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8 everyday things that would quit working without data centers

8 everyday things that would quit working without data centers

Data centers are the largely unseen infrastructure behind modern life, powering everything from the apps on your phone and shows you stream to online shopping, banking and artificial intelligence. Inside these warehouse-sized facilities, thousands of servers store data, process digital requests and keep online services running around the clock. Most Americans may never see one, but they rely on them constantly, often without realizing it. “Data centers have been around for as long as technology has been around,” Brittany Kaiser, CEO of Alpha Compute, told Fox News Digital. “Anytime you’re touching technology and using everything from social media to your email, all of that information, all of the data is being processed in a data center.” As more of the economy moves online, data centers have become far more than a niche piece of the tech industry. They are increasingly essential infrastructure for everyday American life. The U.S. is home to roughly 4,000 operational facilities, with thousands more planned or under construction as demand for cloud computing and AI accelerates. Here are eight ways data centers quietly power the services Americans rely on every day. From Instagram and TikTok to Gmail and banking apps, data centers process and store the information behind the services people use every day. When you open an app, upload a photo, refresh your feed or send a message, your phone is connected to servers that retrieve and deliver that information in seconds. The apps may live on a screen in your hand, but much of the work happens far away inside a physical facility filled with computers running continuously. Netflix, YouTube, Spotify and other streaming platforms rely on massive computing infrastructure to deliver movies, videos and music to millions of users at once. Data centers help store enormous libraries of content and move it quickly enough to prevent the pauses and buffering that frustrate viewers. ONE OF AMERICA’S OLDEST MANUFACTURERS SAYS AI IS CREATING JOBS — NOT REPLACING THEM Online games also rely on data centers to connect players, synchronize what is happening in a match and reduce the lag that can make a game unplayable. The more people stream, game and use data-heavy services, the more computing power those platforms need behind the scenes. Your iPhone photos, Google Drive documents and cloud backups do not just float around in cyberspace. They are stored on physical servers inside data centers, often with copies kept in multiple locations to help prevent data loss. That means a lost phone or broken laptop does not necessarily mean lost memories or work file — but it also means the cloud depends on vast amounts of real-world hardware. Search engines rely on data centers to sort through enormous amounts of information and return results in fractions of a second. Every query triggers systems that locate relevant webpages, images, maps, videos and other information before sending the results back to your device. What feels like a simple Google search is actually a complex exchange between your device and powerful servers processing requests at an enormous scale. When you order something online, data centers help manage inventory, process payments, make product recommendations and track packages to your door. They also allow retailers to update product availability and pricing quickly as demand changes. ELECTION WHISTLEBLOWER WARNS FOREIGN ACTORS ARE SPENDING BILLIONS TO TURN AMERICANS AGAINST AI During major shopping events such as Black Friday, those systems have to handle a surge of shoppers and transactions without crashing. Google Maps, Waze and other navigation services depend on computing infrastructure to process traffic patterns, routes and location data in real time. They combine information from roads, users, businesses and mapping systems to estimate travel times and suggest alternate routes. Without the data centers behind them, navigation apps would not be able to react as quickly to accidents, congestion or changing road conditions. Video calls, cloud-based software, shared documents and workplace messaging all rely heavily on data-center infrastructure. Every Zoom meeting, Slack message and live edit to a shared file depends on servers that keep information synced between people working from different locations. THIS TINY FARMING TOWN YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF IS HELPING MICROSOFT SELL AMERICA ON DATA CENTERS For many companies, data centers have become as essential to day-to-day operations as office space, phones and electricity. Every time someone asks an AI chatbot a question, generates an image or uses an AI-powered search feature, data centers provide the computing power working behind the screen. Those requests require far more processing than a basic web search because the systems must analyze information and generate a response in real time. That is a major reason the technology industry is racing to build bigger and more powerful data centers, often equipped with specialized chips designed for AI workloads. GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE In addition, autonomous vehicles, advanced robotics, scientific research and other emerging technologies require increasingly powerful computing infrastructure. Data centers help train the AI systems behind those tools, process huge volumes of data and support the software that allows them to improve over time.

Letitia James’ Times Square shooting probe draws GOP criticism over New York’s mental health crisis

Letitia James’ Times Square shooting probe draws GOP criticism over New York’s mental health crisis

