Front Burner

“I do believe I will be having the honor of taking Cuba.”

Those are the words of U.S. President Donald Trump spoken to a group of reporters assembled at the White House.

For more than a century Cuba has remained a fixation of American foreign policy. The U.S. has tried everything from buying the island to taking it by force.

Today the country faces the worst economic crisis in its modern history, and U.S. officials say Cuba could face a similar fate to Venezuela, where the Trump administration launched a military operation and removed its president from power.

We sort through the history with our guest Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive and author of ‘Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana.’

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

This spring, just outside Regina, construction is set to begin on Canada's largest data centre. Many of these massive server farms, that train and power AI, are being built or proposed across the country.

They’re all part of a global infrastructure supercycle. In the U.S. alone, data centres have nearly quadrupled since 2010. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta plan to spend more than $600 billion on their expansion in 2026.

But as they grow – so does resistance to them, as communities begin to ask what they’re giving up to power the world’s chatbots.

Ellen Thomas is an investigative reporter with Business Insider. She’s been covering the AI data centre boom in the U.S. for years.

Ellen spoke to host Jayme Poisson about the true cost of building data centres, and what it takes to keep them open.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

As the world watches for updates in the war on Iran, cutting through the fog of war and getting a real sense of the extent of damage and military activity in the region isn’t easy. For some, the answer is open source intelligence: pouring over satellite images, flight radars, news updates, social media posts, and just about any kind of data someone can get their hands on.

And while OSINT investigations have worked their way into common practice for newsrooms all over the world, it’s also increasingly popular among amateurs or “OSINT cowboys” with sophisticated AI-coded dashboards streaming constant real life info so that they can monitor the situation as closely as possible and even place bets on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. But how accurate are these OSINT reports? And what happens when watching for war updates becomes gamified?

Tyler McBrien, the managing editor at Lawfare, joins us to talk about the piece he wrote on this topic for The Baffler.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

As Ottawa prepares to tighten bail laws across the country, we take a documentary look at how the issue has become a focal point of Canadian anxiety around crime and ask what might change with Bill C-14, legislation the Prime Minister has called “arguably the most aggressive tightening of the criminal code seen in decades.”

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

On Tuesday U.S. president Donald Trump took back his appeal for help to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, and called out his NATO allies for largely ignoring his request.

Iran’s blockade of the chokepoint between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman has effectively cut off commercial shipping. This has halted the flow of nearly 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply, caused fuel prices to surge, and sent shockwaves through the global economy.

As the Israel and U.S. war on Iran continues, today we’re asking whether the U.S. can open the Strait on its own, why allies are so reluctant to help, and if diplomacy — not military might — will be the key to unlocking the shipping route.

Guest host Jason Markusoff speaks with Aaron Ettinger, professor of political science at Carleton University.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts