Hello and welcome to another episode of the OddLotss podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

And I'm Tracy Aloway.

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 and journalists, you know.

Absolutely. I cannot imagine what that job is. I sometimes look at some of the stuff that our colleagues in the uh political media have to report on and like look like a lot of it does touch what we do and there obviously like there's no way to avoid it all together and obviously some of the stuff has big implications but by and large you know getting to look at the numbers on a chart or learning how you know debt structures work or learning how cardboard boxes work is just much more is very satisfying to me relative to

you prefer the lines over the lines coming from the mouths the politicians lines over lines.

That's a good one.

Thank you.

But it's going to it's going to fall apart, I think, because I think this AI story is such high stakes and there's so many different policy questions, etc., whether it's related to electricity prices or the possibility for labor displacement. I think there's basically no way at this point that 2028, maybe even 2026, AI somehow is going to be a big political story in a way that it was not really in 2024. Well, I think you're already seeing it in 2025, right? So, we had Sarah Frier came out and said she was talking about maybe getting a government back stop for AI capex spending.

This is the open AI CFO.

Yes. And of course, she rolled it back a little bit, but it got really but not really. And it got everyone talking about, you know, what is the government's involvement or obligations here? Uh we know that JD Vance of course has been supported by Peter Teal who has very strong and possibly idiosyncratic opinions when it comes to AI. 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.

I don't think you know we're recording this November 13. I don't like we're probably not currently in a recession though the economy is not booming but who knows exactly but you know if you imagine a recession is going on and here is 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 placing greater strain on electricity and as you mentioned there's the possibility that oh maybe the government should back I mean this is a this is a powder keg

absolutely yeah

all right 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 vas. 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 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 Jetty. He is the co-host of Breaking Points. uh massive popular podcast, knows a lot more about all the political dimensions than we do. So, Sager, thank you so much for uh coming on OddLots.

Thank you for having me, guys. Longtime listener and congratulations on your 10 year anniversary.

Thank you so much. You've been doing these segments on AI and they're blowing up on YouTube, 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 Daario and Elon and Sam Alman just routinely go on podcasts in 2025, right? And they're just like, "Yeah, we are going to replace you. 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 mapap 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 Bull work and Ryan Grim, co-host of mine, Farlefty, and then Matt Walsh are all agreeing on attacking AI with John Favro of Pod Save America coming in. We're not really 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 was also one of the promises. That's kind of behind the entire pitch.

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 gonna die 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?

Yeah, I 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 everything's kind of seems rolled up fundamentally that you guys are know 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 disagregate 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 push back 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 of a YouTube show. I mean in ways like I have real-time analytics daytoday about how people are feeling. You only get a Democratic kind of feel about this once every 2 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 2018 2019 you know more think tank talking points that I think that you're describing there.

Tracy David Saxs the co-host of the All-In podcast and the White House's AI and cryptosar. He says all the negativity is because of effective altruists and the 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? Is that where they're getting insight from?

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 terms of the way that the rhetoric around AI that causes Adario and Elon and others to like go on shows and talk specifically about how you're not going to work, but you're going to be okay and this whole idea that kind of backs stops EA. But this is really just like small d democratic like push back. I really think and I also think an idea I've 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 were some newer upstarts. You know, we'd never heard of Mark Zuckerberg. We'd 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 multibillion dollar in some cases trillion dollar bets on AI and telling us to trust them. So that's something that really belies it. You know, the Mark Zuckerbergs of the AI space, let's I don't know, Alexander Wang, like he now works for Mark Zuckerberg, right? It's just a 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 and chat GPT is just going to be the exact same as the internet as it always has been, which is basically increasing, you know, user time and chat GPT, putting some ads in there, just an emiserating experience, which of course also has high levels of efficiency for business use.

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

and your children are going to get married to an AI model, so you're not even

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 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 games now?

Oh, it's every game. And it's like here, Chat GPT is designing my workout. ChatGpt is designing my vacation. Listen, no hate, but it's basically an Expedia ad, right? This is not cancer curing. It's Instagram for teens. It's ChatGpt. Microsoft Copilot, I believe, ran an ad about image generation. You know, the studio Ghibli thing. 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.

So, 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 2022 when Chad GBT burst on the scene people were already souring on these big tech moguls you know on the right specifically but also but really across you know there's concern about the algorithm what's it doing shadow banning are cert are certain things being labeled as fake news that aren't fake news you know there was all the backlash against YouTube for what videos they allowed during the pandemic etc. It feels like just intuitively there is no reason that all of these concerns don't quickly map onto very cleanly onto AI concerns.