New York Attorney General Letitia James is facing scrutiny after opening up a legally required investigation into the police shooting of a woman who fatally stabbed Erin Piacenti, Bank of America executive and a new mother in her first week back to work from maternity leave, in Times Square. James’ office announced on Wednesday that it will be investigating Pamela Cisneros’ death, who was wielding two large knives in each hand when officers confronted her following the fatal stabbing. She was ordered to drop the weapons but did not comply and was shot when she moved toward the officers. Under state law, the Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigation is mandated to investigate all deaths that were caused by police officers. However, Republican attorney general candidate Saritha Komatireddy is pushing the Attorney General’s Office to take more concrete steps to ensure that another tragic killing or attack caused by a mentally unstable person doesn’t happen again. She argued that an investigation into police conduct fails to address the real problem. “The problem is that we have people who are known dangerous individuals, people with documented mental illness,” Komatireddy told Fox News Digital. “They’ve been in the courts before, or they’ve been to the hospitals before. The police know exactly who they are, but we have no ability to take care of them.” REPUBLICANS GET ‘AGGRESSIVE’ IN FIGHT TO WIN TOP COP SPOTS IN BATTLEGROUND STATES A campaign spokesperson for James accused Komatireddy of seeking to “score cheap political points off of a tragedy.” “Saritha Komatireddy wants to be Attorney General but doesn’t understand the law,” a spokesperson said in an email to Fox News Digital. “Under New York’s Executive Law, the Office of the Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigation is required to investigate any incident where a police officer’s actions may have caused a death, including this one.” However, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has a history of anti-police rhetoric, applauded the officers who stopped Cisneros. “I want to thank the NYPD officers who stepped in and prevented a horrific attack from becoming even worse,” Mamdani said at a news conference. PARENTS IN BRONX NEIGHBORHOOD PLEAD FOR NYPD GUARD AS MAMDANI CUTS COPS, HALTS HIRES: ‘HORRIBLE SITUATION’ New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch shared that while Cisneros, who lived in Queens, didn’t have an arrest record in the city, there were two times police responded to calls concerning her suffering a mental health crisis. In March 2019, Cisneros attempted suicide by jumping onto the tracks of the E train and was removed and later hospitalized. In March 2018, police found her in Midtown, where she was screaming, acting belligerent and intoxicated. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). Under the state’s Mental Hygiene Law, police and doctors can take a person to the hospital for a psychological hold if they are deemed to be a risk to themselves or others, or they can not meet their basic needs — but often times those with severe mental illnesses are released by the hospital back onto the streets hours after being brought in. LETITIA JAMES FACES SCRUTINY AFTER NEW YORK CITY SPENDS $81,700 PER HOMELESS PERSON AMID SHELTER SCANDALS “I was there in Times Square — just a couple of days after this fatal stabbing — and I was walking around and saw severely mentally ill people on the street,” Komatireddy told Fox News Digital. “It’s still happening every day, and we need someone who’s actually going to propose a real solution and way forward.” TRUMP WANTS TO HELP 146,000 MENTALLY ILL WHO ARE HOMELESS. DEMOCRATS WANT TO STOP HIM The New York State Office of Mental Health is tasked with overseeing the state’s mental health system, which includes 23 psychiatric centers and 6,500 programs overseen by local governments and nonprofits. In addition, Komatireddy said that, if elected, she’d create a new office known as the Office of Civil Commitment that would target and keep tabs on people who are at most risk. “The Office of Civil Commitment that I’m going to launch will be staffed with both law enforcement personnel and also physicians, and you need both because, under state law, the law requires that physicians certify that someone has the mental state required for involuntary civil commitment,” Komatireddy told Fox News Digital. “So there’s nothing like that right now in New York state. There’s no office that has both law enforcement and physicians who can work together to get these people off the streets.” Greene County Sheriff Peter Kusminsky told Fox News Digital that his deputies are not trained to handle psychiatric crises — and that the county has nowhere to send people who need real care. Deputies are constantly pulled off patrol for mental-health calls, he said, then left to put those in crisis in hotels because there aren’t enough hospital beds available. “Additionally, we really struggle when we have people in custody who we aren’t equipped to handle, and secure beds are even harder to find,” Kusminsky said. “It sometimes takes weeks or months to locate once and when we do, they are maybe on the other side of the state and at an exorbitant cost.” “Hotels and motels don’t have doctors, don’t have medicine, don’t have therapy,” Komatireddy said. “The state needs to step in.”

‘Destroying the American way of life’: El-Sayed’s political orbit complicates effort to moderate his image

‘Destroying the American way of life’: El-Sayed’s political orbit complicates effort to moderate his image

