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We tend to picture cyberattacks as distant battles—state hackers, big targets, glowing maps of global chaos. But often, the frontlines are more local: a water plant, a 911 system, the power lines outside your window. In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU’s 1A, we examine a small-town breach, the fragility of our digital infrastructure—and what it means for all of us.

Milo Comerford has been studying online extremism for more than a decade. He’s watched ideologies rise and fall, platforms shift, and tactics mutate. Now, as kids fall into violent online communities with no ideology at all, Milo says we’re overdue for a new playbook. Today: the solutions he thinks might actually work.

Across the internet, groups like 764 are redefining extremism: less about beliefs, more about chaos. We look at how the movement works, who it attracts, and why stopping it is so challenging.

Car theft has gone digital. We talk to a white-hat hacker about how cars became computers on wheels—and why, in the race for smarter tech, safety is still trying to catch up.

Volvo built its reputation on safety. Then a software update nearly sent one driver off a cliff. We look at what happens when car companies start acting like tech companies — and discover the danger of “move fast and break things” on the open road.

The Espionage Act was written more than a century ago to stop spies and saboteurs. But over time, its reach has quietly expanded — from enemy agents to insiders, and now, possibly, to the press itself. Georgetown Law’s Stephen Vladeck explains how a law built for wartime secrecy could become one of the most powerful tools in Washington’s arsenal.

In 2017, NSA contractor Reality Winner mailed a five-page classified document to “The Intercept.” What happened next – a botched verification, an FBI knock at her door, and a prison sentence under the Espionage Act – raised big questions about how journalists handle secrets and how the government punishes those who share them. We talk to Reality about all that and her new memoir.

Big Tech’s data centers are changing the landscape of small-town America, bringing new kinds of jobs and economic opportunity. This week, we hear from Shannon Wait, a data technician in South Carolina whose experience led to a rare labor settlement — offering a window into what life inside these facilities is really like.

When Big Tech brought plans for a giant data center to St. Charles, Missouri, one college student decided to fight back. And it raises a question small towns all over the US are asking: what happens when the cloud touches ground?

As the Trump administration pressures Apple and Google to remove apps that track ICE activity from their stores, locals are going old-school. Francisco Chavo Romero, an LA-based activist, explains how it works.

When the Trump administration began rounding up immigrants, a new kind of resistance took shape — digital, crowdsourced, and built for the smartphone era. Activists used apps and social media to keep watch on the government. But before long, the government started watching back.

Polish developer Kuba Gretzky wanted to prove that multi-factor authentication wasn’t foolproof. He succeeded—maybe too well. What happens when a cybersecurity warning becomes the threat itself?

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.

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.

Scams aren’t always loud. They don’t always come with pop-ups, typos, or promises of instant riches. The most effective ones whisper and tap into our better angels. And once they’re done that… they have us. In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU’s 1A, we return to a Click Here episode and take your calls—on scams that prey not on our wallets but on our humanity.

The Kremlin has mastered controlling the message online. But now, tens of thousands of soldiers are coming home from Ukraine with stories the state can’t erase. Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst with the Institute for the Study of War, explains why those voices scare Vladimir Putin — and how far he’ll go to keep them quiet.

The Kremlin claims it’s slowing mobile internet to keep Ukrainian drones at bay. But that’s just the cover story. What’s really happening is Vladimir Putin’s long-imagined plan for a walled-off Russian internet — a plan that’s fast becoming a model for strongmen around the world.

The A.I. boom is reshaping our world—and quietly guzzling power. This week, sustainable code advocate Stuart Clark explains how the race to build smarter machines is heating up our planet—and how we can code our way to a cleaner future.

For years, companies have been collecting our data—tracking what we search, where we go, what we buy. But now, empowered by AI and fewer government protections, that data is being used to do something unsettling: personalized prices. We look at how it works.

What happens when a government erases a people’s digital past? This week on Click Here’s Mic Drop, the story of China’s quiet purge of the Uyghur web—and the lone coder determined to bring it back to life.

ERASED is a four-part investigation into how China is wiping Uyghur culture from existence — one law, one app, one person, one website at a time. From shuttered schools to vanishing websites, ERASED uncovers an authoritarian regime’s campaign to delete a culture — and the unlikely rebels racing to stop it.

Ekpar Asat dreamed of building a digital home for his people—a place where Uyghurs could share music, stories, and a sense of belonging. Beijing saw that dream as a threat. They erased the network, and then they erased him. But what happened in Xinjiang wasn’t only about one man or one community. It has become a blueprint for how repression spreads—far beyond China’s borders.

ERASED is a four-part investigation into how China is wiping Uyghur culture from existence — one law, one app, one person, one website at a time. From shuttered schools to vanishing websites, ERASED uncovers an authoritarian regime’s campaign to delete a culture — and the unlikely rebels racing to stop it.

China’s surveillance of Uyghurs has leapt from the physical world to the digital one. No longer just QR codes on doorways, it’s now hidden in cloud services and software updates. This week on Click Here’s Mic Drop, how digital tools meant to protect identity are being used to erase it.

ERASED is a four-part investigation into how China is wiping Uyghur culture from existence — one law, one app, one person, one website at a time. From shuttered schools to vanishing websites, ERASED uncovers an authoritarian regime’s campaign to delete a culture — and the unlikely rebels racing to stop it.

In a small classroom in western China, children once learned to sing and count in the language of their ancestors — Uyghur. Then the doors were locked, and founder Abduweli Ayup went from teacher to enemy of the state. 

