the powers of the FSB, which, in
00:26:18particular, was allowed to create and maintain its own
00:26:21detention centers. At the direction of the Federal Security Service,
00:26:25operators are now obliged to suspend Internet, telephone,
00:26:28and SMS communications.
00:26:31And a law was also passed on the protection of the Russian language in public
00:26:34spaces, according to which signs, pointers, and advertisements
00:26:38must be only in
00:26:39Russian.
00:26:42In the autumn of 2022, the deputies unanimously
00:26:46ratified treaties on the accession to Russia of the so-called
00:26:49Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, Zaporozhye
00:26:53and Kherson regions, which required a large-scale
00:26:57restructuring of the legal space. Due to the war and sanctions, the legislative
00:27:00activity of the eighth convocation of the Duma.
00:28:02Russian children citizens of countries where gender change is
00:28:05permitted. Now, under the pretext of fighting fraudsters,
00:28:08WhatsApp and Telegram are being blocked in Russia, but fraudsters
00:28:12have perfectly mastered Max. This is a national messenger for
00:28:15widespread voluntary-compulsory implementation, for which, by the way, the State Duma
00:28:19adopted many amendments to various
00:28:22laws. Summarizing the work of the State Duma of the eighth convocation, its speaker
00:28:26Vyacheslav Volodin called accusations that it is
00:28:29focused on prohibitions inappropriate, because deputies
00:28:32adopt laws exclusively at the request of citizens, and those very
00:28:36prohibitive measures, according to Volodin, are in fact
00:28:40protection for the younger generation and adults who
00:28:43have gone astray.
00:28:44пути.
00:28:53Probably since the early 2000s,
00:28:57the cultural environment for me became first
00:29:00uncomfortable, then completely...
00:29:32necessary measures so that children under 15 years old, orphaned
00:29:36or separated from their families due to
00:29:39the war, were not left to their own devices.
00:30:56In Texas, people are increasingly repeating the local and main city.