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is seeking to appear more moderate to voters while, at the same time, maintaining ties to individuals who take positions far to the left of anything he publicly endorses. Since launching his Senate bid in April 2025, El-Sayed has distanced himself from a number of positions he had previously held and scrubbed much of his left-wing pre-campaign content from the internet. He has also repeatedly insisted that he is “not a socialist.” While attempting to convince voters that characterizations of him as a left-wing ideologue are inaccurate, El-Sayed has appeared at campaign events with and accepted endorsements from a range of political allies and supporters with controversial records or views. EL-SAYED’S HASAN PIKER PROBLEM FOLLOWS HIM TO DEM CONVENTION AS JEWISH VOTERS BREAK RANKS Beyond campaigning with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who claimed that America “deserved” 9/11, El-Sayed has also linked himself with terror-sympathetic Islamic clerics, individuals accused of antisemitism and several prominent socialists and socialist-aligned activists. “Abdul has made clear that no one speaks for his campaign besides himself and his campaign spokespeople,” El-Sayed campaign spokesman Cole Wozniak told Fox News Digital. El-Sayed’s campaign has attempted to flip the narrative on Republicans, pointing out that Mike Rogers, the GOP nominee facing off against him, has his own set of controversial associations. Some individuals affiliated with the Rogers campaign, which did not respond to a request for comment, have also cast doubt on the outcome of the 2020 election and advocated for banning gay marriage. Nonetheless, Republicans have made El-Sayed’s affiliations with controversial figures a focal point of their campaign in Michigan. “I am not somebody who is a socialist,” El-Sayed told CNN in July. “I believe in capitalism, I just believe that capitalism has to be regulated.” Despite this assertion, and multiple others like it, El-Sayed has surrounded himself with socialists during his tenure as a public figure. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont described by some as the avatar of socialism in America, threw his support behind El-Sayed’s ill-fated 2018 gubernatorial run. The Vermont socialist was also among the first to back El-Sayed’s 2026 Senate bid, endorsing him on the same day he launched his campaign. Sanders isn’t the only socialist backing El-Sayed’s run for Senate. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Summer Lee and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are all vocal supporters. TOP DEM HOPEFUL FLIPS SCRIPT AFTER YEARS IN SOCIALIST ORBIT WITH PUZZLING CLAIM El-Sayed has long aligned himself with the Democratic Socialists of America, only recently distancing himself from the ascendant left-wing organization as he seeks to win a competitive Senate race. Between 2017 and 2020, the Michigan Democrat spoke at six events held by Democratic Socialists of America chapters, including a 2019 fundraiser where he served as the keynote speaker. Additionally, DSA officials told Politico in July that they were mobilizing resources to help El-Sayed win his Democratic primary election. “I’m not technically or practically DSA,” El-Sayed told the Wall Street Journal in July. Socialist organizers, however, have called him “a longtime friend of Detroit DSA.” Most recently, news broke that William Lawrence, a Democratic Socialists of America member running for Congress in Michigan who has campaigned alongside El-Sayed, called for “destroying the American way of life” on a podcast hosted by Marxist activists. “I’m wondering how we can inspire a sense of abundance for people in the United States, while frankly, destroying the American way of life and the negative connotations and material realities that has come to mean,” he said on the episode. A strong showing with Michigan’s Arab American community helped carry El-Sayed to victory in August’s Democratic primary. El-Sayed has been deeply involved with the state’s Muslim community, including relationships with figures who have made controversial statements about Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah. ‘MARTYRS’: MICHIGAN DEMS NOMINATE HEZBOLLAH-PRAISING CANDIDATE AFTER OUSTING JEWISH REGENT In April, Amir Makled, a man running for the University of Michigan’s board of regents who celebrated dead members of Hezbollah — a U.S.-designated terrorist organization — as “martyr[s],” introduced El-Sayed at a campaign rally. Then, in June, El-Sayed headlined the opening of Imam Hassan Qazwini’s Islamic Institute of America, offering him his “hearty congratulations” and calling his mosque “incredible.” Qazwini has a history of making controversial comments. Among these have been his claim that Israel was behind ISIS, calling a slain leader of Hezbollah a hero of the “resistance,” and describing Sanders as honorable “even though he is a Jew.” Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign denounced Qazwini as antisemitic. Qazwini has since compelled his congregation to vote for El-Sayed, arguing that doing so is a “moral responsibility” and “religious duty” in a July sermon. At the opening of Qazwini’s institute, El-Sayed shared the stage with Sheikh Fadhel al-Sahlani, a cleric who praised Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack and downplayed the number of people killed in the Holocaust. EL-SAYED BOOKED FOR MAJOR ISLAMIC CONVENTION ALONGSIDE CLERICS WITH RADICAL PASTS On Sept. 5, El-Sayed is scheduled to share a different stage at the Islamic Society of North America’s annual convention with Qazwini. Also slated to be in attendance are Imam Baqir Berry, who prayed that God would grant Islamic holy soldiers in Gaza “a mighty victory;” and Siraj Wahhaj, who was named as a possible co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center terrorism case but was never charged in connection with the attacks. El-Sayed’s religious views have puzzled some observers. While the Democrat supports easy access to abortion and child sex changes, he has also expressed a desire to live in accordance with Sharia law and describes his faith as important to his outlook on life. A number of people El-Sayed has appeared with or promoted have ties to the Nation of Islam, a religious organization founded by Black nationalists in the 1930s that is not considered an orthodox Muslim sect by most Islamic leaders. The Nation of Islam teaches that Black people are the original human beings and that White people were created by an evil Black scientist named Yakub. Their doctrine portrays the White race