November 19, 2025 • 45 mins
AI wasn't much of a topic in the 2024 election. But it will almost certainly be big in 2028, and probably even the 2026 midterms. There are concerns about all the money being spent and whether a federal backstop or bailout will be necessary one day. There are the concerns about energy use and electricity prices. There are concerns about labor displacement. And there are concerns about whether we can trust AI outputs. Already we see numerous politicians lining up against AI in one way or another. On this episode, we speak with Saagar Enjeti, the co-host of the Breaking Points podcast to discuss how this issue is already blowing up, and how the tech industry may soon find itself friendless in DC.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I'm Jill Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Tracy, something I've thought for a long time. I think
you might feel the same way. I'm glad we're not
like politics reporters.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Absolutely, I cannot imagine what.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
That job is.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I sometimes look at some of the stuff that are
colleagues in the political media have to report on and like,
look like a lot of it does touch what we do,
and they're obviously like there's no way to avoid it
all together. And obviously some of the stuff is big implications.
But by and large, you know, getting to look at
the numbers on the chart, or learning how you know
debt structures work, or learning how cardboard boxes work is
(00:59):
just much more, or is very satisfying to be relative too.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
You prefer the lines over the lines coming from the
mouths of politicians, the lines over lines.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
That's a good one, thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
But it's gonna fall apart, I think because I think
this AI story is such high stakes and there's so
many different policy questions, et cetera, whether it's related to
electricity prices or the possibility for labor to play displacement.
I think there's basically no way at this point that
twenty twenty eight, maybe even twenty twenty six AI somehow
(01:31):
is going to be a big political story in a
way that it was not really in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Well, I think you're already seeing it in twenty twenty five, right,
So we had Sarah Fryar came out and said she
was talking about maybe getting a government backstop for AI
kapec spend this is.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
The open AICFI yes.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
And of course she rolled it back a little bit,
but it got up really but not really, and it
got everyone talking about, you know, what is the government's
involvement or obligations here. We know that jd Vance of
course has been supported by Peter Teel, who has very
strong and possibly idiosyncratic opinions when it comes to AI,
(02:07):
and of course there's the labor market aspect. There's also
electricity prices. Inflation is still a big political challenge for
the administration, and having all these data centers consume energy
is pushing prices up. And so I expect you'll hear
a lot about AI.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I don't think you know, we're recording this November thirteen.
I don't think we're probably not currently in a recession,
that the economy is not booming, but who knows exactly.
But you know, if you imagine a recession is going on,
and here's this technology where many of its biggest backers
talk about the ability to replace a lot of labor,
and you know, there's some debate, but and there's this
(02:43):
talk about place in greater strand on electricity, and as
you mentioned, there's the possibility that oh and maybe the
government should back I mean, this is a lot, this
is a powder keg.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Absolutely, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
We have to learn more though about the different factions,
how it's going to play out politically, will AI have
any friends in Washington, DC? Whatsoever? How the different candidates
are positioning themselves Visa Vivas. So I wanted to talk
to one of the most plugged in guys I know
in DC, someone I've talked to for a very long time,
(03:13):
who's been talking about the politics of AI on his
own show for a long time. Literally the perfect guest
we're going to be speaking with Sager and Jetti. He
is the co host of Breaking Points, massive popular podcast,
knows a lot more about all the political dimensions than
we do so Sager, thank you so much for coming
on Odd Loaves.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Thank you for having me guys, longtime listener, and congratulations
on your ten year anniversary. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
You've been doing these segments on AI and they're blowing
up on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Huh yeah, yeah, I mean, purely analytics wise, I have
a little bit of a test here for how the
people are feeling. And I think you summed it up
actually really well. Joe is in a time of economic procarity,
a very low consumer sentiment. When Dario and Elon and
Sam Altman just routinely go on podcasts in twenty twenty five, right,
and they're just like, yeah, we are going to replace you.
(04:01):
You don't have to work anymore. It's basically the embodiment
of that World Economic Forum meme about you will own
nothing and be happy. And so, I mean, I don't
think that they really understand the implications that a lot
of us are actually taking their words very seriously, and
I'm increasingly tapped into both, not only the data center backlash,
which is real. By the way, heat Map just did
(04:21):
a fantastic piece about the data center backlash, how it's
swallowing American politics. Georgia's power races very recently were massively
influenced by AI and data centers specifically. And I'm watching
this like fascinating. Horseshoe is really not the right word,
because horseshoe implies, you know, far right and far left.
I sent you a tweet earlier today, Joe, which kind
(04:43):
of brings it together, and it was like, if Tim
Miller of The Bulwark and Ryan Grimm, co host of Mine,
Far lefty, and then Matt Walsh are all agreeing on
attacking AI, with Jon Favreau of Pod Save America coming in,
We're not really a horseshoe, are we? Like we're the
entire spectrum of American politics all agreeing to stand in opposition.
(05:04):
I think to what fundamentally is about an issue where
we do not feel that we are in control of
this technology. We are not sold yet on the benefits.
And you guys talked about that recently in one of
your latest episodes about how AI is not even going
to make you rich, which is what was also one
of the promises that's kind of behind the entire pitch.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
All right, So AI truly a bipartisan issue or bipartisan gripe.
But at the same time, we hear a lot of
politicians talk about the tech competition with China in particular, right,
And we have an episode that came out recently where
we talk about the existentialism around AI, this idea that
you have to win otherwise you're basically going to die
(05:45):
or fall into some sort of like modern dystopian poverty
forever and ever. Why is that rhetoric still out there
if at a local level everyone kind of agrees, like,
you know, this is bad for electricity prices, it's potentially
bad for the labor market.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, great question, And I think actually that might be
the politicians not really getting to the heart of the issue.
And we have to separate the AI technology and the
promises that were originally there, which we could probably strategically
agree like we need to maintain technological advancement, and then
the current way that it's structured, where it's basically in
the hands of three or four like super CEOs, and
(06:23):
everything's kind of seems rolled up fundamentally that you guys
are no going a lot more than I do. But
because of the cost of compute of data centers, specifically
like the Big tech companies are the ones that are
in control. So I think we should disaggregate like the
idea of AI itself as a technology potential, open source
and its usefulness from the way that it's actually being structured,
used and controlled. And I think that's really where a
(06:46):
lot of the pushback is. And also, though I would say,
you know, politicians, this may seem counterintuitive, but are often
the last people to know whenever something organically is pushing up.
You know, I'm I guess on the forefront of a
YouTube show. I mean in ways like I have real
time analytics day to day about how people are feeling.
You only get a democratic kind of feel about this
once every two to four years, so it can take
(07:07):
a long time for this to bubble up through the
halls of Washington and kind of get rid of some
of the twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, you know more think
tank talking points that I think that you're describing their Tracy.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
David Sachs, the co host of the All In podcast
and the White House's AI and cryptos are He says,
all the negativity is because of effective altruists and this
sort of movement in San Francisco that's pushing these doom scenarios.
Are all these people that you follow and talk to
or that follow you, are they all like reading EA substacks?
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Is that where they're getting they have they have no
idea what EA even is. I've actually had to do
a few explainers on the show about effective altruism, you know,
and again the vast majority of my audience. I mean,
these are you know, Uber drivers and hotel these are
just normal people who are kind of like going about
their day to day life. David is absolutely wrong on
this issue. I mean, he may be structurally correct in
(07:59):
terms of the way that the rhetoric around AI that
causes a Dario and an Elon and others to like
go on shows and talk specifically about how you're not
gonna work, but you're gonna be okay, and this whole
idea that kind of backstops EA. But this is really
just like small d democratic like pushback, I really think,
and I also think an idea of really been rolling
(08:20):
around in my head. I'm curious for what you guys think.
Is that at the heart of the social media revolution,
we're some newer upstarts. You know, we never heard of
Mark Zuckerberg. We never heard of. You know, even if
we push back to Google's you know, these guys were
revolutionary entrepreneurs this time around. You know, they sold us
the promise of social media, and regardless of whether you
think it's good or not, we don't really have a
(08:41):
high level of societal trust in you know, the Arab
Spring and all that, And these are the very same
people now making these multi billion dollars in some cases
trillion dollar bets on AI and telling us to trust them.
So that's something that really belies that, you know, the
Mark Zuckerberg's of the AI space. Let's I don't know
Alexander Wang like he now works for Zuckerberg. Right, It's
(09:02):
just it's just fundamentally like a little bit different in
terms of who the key players are who are trying
to tell us about the beneficiary of the technology. And
I also think you know, they're no longer talking about
the things that they originally did, Like they were like,
we're going to cure cancer, and it's like, well, Sam,
why are you talking about erotica porn man, Because that's
that's a little bit different. It's like maybe the Internet
(09:24):
in chat ept is just going to be the exact
same as the Internet as it always has been, which
is basically increasing you know, user time in chat EPT.
Putting some ads in there just an a miserating experience,
which of course also has high levels of efficiency for
business use.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
I was going to say exactly that. I'm not sure
it's that people don't trust the promise. It's that the
promise itself doesn't seem that enticing at the moment you
know you're going to lose your job and AI is
going to get to do all the fun stuff in
human life, like make pictures and movies.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
And getting married to an AI model.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, I
thought the erotica thing from Sam was just the biggest tell.
I was like, wow, man, like, we're not talking about biomedical,
We're not talking about chat GPT curing cancer and all
of this. I mean, to be fair to him, he
has talked about the Open Eye Foundation, how they're going
to try and move things in that direction, but all
(10:17):
of the public consumption and everything being you know, Geared,
I don't know if either of you are NFL fans.
Have you noticed the number of chat GPT ads during
NFL game? Now, Oh, it's every game, and it's like
here chat gepts designing my workout, Chat gpt is designing
my vacation. Listen, no hate, but it's basically an extpedia ad. Right,
this is not cancer curing, it's Instagram for teens. It's
(10:39):
chat GPT, Microsoft Copilot. I believe ran an ad about
image generation. You know, the studio Ghibli thing. Yeah, I
mean that's that's not enterprise groundbreaking technology like this is
like you're burning data center or like you're increasing my
power bills so that people can do studio Ghibli recreates.
