Environmental groups have helped block or delay $23.6 billion in AI data center investments across 14 states. The stated reasons noise, water use, energy costs, neighborhood impact are real concerns. But follow the money behind some of the loudest opposition groups and it leads to a U.S.-born man now living in Shanghai who has funneled hundreds of millions into left-wing causes whose campaigns happen to line up almost perfectly with Chinese state media narratives.Jamie and Chris dig into one of the strangest stories in American tech politics right now — the foreign influence angle on U.S. AI infrastructure, Trump's push to build fast, Florida's decision to push back harder than any other state, and the genuinely complicated question of where legitimate local opposition ends and strategic sabotage begins.What's covered:• What AI data centers are and why the U.S. buildout matters for national security• Trump's AI executive order and the ratepayer protection pledge from Microsoft, Anthropic, and others• The $23.6 billion in blocked or delayed investments what happened and where• Who is Neville Roy Singham, why he lives in Shanghai, and what his funded groups have been doing• How foreign influence operations exploit legitimate NIMBY concerns (energy, water, noise, land use)• China's strategic interest in slowing U.S. AI infrastructure while expanding its own• Russia and other actors running parallel influence operations• Palm Beach County's 5-1 vote rejecting Project Tango after a 12-hour public hearing• Florida SB 484: the new law giving communities real power to reject data centers• The honest version: is ALL opposition foreign-influenced, or is some of it just people who don't want a server farm next to their house?• What a reasonable national AI infrastructure policy would actually look likeDon't Be An Idiot drops new episodes every week. Follow so you never miss one.

You probably drove past a Flock Safety camera this week. Maybe several. And somewhere in a searchable database, your plate, your location, your direction, and the timestamp are all sitting there whether you're suspected of anything or not.

In this episode, Jamie and Chris break down the massive rise of automated license plate readers, networked surveillance systems, and the data-fusion platforms connecting all of it together and ask the question nobody in the sales meeting wants to answer: what happens when someone abuses this?

Spoiler: it's already happening. A Milwaukee cop was charged in 2026 with using a Flock camera system to run 179 personal searches to track a dating partner. He's not alone it's allegedly happened at least 14 times with license plate reader systems nationally.

What's covered:

• What Flock Safety cameras are and how the network works

• The real public safety wins and why they're legitimate

• How ALPR systems create searchable movement histories for everyone

• The Fourth Amendment question: Carpenter v. United States and where the law stands

• Who has access to the data and who else can get it through the side door

• The Milwaukee stalking case and the pattern of misuse

• False positives: wrongful arrests from camera misreads

• The full surveillance ecosystem: Palantir, Clearview AI, ShotSpotter, Fusus

• Private-sector creep: HOAs, businesses, and schools

• The chilling effect on protests, medical visits, and political activity

• World Cup 2026: 1,181 license plate cameras near 11 U.S. stadiums

• What responsible use would actually look like

• 9 questions every citizen should ask their city council

Don't Be An Idiot drops new episodes every [day]. Follow so you don't miss one.

While everyone was watching the NBA Finals, a former CDC director went on national TV and used the word "pandemic" — about Ebola.

The 2026 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the 17th in that country alone. It started only five months after the last one ended. It's already spread to Uganda. And the twist that makes this one genuinely different from everything before it: the strain driving this outbreak is Bundibugyo — and there is no approved vaccine, no approved treatment, and until recently the test kits couldn't even detect it.

Jamie and Chris break down what Ebola actually is, why this outbreak is unlike anything we've seen, how it slipped past surveillance systems for weeks, and what Robert Redfield actually meant when he said "pandemic."

What's covered:

• What Ebola is and how it spreads (and what it doesn't do)

• The 2026 DRC outbreak: case numbers, deaths, and what we know

• The Bundibugyo strain: why the vaccine and the tests both failed

• Five reasons the outbreak spread undetected for over a month

• Hospitals being attacked, staff evacuated at gunpoint

• WHO's Public Health Emergency declaration — and why they stopped short of "pandemic"

• U.S. travel restrictions and CDC screening measures

• The World Cup risk factor

• Ebola's history: from 1976 to the catastrophic 2014 West Africa outbreak

Should you be worried? We'll give you a straight answer.

Don't Be An Idiot drops new episodes every week, usually. Follow so you never miss one.