10/2/25: Trump Cuts Blue State Funding, Job Losses As Gov Shuts Down, Data Centers Surge Electricity Prices

Saagar and Ryan discuss Trump cuts blue state funding, job losses as gov shuts down, data centers surge electricity prices.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.

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Speaker 1 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. We have an
amazing show for everybody today, Bro Show. Good to see you,
Ryan Sager, all right, Dad's show. Bro Show. That's what
people live for.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
The pound.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
I gotta get all my god.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Shit, the two shirts.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah yeah, that's we gotta get the T shirts. All right.
So we've got a great show for everybody today. Let's
do this the hardest part of the job. What do
we have. We're going to start with the shutdown. We
are officially some twenty four four forty eight hours something
like thirty six hours. All right, we'll go with that.
Time is a blur when you know, nobody knows the
government infant of home. Yeah, exactly. We have a shutdown

(01:08):
that's going on. We're going to break down all the
politics for everybody, some of the developments from the Trump administration.
We're going to get then to some of the democratic
response and some of the internacing warfare about whether the
shutdown was a good idea or not. We have a
lot of economic news actually to break down. In fact,
because the government shut down, some of the key government
indicators maybe not be released by the Trump administration, as

(01:29):
well as some news on the BLS nominee. That's one
of those key data points that the Trump administration had
been at war with. They nominated this new guy, and
now all of a sudden, with his nomination has been pulled.
We are going to talk about Sora. Sora is this
new Ryan open AI video generator, deeply dystopian AI.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
This show is produced by that.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, yeah, I wish it was produced by Story. It'd
save us a lot of money, wouldn't it. Although the
whole point may be, you know, in terms of what
we're giving up, what are we getting for all of this,
and in particular the amount of money and power that
these data centers which power this AI are consuming. It's astronomical.
I know that's high, and even I did not know
what the actual numbers were, including in the state where

(02:11):
I live. We're also going to talk about Qatar, and
it's funny, Ryan, we're very often accused of being Katari
assets for being critical of Israel. So I do hope
that this block will set the record straight. Donald Trump,
out of thin air, created Article five style protections for Qatar,
why exactly because Israel attacked them. Seems better to just

(02:31):
constrain Israel than just unilaterally grant Article five protection. And also,
Steve Wikoff, you know, you and I have been joking
in the last twenty four hours. I always kind of
thought it was a Zionist talking point that Steve Wikoff
is bought by Qatar A little bit point, all right,
It's like, you know, listen, if he actually had followed
through the ceasefire and a dealer in Gaza, maybe we could.

(02:53):
You know, It's like, what's a few billion here between friends.
But if we're going to be where we are now
and you're going to be straight, you know, in some
sketchy dealings. It needs to be called out.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
And he speaking, you can imagine being guitar, like, we
gave this guy billion.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, yeah, we're still getting We're still getting more.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
It's ridiculous by good assets anymore. Yeah, it's so good.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
And then finally we're going to talk about TikTok, some
of the new pro Israel censorship rolling out across TikTok.
And Ryan, you have a TikTok creator who you are
friends with, who has been massively surprised in the algorithm.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
Tell us about him. Yeah, he goes by your favorite guy.

Speaker 4 (03:26):
He's kind of tutored us over it, drops out a
little bit about how to do TikTok because this is
a foreign well not only a foreign company, but he
kind of used to be foreign in that colloquial sense
to old people like me and Sagar, and so he
since this new rollout, I think it was September thirteenth
or twenty third, we'll get into it with him. These

(03:47):
new community guidelines are are presaging the extraordinary amount of
censorship that we're going to see interesting on TikTok going forward.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
So like his politics, don't like his poblics.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
Whatever he's going to talk to us about out what
it's doing for his ability to.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Express those totally on this Platfor eah, I don't care
what is politics on right, so you know, for me,
it's just more interesting about the you know, censorship guidelines
and the things that have come into place in some place. Previously,
there was a lot of discussion around Israel and particularly
really had an effect on youth culture and it's been
hit like that at night. So we're very curious to
see how that goes. Thank you everybody who's been supporting

(04:22):
the show Breakingpoints dot com. If you are able to,
If you're not no worries to become a full subscriber,
just please go ahead and hit the subscribe button on YouTube.
If you're listening to this on a podcast, send an
episode to a friend and or rates five stars. It
really helps other people find the show. So let's go
ahead and start with the shutdown. As you said, the
most consequential news is that the White House is telegraphing

(04:44):
riffs or reduction in forces of US government employees given
their unilateral authority on how to run the government when
there is a shutdown. Here is the press structory of
Caroline Levitt speak yesterday at a press conference. Let's take
a listen.

Speaker 4 (04:56):
I'm clarify the timing of these potential layoffs to federal workers.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
You said imminent, the Vice President seemed to.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Say in a couple of days.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
It looks like russ both maybe said in two days.
What is when would these layoffs begin two days? Imminent?
Very soon?

Speaker 3 (05:13):
You will expect more announcements.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
All right, now, is it just not clear or are
you waiting?

Speaker 3 (05:18):
Is it? No, it's not unclear.

Speaker 5 (05:19):
All of those things are very synonymous with one another.
These riffs are unfortunately going to have to happen very soon.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Let's fix our policy after the shutdown? Where have I
heard that before?

Speaker 3 (05:30):
Where have I heard that on the other side?

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Nothing, there's nothing. There's something so beautiful about everybody just
switching sides on the shutdown. Republicans shut down the government
multiple times. People just tore their hair out over the norms.
Now that Democrats are shutting the shutdown, I love it personally,
you know, I like to see people be responsive to
their partisan bases. But Ryan tell us tell us a
little bit your thoughts here in terms of the messaging

(05:53):
wars on the shutdown before we get to Schumer.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
I mean, I think there's there might be something.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
To that regarding Schumer.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
I don't know, it's just just AOC threatening to challenge
him in a primary. It's it's just generally this sense
among Democrats that he is failing at his job and
he's not being tough enough.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
I've heard of him going into.

Speaker 4 (06:18):
Spaces here in d C where it's all establishment elite
type figures and just getting absolute like cold shoulder, yeah,
just like oh right, this guy interesting. Like so even
like the brass, it's like this, there's a there's a
sense that going from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi some

(06:41):
some real ballers to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries is
a is a massive step down.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
And like talent and stress.

Speaker 4 (06:48):
That's subjectively, it's objectively, but even the establishment like understands that.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, but I'll save some of my commentary. But isn't
that kind of their fault? Like they're the ones who
wanted people who were more agreeable and more old tested.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
I mean, they voted for right, they voted for these guys.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
They supported their cannon.

Speaker 4 (07:04):
Read, you know, and read helped the Usher and Schumer
and Pelosi helped up.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
That's in Jefferys.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
Yeah, he's really AOC's fault for knocking Joe Crowley out
that he'd be the House speaker right now.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
So it's actually deeply funny to you consider all of that.
All right, let's get to Chuck Schumer his own response
from the framing coming out of the House leadership or
the House and Senate leadership from the Democrats.

