The Tucker Carlson Show - August 21, 2026


Clayton Morris： Blackouts & Water Shortages, Tech Overlords Build AI Dystopia & Crush Resistance


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 2 minutes

Words per minute

175.78

Word count

10,939

Sentence count

616

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

14

sentences flagged

Hate speech

18

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Clayton Morse, thank you so much for doing this.
00:00:07.020 A lot of us have been focused on the AI slash data center story
00:00:11.180 from a badly informed tech perspective,
00:00:14.020 trying to answer the question,
00:00:15.540 will machines become our masters?
00:00:17.720 Is this the end of the human race?
00:00:19.480 But there's another component to the story,
00:00:21.540 which may be bigger,
00:00:22.460 and it has to do with the physical world
00:00:24.400 and the demands of AI on that world
00:00:26.700 and the short-term implications for the rest of us.
00:00:30.000 because of the construction of these data centers.
00:00:32.500 And you have been on this more than anyone I know.
00:00:35.500 So can you just frame the way
00:00:38.080 that you're looking at AI and data centers?
00:00:40.440 Why is it important?
00:00:42.500 Well, I think it's so important for these communities.
00:00:44.620 You're seeing, if we step back,
00:00:46.960 there's so much math involved in this.
00:00:49.240 And I would say that every real estate story is all local.
00:00:53.860 So it's different what's happening in New York
00:00:56.000 from what's happening in Texas right now,
00:00:57.820 what's happening in Quincy, Washington.
00:01:00.000 or Homer City, Pennsylvania, like it's all different, but it's all of the same, you know,
00:01:06.240 it's all of the same animal, so to speak. And so we are, I don't even think we're at the beginning
00:01:13.680 of this because there's so much discussion about AI, just flip on CNBC or Bloomberg or anything.
00:01:20.620 It's AI everywhere. We're going to hit an AI bubble. We haven't even started
00:01:24.940 this build out for AI data centers across the United States.
00:01:29.500 And I honestly think we're at the precipice
00:01:32.040 of a major transformation for humanity.
00:01:36.080 And we won't know for years whether it's good or bad.
00:01:39.660 There were studies done on Google,
00:01:41.440 the Google effect back in like 2011.
00:01:43.760 You know, our kids like outsourcing
00:01:45.260 their ability to search for things to Google.
00:01:49.240 Like think about how funny that is now
00:01:51.480 in hindsight all these years later.
00:01:53.720 But we are, I think, at the beginning of this build-out.
00:01:56.500 We haven't even begun to see the thousands of data centers
00:02:00.260 and the way that this is going to change humanity for good and bad.
00:02:04.520 And I think that anyone who says they know for sure doesn't know.
00:02:08.100 And I think a lot of these companies that are spending $500 billion,
00:02:12.060 we just got word that NVIDIA is going to take out credit
00:02:15.340 in order to build out massive amounts of infrastructure.
00:02:19.040 So this is like a new phase of this now, not even their own money.
00:02:22.140 It's going to be a credit story, borrowing money at enormous sums from Wall Street in
00:02:27.680 order to build out this infrastructure.
00:02:30.140 So just at like a micro level, if you just think about communities and what it means
00:02:34.380 to just you and I, it means right now increased prices for kilowatt hours just to run your
00:02:41.140 home.
00:02:41.940 It means increased prices at the grocery store just to get additional groceries because the
00:02:48.040 cost of everything has gone up.
00:02:49.980 And it means water shortages across the United States.
00:02:54.860 We're already seeing it.
00:02:56.020 We're already seeing its effects on ranchers.
00:02:59.540 So it's so big and there's so many pieces of this.
00:03:03.800 You've got the robotics piece of this, which is the human robotics layer.
00:03:08.000 So AI will, of course, be involved in every level of robotics, which is going to be as
00:03:13.260 if you listen to Elon Musk, and I believe he's a smart, very smart person.
00:03:16.180 And he says that his Tesla robotics division is going to be the biggest product in human history, his Optimus robots.
00:03:25.080 So if you take him at his word, or even if half of his word is true, and that's just one company, the human robotics element of this is going to be absolutely massive.
00:03:33.880 And of course, then the AI, the compute power that will be layered inside of that hardware, the requirements for that are going to be astronomical.
00:03:44.500 And that's just one piece of it.
