The Politics of AI Are About to Explode

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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 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. 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.

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.

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

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 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.

this issue. I mean, he may be structurally correct in 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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.

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 AI concerns.

you know, controls in place. And look, I mean, at 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 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 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

very cleanly onto AI. There's no reason that I shouldn't.

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.

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 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 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, 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 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.

Actually here in northern Virginia where I live, there's a 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 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,

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 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 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

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.

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, 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.

if that makes sense. Like, as you guys know, probably most of the people listening to this, like there's an 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, 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 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.

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 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. 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

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.

got much more comfortable. But it feels like to me they could you know, they've moved, they've switched asides to like they could.

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

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,

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 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 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.

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,

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.

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 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 that start to say things like that, and maybe on the Republican side as well. I'd like to see it.

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.

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

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 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 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, 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

which is going to affect millions and millions amow. Yeah.

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 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 I haven't seen anything truly novel. I really have it.

But look, I mean in a certain way, like those 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, 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, 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 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.

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 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.

that intersect with this? What do you see like among like the commenters on your show in terms of like how they think about you know, just the sort of betting and everything and investing in trading stuff.

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 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 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 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.

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.

really That's why I love your show. Thank you. Just 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 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.

is to it. The other thing I'm thinking is because 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.