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 some level I do sympathize like when a billion people use your product you know 1% of them might be crazy and that's a 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 19 or 20-year-old like anywhere close to this that really because of the way that we all lived through those past conversations, Joe, they track exactly onto Sam Alman and Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, look at the stuff he's had to deal with with the meta AI Instagram chat bots, you know, for teenagers. And it's funny because they're trying to get ahead of it to 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." 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 bestselling books in the United States like it's an upper middle class like revolution now about people who are like against iPad kits right and I think that's going to track very very cleanly onto AI there's no reason that it shouldn't

How would you describe the relationship between, you know, the people running some of the biggest tech companies now versus years past? cuz 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 DC, people did kind of feel like big tech was in control, right? It was DC coming to big tech for help. 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 there sort of, you know, I I 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 [laughter] the the big tech CEOs, you know, they're all gathered in front of Trump and they seem kind of scared.

They're smiling, but

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?

Yeah, that's a great question because you know what I'm talking about is small D democratic politics. Now you're asking about power politics. Power politics here is very different. I mean you know David Saxs 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 it was a Financial Times piece and it was just about it was like AI accounts for 80% of stock gains and X% of GDP in terms of capex and David Saxs 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 Sens David and even Sam Alman 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 did he leans over to Trump and 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 Bessants and others of the world. Talking about MAGA economics.

Let's talk a little bit more about electoral politics specifically. Ronda Santis actually seems to be trying to make a carve a lane for himself early on even before the Sarah Frier comments actually saying no bailouts for AI companies like what do you see right now in terms of candidate positioning.

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. You have guys who are running for city council talking about impeachment or something. It's like, dude, what? 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 was a big comment and there's a lot of public controversy about data centers. My state, Virginia, 40% of our power is consumed actually by data centers. Oregon is like 33% 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 when 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 Wiggle'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 Ronda Santis 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 bailout because people can feel it. They're like, I've seen this movie before. They're, you know, you know, yeah, they make 20 billion, but they've got 75 billion in projected losses to 2028. They've got a trillion dollar in committed spend. You know, the p 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 a 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 tremendous benefit. It doesn't take a week or it took a week to go to California instead of 3 months. That's awesome. But, you know, very quickly in the 1880s and 1890s, 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 populists in Washington, even though originally everybody was really sold at the idea politicians.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, there definitely were.

Uh, there were all throughout the 1890s, some of the original populist party, if you go 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 I'd have to right back. Yeah. There were other like people like Sam Rayburn actually famously was very anti- railroad. He wouldn't take the free railroad passes. These were like big big stories all the way up until the 1920s. 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 stage coach 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 It's not worth it.

Tracy's insisting that I correct that I'm not really a real Texan. I only went to college there.

He's a college.

Truly. Anyway.

Okay. All right.

This is important to me as someone with a dad who was raised in Dallas and Lancaster. I

know. Anyway, I was just thinking, you know, we were talking about populism in the 1800s and did you ever see the interpretations of the Wizard of Oz as like

Yeah. something about the silver.

Yeah. It was farmers who like wanted to move to silverbacked currency and a lot of it supposedly was tied to populism. Anyway, I wanted to go back to power politics for one second and ask what the heck JD Vance is going to do here because it's not impossible that he is the chosen successor to Trump in whatever time frame

and in that case he's sort of stuck between I guess two P's here, populism and Peter Teal.

Yeah. Well, you know, so it's it's a lot more peas than that actually because it's [laughter] populism, it's Trump, it's teal. I mean, you know, the teal thing, I've always thought it was frankly a little bit overstated in terms of influence. But regardless, I would 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 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 techch, 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 Palanteer, Alex Karp, and others. But even he is fascinating, right? Because he's pro AAI, but only for Palanteer and he thinks that the rest [laughter] suck. So like these things do break down. But JD, I mean, look, he's going to be in a tough position as well because he also, it's not exactly like he can repudiate the Trump administration. I actually think it's one of his biggest weaknesses going into 2028. I mean, you guys will remember they savaged Kamla 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 [laughter] have to run? You know, you're going to get destroyed if you say the truth. And I mean, look, I don't know where things are going to 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 uh 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 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 commentariat who would probably be more JD Vance ideologically positioned, let's say, like the Matt Walshes of the world, the Tucker Carlson's of the world, these people are 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 populist left really, really grab on to it. And I think a democratic position in 2028 is going to come down hard in terms of either regulation or protecting Americans, you know, reforming power, however it's going to be. They're they are going to be there and the right is going to have a very tough time. It's interesting because like even 10 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 they could, you know, they've move they've switched sides to some extent. Like they could kind of end up friendless in all this.