Speaker 6 (07:26):
Let's take a listen what happens on Friday night when
the family sits around the kitchen table and says, how
are we going to pay the bills? When they see
that their insurance could be one thousand dollars more a month,
health insurance vital to the parents, the children.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
Of the family.

Speaker 6 (07:44):
What are they going to do? The average American can't
afford one thousand dollars a month, or even four hundred
dollars a month.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
The average Americans could.

Speaker 6 (07:53):
Say, what the heck happened here? And we Democrats are
going to be there every day every Senate House groups
that care about healthcare, hospital groups, healthcare groups, research groups,
and letting them know this didn't have to happen. It
happened because our Republican colleagues wanted to give tax breaks
to billionaires and cut their healthcare.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
So Ryan, they are going all in on the healthcare message.
We've talked about it here quite a bit with Crystal.
It does obviously, it's the most poll tested. I mean,
it'sture not even legitimate is a deeply important issue. Obamacare subscribers,
you too, You're like, I'm just way yeah, I'm like yeah,
you know, maybe it's like a sly thing where I'm like, yeah,
it wouldn't be so bad. You know, they got what
they wanted to be nice, especially you know with the

(08:37):
with the new addition here into our family Plan. The
question around it is is this going to satisfy the
Democratic base for some of the stuff that they want
to stop Trump on. It's not really about healthcare, let's
be honest. They just want, you know, kind of throw
wrench in the government. And then the secondary question is
can the Democrats withstand what the Trump administration is going

(08:57):
to do. So, for example, let's put a four up
here on the screen. I'll get your reaction. Russ vote,
who is the OMB director says quote, roughly eighteen billion
in New York City infrastructure projects that have now been
put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing based
on quote unconstitutional DEI principles more infos who come from
the US dot he specifically there was talking about New

(09:19):
York City, what is it, the Second Avenue subway line,
as well as another infrastructure project that is currently being
funded by the government. And so you see the direct
targeting here of New York City, and I can combine
it here, yeah with a five just so you can
tell us a little bit about some of the states
nearly eight billion in green quote green new scam funding
to feel the left crimeate agenda is being canceled. Projects

(09:40):
are in the following state California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota,
New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington.
For the life of me, Ryan.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
Pop Quiz, I love class. What connects all of those states?

Speaker 1 (09:56):
You know, For the life of me, I cannot figure
out what is in common with all these states.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
They have capitals that have three syllables.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
There, you go, right, that's got to be it, right,
Not that they all voted for Democrats and oh yeah, that's.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
So yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
I mean, what do you think about the way that
these establishment Dems are going to handle this, right, because
they already lost a couple in terms of the vote,
So how many do they actually need?

Speaker 3 (10:21):
Many?

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Like seven de.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
Votment they need three more, sorry.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
Three more, they need three more to come along with them.
You've got the government New York City obviously being targeted
because of Chuck Schumer the rest of the Democratic States
to put a lot of pressure there on the senators
of course, reduction and force. You got Democrats have a
lot of veterans for the government like itself, for the bureaucrats.
Are they really going to sit by and allow, you know,
tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands to be fired and

(10:46):
eventually cave I don't know. I mean that almost seems
worse to me from a Democratic base perspective. So what's
your read currently on the situation?

Speaker 3 (10:54):
Right?

Speaker 4 (10:54):
And I think we can put up a six as well,
because this goes to its reporting from Capitol Hill saying
that a gang of moderates in both parties they're starting.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
The old old, the age old gang process in search
of a deal. Center on ACA subodies.

Speaker 4 (11:10):
What this means basically is that you'll get enough Democrats
sitting down in a room with enough Republicans that if
they all agree, they can no matter what the leaderships
want to do, they can they can break the log jam.
And so I think this is where it heads because
from Democrats perspective, the base and Schumer, they just want

(11:32):
to show that they put up a fight, and now
they've kind of showed that, and if they can get something,
then they can move on and say we're going to
fight fight on this another day. Schumer's strategy here is
very clear, and I get it like he's in January,
you and I'm talking about all of you, particularly Sager,

(11:52):
are going to you know, get hit with the if
you're on the exchanges, which is about twenty million people, Yes,
the subsets go away and boom, all of a sudden,
your affordable payment for the Affordable Care Act is now
deeply affordable, by the way, but it's more affordable, yes,
than when they strip the subsidies away. And Democrats want
the public to know why that happened. And they're hoping

(12:14):
that this big storm that they're creating now will then
remind people. Okay, so they're hoping I think that they
may make enough of a storm. And then once you've
done that, you've kind of scratched all the different itches.
You still have this fundamental philosophical question that actually speaking
of AOC goes back to her debate with Joe Crowley,
where she had gotten Crowley to say that ICE is fascist,

(12:38):
and then she'd be like, but then why would you
vote to fund a fascist agency? Which you it's like
when that's why a lot of politicians don't want to
call what's happening in Gaza genocide because once you call
it a genocide, fund on what planet can you fund
a gend And what planet can you fund a fascist agency?
So Democrats have said, this is an authoritarian crackdown. You know,

(13:00):
this is the end of the American Republic. Oh, and
here we're going to fund it.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
That is just it.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
That's what they did earlier, right, So I get killed,
So they have to do something right. But then doesn't
it seem as if shutting it down for messaging purposes
only to cave in a couple of days, isn't that worse? Right?
And how would Schumer and Jeffries and them handle it?
So again, to explain just a little bit to people,
the House bills already passed, right, you only need a
couple of Senators to buckle and to just vote for

(13:27):
the quote clean CR whatever to go through, and then
you're done. And so the majority of the Democrats could
stand against the bill, but if a couple of the
quote moderates due, well you still lost. And that's going
to affect the national Party at a make level.

Speaker 4 (13:41):
And maybe they get it, and it'll be interesting to
see how they work the details out, because yeah, you
can make a deal around the subsidies, pass the clean
CR and then try to implement it in the next thing.
Then you're at the whim of Republicans again, right, and
really you have to get it passed, But then then
Johnson and Republicans in the House would have to then
agree to it, which goes back to a question I've

(14:02):
been wondering from the GOP perspective, why fight this? Actually, well,
like they don't care about deficits anymore, but why not
just say, okay, fine, you know what, this subsidies going
away would suck for us in an election here anyway, Fine,
keep them?

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yeah, you know, because I wonder how much of this
is about healthcare and how much is it about the
executive just basically doing backflips on Hey, we've been wanting this.
They're like, we want the O and B director, for example.
I can read this just this morning. There's a new
Trump truth quote. I have a meeting today with RUSS
vote of Project twenty twenty five fame to determine which which.
By the way, hilarious because now now project plainting.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
Because he said, yeah, nothing to do with productly doing five.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
I will fire anybody who has anything to do with
Project twenty five anyway, whatever. Project to determine which of
the many democratic agencies, most of which are a political
scam he recommends to be cut, and whether or not
those cuts will be temporary or permanent. I can't believe
the radical left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They
are not stupid people, so maybe this is their way
of wanting to quietly quickly make America great again. I mean,

(15:02):
he's kind of correct, right in terms of they knew
that this was the likely outcome. The Democratic response I
have seen is if you look at russ votes tweet
on New York City, it has nothing to do with
the shutdown. He said it was about DEI so The
point that I've seen the base and them make is guys,
they're going to cut funding whether they whether there's a

(15:23):
shutdown or not, So who cares? Why should we buckle
to this? I just personally think that they can't sit
by for that long and let the government just cut
whatever agency or whatever people put entirely on furlough. In particular,
if you see a straight up targeting of all democratic
states and of their funding, how long are they really

(15:43):
going to go with it before some mealy mouth you know,
New Nevada Democrat is going to becoming in voting for
the CR. I could I just I could see that
happening very quickly.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
It could, Yeah, it could for sure.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
But yes, like Democrats also do have that point that
like Russ votes to do this stuff anyway, right, so
the threats and that he's probably gonna do more.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
Was it shutdown?

