Sources & Credits

AI Primer for Elected Officials

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1. 89(R) HB 149, Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act, enrolled version. Texas Legislature, 2025; effective Jan 1, 2026. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/HB00149F.htm (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
2. 89(R) HB 3512, enrolled version. Texas Legislature, 2025; effective Sep 1, 2025. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/pdf/HB03512F.pdf (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
3. “Governor Abbott Announces Ban On Chinese AI, Social Media Apps”. Office of the Texas Governor, Jan 31, 2025. https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-announces-ban-on-chinese-ai-social-media-apps (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
4. Shehabi et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Dec 2024. https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/lbnl-2024-united-states-data-center-energy-usage-report_1.pdf (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
5. “Sustainable by design: Next-generation datacenters consume zero water for cooling”. Microsoft Cloud Blog, Dec 9, 2024. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/12/09/sustainable-by-design-next-generation-datacenters-consume-zero-water-for-cooling/ (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
6. Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2025. Uptime Institute, 2025. https://datacenter.uptimeinstitute.com/rs/711-RIA-145/images/2025.Annual.Survey.Report.pdf (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
7. Meta’s Odense Data Center (fact sheet). Meta, Feb 2025. https://datacenters.atmeta.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Metas-Odense-Data-Center.pdf (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
8. Energy and AI: Energy demand from AI. International Energy Agency, Apr 2025. https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from-ai (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
9. 89(R) SB 6, enrolled version. Texas Legislature, 2025. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/pdf/SB00006F.pdf (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
10. Order adopting new 16 TAC §25.370, ERCOT Large Load Forecasting Criteria (Project 58480). Public Utility Commission of Texas, Feb 6, 2026. https://ftp.puc.texas.gov/public/puct-info/agency/rulesnlaws/subrules/electric/25.370/58480adt.pdf (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
11. Consumer AI Rights: Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act. Office of the Texas Attorney General, undated web page. https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/consumer-protection/file-consumer-complaint/consumer-ai-rights (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
12. FY26–27 Certified AI Awareness Training Programs. Texas Department of Information Resources, Sep 2026. https://dir.texas.gov/sites/default/files/2026-09/FY26-27%20Certified%20AI%20Awareness%20Training%20Programs%20Final%204.0.pdf (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
13. TX-RAMP Eligibility and Requirements. Texas Department of Information Resources, undated web page. https://dir.texas.gov/information-security/texas-risk-and-authorization-management-program-tx-ramp/tx-ramp-eligibility (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
14. Texas Election Code §255.004. Texas Legislature, statutes online. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/?artSec=255.004&chapter=EL.255&code=EL&tab=1 (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
15. 89(R) SB 20, enrolled bill summary. Texas Legislature, 2025; effective Sep 1, 2025. https://capitol.texas.gov/billlookup/BillSummary.aspx?Bill=SB20&LegSess=89R (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
16. S.146, TAKE IT DOWN Act, all actions (Public Law 119-12). Congress.gov, signed May 19, 2025. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/146/all-info (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
17. “FTC Begins Enforcing the TAKE IT DOWN Act”. Federal Trade Commission, May 2026. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/05/ftc-begins-enforcing-take-it-down-act (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
18. Executive Order 14365, “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence”. The White House, Dec 11, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/12/eliminating-state-law-obstruction-of-national-artificial-intelligence-policy/ (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
19. OMB Memorandum M-25-21, Accelerating Federal Use of AI through Innovation, Governance, and Public Trust. Office of Management and Budget, Apr 3, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/M-25-21-Accelerating-Federal-Use-of-AI-through-Innovation-Governance-and-Public-Trust.pdf (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
20. OMB Memorandum M-25-22, Driving Efficient Acquisition of Artificial Intelligence in Government. Office of Management and Budget, Apr 3, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/M-25-22-Driving-Efficient-Acquisition-of-Artificial-Intelligence-in-Government.pdf (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
21. Timeline for the Implementation of the EU AI Act. European Commission AI Act Service Desk, reflecting the Digital Omnibus on AI in force Jul 27, 2026. https://ai-act-service-desk.ec.europa.eu/en/ai-act/timeline/timeline-implementation-eu-ai-act (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
22. Artificial Intelligence & Inventory. City of San José, undated web page. https://www.sanjoseca.gov/your-government/departments-offices/information-technology/digital-privacy/ai-reviews-algorithm-register (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
23. “San José City Clerk Launches Artificial Intelligence Initiative to Increase Language Access at City Council Meetings”. City of San José, news release. https://www.sanjoseca.gov/Home/Components/News/News/5907/4699 (accessed Oct 26, 2026).
24. Generative AI Guidelines. City of San José. https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/100095/638255600904303329 (accessed Oct 26, 2026).