Like I'm out on this, you know, you know that
that's how I feel.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
There are obviously a number of different concerns that people have,
electricity prices, labor, and we'll get into that. But you
said something interesting, which is that even you know, prior
to AI having come out, prior to late twenty twenty
two and chat shept burst on the scene, people were
already souring on these big techmo goals, you know, on
the right specifically, but also but really across you know,
(11:20):
there's concerned about the algorithm, what's it doing? Shadow banning?
Are certain things being labeled as fake news that aren't
fake news. You know, there was all the backlashing guys
YouTube for what videos they allowed during the pandemic, et cetera.
It feels like, just intuitively, there's no reason that all
of these concerns don't quickly map onto very cleanly, onto
(11:42):
AI concerns.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
You're exactly right. I mean, it already has right and
in some of the early cases. You guys we've all
been around, We remember the early content about Facebook moderation,
remember all of that. I mean, look at what's happening
with chat, GPT, story after story about these suicides and
now erotica, and you know, they're saying the same level
of stuff that Facebook used to say, like oh, we have,
you know, controls in place. And look, I mean, at
(12:05):
some level, I do sympathize, like when a billion people
use your product, you know one percent of them might
be crazy and that's actually a really, really tough problem.
But also, you know, when your technology is being implicated
in all of these insane lawsuits and you have screenshots
and stuff that come out that make people go, WHOA,
I don't even know if I want my nineteen or
twenty year old like anywhere close to this. That really
(12:28):
because of the way that we all lived through those
past conversations show they track exactly onto Sam Altman and
Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, look at the stuff he's had
to deal with with the meta AI Instagram chatbots, you know,
for teenagers, and it's funny because they're trying to get
ahead of it to the NFL thing. I watch these
ads closely. Like one of the big ads right now
(12:48):
ad campaigns is Instagram for teens, which they're like, we
have safety stuff, you know, like that's kind of baked in,
and they're trying to get ahead of it because you know,
you don't run that ad if you don't have The
Anxious Generation as one of the top best selling books
in the United States, Like it's an upper middle class
like revolution now about people who are like against iPad
kiss right, And I think that's going to track very
(13:09):
very cleanly onto AI. There's no reason that I shouldn't.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
How would you describe the relationship between you know, the
people running some of the biggest tech companies now versus
years past, because I remember, you know, we're talking a
little bit about some of the scandals and discussions about
political influence and what is actually shown on Facebook, and
I get the sense that once upon a time in
d C, people did kind of feel like big tech
(13:51):
was in control. Right, it was d C coming to big.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Tech for help.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
And now I'm thinking back to the inauguration when we
had you know, people like Bezos and I think Zuckerberg
was there as well, Yes he was, and they're sort
of you know, I don't know how I saw one person.
I'm not going to describe it this way myself, but
I did see one person describe it as a hostage
situation where the big tech CEOs, you know, they're all
(14:17):
gathered in front of Trump and they seem kind of scared.
They're smiling, they're smiling, but not with their eyes. How
would you describe the relationship now between the administration and
you know, the big wigs of big tech.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, that's a great question, because you know what I'm
talking about a small d democratic politics. Now you're just
asking about power politics. Our politics here is very different.
I mean, you know, David Sachs has navigated his position incredibly. Well,
you know, Joe, there was a funny incident I think
I talked to you about this where I found a
snippet I think was a Financial Times piece and it
was just about it was like AI accounts for eighty
percent of stock gains and x percent of GDP in
(14:53):
terms of CAPEX, and David Sachs like retweeted it and
I was like, oh, so you think that's a good thing,
you know. I was like, I was like, oh, I
was like, okay, but you know that's actually if you're
in the Trump White House right now, you need this.
You know, you need the rally, you need the GDP
and the data center spend because that's what's propping up again.
You're the economist. Just from my listening to you and
(15:14):
reading Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Financial Times and others like,
that's a main reason why Joe you were like, well,
I don't think we're in a recession. Derek Thompson has
written very eloquently about this as well. Is just how
much of that spend currently accounts for why things seem okay.
So there is like a real alliance I think right
now between the Jensen's, David and even Sam Altman and others,
(15:36):
like they all come to the White House and announce
their crazy deals. For a reason, they get these awesome
press conferences from Trump. I mean there's the famous moment
where Zuck what he leads over to Trump, He's like,
I didn't know how much you wanted me to say.
I'm like, wow, okay, So you know you could I mean,
you could describe that as at heel. You could also
say he's got to bend over and kiss the ring
(15:56):
while also being able to basically just do whatever he wants.
So there is I think a very you know, alliance
of convenience right now, where the amount of money they're
pumping into the economy, the amount of stock value that
they're creating, is extremely beneficial to the Scott Bessens and
others of the world. Talking about MAGA economics.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Let's talk a little bit more about electoral politics specifically.
Ron DeSantis actually seems to be trying to make a
carveline for himself early on, even before the Sarah Friar comments,
actually saying no bailouts for AI companies, Like, what do
you see right now in terms of candidate positioning.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, that's it's all very early signaling. And that's actually
you know, I love this because usually one of the
things I hate most about politics recently it's all top down.
Do you have guys who are running for city council
talking about impeachment or something. It's like, dude, tell me
about the roads, you know, but actually this one is
really bottom up, you know, the data center stuff. It's Tucson.
Actually here in northern Virginia where I live, there's a
(16:52):
big comment and there's a lot of public controversy about
data centers. My state, Virginia, forty percent of our power
is consumed actually by data. Oregon is like thirty three percent,
I believe of power. There's been a lot of local
stuff and it hasn't really bubbled to the national level.
And I would say people here they care about money,
but they also care about electability. So there's an ocean
(17:12):
of money to be had if you're quote pro AI
or pro tech, but they'll always choose their own careers.
It went, and if you know, it does come down
to that, I haven't seen it bubble up yet. I
did see I'm not sure if you guys did that.
Bernie Sanders and a few of other progressives signed a
letter against data centers specifically, and that was the first
indication that I'm like, Ah, the staffers, they're paying attention, right,
(17:34):
they're listening to the pods. They're reading David Weigel's piece
about data center politics, and they're trying to operationalize that
into something at the national level. You're exactly right in
terms of dron desantists tried to pick that lane about bailout,
and that actually gets to something very recently where you
talked about Sarah's comments. I mean, we did a segment
about that, and it was huge about the open AI
(17:55):
bail out because people can feel it. They're like, I've
seen this movie before. They're you know, you know that. Yeah,
they make twenty billion, but they've got seventy five billion
in projected losses to twenty twenty eight. They've got a
trillion dollar in committed spend. You know, the pe ratios
and all this are so crazy, and if it doesn't
work out, they're going to say, oh, well, we need
you to bail us out, or we need you to
(18:15):
build the data centers for us and take all the
most expensive part of our business out. They are inherently
distrustful already of the numbers, and I think this is
very American, like you don't want to be controlled. And
the AI people tell us about how this is the
second Industrial Revolution and it's like, well, you know, then
we should probably look to the politics of the previous
industrial revolutions. You know, the railroad obviously, like had a
(18:38):
tremendous benefit. It doesn't take a week or it took
a week to go to California instead of three months.
That's awesome. But you know, very quickly in the eighteen
eighties and eighteen nineties Titanic, you know, uprisings in the
Midwest of farmers feeling like they're being controlled and anti
railroad politicians were some of the original like anti industrial
populace in Washington, even though originally everybody he was really sold.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
I didn't know that the politicians.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Oh yeah, yeah, there definitely were. They were all throughout
the eighteen nineties, some of the original populist party. And
you look at what that all was. A lot of
it was about the railroad. And you know, I mean
there's legendary stories Texas where you and I are from,
Joe White, Patman, I'd have to write right back. Yeah.
There were like people like Sam Rayburn actually famously the
very anti railroad. He wouldn't take the free railroad passes.
(19:25):
These were like big, big stories all the way up
until the nineteen twenties, and so and so I see
a very similar kind of track, except though that I'm
not so sure that the socialized benefits will be as
good as the railroad, because the railroad, at the end
of the day, it was awesome. I could go to
California in a week. I don't have to take the
stagecoach or the Oregon Trail or whatever. This time around,
(19:46):
I'm like, listen, I don't know if you guys have
used Sora. Sorry, Like, it's not worth the power bills.
It's not worth it.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Tracy's insisting that I correct that I'm not really a
real Texan. I only went to college there.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
He's a photo true. Okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
This is important to me as someone with a dad
who was raised in Dallas and Lancaster. Anyway, I was
just thinking, you know, we were talking about populism in
the eighteen hundreds, and did you ever see the interpretations
of the Wizard of oz as.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was farmers who's like wanted
to move a silver backed currency, and a lot of
it supposedly was tied to populism.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Anyway, I wanted to go back to power politics for
one second, and ask what the heck JD. Evans is
going to do here, because it's not impossible that he
is the chosen successor to Trump in whatever timeframe, and
in that case, he's sort of stuck between I guess
two peas here, populism and Peter Teel.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah, well, you know, it's a lot more peas than
that actually, because it's popularism, it's Trump, it's Tea. I mean,
you know, the Teal thing. I've always thought it was
frankly a little bit overstated terms of influence. But regardless,
I wouldn't say more like Teal sphere or Teal thought
if that makes sense. Like, as you guys know, probably
most of the people listening to this, like there's an
(21:09):
entire like ecosystem around like zero you know, zero to
one posting and all of that within tech anyway, So
that sphere, let's call it, right tech, I guess, you know,
to be extremely reductive, that sphere is really the one
which currently embodies, you know, really a lot of this
more pro AI direction. Let's say, Palenteer, Alex KRP and others.
But even he is fascinating, right because he's pro AI,
(21:31):
but only for Palenteer, and he thinks the rest of
this up. So like these things do break down. But Jad,
I mean, look, he's gonna be in a tough position
as well because he also it's not exactly like in
repudiate the Trump administration. I actually think it's one of
his biggest weaknesses going into twenty twenty eight. I mean,
you guys will remember they savaged Kamala for the what
would you do different conversation from Biden? I mean, how
(21:54):
do you answer that when Donald Trump is still alive
and you about to run. You know you're gonna get
destroyed if you say the truth. And I mean, look,
I don't know where things are gonna end up. Trump
is basically trending in Biden territory right now in terms
of his approval ratings. And so look, you know, we
saw that movie, and in my opinion, when you start
chart posting about how the economy is actually good, you're cooked.