Speaker 4 (16:06):
But yeah, Democrats was what you know, when you lose power,
you're left with like that and even worse.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Elections consequences as Obama. As Obama famously said, I do
wonder here with the shutdown again, you know how the
Democratic base is feeling is because something that is mystifying
to me is if you recall in twenty thirteen, the
shutdown was the biggest story in the world. It was everywhere,

(16:34):
especially I was living. I was going to college here
in Washington. But the Obama administration made sure that you
knew about the shutdown, like they had some I remember,
you know, even in the place that I would walk sometimes,
which is near my university was technically National Park Grounds,
and there was a big sign over and it was like,
this place is shut You could still walk there, but
it's like it's shut down because of the shutdown. The
Trump administration is doing some of that, but the Republicans

(16:55):
also their full media, you know, Fox News, the radio stations,
everybody was mobilized. This seems weirdly like a low key shutdown,
almost like do the Democratic base feel the responsiveness here,
because I haven't seen that quite yet in terms of
their media, in terms of maybe like their feeling as
if they're being responded to, and that that feels relevant

(17:16):
as we transition to the next part about how the
Democrats themselves are kind of handling the shutdown.

Speaker 4 (17:21):
Yeah, and while you were in college, I was actually
on pool duty with Obama.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
Oh wow, that was going on.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
I remember sprinting up the Lincoln Memorial Steps. Because he
went up and did an event at the very top
of the Lincoln Memorial Steps, I beat all the rest
of the poll reporters totally out of shape.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
That's a good feeling.

Speaker 4 (17:38):
Yes, and Obama was in much better shape than all
of us, yes combined.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
And yeah, it was a huge deal.

Speaker 4 (17:45):
I think that there's a boredom with twenty years at
this point almost of Washington doing shut down drama, fiscal
cliff drama, the debt sealing drama, super committees like.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
And it all adds up to just blips for people, Like.

Speaker 4 (18:09):
There's a there's you know, some for hundreds of thousands
of like individuals who work for the federal government, certainly
it's impactful. But for the three hundred plus million people
in the country, like, we're just kind of kind of
bored of like all of this. But that is a
recipe oftentimes for catastrophe, because eventually.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
The wolf does show up.

Speaker 4 (18:32):
Yeah, even if you have been crying wolf right a while,
people kind of learn the wrong lesson from that fairy
tale sometimes like or whatever you would call it. It's like, yes,
you shouldn't cry wolf. But also there are wolves.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
This is again kind of to the messaging battle is again, look,
I'm biased, so it's my own person, but I mean,
you have to be honest. Like the way that the
Trump administration has been handling this, even if you hate
the way they're doing it, it's effective. Like every government
agency if you go to their website, has a thing
at the top. It's like the Democrats, the radical left
Democrats shut down the government.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
They figured out they don't have to follow the law.
Who cares righttically, what are they going to do?

Speaker 1 (19:14):
You're gonna assume over the hat Hatch Act violation or whatever?
Good luck? Right? You know, it seems like quaint in
our current politics, and from the Democratic side, like we
have Hakim Jefferys, we have Chuck Schumer, it just to
me is lame, like the way that it just doesn't
seem legitimate. It doesn't seem as if they really believe
in the fight. And especially when you have multiple Democratic
senators who already kind of voted for it, You're like, Okay,

(19:35):
what are we really doing here? And so our team
helped me decipher this new TikTok democratic meme that was
posted by the Democratic Party of a kitty explaining the
government shutdown. Let's take a Listenpublican.

Speaker 7 (19:49):
And Democrat kitties cannot agree on what should be funded.
Democrat kitties want you to have health care. Republican kitties
do not. Republican kitties control the Senate, House and the
White House, so they're using the had to cut your
health care.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
And give money to billionaires.

Speaker 7 (20:04):
Democrat kitty tries to negotiate, but Republican kitty keeps running away.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
He has a vacation to get to.

Speaker 7 (20:09):
Uh oh, suddenly the money you pay for your health
insurance has tripled, thanks Republicans.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
Our Our gen Z Staffer tells us that usually this
meme is about kitty explains boyfriend to girlfriend and not
technically about the government shutdown. I don't know about this.
I mean, look, maybe the point about unified government is
always one that does hit with the American people, right
is they're like, hey, you have the House, the Senate
and the White House, and so you guys still can't

(20:34):
fund the government. It's like, well, you know, there is
the filibuster, which you know, the Republicans still, I guess
do believe in both kind of bases. Probably would be fine.
With nuking the filibuster. So technically, you know, if they
really wanted to, they could nuke the philibuster and then
they could just fund the government. But that doesn't seem
like something that they want to do. But more broadly,
Ryan this kind of gets to the shutdown wars and

(20:55):
some more establishment voices in DC voicing against Democrat to
embrace of the shutdown. Let's put a eight please up
on the screen. I'm very curious for what you think.
So Washington Post editorial board, you know, one of the
classic people used to care but nobody really cares a
lot more still has some voice in Washington quote the
Democrats marched into a shutdown trap, they say, Progressive Democrats

(21:19):
like the Freedom Caucus are urging their party in a
dangerous direction. And so what they say is that the
Democratic Party shut off any potential escape valve to avoid
a shutdown. In doing so, progressives embrace the same disastrous
mentality that led the House Freedom Caucus to believe it
could come out ahead in previous government funding shutdowns. They
strongly assumed, they wrongly assume their political leverage would withstand

(21:42):
the ensuing fallout. Left wing democrats like the Freedom Caucus
before them enter the shutdown in a position of weakness,
they point to the Trump administration saying that they're going
to do whatever they want. And they also point specifically
to how, in their telling, the previous Republican shutdowns quote
failed to achieve Republican goals every time. Do you think
that that's true or not? Because I don't think it's

(22:04):
necessarily true that the Freedom cack Is Act didn't achieve
they didn't achieve their goals. I think they vastly achieved
their goals in.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
A significant way. They achieved their goals.