The data center comes full circle

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1. R.C. Chu, “Exploring Innovative Cooling Solutions for IBM’s Supercomputing Systems” (presentation). IBM (hosted by Clemson University), 2010. https://mark.people.clemson.edu/ExploringInnovativeCoolingSolutions.pdf (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
2. “NVIDIA Vera Rubin POD: Seven Chips, Five Rack-Scale Systems, One AI Supercomputer”. NVIDIA Technical Blog, Mar 16, 2026. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-vera-rubin-pod-seven-chips-five-rack-scale-systems-one-ai-supercomputer/ (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
3. Delia et al., “System cooling design for the water-cooled IBM Enterprise System/9000 processors,” IBM Journal of Research and Development 36(4). IBM, July 1992. https://doi.org/10.1147/rd.364.0791 (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
4. “Sustainable by design: Next-generation datacenters consume zero water for cooling”. Microsoft Cloud Blog, Dec 9, 2024. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/12/09/sustainable-by-design-next-generation-datacenters-consume-zero-water-for-cooling/ (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
5. Meta’s Odense Data Center (fact sheet). Meta, Feb 2025. https://datacenters.atmeta.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Metas-Odense-Data-Center.pdf (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
6. Shehabi et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report (p. 55). Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Dec 2024. https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/lbnl-2024-united-states-data-center-energy-usage-report_1.pdf (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
7. “Cray-2 CPU and cooling tower,” Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing. Computer History Museum, undated web exhibit. https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/supercomputers/10/68/275 (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
8. “Luleå goes live”. Meta Data Centers, Jun 12, 2013. https://datacenters.atmeta.com/2013/06/lulea-goes-live/ (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
9. High-Performance Computing Data Center Heat Capture and Reuse. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), undated web page. https://www.nlr.gov/computational-science/waste-heat-energy-reuse (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
10. High-Performance Computing Data Center Power Usage Effectiveness. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), undated web page. https://www.nlr.gov/computational-science/measuring-efficiency-pue (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
11. “To cool datacenter servers, Microsoft turns to boiling liquid”. Microsoft Source, Apr 6, 2021. https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/datacenter-liquid-cooling/ (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
12. “Computer engineers at ORNL pioneer approaches to energy efficient supercomputing”. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sep 10, 2024. https://www.ornl.gov/news/computer-engineers-ornl-pioneer-approaches-energy-efficient-supercomputing (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
13. “Exploring a space-based, scalable AI infrastructure system design”. Google Research, Nov 4, 2025. https://research.google/blog/exploring-a-space-based-scalable-ai-infrastructure-system-design/ (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
14. “How Starcloud Is Bringing Data Centers to Outer Space”. NVIDIA Blog, Oct 2025. https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/starcloud/ (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
15. “Starcloud-1 satellite reaches space, with Nvidia H100 GPU now operating in orbit”. DatacenterDynamics, Nov 3, 2025. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/starcloud-1-satellite-reaches-space-with-nvidia-h100-gpu-now-operating-in-orbit/ (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
16. “Google’s Project Suncatcher prototype satellite is in orbit”. Google, Oct 1, 2026. https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/google-research/project-suncatcher-prototype/ (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
17. Public Notice DA 26-113, SpaceX application for orbital data centers. Federal Communications Commission, Feb 4, 2026. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-113A1.txt (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
18. PG25 Fluid Requirements. NVIDIA, July 2026 (v01 Aug 19, 2025). https://marketplace.nvidia.com/docs/PG25_Fluid_Requirements.pdf (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
19. Universal Quick Disconnect (UQD) Specification, Rev 1.0. Open Compute Project, undated specification. https://www.opencompute.org/documents/ocp-universal-quick-disconnect-uqd-specification-rev-1-0-2-pdf (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
20. Leak Detection and Handling. NVIDIA Infra Controller documentation, undated web page. https://docs.nvidia.com/infra-controller/documentation/operations-day-2/leak-detection-handling (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
21. Guidelines for Using Water-Based Transfer Fluids in Single-Phase Cold Plate-Based Liquid-Cooled Racks. Open Compute Project, undated guideline. https://www.opencompute.org/documents/guidelines-for-using-water-based-transfer-fluids-in-single-phase-cold-plate-based-liquid-cooled-racks-final-pdf/ (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
22. Best Management Practice #10: Cooling Tower Management. U.S. Department of Energy, Federal Energy Management Program, undated web page. https://www.energy.gov/cmei/femp/best-management-practice-10-cooling-tower-management (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
23. “Meta surplus heat to district heating” (project page). Ramboll, undated web page. https://www.ramboll.com/projects/energy/meta-surplus-heat-to-district-heating (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
24. “Inside the NVIDIA Vera Rubin Platform: Six New Chips, One AI Supercomputer”. NVIDIA Technical Blog, Jan 5, 2026. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/inside-the-nvidia-rubin-platform-six-new-chips-one-ai-supercomputer/ (accessed Oct 25, 2026).

Photo credits

• Under the raised floor of a data center, 2008. Photo: Adamantios, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 2022. It is cooled with warm water and no chillers. Photo: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Unveiling the warm-water, liquid-cooled Peregrine supercomputer at NREL’s data center in Golden, Colorado, 2013. Photo: U.S. Department of Energy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
• Meta’s data center in Luleå, Sweden, photographed in 2016. Meta says it is cooled with outside air and runs on local hydroelectric power. Photo: Christopher Down, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• An immersion-cooling tank, 2017. Servers sit in a liquid that does not conduct electricity. Photo: Rolf Brink, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Front panel of an IBM System/360 Model 91, as displayed at the Living Computer Museum, Seattle. Photo: MBlairMartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• A Cray-2 supercomputer at the Museum für Verkehr und Technik, Berlin, 2022. Photo: Fridolin freudenfett, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Diagrams drawn by us from the sources cited.