Yeah. Oh, I mean I I already I I I think that they massively overplayed their hand with Doge and I mean, you know, it's look, I mean, if we're being honest, just look at the stats. Like, it's a total failure in terms of its stated project. You could debate whether USAD 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 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

I actually kind of want you to go deep. I kind of want you to go deep in the

Yeah. I mean, the tech the tech right, let's take this H-1B 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-1B. You know, Elon famously said he would fight to the death over the issue of H1B. 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-1B, say actually we need more talent. But there's a lot of the activist political right, which is very against that, and increasingly are blaming a lot of these techright 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 Lawndale Shawn 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 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 at the math of who are the people increasingly identifying as MAGA or Republican like people making less than $100,000 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 going to work anymore. Not that they don't have to work anymore. They're not going to work anymore. More bluecollar 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 going to have something to say, I think.

Yeah. I feel like we saw some of the sensitivity burst into the open with the H-1B visa comments when Trump was like, "We don't have enough talent in America." I mean Twitter/X just exploded.

I was going to take all the jobs and the jobs [laughter] that will be left were 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. Right.

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?

Uh Andrew Yang. I just had him on my show. He's doing 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 is 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 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 Gmail's filters?" Like, these are real questions that are asked in by the United States Senate and the Congress. So, I don't have a lot of faith that there are a lot of very forwardfacing thinkers around this issue and in particular, I mean, I know that to be the case. It could change in 2026. I think a de 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.

We've been talking a lot about the right, the Republicans. I actually really like a lot these guys, but when I think about the other side of the aisle and I think about some of these tensions, you mentioned more perfect union and some of these more, you know, kind of populist left things, I'm not very bullish on um the abundance dems right now and how that sort of faction that would like to sort of take the party in a sort of more, you know, I guess they I don't know if centrist centrist moderate liberal realm, etc. Yeah, whatever it is. I don't know how you feel. Give us your sort of uh your view on the other side of the aisle.

Definitely. 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. 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, and to kind of bring back to Tracy's question earlier about, you know, beating China, etc. 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 chatbt 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 Carlson interview was like, "Well, in a country where assisted 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, ChachiPT'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 guard rails and acceptable norms are. And I can't just be leaving it to Sam Alman. Sorry. I think you know, no offense to that guy. It's not even about him. It's about everybody. Nobody, no one person should have that immense amount of power, which is going to affect millions and millions of people.

Yeah. And it just seems incredibly difficult to have any democratic input into what are effectively black boxes, right? And have have always been black boxes. I have a very basic question, but is anyone in DC using AI in an interesting way? Um I I imagine you know people are probably editing policy papers or whatever with it and doing some research but like is anyone I don't know

creating lots of AIdriven bots to sway conversations or I don't know come up with some new system of campaign finance who knows

I'm not privy to any of the secret stuff like you I mean that kind of that kind

either just to be clear

I I mean it kind of begs the question is is anything interesting being done with AI right you know what you just said of editing papers everybody's editing papers. Great, you know, awesome. A friend of mine, John Kugan, I'm sure you guys know him. I think he John had a great analogy to AI, he was like, I kind of think it'll be like the credit card, you know, like frictionless payments. It enabled an entire new ecosystem. We can build wealth and 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 work 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.

You know, in terms of elected officials who maybe a few years ago, this would have been a surprise, but who seem to have an very good intuitions about things. Marjgery Taylor Green, one of these names who's 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?

I I you know, I haven't looked definitely. I haven't seen anything in particular. I I can almost guess where she would land though, especially look her own home state is now ground zero for a statewide referendum against

talk to us about that. We haven't actually tell us we haven't this Georgia election. I know it was like kind of power and power is in electricity stuff was kind of directly on the ballot, 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 for Democrats everywhere,

but it was it was an awesome night for Democrats, right? 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 net worths of Zuck and Elon and the rest of these people. So, that's where the politics of this really matter. And you know, heat mapap, I've shouted them out. They wrote a great piece about the data center backlash is swallowing American politics. And you should go read it. Just 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 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 as 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 confirm it both confirms biases and it's real so it's not even particularly a bias.

