When Digital Fails: An AI-Hosted Look at Why Cash Still Matters

In this AI-hosted episode, we explore why cash remains essential even as digital payments dominate. The discussion starts with the October 2025 AWS outage and how a single failure in the US-East-1 cluster rippled across finance, travel, communications, entertainment, and government services.

From there, the episode examines digital exclusion, the millions who rely on cash every day, and the real-world consequences when stores go cashless. The AI hosts also unpack policy debates in the US and New Zealand, business concerns around cash handling, the hidden costs of digital payments, and the growing conversation about privacy, control, and economic freedom in a fully trackable digital system.