(22:16):
You know, to borrow a phrase from the youth about politics,
but yeah, you're the power politics of it are really
I think trepidacious. So I think for a lot of
the right because they don't want to get away from
Elon and from his money. Right, Elon is very very
powerful center. I think in Republican politics. XAI. He's got
this huge new data center project. I'm sure you guys
(22:37):
have read or seen something about that. He's probably going
to demand, you know, certain things. And at the same time,
you're i mean a huge amount of the right wing
commentariot who would probably be more jd vance ideologically position
let's say, like the Matt Walsh's of the world, that
Tucker Carlson's of the world. These were were straight up
on record as this is, you know, demonic. We need
to stand for humanity, and it's going to be very tough.
(23:00):
I actually think it might be the single toughest position
that you'll have to navigate in the campaign. And I
think that the left, the political left in particular, they
are looking at this data center stuff. They are all
over it. More Perfect Union, which is one of those
it's like a Bernie aligned institution. They have been all
over this issue. So I'm watching the populace left really
(23:20):
really grab onto it. And I think a democratic position
in twenty twenty eight is going to come down hard
in terms of either regulation or protecting Americans, you know,
reforming power. However, it's going to be there. They are
going to be there and the right is going to
have a very tough time.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
It's interesting because, like even ten years ago, we thought
of Silicon Valley as like basically being democratic aligned, right
like most big tech executives. And I still think, you know,
most people in San Francisco obviously vote Democrat, including a
lot of high people at these tech companies. But there's
this well known shift that everyone talks about and they've
got much more comfortable. But it feels like to me
(23:57):
they could you know, they've moved, they've switched asides to
like they could.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Kind of end up friendless and all this. Oh, I
mean I already I think that they massively overplayed their
hand with DOGE. And I mean, you know, look, I
for being honest, just look at the stats. Like it's
a total failure in terms of its stated project. You
could debate whether USA I D or whatever is bad.
I mean, Treasury data is public, guys, you can go
read it for yourself in terms of spending. So that's
(24:23):
one thing. But two, you're exactly right, Joe in terms
of the fair weather friend nature of all of this
is that you know, a in terms of the way
that a lot of the democratic base has been radicalized
at this point, they're never going back. And then in
the right wing coalition, you know, I don't want to
go too deep in the weeds here, but like, yeah,
I mean the tech the tech right. Let's take this
(24:44):
H one B thing for example. This is like a huge,
huge split right now in the political right because a
lot of these tech guys are very pro H one B.
You know, Elon famously said he would fight to the
death over the issue of H one B. This was
during the whole fight, you know, in December before Trump
took office, and Trump ultimately he just did an interview
a few days ago where he embraced H one B,
(25:06):
say actually, we need more talent. But there's a lot
of the activist political right which is vary against that
and increasingly are blaming a lot of these tech right
politicians for hijacking the administration. So that's why, you know,
for them, I would be very careful as to how
exactly you know they're going to navigate. There's also I mean,
this breaks on foreign policy lines as well, because a
(25:28):
subset of the tech right is also very pro Israel,
which is also a very divisive issue. I don't want
to drag that into this, but only to say, like
Joe Lonsdale, Sean Maguire, these are you know, very very
rich people, very activated in the current you know, cohort
of MAGA, but not exactly like beloved. Let's say amongst
a different segment you know, of the American right. And
(25:49):
so I could see a huge clash coming to the
front with that. And that's another issue I would say,
you know, for a JD. Vance is like, I'm sure
he's friendly with them, and that's easy when Trump is
papering over all these coalitional politics. But that's going to
break out into the open like nobody's business in a primary,
and I could see it. I could see them becoming
friendless quickly because again, I mean, look, I could be wrong.
(26:12):
I don't think that that's where the base is. I
really don't, just because if we look at the math
of who are the people increasingly identifying as MAGA or
Republican Like, people making less than one hundred thousand dollars
a year are not going to be cheering on, you know,
multi billionaires telling them that they don't have to work,
that they're not gonna work anymore, not that they don't
have to work anymore. They're not going to work anymore more,
(26:34):
blue collar types. I mean, you know the driverless you know,
the driverless trucks issue. Like the Teamsters president, I had
him on my show, just going hard, Sean O'Brien, famously
the only union president to not endorse in the election.
Much more Trump friendly, So that part of the coalition
is gonna have something to say, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
I feel like we saw some of the sensitivity burst
into the open with the h one B Visa comments
when Trump was like, we don't have enough talent in America. Yeah,
I mean Twitter slash x just exploded.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
I ask you to take all the jobs and the
jobs that will be left. We're also going to Yeah, yeah,
that's right. Whatever jobs are left, they'll be in India.
So you're like, I don't know about that.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Okay, So I feel like I know the answer to
this question. But if a lot of people are going
to be unable to work, is there anyone in DC
or elsewhere who is talking about universal basic income?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Andrew Yang I just Adam on the show. He's doing
the biggest victory lap over all of this. You know,
I have not seen it. I know even Bernie famously,
I think it's against UBI. I have to go back
and check. He's more of a federal jobs guarantee guy,
and that's the most most out there. Like I said,
I mean to be honest covering politics now, I've only
(27:48):
watched them play catch up. I mean famously, I've talked
with Jack Dorsey and others about this. But like those
famous hearings where they'd be like, so, how does Facebook,
you know, make money? And you're like, oh my god, man,
you know, in front of these hearings when the congressmen
you know, don't even know the most basic facets, or
they'll be asking stuff like why do my campaign emails
get stuck in gmails? Filters? Like these are real questions
(28:11):
that were asked in Friday, the United States senator in
the Congress. So I don't have a lot of faith
that there are a lot of very forward facing thinkers
around this issue, and in particular, I mean I know
that to be the case. It could change in twenty
twenty six. I think a dem you know, tea party
type wave is coming. There might be some interesting candidates
(28:31):
that start to say things like that, and maybe on
the Republican side as well. I'd like to see it.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
We've been talking a lot about the right, the Republicans.
I actually really like a lot of these guys. But
when I think about the other side of the aisle
and I think about some of these tensions, as you mentioned,
more perfect union and some of the more you know,
kind of populous left things, I'm not very bullish on
the abundance Dems right now, and how that sort of
(29:11):
faction that would like to sort of take the party
in a sort of more you know, I guess, I
don't know, centrist, but a centrist moderate liberal realm. Yeah,
whatever it is. I don't know how you feel. Give
us your sort of your view on the other side
of the aisle, definitely.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
I mean the interesting thing about the whole abundance thing
and all of that is, I think, you know what
it misses is the theory of control. And you know,
it's like more housing awesome, you know, but it doesn't
get to ownership, I guess, and the feeling of like
the ability to control your own destiny, which I think
is really baked into the American spirit and the American project.
(29:49):
And you know, you see stuff like this about debates
around housing and you know, they'll kind of ridicule this
idea about corporate ownership, and you know, I'm not going
to get into the weeds about whether that's even true
or not. I know there's a lot of controversy, but
the idea is definitely very popular, right, you know, for
a lot of people. And the reason why is fundamentally,
they're like, I'm being priced out of my ability to
(30:11):
buy a home. Like it really, what it is about
is about you know, the individuality of reclaiming your own destiny.
And that's why that's why those two things are very linked.
You know, it's about power. You know, to kind of
bring back to Tracy's question earlier about you know, beating China,
et cetera, it's the technology is not the same as
the companies that are in charge. And when you see
(30:33):
these swelling valuations and talks of bailouts and the encroachment
into your daily life or your office, and you see
headlines about firing workers, you know, on the promise of AI.
None of this goes to the heart about democratic input.
You know, I was thinking about that in terms of
the chatchypt suicide question, which I know is fringe from
(30:53):
their point of view, but I think it's important if
billions of people are going to use your technology. And
Sam famously in a Tucker car else an interview, was like, well,
in a country where assistant suicide is legal, like, would
you direct people to those resources? He effectively said yes,
And I was like, oh my god, I mean, then
you know chat ept's mental health standards. In my opinion,
(31:14):
like there needs to be some like there needs to
be stuff hashed out in the US Congress and at
the state and the local level where like we all
agree on what so called guardrails and acceptable norms are.
And I can't just be leaving it to Sam Altman.
I'm sorry, I think you know, no offense to that guy.
It's not even about him, it's about everybody. No, but
no one person should have that immense amount of power
(31:35):
which is going to affect millions and millions amow. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
And it just seems incredibly difficult to have any democratic
input into what are effectively black boxes, right and have
always been black boxes. I have a very basic question,
but is anyone in DC using AI in an interesting way?
I imagine you know, people are probably editing policy papers
or whatever with it and doing some research, but is
(32:00):
anyone I don't know creating lots of AI driven bots
to sway conversations, or I don't know, come up with
some new system of campaign finance. Who knows.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
I'm not privy to any of this secret stuff like you.
I mean that kind of either, Just to be clear,
I mean it kind of begs the question is is
anything interesting being done with A right? You know what
you just said of editing papers? Everybody's editing papers great,
you know, awesome. A friend of mine, John Coogan, I'm
sure you guys know, Yeah, yeah, I think John had
a great analogy to AI. He was like, I kind
(32:32):
of think it'll be like the credit card, you know,
like frictionless payments. It enabled an entire new ecosystem. We
could build wealth. It'll make your life like a little
bit better, you know, and all that. I think that's
basically the technology, right, you know, summarizing editing. It's a
better Google. That's cool and all that. But I haven't
yet seen like some mass sophisticated thing. I mean, to
be honest, you know, most people in DC are probably
(32:54):
using AI for editing purposes, research, to check things, what else?
I mean, image generation to slander your political opponents. That's
a pretty big one. We use it for thumbnails for
our YouTube videos. You know, Like, I guess that's cool,
you know, I mean, yeah, it's nice. It's definitely nice.
