In August 2026, the so-called "AI book burning" incident in Silicon Valley took on an increasingly intense hue. Media organizations, working in tandem with second-hand book vendors, installed trackers in books believed to have been procured by AI firms. These trackers eventually led them to Amazon's VGT3 project hub in Las Vegas. The project's goal was to acquire pristine training datasets, untainted by AI-generated material. To achieve this, they removed the book spines, scanned the paper book contents at high speed, and then disposed of the original copies. Earlier, Anthropic's "Project Panama" had come under scrutiny for a similar practice, where it invested tens of millions of dollars to acquire millions of books published prior to 2022 for the purpose of model training. The U.S. Federal Court ruled that such actions fell under "fair use." Despite the court's stance that the physical destruction of books did not amount to copyright infringement, public sentiment grew wary, fearing that the procurement methods of AI companies could jeopardize public cultural assets, especially through the systematic depletion of rare and out-of-print books. Amazon countered that its procurement activities were lawful and intended to enhance product offerings. However, authors and book dealers raised concerns about the potential risks associated with the privatization of knowledge.