Speaker 4 (22:12):
Yeah, particularly when it comes to leveling off government spending
starting in like after twenty eleven, which actually slowed the recovery.
They had sequestration, it got sequestration out of it. And
I think without that, they don't win the Senate in
twenty fourteen. And if you don't win the Senate in

(22:34):
twenty fourteen, Merret Garland is a Supreme Court justice, and
our entire world looks different than it does now. So
and I think without actually without what the Freedom cauc
Is accomplished in slowing the economy and then slowing the
recovery in those four or five years, you don't even
get Trump winning in twenty sixteen because it was such
a close election and people were frustrated at the very

(22:56):
slow recovery from the financial crisis. So you know, they
actually got there. They got they didn't get everything they
wanted by any remote stretch of the imagination, and we
now have what thirty plus trillion dollars in debt, So
like from their perspective, they were like, well, we totally failed,
but you know it's marginally. They actually did bring about
four or five years of austerity with a Democrat in

(23:19):
the White House, which was to their political benefit.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
And I would flip it too and say, did they
really care about austerity? Obviously not. What they cared about
was the exercise of power in and of itself, right,
And what they showed is that some fifteen to thirty
people actually could wield immense amounts of power relative to
everybody else in the government. It's almost like a tyranny
of the minority part where as long as you're together
in lockstep, that the rest of the group is going

(23:42):
to have to adapt itself to whoever you are. This
is part of the problem though with the Democratic Party. Again,
I think, in my opinion, is that by kind of
lamely talking about ACA. And again, I don't even think
really authentically, because the truth is is that the Democrats
just wanted to shut down.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
Period.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
Like if you listen and they cite from Greg Sasar
and others, they're like, it's not about ACA. Okay. They
were like, we hate Trump. They're like, well, we think
what Trump is so horrible. We're not going to fund it, period, Right,
We're going to make his life hell. It's a question
mark of whether they are making their life hell, but
it's the only thing that we have, so we might
as well do it. And I think that that has
a lot of currency. But without any uptick and constant

(24:20):
browbie of a lot of the people who are the
Democratic Party faithful accepting that message, then you do kind
of find yourself in a weird position where if you
look at Chuck Schumer, he's not taking what I originally
said the smartest thing Mitch McConnell ever said in two
thousand and nine was our job is just make sure
the president doesn't get reelected no period. All right. I
was like, they were like, oh, we are you going
to work with Obama? He's like no, He's like that's

(24:41):
we have one job make sure that he does not succeed,
period and everyone was shocked by that. It was actually
the most honest thing a politician has said in years,
because he's like, yoh, you think we're going to negotiating
good faith. Absolutely not. He's like, we're here to make
to make shit miserable for Obama. And he succeeded one
hundred percent. So the point is, though on the Democratic side,

(25:02):
you don't see that level of fight and of energy.
And look, McConnell became hated many years later, but he
was a hero, right, He was a absolute Tea Party
Freedom Caucus hero there for some time. Obviously there were
a lot of fights in particular, but Paul Ryan became
the House Speaker as a result of this, and he
was seen as a credible person who could replace Bayner.

(25:23):
So like to me, that's where no, the shutdown politics
actually did work in terms of look at the Republican
stars of that period. Every single one of them remains
prominent to today. Ted Cruz, you could say a lot. Yes,
he failed to achieve the Republican nomination. He came in second. Okay,
you know he got second in the Republican primary in
twenty sixteen. That's nothing to sneeze at, like he had

(25:44):
a real popular currency for If you're a Democrat and
you want to be taken seriously, you do need to
mount like a credible fight against Trump if that's where
your party base is. So that's where I feel like
the Washington Post is almost being too cute by saying
their actual political ends. Their political ends are not about
the ACA. That's probably not going to I mean, maybe
it will be. You know, it'd be great for me
if it did, and for everybody else, But I don't

(26:06):
think that that's the ultimate point of the shutdown itself.
And that's why I've seen some more establishment liberals and
others being like, Guys, this is a bad idea. Trump
is just going to use it as an excuse, And
it's like, yeah, but you're doing that anyway, right, so
why not? It just seems like a hail Mary approach
to government. But I know you have some more mixed
thoughts on show.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
No, No, I think that's I think that's about right.

Speaker 4 (26:26):
The one final point I would have on this is
that I was talking to somebody last night who spends
a lot of time in China and they were telling
me about all the different projects that they've got going on,
trying to figure out.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Ways to like repurpose like waste.

Speaker 4 (26:40):
Removal and all that, like confronting all of the difficult
challenges of contemporary life and trying to like move forward
in ways that can like make everybody's life better. And
it just reminded me of like just how existentially kind
of dead and boring our own politics is.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
What do we do? Like are we going to keep
the government open or out?

Speaker 4 (27:03):
And why is there any effort by any party to
actually grapple with the problems that are confronting contemporary society.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
I don't see it.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
No, I don't see it either.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
I mean, we're going to talk what do we do?

Speaker 1 (27:17):
Like what we're gonna talk in our store block about
these data centers, rising electricity prices. Everyone's like, oh, I
just got to take it.

Speaker 4 (27:23):
It just feels it just feels like a hollow death
spiral and here we are just like riding it on
the way down.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
It's like inspiring.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
Is it good that they do as bad as? I
don't know, we're all just circling the drain.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Uh, I'm with you, right? If Chinese century it is,
you might as well embrace it. Okay, let's go ahead
to the next part here on the economy. As you
were saying about death spirals and all that, we may
not even know if we're in a death spiral apparently,
So let's go and put this up here on the
screen about some of the key economic data that will

(27:58):
be suspended during a government cut down. The jobless claims
from the Labor Department will likely not be released. Non
farm payrolls by the BLS will not be released. The
CPI and the PPI, the consumer Price Index and the
pursuit of producer price intexs key inflation indicators from the
BLS will likely not be released. Retail sales, factory orders,
housing starts, trade data from the Census and the Bureau

(28:20):
of Economic Affairs, the Employment Trends Index from the Conference Board,
the GDP data, new home sales and construction permits from
the Census Bureau, export and import trade data from Census
and Commerce. And they say, quote, the next FED meeting
is four weeks away. We're entering at data freeze. So
historically the FED would shift more dubvish on average during

(28:41):
US government shutdown, which maybe that might be a blessing
in disguise, right, the FED would become a little bit
more dubbish.

Speaker 4 (28:47):
But a source of mine at BLS said that one
BLS official is listed as essential.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
Wow, so what it? Yes, that's out of about two thousand.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Should we explain the essential thing for people?

Speaker 4 (28:59):
For non wan So if you're if you're deemed to
be an essential employee, then you have to keep working.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
Doesn't mean you get paid, right, ye, paid, but you
do have to keep working. But you have to keep working.

Speaker 4 (29:10):
So there's one dude and it's not apparently I guess
the guy who just will talk about him in a second.
One dude or woman who is deemed to be essential.
Somebody's got to make sure you run that coffee maker
so it doesn't get moldy or whatever.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
That's essential.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
And so the BLS every day, it's thousands of employees
are collecting and analyzing data from businesses and other entities
around the country like this. This data does not just
appear out of nowhere, like it has to be produced,
it has to be found. So you're like, these employees

(29:48):
are on the phone calling businesses because if you're a business,
you think your top priority is calling bls back now
and telling them like, how many employees do.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
You have this?

Speaker 1 (29:56):
No, I've shared this before. Breaking Points was recently selected
for like the whatever survey, and it was so annoying
to fill out right. The only reason that we did
it is because they were like, you will be punished
if you do not fill out this or I was like,
all right, I guess it goes two hours of my life,
you know, going.