It's not that I don't have. I also have photoshop
guys who worked for me, so you know, they use
it a little bit every once in a while. But
(33:15):
I haven't seen anything truly novel. I really have it.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
You know, in terms of elected officials who maybe a
few years ago this would have been a surprise, but
who seemed to have an very good intuitions about things mergery,
Taylor Green, one of these names. Was like, Oh, I'm like,
she seems savvy in a way that maybe people wouldn't
have guessed. Has she been talking about AI at all?
Speaker 1 (33:37):
You know, I haven't looked. Definitely, I haven't seen anything
in particular. I can almost guess where she would land them. Yeah,
especially look, her own home state is now ground zero
for a statewide referendum. Again, talk to us about that.
We haven't actually told us. We haven't.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
This Georgia election, I know, it was like kind of powers,
elect empowers and electricity stuff. It's kind of directly on
the ballot.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Right, Yeah, two races literally about power. Both made Democratic candidates,
they made data centers power usage like a central part
of their campaign, and they won a huge victory. I
don't want to ascribe the entire thing. Let's be honest.
In a national environment, a lot of people are decrets, right,
but it was it was an awesome night for Democrats. Right.
But look, I mean in a certain way, like those
(34:19):
arguments still are really finding a lot of salience because
you know these stories about power going up, and look,
I mean everybody remembers, you know, the walmartization conversation, the
Amazon warehouse conversation. Nobody loves this idea of these big
companies coming in buying land, using a ton of resources,
(34:40):
driving prices up. Nobody buys the BS anymore. About how
this is going to create a ton of jobs. I mean,
definitely some construction jobs. But nobody's really under the illusion.
Everybody knows tech is a power law business. You know,
the vast majority of the wealth is going to flow
up to the top of the CEO and the networks
of Zuck and Elon and the rest of these people.
So that's where politics of this really matter. And you know,
(35:02):
heat map I shouted them out They wrote a great
piece about the data center backlashes swallowing American politics, and
you should go read it just to even look at polling,
not just about Georgia. I mean, this is bipartisan at
every level. And younger generations are the most anti data center,
anti AI kind of politics. And I mean, look, they're suffering.
I mean, they have a high unemployment rate right now.
A lot of them either blame AI or look at
(35:24):
AI is one of the reasons why they're having a
tough time in the labor market. And you know, it
doesn't help. Whenever you see Wall Street Journal articles just
about white collar companies increasingly bet on more productivity out
of existing workforce, like this stuff confirmed. It both confirms
biases and it's real, so it's not even particularly a bias.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
What is the state of antitrust at the moment, because
I remember at the beginning of this year, it seemed
like it was emerging as a possibly bipartisan issue or
at least a direct link between the Biden administration and
the Trump administration. Everyone wanted to go after the big
tech companies, possibly for different reasons, but you know, the
outcomes the same. Is that still a live issue?
Speaker 1 (36:03):
In DC. Yeah. I mean, look, speaking quite candidly, like
the state of the government is like large portions of
it for sale and for you know, large portions of
it are basically you know, they are very beholden to
financial interests. I'll put that very politely, shall I at
least about who can get to Trump's ear, who can
(36:24):
get and have some influence with the administration. I don't
want to poop poo it entirely, you know, when big
money or a donor or something like that is not involved.
The FTC has done some good work and has been
looking to try and confirmed, but they've also quite honestly,
you know, moved bass some of the antitrust cases and
others that Lena Khan put forward. So I would say
it's mixed. I mean, I think that the look, this
(36:45):
stuff is happening on in the open, so I don't
even know, I'm afraid of saying it. Like he convenes
the tech CEOs and they are like, how much money
do you want me to announce? And they'll just do it,
you know. I Mean, that's pretty much is the whole
ball game. And I think that gets to the kind
of power alliance I talked about earlier, like the Trump
administration really needs these companies for headlines and because they're
propping up the economy in their stock marketing.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
So so this is exactly where I wanted to ask
you about next, which is if there's one tension here,
which is the stock market itself has sort of become
a populist issue. Right, This seem is very strange to
talk about the stock market and populism in the same sentence,
But you see all of the different people you know
who will randomly pull up on their phone various stock positions.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Well, Trump himself also benchmarks and Trump.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Talks about the stock market, so you know, this whole
time is like, oh, it's you know, it's main Street's turn,
et cetera. But a lot of young people, people who
are middle class or lower middle class feel either directly
either very directly in the stock market where they feel
like they have some very interest in it. How does
that intersect with this? What do you see like among
like the commenters on your show in terms of like
(37:53):
how they think about you know, just the sort of
betting and everything and investing in trading stuff.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
That's a great question. I mean, I don't know, there's
like a couple of different angles to it, right, because
the Trump people ridiculed Biden for saying the economy was good,
but now they're doing the exact same thing. You guys know,
the S and P did pretty well under Biden. Right,
let's be honest, start benchmarketing from the day took office
to the day off. I forget the exact number, it's
like sixty eighty percent. Like these are decent returns over
(38:19):
the four year period. But it's not like anybody at
home was like, oh, the economy is so much better.
But of course politicians do that, you know, whenever they
come into office. But Joe, I mean, you're not wrong,
And I guess this is a much more meta conversation
where I mean you and you and I have talked
about this privately. The numbers got to go up, right,
because all of our futures are in the number. Like,
we don't have pensions in this country, We don't have
(38:40):
a robust social safety net until we turn sixty five,
So in the interim robust, Yeah, and then it gets
very robust. And that's a separate combo. But yeah, I
mean in the interim, like you know, your hopes of
retirement your hopes of buying something or asset appreciation, like
that's all we got. And I think that the increasing
financialization hope is exactly behind crypto sports betting issue and
(39:03):
very passionately against this is exactly why is I think,
you know, it removed a lot of the hope kind
of undergirding the stability of the American foundation, and within
that speculation and fast riches and plus, I mean, the
tech is so good. I mean, have you guys placed
trades on robin Hood, you know, with the and everything,
you gotta go do it. You know, you got to
(39:23):
feel it, put a little bit, put a position behind it,
and you'll see exactly that's the responsible thing to do.
Go put a couple of hundred into the spy and
but you'll just.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
See like like celebratory Oh yeah, animations when you place
the trade.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
It's happened to me recently, Yeah exactly. But I mean
I can see how you know, addictive that this can
all be. And they send you a million push notifications
a day, you know, the opposite of what a good
investor should do, Like, oh, stock is down five percent,
stock is up two percent. You know, they want you
click and staying in the app and the charts, everything
(40:02):
is designed for you to kind of be in there.
So these are big tech companies which they make a
lot of money doing this stuff. And you can see
why societally, structurally and technologically why that this became kind
of like a democratic issue.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
By the way, while we're recording this, just breaking the
breaking news from Bloomberg Thinking Machines Lab and artificial intelligence
startup funded by former Open ai executive Mirror Murati early
talks to raise a new round of funding a roughly
fifty billion dollars valuation.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
So every time we record an episode about AI, a
headline comes out recording.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Yeah, it helps us benchmark where we are. That is
so crazy, It's so didn't core there was something I
saw research every day every day every day was one
yesterday and a new one hundred billion anthropic anthrop data
center exactly. It's just I mean, I don't know, I
really That's why I love your show. Thank you. Just
(40:55):
thinking about you know, I've been doing a lot of
John Cassidy dot com dot com reading, you know, back
from two thousand and vendor finance and just thinking really
deeply about it because I do think, you know, if
that look, you know, I don't know today, tomorrow, a
few years, who knows, you know, where exactly it comes.
But some sort of downturn is probably inevitable, and the
(41:17):
political ramifications of that are just so immense, you guys, know,
with the downturn in the stock market, interest rates, reduction
in workforce. I'm really afraid.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
This is the thing, which is that there's already this
backlash and the stock market is in your record highs
and unemployment is near fifty year lows or whatever, so
we haven't actually seen any of like really bad stuff.
Soccer and Jetty, thank you so much for coming on
to oddlogs.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
That was a love for you guys for having me.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
I love it, Tracy. I thought that was a lot
of fun. You know, this idea that like there's already
this backlash that brewing, and we actually don't have widespread
(42:03):
unemployment yet. We haven't had a stock market crash yet
or anything like that. You know, three years of a
long time. We have no idea what the economy is
going to look like in twenty twenty eight or really
even twenty twenty six. But if there's so much negativity
already building, right, that sort of tells you tells you
a lot.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Right, If people are angry with the SMP at like
six thousand, seven hundred, how are they going to feel
when it's like below six thousand. Yeah, I mean I
think everyone is agreed at this point that this is
going to become a political issue, right, and the only
question is how big and then what the response actually
is to it. The other thing I'm thinking is because
(42:41):
relationships both within the government and between the government and
private entities seem so I'm just going to say, complicated
and fluid at the moment, it seems really hard to
guess like which direction this is going to go in.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Totally, it seems really hard to guess. I thought your
question about is anyone talking about you ubi?
Speaker 1 (43:00):
And this is really interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
It's grim like how there seems to be almost no
truly forward thinking politics. I mean, really, this conversation should
have been happening throughout the twenty twenty four election, right,
like this was like obviously going to be a massive
thing and the stakes would be incredibly high. It was
virtually non existent.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
That was just a year ago.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, So I think that really tells you something. And
the fact that by and large, you know there's a
couple of people tweeting about it here and there, like
maybe Aron DeSantis, but by and large, this still doesn't
seem to be something that any elected official like wants
to sort of carve their land out.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Yeah, and it's probably not until unemployment actually picks up
that you're going to see like people actually start to
talk about some possible solutions, but again it's hard to
see what those are.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
We're just like, yeah, thinking and advance any of this stuff.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Yeah, all right, shall we leave it there?
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Sure, let's leave it there.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guests Sager and Jetty. He's at e Sager.
Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Kerman Armann, dash Ol
Bennett at dashbod at Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. For more Odd
Lots content, go to Bloomberg dot com. Slash odd Lots
were a bid daily newsletter and all of our episodes,
and you can chat about all of these topics. Twenty
four seven in our discord Discord dot gg slash odd Lots.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
And if you enjoy odd Lots, if you like it
when we talk about the political ramifications of AI, then
please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform.