What It Is: The Plain-English Tech Glossary

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1. “Implementing Phishing-Resistant MFA (fact sheet)”. CISA, Oct 2022. https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/fact-sheet-implementing-phishing-resistant-mfa-508c.pdf (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
2. “Email sender guidelines”. Google Workspace Admin Help. https://support.google.com/a/answer/81126 (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
3. “FTC Safeguards Rule: What Your Business Needs to Know”. Federal Trade Commission. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftc-safeguards-rule-what-your-business-needs-know (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
4. “Safeguards Rule notification requirement now in effect”. Federal Trade Commission, May 2024. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/05/safeguards-rule-notification-requirement-now-effect (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
5. “IEEE P802.3bt DTE Power via MDI over 4-Pair Task Force”. IEEE 802.3. https://www.ieee802.org/3/bt/ (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
6. “10GBASE-T field testing requirements”. Fluke Networks knowledge base (citing TIA TSB-155). https://www.flukenetworks.com/knowledge-base/applicationstandards-articles-copper/10gbase-t-field-testing-requirements (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
7. “RFC 3261: SIP: Session Initiation Protocol”. IETF, 2002. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3261 (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
8. “RFC 3550: RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time Applications”. IETF, 2003. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3550 (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
9. “Multi-line Telephone Systems: Kari’s Law and RAY BAUM’S Act 911 Direct Dialing, Notification, and Dispatchable Location Requirements”. Federal Communications Commission. https://www.fcc.gov/mlts-911-requirements (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
10. “RFC 9309: Robots Exclusion Protocol”. IETF, 2022. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9309 (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
11. “Verifying Googlebot and other Google crawlers”. Google Search Central. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/verifying-googlebot (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
12. “The /llms.txt file (proposal)”. llmstxt.org. https://llmstxt.org/ (accessed Oct 25, 2026).
13. “Schema.org”. Schema.org. https://schema.org/ (accessed Oct 25, 2026).

ConnectWise Cloud Backup (SkyKick) Incident: What Microsoft 365 Customers Should Check

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1. ConnectWise Trust Center: Cloud Backup (formerly SkyKick) advisory and updates
2. ConnectWise: Cloud Backup technical investigation and remediation guide (PDF)
3. Microsoft Security Blog: AI-driven, large-scale nation-state campaign using ARTEX enables supply chain compromise
4. Huntress: ConnectWise (SkyKick) vendor credentials abused in M365 attacks

Fortinet Firewall Owners: Install the October Security Updates Now

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1. Fortinet: Fortinet Releases Security Hardening Release for Multiple Products (Carl Windsor, October 21, 2026)
2. FortiGuard Labs: PSIRT Advisories (details due November 10, 2026)
3. FBI and U.S. Secret Service: FortiBleed Operations Continue Targeting Exposed Systems Leading to Reports of Lockouts (October 6, 2026)
4. Help Net Security: Fortinet patches critical FortiOS flaws found with AI help

Nextcloud Users: Update the Built-in Office App Now (CVE-2026-110447)

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1. Collabora: Unauthenticated OS command injection in the richdocumentscode proxy
2. NIST National Vulnerability Database: CVE-2026-110447
3. CISA: Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog
4. Nextcloud community forum: To Collabora Built-in User: Update ASAP

Nvidia Vera Rubin: A Cable-Free, Warm-Water-Cooled AI Rack

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1. NVIDIA Technical Blog: NVIDIA Vera Rubin POD (Mar 16, 2026)
2. NVIDIA Technical Blog: Inside the NVIDIA Rubin Platform (Jan 5, 2026)
3. NVIDIA Newsroom: Rubin platform announcement (Jan 5, 2026)

Palo Alto GlobalProtect VPN Flaw Now Used by Ransomware Groups: What to Check

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1. Palo Alto Networks: CVE-2026-0257 PAN-OS GlobalProtect Authentication Bypass Vulnerabilities
2. Unit 42: Active Exploitation of May 2026 PAN-OS CVE-2026-0257 (updated October 2026)
3. CISA: Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog

PHP2Shell: What Business Owners Should Do About the New PHP Flaw

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1. CISA: Critical Vulnerabilities in PHP Require Immediate Patching
2. The PHP Foundation: Today's PHP Security Release
3. CERT-EU: Critical Vulnerabilities in PHP
4. watchTowr: PHP2Shell FAQ

SafePay Ransomware: What the New FBI and CISA Warning Means for Your Business

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1. CISA and partners: #StopRansomware: SafePay Ransomware (AA26-293A)
2. CISA: CISA, FBI and Partners Warn Organizations of SafePay Ransomware Actors
3. CISA: Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog
4. StopRansomware.gov