You’ve likely received a scam call or text at some point. Some of these messages come from elaborate compounds found mostly in Southeast Asia. These compounds look like call centers but operate more like prisons. In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU’s 1A, we return to an episode and hear from listeners — on how these centers cropped up and what’s being done to stop them.

We usually think of getting online as something that requires cables—strung under oceans or buried beneath our feet. Mahesh Krishnaswamy of Taara thinks the future may lie in beams of light pointed at the sky.

What does it take to get everyone online? A maze of cables, satellites — and politics. We meet one farmer in Mississippi chasing a signal, and discover that what’s really at stake isn’t just access to the internet — it’s access to the future itself.

In Tuesday’s episode, novelist Bruce Holsinger imagined the moral fallout of an autonomous car crash in his new book Culpability. Today, we leave fiction behind and ask a more urgent question: Can we really trust driverless cars on the road? Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and AI ethicist at NYU, cuts through the hype.

What happens when an algorithm doesn’t just crunch data, but reshapes morality? In his new novel Culpability — an Oprah Book Club pick — Bruce Holsinger explores how AI collides with family, justice, and blame. We talk with him about where responsibility lies when machines make the choices… and what that means for all of us.

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Tech giants say artificial intelligence can outsmart the storm, predicting tomorrow’s weather faster than ever. We talk to Paris Perdikaris of the University of Pennsylvania about a new tension: forecasts are only as good as the public data that fuels them – and now even that is in doubt.

Artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of weather forecasting — spotting storms sooner, warning us faster, and increasing the potential to save lives. But cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service threaten the very data that makes it possible. Veteran meteorologist John Morales takes us inside the green screens and satellite feeds to show what’s at stake.

Leaked Chinese documents from a company called GoLaxy reveal a chilling new playbook for information war: an army of A.I. personas, engineered to look like us, think like us… and win our trust. Vanderbilt University’s Brett Goldstein and Brett Benson explain why the threat isn’t coming—it’s already here.

Visa denials. Frozen grants. Whispers of disloyalty. It all feels strangely familiar. This week: the story of Qian Xuesen—an exiled Chinese scientist who once helped America win a war, only to be driven out in a season of suspicion. His exile isn’t just history. It’s a warning.

For decades, the U.S. has led the world in cyber innovation. But when it comes to resilience — the ability to withstand and recover from an attack — we’ve fallen dangerously behind. Anne Neuberger, former deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, explains how AI-powered “digital twins” could help us catch up — and maybe even get ahead.