And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can
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you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on
Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening,
(45:04):
Nan
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I'm Jill Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Tracy, something I've thought for a long time. I think
you might feel the same way. I'm glad we're not
like politics reporters.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Absolutely, I cannot imagine what.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
That job is.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I sometimes look at some of the stuff that are
colleagues in the political media have to report on and like,
look like a lot of it does touch what we do,
and they're obviously like there's no way to avoid it
all together. And obviously some of the stuff is big implications.
But by and large, you know, getting to look at
the numbers on the chart, or learning how you know
debt structures work, or learning how cardboard boxes work is
(00:59):
just much more, or is very satisfying to be relative too.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
You prefer the lines over the lines coming from the
mouths of politicians, the lines over lines.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
That's a good one, thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
But it's gonna fall apart, I think because I think
this AI story is such high stakes and there's so
many different policy questions, et cetera, whether it's related to
electricity prices or the possibility for labor to play displacement.
I think there's basically no way at this point that
twenty twenty eight, maybe even twenty twenty six AI somehow
(01:31):
is going to be a big political story in a
way that it was not really in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Well, I think you're already seeing it in twenty twenty five, right,
So we had Sarah Fryar came out and said she
was talking about maybe getting a government backstop for AI
kapec spend this is.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
The open AICFI yes.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
And of course she rolled it back a little bit,
but it got up really but not really, and it
got everyone talking about, you know, what is the government's
involvement or obligations here. We know that jd Vance of
course has been supported by Peter Teel, who has very
strong and possibly idiosyncratic opinions when it comes to AI,
(02:07):
and of course there's the labor market aspect. There's also
electricity prices. Inflation is still a big political challenge for
the administration, and having all these data centers consume energy
is pushing prices up. And so I expect you'll hear
a lot about AI.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I don't think you know, we're recording this November thirteen.
I don't think we're probably not currently in a recession,
that the economy is not booming, but who knows exactly.
But you know, if you imagine a recession is going on,
and here's this technology where many of its biggest backers
talk about the ability to replace a lot of labor,
and you know, there's some debate, but and there's this
(02:43):
talk about place in greater strand on electricity, and as
you mentioned, there's the possibility that oh and maybe the
government should back I mean, this is a lot, this
is a powder keg.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Absolutely, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
We have to learn more though about the different factions,
how it's going to play out politically, will AI have
any friends in Washington, DC? Whatsoever? How the different candidates
are positioning themselves Visa Vivas. So I wanted to talk
to one of the most plugged in guys I know
in DC, someone I've talked to for a very long time,
(03:13):
who's been talking about the politics of AI on his
own show for a long time. Literally the perfect guest
we're going to be speaking with Sager and Jetti. He
is the co host of Breaking Points, massive popular podcast,
knows a lot more about all the political dimensions than
we do so Sager, thank you so much for coming
on Odd Loaves.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Thank you for having me guys, longtime listener, and congratulations
on your ten year anniversary. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
You've been doing these segments on AI and they're blowing
up on YouTube.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Huh yeah, yeah, I mean, purely analytics wise, I have
a little bit of a test here for how the
people are feeling. And I think you summed it up
actually really well. Joe is in a time of economic procarity,
a very low consumer sentiment. When Dario and Elon and
Sam Altman just routinely go on podcasts in twenty twenty five, right,
and they're just like, yeah, we are going to replace you.
(04:01):
You don't have to work anymore. It's basically the embodiment
of that World Economic Forum meme about you will own
nothing and be happy. And so, I mean, I don't
think that they really understand the implications that a lot
of us are actually taking their words very seriously, and
I'm increasingly tapped into both, not only the data center backlash,
which is real. By the way, heat Map just did
(04:21):
a fantastic piece about the data center backlash, how it's
swallowing American politics. Georgia's power races very recently were massively
influenced by AI and data centers specifically. And I'm watching
this like fascinating. Horseshoe is really not the right word,
because horseshoe implies, you know, far right and far left.
I sent you a tweet earlier today, Joe, which kind
(04:43):
of brings it together, and it was like, if Tim
Miller of The Bulwark and Ryan Grimm, co host of Mine,
Far lefty, and then Matt Walsh are all agreeing on
attacking AI, with Jon Favreau of Pod Save America coming in,
We're not really a horseshoe, are we? Like we're the
entire spectrum of American politics all agreeing to stand in opposition.
(05:04):
I think to what fundamentally is about an issue where
we do not feel that we are in control of
this technology. We are not sold yet on the benefits.
And you guys talked about that recently in one of
your latest episodes about how AI is not even going
to make you rich, which is what was also one
of the promises that's kind of behind the entire pitch.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
All right, So AI truly a bipartisan issue or bipartisan gripe.
But at the same time, we hear a lot of
politicians talk about the tech competition with China in particular, right,
And we have an episode that came out recently where
we talk about the existentialism around AI, this idea that
you have to win otherwise you're basically going to die
(05:45):
or fall into some sort of like modern dystopian poverty
forever and ever. Why is that rhetoric still out there
if at a local level everyone kind of agrees, like,
you know, this is bad for electricity prices, it's potentially
bad for the labor market.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, great question, And I think actually that might be
the politicians not really getting to the heart of the issue.
And we have to separate the AI technology and the
promises that were originally there, which we could probably strategically
agree like we need to maintain technological advancement, and then
the current way that it's structured, where it's basically in
the hands of three or four like super CEOs, and
(06:23):
everything's kind of seems rolled up fundamentally that you guys
are no going a lot more than I do. But
because of the cost of compute of data centers, specifically
like the Big tech companies are the ones that are
in control. So I think we should disaggregate like the
idea of AI itself as a technology potential, open source
and its usefulness from the way that it's actually being structured,
used and controlled. And I think that's really where a
(06:46):
lot of the pushback is. And also, though I would say,
you know, politicians, this may seem counterintuitive, but are often
the last people to know whenever something organically is pushing up.
You know, I'm I guess on the forefront of a
YouTube show. I mean in ways like I have real
time analytics day to day about how people are feeling.
You only get a democratic kind of feel about this
once every two to four years, so it can take
(07:07):
a long time for this to bubble up through the
halls of Washington and kind of get rid of some
of the twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, you know more think
tank talking points that I think that you're describing their Tracy.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
David Sachs, the co host of the All In podcast
and the White House's AI and cryptos are He says,
all the negativity is because of effective altruists and this
sort of movement in San Francisco that's pushing these doom scenarios.
Are all these people that you follow and talk to
or that follow you, are they all like reading EA substacks?
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Is that where they're getting they have they have no
idea what EA even is. I've actually had to do
a few explainers on the show about effective altruism, you know,
and again the vast majority of my audience. I mean,
these are you know, Uber drivers and hotel these are
just normal people who are kind of like going about
their day to day life. David is absolutely wrong on
this issue. I mean, he may be structurally correct in
(07:59):
terms of the way that the rhetoric around AI that
causes a Dario and an Elon and others to like
go on shows and talk specifically about how you're not
gonna work, but you're gonna be okay, and this whole
idea that kind of backstops EA. But this is really
just like small d democratic like pushback, I really think,
and I also think an idea of really been rolling
(08:20):
around in my head. I'm curious for what you guys think.
Is that at the heart of the social media revolution,
we're some newer upstarts. You know, we never heard of
Mark Zuckerberg. We never heard of. You know, even if
we push back to Google's you know, these guys were
revolutionary entrepreneurs this time around. You know, they sold us
the promise of social media, and regardless of whether you
think it's good or not, we don't really have a
(08:41):
high level of societal trust in you know, the Arab
Spring and all that, And these are the very same
people now making these multi billion dollars in some cases
trillion dollar bets on AI and telling us to trust them.
So that's something that really belies that, you know, the
Mark Zuckerberg's of the AI space. Let's I don't know
Alexander Wang like he now works for Zuckerberg. Right, It's
(09:02):
just it's just fundamentally like a little bit different in
terms of who the key players are who are trying
to tell us about the beneficiary of the technology. And
I also think you know, they're no longer talking about
the things that they originally did, Like they were like,
we're going to cure cancer, and it's like, well, Sam,
why are you talking about erotica porn man, Because that's
that's a little bit different. It's like maybe the Internet
(09:24):
in chat ept is just going to be the exact
same as the Internet as it always has been, which
is basically increasing you know, user time in chat EPT.
Putting some ads in there just an a miserating experience,
which of course also has high levels of efficiency for
business use.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
I was going to say exactly that. I'm not sure
it's that people don't trust the promise. It's that the
promise itself doesn't seem that enticing at the moment you
know you're going to lose your job and AI is
going to get to do all the fun stuff in
human life, like make pictures and movies.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
And getting married to an AI model.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, I
thought the erotica thing from Sam was just the biggest tell.
I was like, wow, man, like, we're not talking about biomedical,
We're not talking about chat GPT curing cancer and all
of this. I mean, to be fair to him, he
has talked about the Open Eye Foundation, how they're going
to try and move things in that direction, but all
(10:17):
of the public consumption and everything being you know, Geared,
I don't know if either of you are NFL fans.
Have you noticed the number of chat GPT ads during
NFL game? Now, Oh, it's every game, and it's like
here chat gepts designing my workout, Chat gpt is designing
my vacation. Listen, no hate, but it's basically an extpedia ad. Right,
this is not cancer curing, it's Instagram for teens. It's
(10:39):
chat GPT, Microsoft Copilot. I believe ran an ad about
image generation. You know, the studio Ghibli thing. Yeah, I
mean that's that's not enterprise groundbreaking technology like this is
like you're burning data center or like you're increasing my
power bills so that people can do studio Ghibli recreates.
Like I'm out on this, you know, you know that
that's how I feel.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
There are obviously a number of different concerns that people have,
electricity prices, labor, and we'll get into that. But you
said something interesting, which is that even you know, prior
to AI having come out, prior to late twenty twenty
two and chat shept burst on the scene, people were
already souring on these big techmo goals, you know, on
the right specifically, but also but really across you know,
(11:20):
there's concerned about the algorithm, what's it doing? Shadow banning?