Speaker 4 (30:12):
Right, And so it's it's a bunch of bureaucrats job
to make sure Sager fills that paperworkout.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
And Sager does not want to fill out that. No.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
I didn't want to. I even ask the accounts, I go,
do I have to do this?

Speaker 4 (30:23):
They're like yeah, yeah. I was like okay, And so
now they're not going to be harassing. You're like, you
know what, I'm not filling that paperworkout, and so our
will be flying blind, yeah, into the FED meeting and elsewhere,
because once they come back right then then recollecting getting
it getting it started is a lot harder.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
And the accuracy.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
No.

Speaker 4 (30:44):
Trump was very frustrated abou all the revisions. Can you
imagine what kind of revisions we're going to be looking at?
Good point of these coming months.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah, government shutdowns always cost just kind of crazy disruptions
in service, and you know exactly anyways, and also, by
the way, that's why the market usually re acts negatively.
Although yesterday for some reason the stock still went green.
We'll talk about that with the AI block as to
what's actually driving the economy. But we had some very
limited data before the government shutdown we can share with you.

(31:11):
Let's put this up here on the screen. This was
from ADP. They say, quote that the US lost some
thirty two thousand jobs in September, says ADP Payroll Processor.
That is down from a revised loss of three thousand
in August. Economists had expected an increase of forty five thousand.
So the ADP does not include government workers. But they
say that they have to give it a closer look

(31:32):
this month because the BLS data is going to be
delayed because of the government shutdowns. So we are kind
of flying blind, as you just said. They say, quote,
the surprise job loss in September is the latest sign
that the labor market is weakening. Job growth has slowed
to a trickle this year, even as the unemployment rate
has mostly held steady. Federal reserve last month lowered short
term interest rates by quarter point and signal more cuts

(31:54):
are likely citing weak hiring specifically like this, and they
say that the leisure and hospitalitiestor shed some nineteen thousand
jobs last month, which was the largest decline among major sectors.
Education health services were still bright spots, with a collective
gain of thirty three thousand. So I think think the
fact that the leisure in hospitality industry is the one

(32:14):
that's getting the most hit that reminds me a lot
of COVID and of oh nine. Now it's not in
any way comparable to thirty two thousand, but the point is,
when consumer spending starts to soften, what's the first thing
that goes? Flights, hotels, travel, things like that. And if
you have that on top of a government shutdown, why
does the shutdown matter? Well, remember, the federal government is

(32:34):
the largest employer in the United States. You know, two
million people work for the federal government. So let's say
that this thing, the last one dragged thirty five months.
We were doing it for thirty five days, sorry, thirty
five minus. Can you imagine thirty five days? We were
trying to do the math on a number of mispay periods.
But that's a lot of money. I mean, the average
margin for the median household income is somewhere between five

(32:55):
hundred to one thousand dollars for an emergency, So to
mispaid periods, you're really starting to cut into credit card
debt and to some other issues. I mean, we could
put the morality or whatever of that aside and say
economically that's usually not good. That means it's like, Okay,
we're not eating out, we're not buying gas, we're making
like app putting most stuff on a credit card, hoping
that stuff eventually we do get paid. We can backpay

(33:18):
our mortgage, our rent, et cetera. So that's a that's
a difficult situation.

Speaker 3 (33:22):
Right, Right, We're not going to fly anywhere in the fall.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, we're definitely not going We're not going anywhere for Thanksgiving, right,
you know, things like Thanksgiving. I mean, isn't I believe
Thanksgiving Sunday is like the biggest travel day of the
entire year, so tens of millions of people take to them.

Speaker 4 (33:35):
We might not be making that and a lot of
those people had miserable flights last time.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yeah, it was you know, what maybe we're just not
gonna slode us.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
We're there too.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
Ye, they were going to fly this year. We'll just.

Speaker 4 (33:45):
Whoever lives close enough to drive together, we'll celebrate with that.
And this is come, this difficult time is coming as
people are stretched ever tighter because of the increase in
energy costs and grocery bills and uh, you know, interest
rates and housing prices. Like it's it's just tougher out
there than it was five years ago. Uh, and so

(34:08):
people have I think a little bit less breathing room
going this time.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
But also Trump's.

Speaker 4 (34:15):
Global whatever you would call it, a global trade war
and like attack on Canada in particular, has has really
dragged down, uh, tourism from Canada and tourism from everywhere
around the world.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, I heard this is screwing Vegas.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
So first of all, now l a too.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Really, what's some of those Canadians.

Speaker 4 (34:37):
Canadians love they love Vegas and they love they love Canada.
By the way, you've been to Canada, right, Yeah, you
want to stay in Canada all the time? No, Okay, exactly,
I'm not Canadian. Closest closest country the United States. And
so they come down here in droves. Yeah, they go
to Florida, they go to outer banks.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
You know, they go to there's snowbirds. Yeah, okay, that
makes sense.

Speaker 4 (35:01):
Yeah, and so if you're in canad wouldn't you rather
be in La Sure?

Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 4 (35:06):
Instead the Canadians like, you know what, screw it, We're
not going to La.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
So where are they going?

Speaker 4 (35:11):
A lot of me staying home, And then I think
they're going to Europe. I don't know what they're doing.
It's good, that is, Actually that's a good question. Maybe
they're going to Mexico. That would actually be lying right over. Well,
I'll actually make some call to like the Canadian tourism places.
I would love where the Canadians is because they're not
coming here and it's killing, you know, our tourism industry.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
I knew that about Vega because I've seen some Vegas
stuff coming out and be like, oh my.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
God, Vega screw just one after another.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
I was like, really like Canada that relying on Vegas. Interesting.
All right, let's continue to on this, you know, on
this train with the BLS news that we could share
with all of you. Let's put it up here on
the screen so you'll all recall the BLS commissioner was
fired after our revision happened because Trump didn't like the revision,
and so Trump nominated E. J. Antone me, previously of

(36:01):
the Heritage Foundation, to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Well,
it turns out that his nomination has now been pulled
from the BLS before the United States Senate to be confirmed.
The quote White House official declined to say the reasons
for withdrawing the nomination, only to say that he was
a talented economist and President Trump plans to announce a
new nominee soon. So Ryan, as you and I know

(36:23):
here in Washington, what this means is that not one senator,
not two, but four Republicans came to the White House
and they're like, hey, this is not happening, period. And
so usually what happens then is the White House gets
to save face and withdraw and no Republican senator has
to come out publicly and say I was not going

(36:44):
to vote for this person. But they were willing to
do it. They called the bluff, They called the Office
of White House Legislative Affairs and they're like, look, he's
not getting he's not even going to go through committee.
He's not going through the floor. Pull his nomination and
let's move on because this is not happening right now.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
So Larry Summers went down.

Speaker 4 (37:00):
Yeah, maybe five Democrats from the Banking Committee just called
the Obama administration and said, we're not making him fed shair. Yep,
you can put him up, but he's going down. Yeah,
and you're like, you know what, then we're not putting
him up. There was these he had, he lacked support
within within the right wing. Incredible quote, uh do you
know uh Kyle Palmerlow, I don't know him, no tax

(37:22):
expert for the for American Enterprise Institute. He wrote on
Twitter after after his nomination. He wrote, quote, there are
a lot of competent conservative economists that could do this job.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
E J is not one of them.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
It's just such a very bitchy.