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 outcome's the same. Is that still a live issue in DC?

Yeah. I mean uh look speaking quite candidly like the state of the government is like large portions of it for sale and for

[laughter]

uh you know large portions of it are basically you know they it are very beholden to financial interest. I'll put that very politely, shall I? At least about who can get to Trump's ear, who can get and have some influence with the administration. I don't want to poo 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 confirm, but they've also quite honestly, you know, moved past some of the antirust 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 out in the open, so I don't even know why 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 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 market. 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 seems 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.

Well, Trump himself also benchmarks himself

and Trump talks about the stock market. So, you know, this whole thing is like, oh, it's, you know, it's Main Street's turn, etc. But a lot of young people, people who are middle class or lower middle class feel either direct, they're either very directly in the stock market or they feel like they have some very interest. How does 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 and trading, all that stuff?

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&P did pretty well under Biden, right? Let's be honest. Start benchmark from the day he took office to the day off. I forget the exact number. It's like 60 80%. Like these are decent returns uh over the 4-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 65. So in the interim gets

really robust.

Yeah. And then 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 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 I'm very passionately against. This is exactly why is I think you know it removed a lot of the hope kind of undergirling 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 confetti and everything? You got to go do it. You know you got to feel it. put a little bit put a position behind it and you'll see

buy some spy on

Exa. Exactly. That's the responsible thing to do. Go put a couple hundred in the spy and uh but you'll just see

the little like celebratory

Oh yeah.

animations when you place a trade.

It It's happened to me recently whenever whenever I did one. So congrats on Yeah. Exactly. But I mean, I can see how, you know, addictive that this can all be. And they they send you a million push notifications a day. You know, the opposite of what a good investor should do and and be like, "Oh, stock is down 5%, stock is up 2%." You know, they want you clicking and staying in the app and the charts, everything 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 society, structurally, and technologically why that this became kind of like a democratic issue.

By the way, while we're recording this, just breaking the breaking news from uh Bloomberg Thinking Machines Lab, an artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI executive Mirror Morati. Early talks to raise a new round of funding, a roughly $50 billion valuation. So,

every time we record an episode about AI, a headline comes out while we're recording.

Yeah. that helps us benchmark where we are.

Every day every day.

There was one yesterday and a new hundred billion

anthropic investing $50 million into new data center every day.

Exactly. It's just I mean I don't know. I I really I'm I that's why I love your show. Thank you. just thinking about, you know, I've been doing a lot of John Cassidy.com reading, you know, back from 2000 and vendor finance and just thinking really deeply about it because I do think, you know, event 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 a downturn in the stock market, interest rates, reduction in workforce, I'm really afraid.

Yeah, this is the thing which is that there's already this backlash and the stock market is near record highs and unemployment is near 50-year lows or whatever. So, we haven't actually seen any of like really bad stuff. Sager and Jetty, thank you so much for coming on OddLotss. That was a lot of fun.

Thank you guys for having me. I love it.

Tracy, I thought that was a lot of fun. You know, this idea that like there's already this backlash that's brewing and we actually don't have widespread unemployment yet. We haven't had a stock market crash yet or anything like that. You know, 3 years is a long time. We have no idea what the economy is going to look like in 2028 or really even 2026. But if there's so much negativity already building, right,

that sort of tells you tells you a lot, right? If people are angry with the S&P at like 6,700, how are they going to feel it's like below 6,000?

Yeah. I mean, I think everyone has 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 relationships both within the government and between the government and private entities seems 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.

Totally. It seems really hard to guess. I thought your question about is anyone talk about UBI in DC is really interesting. It's grim like how there seems to be almost no truly forwardthinking politics. I mean, really, this conversation should have been happening throughout the 2024 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. That was just a year ago. So, I think that really tells you something. And the fact that by and large, you know, there's a couple people tweeting about it here and there, like maybe Ronda Santis, but by and large, this still doesn't seem to be something that any elected official like wants to sort of carve their lane out, you know?

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

or just like Yeah. thinking in advance about any of this stuff. Yeah.

All right. Shall we leave it there?

Sure. Let's leave it there.

This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Aloway. You can follow me at Tracy Aloway.

And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at the stalwart. Follow our guest Sager and Jetty. He's at eager. Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman. Dashel Bennett at Dashbot and Kellbrooks at Kellbrooks. [music] For more OddLots content, go to bloomberg.com/odlots where the daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all these topics 24/7 in our Discord, [music] discord.gg/odlots.

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