Are certain things being labeled as fake news that aren't
fake news. You know, there was all the backlashing guys
YouTube for what videos they allowed during the pandemic, et cetera.
It feels like, just intuitively, there's no reason that all
of these concerns don't quickly map onto very cleanly, onto
(11:42):
AI concerns.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
You're exactly right. I mean, it already has right and
in some of the early cases. You guys we've all
been around, We remember the early content about Facebook moderation,
remember all of that. I mean, look at what's happening
with chat, GPT, story after story about these suicides and
now erotica, and you know, they're saying the same level
of stuff that Facebook used to say, like oh, we have,
you know, controls in place. And look, I mean, at
(12:05):
some level, I do sympathize, like when a billion people
use your product, you know one percent of them might
be crazy and that's actually a really, really tough problem.
But also, you know, when your technology is being implicated
in all of these insane lawsuits and you have screenshots
and stuff that come out that make people go, WHOA,
I don't even know if I want my nineteen or
twenty year old like anywhere close to this. That really
(12:28):
because of the way that we all lived through those
past conversations show they track exactly onto Sam Altman and
Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, look at the stuff he's had
to deal with with the meta AI Instagram chatbots, you know,
for teenagers, and it's funny because they're trying to get
ahead of it to the NFL thing. I watch these
ads closely. Like one of the big ads right now
(12:48):
ad campaigns is Instagram for teens, which they're like, we
have safety stuff, you know, like that's kind of baked in,
and they're trying to get ahead of it because you know,
you don't run that ad if you don't have The
Anxious Generation as one of the top best selling books
in the United States, Like it's an upper middle class
like revolution now about people who are like against iPad
kiss right, And I think that's going to track very
(13:09):
very cleanly onto AI. There's no reason that I shouldn't.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
How would you describe the relationship between you know, the
people running some of the biggest tech companies now versus
years past, because I remember, you know, we're talking a
little bit about some of the scandals and discussions about
political influence and what is actually shown on Facebook, and
I get the sense that once upon a time in
d C, people did kind of feel like big tech
(13:51):
was in control. Right, it was d C coming to big.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Tech for help.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
And now I'm thinking back to the inauguration when we
had you know, people like Bezos and I think Zuckerberg
was there as well, Yes he was, and they're sort
of you know, I don't know how I saw one person.
I'm not going to describe it this way myself, but
I did see one person describe it as a hostage
situation where the big tech CEOs, you know, they're all
(14:17):
gathered in front of Trump and they seem kind of scared.
They're smiling, they're smiling, but not with their eyes. How
would you describe the relationship now between the administration and
you know, the big wigs of big tech.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, that's a great question, because you know what I'm
talking about a small d democratic politics. Now you're just
asking about power politics. Our politics here is very different.
I mean, you know, David Sachs has navigated his position incredibly. Well,
you know, Joe, there was a funny incident I think
I talked to you about this where I found a
snippet I think was a Financial Times piece and it
was just about it was like AI accounts for eighty
percent of stock gains and x percent of GDP in
(14:53):
terms of CAPEX, and David Sachs like retweeted it and
I was like, oh, so you think that's a good thing,
you know. I was like, I was like, oh, I
was like, okay, but you know that's actually if you're
in the Trump White House right now, you need this.
You know, you need the rally, you need the GDP
and the data center spend because that's what's propping up again.
You're the economist. Just from my listening to you and
(15:14):
reading Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Financial Times and others like,
that's a main reason why Joe you were like, well,
I don't think we're in a recession. Derek Thompson has
written very eloquently about this as well. Is just how
much of that spend currently accounts for why things seem okay.
So there is like a real alliance I think right
now between the Jensen's, David and even Sam Altman and others,
(15:36):
like they all come to the White House and announce
their crazy deals. For a reason, they get these awesome
press conferences from Trump. I mean there's the famous moment
where Zuck what he leads over to Trump, He's like,
I didn't know how much you wanted me to say.
I'm like, wow, okay, So you know you could I mean,
you could describe that as at heel. You could also
say he's got to bend over and kiss the ring
(15:56):
while also being able to basically just do whatever he wants.
So there is I think a very you know, alliance
of convenience right now, where the amount of money they're
pumping into the economy, the amount of stock value that
they're creating, is extremely beneficial to the Scott Bessens and
others of the world. Talking about MAGA economics.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Let's talk a little bit more about electoral politics specifically.
Ron DeSantis actually seems to be trying to make a
carveline for himself early on, even before the Sarah Friar comments,
actually saying no bailouts for AI companies, Like, what do
you see right now in terms of candidate positioning.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, that's it's all very early signaling. And that's actually
you know, I love this because usually one of the
things I hate most about politics recently it's all top down.
Do you have guys who are running for city council
talking about impeachment or something. It's like, dude, tell me
about the roads, you know, but actually this one is
really bottom up, you know, the data center stuff. It's Tucson.
Actually here in northern Virginia where I live, there's a
(16:52):
big comment and there's a lot of public controversy about
data centers. My state, Virginia, forty percent of our power
is consumed actually by data. Oregon is like thirty three percent,
I believe of power. There's been a lot of local
stuff and it hasn't really bubbled to the national level.
And I would say people here they care about money,
but they also care about electability. So there's an ocean
(17:12):
of money to be had if you're quote pro AI
or pro tech, but they'll always choose their own careers.
It went, and if you know, it does come down
to that, I haven't seen it bubble up yet. I
did see I'm not sure if you guys did that.
Bernie Sanders and a few of other progressives signed a
letter against data centers specifically, and that was the first
indication that I'm like, Ah, the staffers, they're paying attention, right,
(17:34):
they're listening to the pods. They're reading David Weigel's piece
about data center politics, and they're trying to operationalize that
into something at the national level. You're exactly right in
terms of dron desantists tried to pick that lane about bailout,
and that actually gets to something very recently where you
talked about Sarah's comments. I mean, we did a segment
about that, and it was huge about the open AI
(17:55):
bail out because people can feel it. They're like, I've
seen this movie before. They're you know, you know that. Yeah,
they make twenty billion, but they've got seventy five billion
in projected losses to twenty twenty eight. They've got a
trillion dollar in committed spend. You know, the pe ratios
and all this are so crazy, and if it doesn't
work out, they're going to say, oh, well, we need
you to bail us out, or we need you to
(18:15):
build the data centers for us and take all the
most expensive part of our business out. They are inherently
distrustful already of the numbers, and I think this is
very American, like you don't want to be controlled. And
the AI people tell us about how this is the
second Industrial Revolution and it's like, well, you know, then
we should probably look to the politics of the previous
industrial revolutions. You know, the railroad obviously, like had a
(18:38):
tremendous benefit. It doesn't take a week or it took
a week to go to California instead of three months.
That's awesome. But you know, very quickly in the eighteen
eighties and eighteen nineties Titanic, you know, uprisings in the
Midwest of farmers feeling like they're being controlled and anti
railroad politicians were some of the original like anti industrial
populace in Washington, even though originally everybody he was really sold.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
I didn't know that the politicians.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Oh yeah, yeah, there definitely were. They were all throughout
the eighteen nineties, some of the original populist party. And
you look at what that all was. A lot of
it was about the railroad. And you know, I mean
there's legendary stories Texas where you and I are from,
Joe White, Patman, I'd have to write right back. Yeah.
There were like people like Sam Rayburn actually famously the
very anti railroad. He wouldn't take the free railroad passes.
(19:25):
These were like big, big stories all the way up
until the nineteen twenties, and so and so I see
a very similar kind of track, except though that I'm
not so sure that the socialized benefits will be as
good as the railroad, because the railroad, at the end
of the day, it was awesome. I could go to
California in a week. I don't have to take the
stagecoach or the Oregon Trail or whatever. This time around,
(19:46):
I'm like, listen, I don't know if you guys have
used Sora. Sorry, Like, it's not worth the power bills.
It's not worth it.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Tracy's insisting that I correct that I'm not really a
real Texan. I only went to college there.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
He's a photo true. Okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
This is important to me as someone with a dad
who was raised in Dallas and Lancaster. Anyway, I was
just thinking, you know, we were talking about populism in
the eighteen hundreds, and did you ever see the interpretations
of the Wizard of oz as.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was farmers who's like wanted
to move a silver backed currency, and a lot of
it supposedly was tied to populism.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Anyway, I wanted to go back to power politics for
one second, and ask what the heck JD. Evans is
going to do here, because it's not impossible that he
is the chosen successor to Trump in whatever timeframe, and
in that case, he's sort of stuck between I guess
two peas here, populism and Peter Teel.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Yeah, well, you know, it's a lot more peas than
that actually, because it's popularism, it's Trump, it's Tea. I mean,
you know, the Teal thing. I've always thought it was
frankly a little bit overstated terms of influence. But regardless,
I wouldn't say more like Teal sphere or Teal thought
if that makes sense. Like, as you guys know, probably
most of the people listening to this, like there's an
(21:09):
entire like ecosystem around like zero you know, zero to
one posting and all of that within tech anyway, So
that sphere, let's call it, right tech, I guess, you know,
to be extremely reductive, that sphere is really the one
which currently embodies, you know, really a lot of this
more pro AI direction. Let's say, Palenteer, Alex KRP and others.
But even he is fascinating, right because he's pro AI,
(21:31):
but only for Palenteer, and he thinks the rest of
this up. So like these things do break down. But Jad,
I mean, look, he's gonna be in a tough position
as well because he also it's not exactly like in
repudiate the Trump administration. I actually think it's one of
his biggest weaknesses going into twenty twenty eight. I mean,
you guys will remember they savaged Kamala for the what
would you do different conversation from Biden? I mean, how
(21:54):
do you answer that when Donald Trump is still alive
and you about to run. You know you're gonna get
destroyed if you say the truth. And I mean, look,
I don't know where things are gonna end up. Trump
is basically trending in Biden territory right now in terms
of his approval ratings. And so look, you know, we
saw that movie, and in my opinion, when you start
chart posting about how the economy is actually good, you're cooked.