Speaker 4 (37:41):
I just once and that's a baseline. He's just saying
he's just not competent. So it wasn't a ideological problem.
And BLS had a bunch of problems after he was named,
Like remember they were like, oh, by the way, we're
not releasing our data. Yes that's right, No, no explanation,
this is this is like last week or the week before.
Data is late, and Wall Street is just not used

(38:03):
to BLS having that data late. Like Wall Street trusts
BLS data, and they trust that when they say it's
going to come post at eight thirty, it posts it
eight thirty precisely.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
And they're sitting there with their trigger fingers ready to
trade on it.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (38:17):
Oh no, they're not even their trigger fingers, but they're
like fake algorithmic trading models are ready to ready to
start trading. And to have a guy who's like, wait,
we're not putting the data out on.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Time, right, it's out here inconceivable right to Wall Street
and two others. That's a good point. I hadn't thought
about that, But you're right. Last thing here in terms
of the White House and the economy. Who can put
this up here on the screen. The Supreme Court has
allowed Lisa Cook to keep her job for now. For
those who were not tracking, Lisa Cook was one of

(38:49):
the members of the Federal Reserve Board. Is a member
or is a member of the Federal Reserve Board who
was not going along with the Trump administration's desire to
cut rates sooner than as soon as possible. So Trump
and the administration accused her of mortgage fraud based on
what is it? Within the executive they're technically allowed to

(39:11):
file people fire people, quote for cause. And so basically
one of their what is it, the Federal Housing Administrator,
Bill Pult went out and found this thing which she
allegedly purchased a home or as a vacation hope, something
like that, some sort of vacation of some sort of
mortgage fraud technicality. Based on that, Trump said that she
was fired. This led to a showdown with the Supreme

(39:31):
Court over whether a whether the charges are legitimate, and
b whether that qualifies as being fired four cause. So
the court, in a brief order quote deferred a decision
on the Trump administration's emergency request to remove Cook from
the bank's independent board while the lawsuit challenged her dismissal proceeds.
So this is going to take a while, at the
very least till January. I think that all of this

(39:53):
goes forward, it's going to center on the legitimacy of
the charges over Trump's own executive power. But at the
very least, four Trump is not getting the total control
of the Federal Reserve Board that he wanted the.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
Right, but he did get his little rate cut.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
Quarter point right, Well, he wants a lot more, right,
And I mean I want a lot more. To be honest,
I still think it's crushing a lot of our economy.
All right, we're turning now to Sora. Some of you
may have seen this open AI released a new video generator,
and while it's cool, I guess you know a little

(40:28):
bit dystopian. What a lot of people are missing are
some of the backbones of the US power industry and
economy that are behind all of this, which are actually
wreaking havoc on all of our lives in a hidden
way that a lot of people don't appreciate. So let's
ahead and put this up here on the screen. This
is new data that has been released and compiled by
Bloomberg over consuming the growing share of electricity. The data

(40:51):
centers are in individual US states. So stick with me,
and let's keep this up so I can read to
everybody what the overall total electricity consumption is on a
state by state basis, Virginia, the state where I live,
thirty nine percent of all power consumption is going to
data centers. Ryan thirty nine percent. Probably all of that
is federal government. If I had to guess Amazon and

(41:14):
as well that are all together, but that's an absolutely
insane amount of power consumption. The state of Oregon thirty
three percent, Iowa eighteen, Nevada fifteen, Utah fifteen, Nebraska fourteen,
Arizona eleven, Wyoming ten, Ohio nine, Illinois seven, Georgia six,
New Jersey six, Washington six, Texas five, North Dakota five.

(41:39):
I find it incredibly consequential that smaller states like Oregon, Iowa, Nevada, Utah, Nebraska,
traditional more flyover states, especially Iowa through Nebraska, are being
used by a lot of these data centers because it
shows that they're picking those more rural areas and they're
getting their state legislators and their municipalities to actually give

(41:59):
them tax breaks to only because their promises, who create
a bunch of jobs, et cetera. Oh, you know, we're
going to pump all this money into the economy. But
the way that our power grid works, which is not
a horrible idea, is that, hey, we have regulated public
power based on that it's a platform through which all
of us get to build upon our houses, our businesses,

(42:20):
and the costs and the benefits are widely distributed. Across.
It's a floor that the government in our power industry
sets so that we can build upon it. And yet
in a scarce power in a place where we are
right now because we have not we don't have any
proper investment or building of nuclear energy. I know you're
more of a solarble guy. I'm not personally a solar guy.

(42:40):
I'm pretty much all of these, but yeah, I'm all regardless.
The point is that we don't have a preponderance of
power the way that they do in China and in
a lot of other places. Even if we were to
go all in on oil, we still don't have new
oil refineries, we don't have new natural gas ricks. We
are in stasis effectively in every state in the So

(43:00):
in a scarce power world and in which AI data
center usage, power and investment is a huge chunk of
GDP spending. What does that mean? It means that these industries,
which have endless amounts of money behind them, come in,
build your data center, use an insane amount of electricity.
They don't care if the power bill goes up. It

(43:21):
does nothing to their bottom line. Because all of this
is fake. None of us even making money in the
first place, they'll just pay it no matter what. Who's
the person for whom a power bill increase is going
to affect you, especially in the more rural areas, the
fixed income household, and just general suburban residents. That's why
I think it's outrageous to have some thirty nine thirty
three percent in places like Virginia and Oregon, one third

(43:44):
to almost forty percent of power being consumed by a
single industry. We can't be living in the world where
everybody else has to absorb all of those increased costs.
And it's again begs the question for what. So if
this was the Manhattan Project, you know, the Tennessee Valley
of thor like any of the maybe right, maybe we

(44:05):
could all set okay, okay, we can all pay a
little bit more because this is so important to the country.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
The hollow electric program.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
Yeah we are electrified. There you go. One of my
favorite sections of the Robert Carroll books. He I think
he won a Politicer Prize for it. It's in the
first book called pat to Power is a chapter specifically
on rural electrification and what it meant to more rural
areas in the nineteen thirties. It was a New Deal
style program designed by Fdr Johnson used it as a

(44:33):
new congressman that was able to bring power to the
Hill Country of Texas. I highly recommend going, at the
very least just read that chapter to understand what that means.
That's the level of where yeah, okay, I think we
could be okay, socializing some of that costs this. No,
all right, and say that's the issue story for AI
generated slop. No, no, no, no, no, We're not doing that.

(44:54):
And yet what we see instead is instead of thinking
about the data centers, what people are starting to think about,
and there's a new bill of introducing the state of Ohio,
is that the utility companies can automatically adjust a customer
thermostat to quote reduce the load on the power grid
during periods of high demand for the data center. So
your house has to be hotter, so the data center

(45:16):
can crunch. Sam Altman, slop. Okay, let's take a listen
from local news.