ERASED is a four-part investigation into how China is wiping Uyghur culture from existence — one law, one app, one person, one website at a time. From shuttered schools to vanishing websites, ERASED uncovers an authoritarian regime’s campaign to delete a culture — and the unlikely rebels racing to stop it.

DEF CON began as a rogue hacker meetup. Then came the prosecutors, the NSA, and the policy panels. This week on Click Here’s Mic Drop, how a game of "Spot the Fed" turned into an uneasy alliance—and what that says about crime, power, and trust in the digital age.

It started as a going-away party… and became the most legendary hacker conference in the world. This week, Jeff Moss—aka The Dark Tangent—tells us how DEF CON began, what it became, and why it still matters.

Australia wants to keep kids off social media. But to do that, it may have to crack open everyone’s digital ID. Privacy advocates say this isn’t just about protecting children– it is about rewriting the social contract for the rest of us.

An episode from "Arachnid: Hunting the web’s darkest secrets" from TVO Podcasts, the Investigative Journalism Bureau, The Toronto Star, and Piz Gloria Productions:

The images are out there—millions of them. Each one a crime scene, each one a permanent scar. But while the Internet forgets nothing, a group of survivors and digital sleuths are trying to change that. They’re challenging the world’s biggest tech platforms to stop looking the other way—and start deleting the evidence.

Dr. Stephen Xenakis has spent years treating veterans and pushing the bounds of psychiatry. Now, he’s asking if artificial intelligence could become a kind of digital therapist for veterans struggling with mental health. We return to our interview from earlier this year. 

What do you get when you cross a marine biologist with a machine learning engineer? Someone who is convinced that humpback whales may have something to say—and that artificial intelligence might be the tool to decode it. This week, we return to a story about interspecies communication, where tech meets tails and signals meet song.

Billionaire Frank McCourt wants to buy TikTok. Not to go viral—but to rewire the web. He says 170 million users could help him turn the Internet into something less addictive… and more democratic. Is that idealism, delusion… or both? As President Trump extends the deadline on the sale of the app, we return to our discussion with Frank McCourt.

An episode from "Understood: Who Broke the Internet" from CBC podcasts:

We were promised a digital utopia. What we got was a pay-to-play hellscape of pop-ups, bots, and algorithmic sludge. Writer and internet contrarian Cory Doctorow charts the internet’s slow descent—from open commons to corporate enclosure—and lays out a path to take it back.

Listen to the full series:

https://link.mgln.ai/ClickHere

In Russia, military families are cashing in on a wartime housing surge. Defense budgets are ballooning, property values are rising… and beneath it all, a troubling question: what happens when the war economy becomes just… the economy?

Before the war, Serhii Zenin played Metallica and joked with listeners on Ukraine’s Radio ROKS. Now he wears fatigues. And the station? It's still playing heavy metal—but now it’s also broadcasting news, coordinating aid, and holding the line in its own way. We return to a story where the frontlines and the airwaves meet.

While most of us were staring at the auroras lighting up our Instagram feeds last year, a small group of analysts at the Space ISAC were focused on something a little less… pretty. Think solar flares. Think sabotage. Think space debris with a grudge. This week, we revisit our story about the watchers who don’t get much attention.

In this week’s CyberMonday crossover with WAMU’s 1A, we revisit a Click Here episode and take your calls—this time, about the cluttered chaos orbiting above us. Space debris isn’t just a cleanup problem. It’s a threat vector. What happens when an old satellite, long forgotten, becomes the perfect cover for a cyberattack? Or worse… a weapon?

Drones promised progress — as lifesavers in floods, storytellers in newsrooms, even assistants to archaeologists. But somewhere along the way, they took a darker turn. Now they hover over protests, shadow 911 calls and surveil our neighborhoods from above. Researcher Faine Greenwood discusses how we normalized the hum of surveillance — and why all this is starting to resemble something much more authoritarian.

Today: A story about a technology that began in the fields — tracking cattle — and is now on the ankles of immigrants. It’s part of a program called “alternatives to detention.” And these ankle monitors, smartphone apps, GPS check-ins have changed. They’re not just tools to monitor. Increasingly, they’re being used to entrap. And for some immigrants, complying with the system means walking straight into ICE detention.

A Chinese hacking group walked right into a trap. Not a firewall. Not a filter. A honeypot. This week, Amazon CSO Steve Schmidt explains how a digital decoy called MadPot helped expose Volt Typhoon—and why, in the age of AI, the real vulnerability isn’t software. It’s people.

TRON was supposed to be just another Ethereum knockoff — faster, cheaper, maybe a little flashier. But over time, it's become something else entirely: the go-to blockchain for illicit finance.

Zoom was built for speed. But in its rush to connect us, it may have left a few doors open. This week, a cybersecurity expert walks us through how one of Zoom's most mundane features became a hacker's best friend — and why the weakest link in crypto isn't the blockchain … it's the person who thinks they're too smart to get scammed.

Jake Gallen was a rising star in crypto. Then, after what seemed like a routine YouTube interview, his digital world unraveled. His NFTs? Liquidated. His social accounts? Hijacked. It turns out, the hackers didn’t need phishing links or fake job offers. They needed something much simpler: a Zoom invite.

The Trump memecoin dinner looked like a political stunt. Maybe even a scam. But inside the crypto community, some saw something else: legitimacy. Today, we hear from one of crypto’s most thoughtful defenders.