(22:16):
You know, to borrow a phrase from the youth about politics,
but yeah, you're the power politics of it are really
I think trepidacious. So I think for a lot of
the right because they don't want to get away from
Elon and from his money. Right, Elon is very very
powerful center. I think in Republican politics. XAI. He's got
this huge new data center project. I'm sure you guys
(22:37):
have read or seen something about that. He's probably going
to demand, you know, certain things. And at the same time,
you're i mean a huge amount of the right wing
commentariot who would probably be more jd vance ideologically position
let's say, like the Matt Walsh's of the world, that
Tucker Carlson's of the world. These were were straight up
on record as this is, you know, demonic. We need
to stand for humanity, and it's going to be very tough.
(23:00):
I actually think it might be the single toughest position
that you'll have to navigate in the campaign. And I
think that the left, the political left in particular, they
are looking at this data center stuff. They are all
over it. More Perfect Union, which is one of those
it's like a Bernie aligned institution. They have been all
over this issue. So I'm watching the populace left really
(23:20):
really grab onto it. And I think a democratic position
in twenty twenty eight is going to come down hard
in terms of either regulation or protecting Americans, you know,
reforming power. However, it's going to be there. They are
going to be there and the right is going to
have a very tough time.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
It's interesting because, like even ten years ago, we thought
of Silicon Valley as like basically being democratic aligned, right
like most big tech executives. And I still think, you know,
most people in San Francisco obviously vote Democrat, including a
lot of high people at these tech companies. But there's
this well known shift that everyone talks about and they've
got much more comfortable. But it feels like to me
(23:57):
they could you know, they've moved, they've switched asides to
like they could.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Kind of end up friendless and all this. Oh, I
mean I already I think that they massively overplayed their
hand with DOGE. And I mean, you know, look, I
for being honest, just look at the stats. Like it's
a total failure in terms of its stated project. You
could debate whether USA I D or whatever is bad.
I mean, Treasury data is public, guys, you can go
read it for yourself in terms of spending. So that's
(24:23):
one thing. But two, you're exactly right, Joe in terms
of the fair weather friend nature of all of this
is that you know, a in terms of the way
that a lot of the democratic base has been radicalized
at this point, they're never going back. And then in
the right wing coalition, you know, I don't want to
go too deep in the weeds here, but like, yeah,
I mean the tech the tech right. Let's take this
(24:44):
H one B thing for example. This is like a huge,
huge split right now in the political right because a
lot of these tech guys are very pro H one B.
You know, Elon famously said he would fight to the
death over the issue of H one B. This was
during the whole fight, you know, in December before Trump
took office, and Trump ultimately he just did an interview
a few days ago where he embraced H one B,
(25:06):
say actually, we need more talent. But there's a lot
of the activist political right which is vary against that
and increasingly are blaming a lot of these tech right
politicians for hijacking the administration. So that's why, you know,
for them, I would be very careful as to how
exactly you know they're going to navigate. There's also I mean,
this breaks on foreign policy lines as well, because a
(25:28):
subset of the tech right is also very pro Israel,
which is also a very divisive issue. I don't want
to drag that into this, but only to say, like
Joe Lonsdale, Sean Maguire, these are you know, very very
rich people, very activated in the current you know, cohort
of MAGA, but not exactly like beloved. Let's say amongst
a different segment you know, of the American right. And
(25:49):
so I could see a huge clash coming to the
front with that. And that's another issue I would say,
you know, for a JD. Vance is like, I'm sure
he's friendly with them, and that's easy when Trump is
papering over all these coalitional politics. But that's going to
break out into the open like nobody's business in a primary,
and I could see it. I could see them becoming
friendless quickly because again, I mean, look, I could be wrong.
(26:12):
I don't think that that's where the base is. I
really don't, just because if we look at the math
of who are the people increasingly identifying as MAGA or
Republican Like, people making less than one hundred thousand dollars
a year are not going to be cheering on, you know,
multi billionaires telling them that they don't have to work,
that they're not gonna work anymore, not that they don't
have to work anymore. They're not going to work anymore more,
(26:34):
blue collar types. I mean, you know the driverless you know,
the driverless trucks issue. Like the Teamsters president, I had
him on my show, just going hard, Sean O'Brien, famously
the only union president to not endorse in the election.
Much more Trump friendly, So that part of the coalition
is gonna have something to say, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
I feel like we saw some of the sensitivity burst
into the open with the h one B Visa comments
when Trump was like, we don't have enough talent in America. Yeah,
I mean Twitter slash x just exploded.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
I ask you to take all the jobs and the
jobs that will be left. We're also going to Yeah, yeah,
that's right. Whatever jobs are left, they'll be in India.
So you're like, I don't know about that.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Okay, So I feel like I know the answer to
this question. But if a lot of people are going
to be unable to work, is there anyone in DC
or elsewhere who is talking about universal basic income?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Andrew Yang I just Adam on the show. He's doing
the biggest victory lap over all of this. You know,
I have not seen it. I know even Bernie famously,
I think it's against UBI. I have to go back
and check. He's more of a federal jobs guarantee guy,
and that's the most most out there. Like I said,
I mean to be honest covering politics now, I've only
(27:48):
watched them play catch up. I mean famously, I've talked
with Jack Dorsey and others about this. But like those
famous hearings where they'd be like, so, how does Facebook,
you know, make money? And you're like, oh my god, man,
you know, in front of these hearings when the congressmen
you know, don't even know the most basic facets, or
they'll be asking stuff like why do my campaign emails
get stuck in gmails? Filters? Like these are real questions
(28:11):
that were asked in Friday, the United States senator in
the Congress. So I don't have a lot of faith
that there are a lot of very forward facing thinkers
around this issue, and in particular, I mean I know
that to be the case. It could change in twenty
twenty six. I think a dem you know, tea party
type wave is coming. There might be some interesting candidates
(28:31):
that start to say things like that, and maybe on
the Republican side as well. I'd like to see it.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
We've been talking a lot about the right, the Republicans.
I actually really like a lot of these guys. But
when I think about the other side of the aisle
and I think about some of these tensions, as you mentioned,
more perfect union and some of the more you know,
kind of populous left things, I'm not very bullish on
the abundance Dems right now, and how that sort of
(29:11):
faction that would like to sort of take the party
in a sort of more you know, I guess, I
don't know, centrist, but a centrist moderate liberal realm. Yeah,
whatever it is. I don't know how you feel. Give
us your sort of your view on the other side
of the aisle, definitely.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
I mean the interesting thing about the whole abundance thing
and all of that is, I think, you know what
it misses is the theory of control. And you know,
it's like more housing awesome, you know, but it doesn't
get to ownership, I guess, and the feeling of like
the ability to control your own destiny, which I think
is really baked into the American spirit and the American project.
(29:49):
And you know, you see stuff like this about debates
around housing and you know, they'll kind of ridicule this
idea about corporate ownership, and you know, I'm not going
to get into the weeds about whether that's even true
or not. I know there's a lot of controversy, but
the idea is definitely very popular, right, you know, for
a lot of people. And the reason why is fundamentally,
they're like, I'm being priced out of my ability to
(30:11):
buy a home. Like it really, what it is about
is about you know, the individuality of reclaiming your own destiny.
And that's why that's why those two things are very linked.
You know, it's about power. You know, to kind of
bring back to Tracy's question earlier about you know, beating China,
et cetera, it's the technology is not the same as
the companies that are in charge. And when you see
(30:33):
these swelling valuations and talks of bailouts and the encroachment
into your daily life or your office, and you see
headlines about firing workers, you know, on the promise of AI.
None of this goes to the heart about democratic input.
You know, I was thinking about that in terms of
the chatchypt suicide question, which I know is fringe from
(30:53):
their point of view, but I think it's important if
billions of people are going to use your technology. And
Sam famously in a Tucker car else an interview, was like, well,
in a country where assistant suicide is legal, like, would
you direct people to those resources? He effectively said yes,
And I was like, oh my god, I mean, then
you know chat ept's mental health standards. In my opinion,
(31:14):
like there needs to be some like there needs to
be stuff hashed out in the US Congress and at
the state and the local level where like we all
agree on what so called guardrails and acceptable norms are.
And I can't just be leaving it to Sam Altman.
I'm sorry, I think you know, no offense to that guy.
It's not even about him, it's about everybody. No, but
no one person should have that immense amount of power
(31:35):
which is going to affect millions and millions amow. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
And it just seems incredibly difficult to have any democratic
input into what are effectively black boxes, right and have
always been black boxes. I have a very basic question,
but is anyone in DC using AI in an interesting way?
I imagine you know, people are probably editing policy papers
or whatever with it and doing some research, but is
(32:00):
anyone I don't know creating lots of AI driven bots
to sway conversations, or I don't know, come up with
some new system of campaign finance. Who knows.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
I'm not privy to any of this secret stuff like you.
I mean that kind of either, Just to be clear,
I mean it kind of begs the question is is
anything interesting being done with A right? You know what
you just said of editing papers? Everybody's editing papers great,
you know, awesome. A friend of mine, John Coogan, I'm
sure you guys know, Yeah, yeah, I think John had
a great analogy to AI. He was like, I kind
(32:32):
of think it'll be like the credit card, you know,
like frictionless payments. It enabled an entire new ecosystem. We
could build wealth. It'll make your life like a little
bit better, you know, and all that. I think that's
basically the technology, right, you know, summarizing editing. It's a
better Google. That's cool and all that. But I haven't
yet seen like some mass sophisticated thing. I mean, to
be honest, you know, most people in DC are probably
(32:54):
using AI for editing purposes, research, to check things, what else?
I mean, image generation to slander your political opponents. That's
a pretty big one. We use it for thumbnails for
our YouTube videos. You know, Like, I guess that's cool,
you know, I mean, yeah, it's nice. It's definitely nice.
It's not that I don't have. I also have photoshop
guys who worked for me, so you know, they use
it a little bit every once in a while. But
(33:15):
I haven't seen anything truly novel. I really have it.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
You know, in terms of elected officials who maybe a
few years ago this would have been a surprise, but
who seemed to have an very good intuitions about things mergery,
Taylor Green, one of these names. Was like, Oh, I'm like,
she seems savvy in a way that maybe people wouldn't
have guessed. Has she been talking about AI at all?