Speaker 8 (45:21):
The Republican lawmaker at the Ohio State House introduced to
bill this week that would allow utility companies to automatically
adjust your thermostat at your house. House Built four twenty
seven would create a voluntary Demand Response Program, Customers would
be allowed to sign up to let their utility company

(45:43):
temporarily adjust energy use, including raising thermostat settings or cycling
water heaters during periods of high demand. The bill sponsor,
Representative Roy Kloppenstein, said it's meant to help homeowners and
small business. This is save money while reducing the load
on the power grid, and analysis from the Ohio Environmental

(46:06):
Council estimates the program would generate between thirty four and
one hundred million dollars in savings for the utility system,
depending on how many customers sign up for it.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Temporarily adjust home power use in small business. I don't
hear any data center being mentioned there, right, And that's
my issue is like these we don't have had any
power demands or anything on these folks, and they get
to just, you know, unlimitedly suck from the grid and
make sure that everybody else power bills get to go up. No, no,
we can't be having that right And instead, like I said,
I tweeted something in reaction to those data powers, and

(46:40):
I said, hey, state legislators, wake up, you guys have
huge amounts of authority, dominion power. You know where I
live Virginia legislators can come in and change the way.
If you're going to consume forty percent of power, I'm sorry,
you got to be paying a hell of a lot
more and making sure that there's some offset or whatever
for consumers. And instead, what Virginia political expert was telling

(47:00):
me was it's the inverse where what's happening is that
the legislators are all bought and paid for by Amazon,
by Meta, Google all these other people, And instead they're
throwing incentives at the data centers because they're like, oh,
we create all of these amazing jobs for all the
people who said, okay, yeah, it's great for you know,
the thousand people or whatever that work there, But what

(47:22):
about the millions or still people that have to pay
a higher power bell in a lot of these other places.
So I think this is a major populist issue which
everybody is sleeping on. And again, if this were the
railroads of the eighteen hundreds, it transformed America, right, you know,
undeniab I get it. They were the villains of the time,
et cetera. But fundamentally they had a good value proposition.

(47:45):
Is you used to have to take a wagon, Now
you can go to California in a week. All right,
that was a real thing. Telecom in the nineties, same thing.
We could say a lot about how much of it
was a bust. They overspent on fiber optics. They massively
consumed amount of GDP to invest because they got a
little too high on their own supply from the dot

(48:07):
com bubble. But that was a real thing. Fiber optic
was a real thing.

Speaker 3 (48:10):
The Internet.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
What is being built here? Right? You know we have
all these billions of billions and billions and billions of dollars.
They're being spent all for what. And that's the point
where when you see what they're actually releasing, I'm sorry
who asked for this? And here's the new trailer from
open Ai about Sora to the video generator. This is

(48:32):
what you're all paying for. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 5 (48:36):
One year ago, Sora one redefined what was possible with
moving images. Today we're announcing the Sora app, powered by
the all new Sora two. That's the most powerful imagination
engine ever built.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
Sure, and it's packed with new features.

Speaker 5 (48:56):
I'll pass it a bill for more details.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
Every video comes with sound.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Wow, so cool. New images and by the way, you
know what the funny thing is one of the very
first images ryan and videos that was released on Sora
was this. Let's just play this. What we saw was
immediately Sora being used to create a surveillance style video
showing Sam Altman himself stealing GPUs at Target and being

(49:40):
accosted by a security officer. I mean, I don't know,
what do you think It looks real ish like I
could probably tell it was AI. So you basically created
slop video which will be used for YouTube shorts and
Instagram and all this other nonsense to do for scrolling purposes.

(50:00):
And also you created a technology which makes it unronically
possible so that a surveillance video and deep fakes and
all that other stuff could be immediately employed. Let's say,
in a matter of crisis, think about the Charlie Kirk thing.
If this was around at that time and you say
I have surveillance video showing Tyler Robinson doing X, Y
and Z, it would go massively viral. You and I

(50:20):
know that, so thank you for creating that. By the way,
the amount of power you know, if you have chat EAPT,
I pay for chat EPT, and even if you want
to use it to create an image. It takes forever,
you know why, because it's a shit ton of you know,
cpu use and electricity and all it has to crunch
through that. So what is the purpose of what we're
being created here? The bowl case is, you have no

(50:41):
idea all of the endless possibilities. It's like, what the
destruction of Hollywood and creative industry to create, like, you
know again, slot video because that's where things are mostly
trending right.

Speaker 4 (50:53):
Now, right, we don't need a video of an elephant
going through a like a jazz switch.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Yeah, we don't need that, we don't, I agree with you.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (51:02):
So the big tech platforms spent the nineties and two
thousands in early twenty tens basically destroying the news media
and creating this new media where people just create stuff
and share it with each other and don't trust any

(51:22):
traditional sources.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Of some benefits of that information.

Speaker 4 (51:25):
Some benefits, we're going to find out it might be
some downside, some downsides as well. Yeah, And now that
nobody trusts anything and there's no real traditional news media left,
they're going to make it so that everybody can just
make you know, authentic looking fake videos. And in order

(51:47):
to do that, they're going to destroy as much of
the Amazon as again to like and build data centers
all over the United States triple or quadruple your electric bill,
and yeah, like for that. The question for what is
a key one Chris and I had on an author yesterday.
It was like, well, the purpose of this, whether it's

(52:11):
intended or not, is it's gonna kill everybody. So there's
like that, and it is true that a lot of
people in the AI world are like, yeah, there's a
twenty percent chance of an existential event as a result
of this.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
I don't really but even yeah, I don't believe.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
I hope it's just slop.

Speaker 4 (52:26):
Yeah, and that it plateaus out it slop.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
That's my that's my hope.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
That's what I think. I mean, I think this is
the end state, Like this is the reality is if
you look at the way that how by the way,
how are they even paying for all of this? You know,
AI data center? Where does it come to scroll algorithm?
That's it? You know, massive amounts of screen time, addiction period, Twitter, Facebook,
they all have the same business model. It's just spend
as much time on platform as possible, sell as many

(52:53):
ads as possible. That's it. And so that's how they're
paying for this, for for the AI data centers, for
the project with the hope that you get artificial general intelligence.
But the end state seems pretty simple. AI to the
extent that it's used in the workplace is for shit
that nobody thought is game changing. Oh it's summarized my emails. Awesome,

(53:14):
summarize my note taking. You know. I've talked previously because
I actually know people who work in like really big corporations,
and I would like, tell me about how you use AI.
They're like, oh, it's great. We cut out the entry
level workers. I was like, so that's it, and they're like, yeah,
that's it, you know it. We use Microsoft teams. Lets
me summarize my notes and then we send that for
an agenda. Somebody who is entry level used to have

(53:35):
to do that before. And I was like, but you're
still having the meetings. You're still doing like, oh, yeah,
it hasn't changed any actual decision making.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
A bunch of twenty four year old.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
To be fair, let's say, in coding and in technology
is a little bit different, right, you can actually have AI.
I think AI is quite good at coding up to
like ninety four ninety five percent and doing a lot
of the previously more difficult or like the time consuming work,
leaving time for creative Great. Okay, but I don't yet
see evidence of like a massive game changing thing which

