Cheap energy, abundant land, and proximity to Beijing have turned a city in Inner Mongolia into a crucial hub for data centers. Travel just two hours west of Beijing by train, and you'll find yourself surrounded by the rolling grasslands and ancient cinder cones of Inner Mongolia. This vast, arid land has long been China's capital of sheep farming and coal mining, but over the last few years, it has become the hottest place in the country to build an AI data center. In Ulanqab, a city in Inner Mongolia home to about 1.5 million people, nearly 100 data centers have been opened or begun construction since 2016. Chinese companies have pledged to build projects with a combined estimated capacity of 12.5 gigawatts in the city, and over 70 percent of the total commitments have been announced in just the last year, making it one of the fastest growing compute clusters in Asia, according to a research note published by Goldman Sachs last week.

ICE's DNA Collection Increases, SpaceX's Rocket Crashes Into the Moon, and the AI Backlash Grows In today's episode of, we discuss how ICE has been collecting DNA samples of people who have no criminal convictions, including children, which end up in an FBI database indefinitely. This week on, Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer, and Leah Feiger break down how ICE has collected DNA from nearly a million people this year, including young children, feeding an FBI database indefinitely. Write to us at [email protected] . You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link . These samples have led to hundreds of thousands of people, including young children, to end up in an FBI criminal database basically forever. From Google Earth disabling its new AI tool after people used it to create fake maps to Substack partnering with the AI writing detection tool Pangram, companies are starting to realize that people really don't like low-quality AI content flooding their feeds. It's keeping the details mostly under wraps, but we're going to discuss what's behind all the secrecy and what this could mean for future regulation. WIRED's Dhruv Mehrotra reported this week about how ICE has collected nearly 1 million people's DNA this past year, just this past year alone, including that of young children. As we mentioned up top, this DNA collection has led to hundreds of thousands of people with no criminal convictions ending up in an FBI database indefinitely. And in fact, the Department of Homeland Security has become the single largest source of new profiles in this database.

"We have no choice but to address the challenges created by these massive facilities," New York governor Kathy Hochul said. The executive order will pause construction for one year. New York governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order Tuesday enacting a one-year pause on the development of hyperscale data centers, effecting the nation's first statewide data center moratorium. The executive order comes as opposition to data center construction sweeps across the country, putting elected officials under intense pressure to take action. The order specifically pauses state environmental reviews for facilities over 50 megawatts for a year.

Why the Reflecting Pool Is Full of Algae After Trump's Renovation Warm weather has fueled a bloom that US National Park Service workers are trying to kill using everything from hydrogen peroxide to nanobubbles ahead of July 4 celebrations. On Wednesday morning, workers poured hydrogen peroxide into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC. The treatment is the latest attempt by the Interior Department to control an algae bloom that has turned the pool bright green, despite President Donald Trump's costly renovation to make it "American flag blue" in time for the nation's 250th anniversary . Hot temperatures and climate change are among the risk factors that could be driving the outbreak. The Trump administration spent more than $14 million to update the pool ahead of celebrations across the US capital .

Despite being declared the third-hottest year on record, 2025 was a relatively quiet year for climate disasters in the US. No major hurricanes made landfall, while the total number of acres burned in wildfires last year--a way of measuring the intensity of wildfire season --fell below the 10-year average. But starting this week, the West is experiencing what looks to be a record-breaking heat wave, while forecasting models predict that a strong El Niño event is likely to emerge later this year. These two unrelated phenomena could set the stage for a long stretch of unpredictable and extreme weather reaching into next year, compounding the effects of a climate that's getting hotter and hotter thanks to human activity. Beginning this week and heading into next, a massive ridge of high-pressure air will bring record-breaking temperatures to the American West.

In this episode of Uncanny Valley, we discuss the economics and environmental impacts of energy-hungry data centers and whether these facilities are sustainable in the age of AI. The Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas.Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images Tech giants have been investing hundreds of billions of dollars into AI data centers just this year alone. But as the deals pile up, so have the concerns around their viability and sustainability. Michael Calore and senior correspondent Lauren Goode sit down with senior writer Molly Taft to discuss how these energy hungry facilities actually work, the different industry interests at stake, and whether it'll all come crumbling down. The AI Industry's Scaling Obsession Is Headed for a Cliff by Will Knight OpenAI's Blockbuster AMD Deal Is a Bet on Near-Limitless Demand for AI by Will Knight How Much Energy Does AI Use? The People Who Know Aren't Saying by Molly Taft Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com. You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. It's so nice to be back in studio with you again, because our schedules were not aligning for the past few weeks. But the stars and the moon have aligned now, and here we are once again. Lauren Goode: Here we are. And I'm sure all of our listeners have just been sitting here wondering, "When are Lauren and Mike getting back together? When is the band getting back together?"