Speaker 1 (33:37):
You know, I haven't looked. Definitely, I haven't seen anything
in particular. I can almost guess where she would land them. Yeah,
especially look, her own home state is now ground zero
for a statewide referendum. Again, talk to us about that.
We haven't actually told us. We haven't.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
This Georgia election, I know, it was like kind of powers,
elect empowers and electricity stuff. It's kind of directly on
the ballot.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Right, Yeah, two races literally about power. Both made Democratic candidates,
they made data centers power usage like a central part
of their campaign, and they won a huge victory. I
don't want to ascribe the entire thing. Let's be honest.
In a national environment, a lot of people are decrets, right,
but it was it was an awesome night for Democrats. Right.
But look, I mean in a certain way, like those
(34:19):
arguments still are really finding a lot of salience because
you know these stories about power going up, and look,
I mean everybody remembers, you know, the walmartization conversation, the
Amazon warehouse conversation. Nobody loves this idea of these big
companies coming in buying land, using a ton of resources,
(34:40):
driving prices up. Nobody buys the BS anymore. About how
this is going to create a ton of jobs. I mean,
definitely some construction jobs. But nobody's really under the illusion.
Everybody knows tech is a power law business. You know,
the vast majority of the wealth is going to flow
up to the top of the CEO and the networks
of Zuck and Elon and the rest of these people.
So that's where politics of this really matter. And you know,
(35:02):
heat map I shouted them out They wrote a great
piece about the data center backlashes swallowing American politics, and
you should go read it just to even look at polling,
not just about Georgia. I mean, this is bipartisan at
every level. And younger generations are the most anti data center,
anti AI kind of politics. And I mean, look, they're suffering.
I mean, they have a high unemployment rate right now.
A lot of them either blame AI or look at
(35:24):
AI is one of the reasons why they're having a
tough time in the labor market. And you know, it
doesn't help. Whenever you see Wall Street Journal articles just
about white collar companies increasingly bet on more productivity out
of existing workforce, like this stuff confirmed. It both confirms
biases and it's real, so it's not even particularly a bias.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
What is the state of antitrust at the moment, because
I remember at the beginning of this year, it seemed
like it was emerging as a possibly bipartisan issue or
at least a direct link between the Biden administration and
the Trump administration. Everyone wanted to go after the big
tech companies, possibly for different reasons, but you know, the
outcomes the same. Is that still a live issue?
Speaker 1 (36:03):
In DC. Yeah. I mean, look, speaking quite candidly, like
the state of the government is like large portions of
it for sale and for you know, large portions of
it are basically you know, they are very beholden to
financial interests. I'll put that very politely, shall I at
least about who can get to Trump's ear, who can
(36:24):
get and have some influence with the administration. I don't
want to poop poo it entirely, you know, when big
money or a donor or something like that is not involved.
The FTC has done some good work and has been
looking to try and confirmed, but they've also quite honestly,
you know, moved bass some of the antitrust cases and
others that Lena Khan put forward. So I would say
it's mixed. I mean, I think that the look, this
(36:45):
stuff is happening on in the open, so I don't
even know, I'm afraid of saying it. Like he convenes
the tech CEOs and they are like, how much money
do you want me to announce? And they'll just do it,
you know. I Mean, that's pretty much is the whole
ball game. And I think that gets to the kind
of power alliance I talked about earlier, like the Trump
administration really needs these companies for headlines and because they're
propping up the economy in their stock marketing.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
So so this is exactly where I wanted to ask
you about next, which is if there's one tension here,
which is the stock market itself has sort of become
a populist issue. Right, This seem is very strange to
talk about the stock market and populism in the same sentence,
But you see all of the different people you know
who will randomly pull up on their phone various stock positions.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Well, Trump himself also benchmarks and Trump.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Talks about the stock market, so you know, this whole
time is like, oh, it's you know, it's main Street's turn,
et cetera. But a lot of young people, people who
are middle class or lower middle class feel either directly
either very directly in the stock market where they feel
like they have some very interest in it. How does
that intersect with this? What do you see like among
like the commenters on your show in terms of like
(37:53):
how they think about you know, just the sort of
betting and everything and investing in trading stuff.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
That's a great question. I mean, I don't know, there's
like a couple of different angles to it, right, because
the Trump people ridiculed Biden for saying the economy was good,
but now they're doing the exact same thing. You guys know,
the S and P did pretty well under Biden. Right,
let's be honest, start benchmarketing from the day took office
to the day off. I forget the exact number, it's
like sixty eighty percent. Like these are decent returns over
(38:19):
the four year period. But it's not like anybody at
home was like, oh, the economy is so much better.
But of course politicians do that, you know, whenever they
come into office. But Joe, I mean, you're not wrong,
And I guess this is a much more meta conversation
where I mean you and you and I have talked
about this privately. The numbers got to go up, right,
because all of our futures are in the number. Like,
we don't have pensions in this country, We don't have
(38:40):
a robust social safety net until we turn sixty five,
So in the interim robust, Yeah, and then it gets
very robust. And that's a separate combo. But yeah, I
mean in the interim, like you know, your hopes of
retirement your hopes of buying something or asset appreciation, like
that's all we got. And I think that the increasing
financialization hope is exactly behind crypto sports betting issue and
(39:03):
very passionately against this is exactly why is I think,
you know, it removed a lot of the hope kind
of undergirding the stability of the American foundation, and within
that speculation and fast riches and plus, I mean, the
tech is so good. I mean, have you guys placed
trades on robin Hood, you know, with the and everything,
you gotta go do it. You know, you got to
(39:23):
feel it, put a little bit, put a position behind it,
and you'll see exactly that's the responsible thing to do.
Go put a couple of hundred into the spy and
but you'll just.
Speaker 3 (39:34):
See like like celebratory Oh yeah, animations when you place
the trade.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
It's happened to me recently, Yeah exactly. But I mean
I can see how you know, addictive that this can
all be. And they send you a million push notifications
a day, you know, the opposite of what a good
investor should do, Like, oh, stock is down five percent,
stock is up two percent. You know, they want you
click and staying in the app and the charts, everything
(40:02):
is designed for you to kind of be in there.
So these are big tech companies which they make a
lot of money doing this stuff. And you can see
why societally, structurally and technologically why that this became kind
of like a democratic issue.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
By the way, while we're recording this, just breaking the
breaking news from Bloomberg Thinking Machines Lab and artificial intelligence
startup funded by former Open ai executive Mirror Murati early
talks to raise a new round of funding a roughly
fifty billion dollars valuation.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
So every time we record an episode about AI, a
headline comes out recording.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Yeah, it helps us benchmark where we are. That is
so crazy, It's so didn't core there was something I
saw research every day every day every day was one
yesterday and a new one hundred billion anthropic anthrop data
center exactly. It's just I mean, I don't know, I
really That's why I love your show. Thank you. Just
(40:55):
thinking about you know, I've been doing a lot of
John Cassidy dot com dot com reading, you know, back
from two thousand and vendor finance and just thinking really
deeply about it because I do think, you know, if
that look, you know, I don't know today, tomorrow, a
few years, who knows, you know, where exactly it comes.
But some sort of downturn is probably inevitable, and the
(41:17):
political ramifications of that are just so immense, you guys, know,
with the downturn in the stock market, interest rates, reduction
in workforce. I'm really afraid.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
This is the thing, which is that there's already this
backlash and the stock market is in your record highs
and unemployment is near fifty year lows or whatever, so
we haven't actually seen any of like really bad stuff.
Soccer and Jetty, thank you so much for coming on
to oddlogs.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
That was a love for you guys for having me.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
I love it, Tracy. I thought that was a lot
of fun. You know, this idea that like there's already
this backlash that brewing, and we actually don't have widespread
(42:03):
unemployment yet. We haven't had a stock market crash yet
or anything like that. You know, three years of a
long time. We have no idea what the economy is
going to look like in twenty twenty eight or really
even twenty twenty six. But if there's so much negativity
already building, right, that sort of tells you tells you
a lot.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
Right, If people are angry with the SMP at like
six thousand, seven hundred, how are they going to feel
when it's like below six thousand. Yeah, I mean I
think everyone is agreed at this point that this is
going to become a political issue, right, and the only
question is how big and then what the response actually
is to it. The other thing I'm thinking is because
(42:41):
relationships both within the government and between the government and
private entities seem so I'm just going to say, complicated
and fluid at the moment, it seems really hard to
guess like which direction this is going to go in.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Totally, it seems really hard to guess. I thought your
question about is anyone talking about you ubi?
Speaker 1 (43:00):
And this is really interesting.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
It's grim like how there seems to be almost no
truly forward thinking politics. I mean, really, this conversation should
have been happening throughout the twenty twenty four election, right,
like this was like obviously going to be a massive
thing and the stakes would be incredibly high. It was
virtually non existent.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
That was just a year ago.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, So I think that really tells you something. And
the fact that by and large, you know there's a
couple of people tweeting about it here and there, like
maybe Aron DeSantis, but by and large, this still doesn't
seem to be something that any elected official like wants
to sort of carve their land out.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Yeah, and it's probably not until unemployment actually picks up
that you're going to see like people actually start to
talk about some possible solutions, but again it's hard to
see what those are.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
We're just like, yeah, thinking and advance any of this stuff.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Yeah, all right, shall we leave it there?
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Sure, let's leave it there.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guests Sager and Jetty. He's at e Sager.
Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Kerman Armann, dash Ol
Bennett at dashbod at Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. For more Odd
Lots content, go to Bloomberg dot com. Slash odd Lots
were a bid daily newsletter and all of our episodes,
and you can chat about all of these topics. Twenty
four seven in our discord Discord dot gg slash odd Lots.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
And if you enjoy odd Lots, if you like it
when we talk about the political ramifications of AI, then
please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform.
And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can
listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All
you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on
Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening,
(45:04):
Nan
Hosts And Creators
Joe Weisenthal
Tracy Alloway
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