(54:04):
doesn't just lead to the tech power law distribution which
makes a bunch of people in Silicon Valley a lot richer,
because instead, what's happened is that AI has led to
mostly job loss or not really real job growth while
they're still pumping all this money into the industry. Plus
the data center question, it just leads to this thing
where're like, what are we all doing here? You know,

(54:24):
for what? And I don't think people understand. If it
were not for AI data center spend, GDP would be contracting, right,
the only reason that we have increasing the recession otherwise
you're exactly right is and the data bears all of
this out. We've played it here on the show many
times before. Is without the data center capital expenditure from

(54:47):
the technology industry, there is no GDP growth. And in fact,
I was just reading this morning one of the consequences
of the nineteen nineties telecom boom, like the amount of
money that went into that, is that what private capital
all understood in the nineties, there's only one way to
return money in the middle of a mania or a

(55:08):
craze is to invest in the mania or the cruise
that has a huge opportunity costs. Because what it meant
in the nineties was that small businesses that are doing
traditional manufacturing were not going to get capital expenditure and
or any investment. All private investment was chasing the same thing.
At the same time of the nineteen nineties, what happened
the end of the Cold War NAFTA, PNTR with China,

(55:31):
which means not only do they get the reduced amount
of money that they should have been owed absent the
AI or the telecom boom, they also face growing international competition. Well,
I think we're in a very similar thing right now.
You have all of this money, stock, the whole s
and P five hundred the government shuts down on the
SP five hundred goes up. Why because of ANVIDIA, Right

(55:53):
you know, you're looking at these stock valuations and everything.
None of it makes any sense. And then at the
same time, with Trump administration's trade policy, what you have
is a chilling on domestic investment and manufacture, which means
again any money in the economy that people have to
spare is just going towards a SAA So I know
this is kind of tedious, but there are serious implications

(56:15):
for all of for this for all of us, not
just in terms of let's say you own a small business.
You wanted to buy a new tractor or whatever, and
you're you're owned by private equity. Well, private equity doesn't
have a lot of incentive to make sure that you're
buying a bunch of new construction equipment. They would much
rather go in and invest in some AI startup or
something like that. That's a real effect. And then add
the Trump trade stuff on top of that, it's a

(56:35):
real problem.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And when that bubble.

Speaker 4 (56:38):
Pops, because even the like Zuckerberg's of the world think
that the bubble will pop. Their argument is that it'll
pop and it will be like the railroads, it will
be like the telecoms that it will have left behind.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
Yes, the infrastructure, built instructure.

Speaker 4 (56:52):
So bubble pops, you bunch a bunch of people get
washed out. Zuckerberg, as he said, that'll create a lot
of opportunity to buy assets cost So he continues to
then concentrate his market power and then and then builds
it up from there. But that's a So that's Zuckerberg
and others are baking in financial crisis as like an

(57:15):
inevitable result. Just a when not if.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
Financial crash just means nothing to somebody worth one hundred
and fifty billion, right, one hundred and fifteen means.

Speaker 3 (57:23):
It means cheaper assets to buy.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
Yeah, yeah, a great point. If you're worth one hundred
fifty billion, even if you go in half to seventy five,
that means nothing to you. If you are one hundred
thousand and you go to seventy five thousand, that means
a lot to you, right, Okay, So like that's the
point that these people never seem to quite understand, is
that the people who suffer from these financial bubbles are
not the people who cause them in the first place.

(57:47):
By the way, our producer Griffin has been flagging some
of this weird Hollywood stuff to us. Let's go and
put these up here on the screen. So there is
now a new AI director. The Italian producer Andrea Ervolino
has unveiled a feature helmed by a virtual auteur, and

(58:07):
what it does is that the Fellini AI would be
housed inside of his company, which would act as a
quote human in the loop supervisor and producer who guides
and monitors the technology, and quote, you can imagine a
future in which only one percent of humanity still works,
transforming labor into a symbolic ritual, while the rest of

(58:29):
the population lives in the freedom and leisure produced by machines.
The log line states for this new AI produced movie
that the last workers become the final masks of a
humanity that resists the insolence of labor. I don't know, Ryan,
I'm not so bought into some sort of Matrix style fantasy.
And then on the right there you see that they

(58:50):
talk about the Hollywood AI is ready to crush Hollywood
as we have known it with these AI actors.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
Fake actress is going to get an agent.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
And that's where I just don't even you know, I
can't even really understand, you know, what it all means,
because they say, we may not even have real movie
stars anymore. We'll soon have computer generated actors aspirational celebrities.
That is the future currently imagined by the founder of
this AI actor. And what they said is that in
this new lab, they're hyper real digital stars. The actresses

(59:24):
said that they would produce sketch video and maybe signing
to a future talent agency. Basically, their likenesses would be
controlled by some sort of corporate conglomerate and that they
would then be featured in movies and licensed to different
commercials and stars. This is basically an a rature of

(59:45):
humanity as we know it, and it's one of those
where the matrix was I guess the documentary. And also
though the government and the level of skepticism that is
required is not happening, because I said, on this state level,
it seems by my immediate perusal that moststate legislators think
data centers are a good thing because of money, right,

(01:00:06):
because they're getting donated to and because they've given these
fake statistics. But I think the people at the very
least are deeply skeptical of whatever the hell all of
this is. So I just wonder if there can ever
be any sort of democratic pushback. The technology companies are
betting that they can go, they can leap so forward
before any skepticism happens, that they can just get there

(01:00:29):
before anybody really wakes up to what's going on.

Speaker 4 (01:00:31):
Yeah, and when you think about the arc of all
of kind of earth history. And you you know, people
say that we're now in the midst of the sixth
Great Extinction, like you know, sixth mass. I've seen people
say that, yeah, and statistically like it's accurate, like so
many different species, both plant and animal are dying off,

(01:00:55):
and they scientists can demonstrate that it is because of humanity,
like we just we gobble everything up.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
And so when you think about that in a moral.

Speaker 4 (01:01:08):
Sense, which is difficult to do because it's like species
are often a moral you think you have to think
about it in a moral sense because humans are the
first ones that have to invent morality. And so you
think about, Okay, the costs to the Earth have been
existential to.

Speaker 3 (01:01:26):
Thousands upon thousands.

Speaker 4 (01:01:27):
Of species, but it has produced what humanity can produce,
which is love, which is art. Shakespeare as a stand in,
like those developments represent a break from what existed before
the other five extinctions. Now we're not even gonna have that, Like,

(01:01:48):
what is humanity bringing to the earth other than misery
and despair? If we're not producing more Shakespeare's I agree with.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
You, I'm with you. This is what the fundamental like
anti humanness of it is something that's very concerning to me.
I also am just concerned at the lack of interest
that legislators and others have in any of what's going
on right now, and in particular they seem instead to
just be bought and paid for and just waiting for

(01:02:17):
something to happen before we all have to grapple with it.
So anyway, yeah, we're all paying higher electricity bills so
that Sora can generate slop videos for kids to be
addicted on TikTok and YouTube shorts in the future. What
a great investment for US alves