00:03:46.180 But every company that exists right now, just about every company is incorporating AI.
00:03:53.080 It's like the AI that you don't see that I think is in many ways the most invasive of all of this.
00:03:59.400 So, for instance, Zoom.
00:04:00.720 Like you and I are talking right now on Zoom.
00:04:02.860 Right.
00:04:03.180 Well, they've recently sort of shifted to becoming really an AI productivity company in many ways.
00:04:09.080 That's their focus now.
00:04:10.160 Forget being just like, hey, we're going to have a meeting over Zoom.
00:04:13.340 Now they've added in a take notes feature,
00:04:15.360 which can use AI and basically take notes for you
00:04:18.220 during your meeting.
00:04:19.600 And now their focus is AI.
00:04:21.240 So AI being built into everything you can think of.
00:04:23.660 May I ask you to pause and ask you a question for a second?
00:04:25.980 So just to take Zoom as an example.
00:04:29.080 So Zoom, again, being this software program
00:04:32.820 that allows people to speak on video conferencing
00:04:35.620 anywhere between each other anywhere in the world.
00:04:38.360 Basically what they're saying is
00:04:39.480 we're going to transcribe every conversation
00:04:41.560 and that's going to be helpful as a productivity device somehow.
00:04:46.700 But what happens to the data?
00:04:49.780 So the substance of your conversation is now on a Zoom server.
00:04:55.000 Do you have control over what's done with that data,
00:04:58.780 with your words, with that information?
00:05:01.800 I mean, I think this idea that you have control over any of your data is a joke.
00:05:06.360 You can ask companies to delete your data.
00:05:08.660 But of course, when the FBI then wants to subpoena that data,
00:05:11.200 suddenly it manages to show back up again.
00:05:13.340 So wait, I thought that you could just delete that stuff.
00:05:16.740 Or Google tells you that, hey, after 30 days, we delete this stuff.
00:05:20.140 It's all there.
00:05:20.920 It's fractals.
00:05:21.820 It's always going to be there.
00:05:23.760 So Zoom, you're opting into this, the take notes feature.
00:05:26.800 And I don't know the full backend of what Zoom's operation looks like,
00:05:29.920 but most of it is all built on Amazon Web Services.
00:05:32.980 Most of it is built on Amazon's infrastructure
00:05:35.320 from Palantir to Flock Safety.
00:05:38.220 You know, they'll tell you that they've got their own proprietary layer of what they do with that data, but all of it's built on like Amazon infrastructure and sort of this backend infrastructure. So where is that data going? It's living in these data centers and being built out at a clip that we've never seen before.
00:05:57.020 So right now, there are about 809, give or take, a few data centers being built right now.
00:06:04.400 There's about 4,800 of them that are currently built.
00:06:09.000 There's another, I think, 3,900 that have been projected to be built over the next year, doubling the amount of data centers in the United States.
00:06:21.500 And they're not getting smaller.
00:06:22.960 They're getting bigger.
00:06:24.420 They're getting more massive.
00:06:25.360 Take, for instance, like the Project Stargate in Texas, in Abilene, Texas.
00:06:29.860 Massive, massive infrastructure that Trump, of course, was championing.
00:06:33.580 And a lot of this was opened up, we shouldn't forget, at the very beginning of the Trump presidency with all these executive orders.
00:06:40.560 So that you could start building a data center without even getting environmental permits.
00:06:45.220 So you could start the construction.
00:06:46.340 So if the redacted news data center wants to get started, I could go out tomorrow, buy some land, and I could start this construction, local permits, and get started.
00:06:57.500 Forget the EPA requirements, like how much pollutants will be spun off as a result of the diesel generator backups or the water influx or any of the particulate matter that will be spun off as a result of the center, the water usage, all of that.
00:07:12.080 Don't worry about it because now the EPA doesn't care.
00:07:14.720 you can get those, you can already start construction. And then of course, on top of
00:07:20.480 that, you have Trump's AI litigation team, which is pretty funny when you look at it.
00:07:25.400 So the Department of Justice has built like an AI litigation team to go out to different
00:07:30.600 states. Like you can see where the priorities are. So if there's a state or a community that
00:07:34.740 says we don't want data centers in our backyard, or we're putting onerous rules in place and
00:07:40.760 regulations in our backyard because we don't want these things here. Well, here comes Trump's
00:07:45.360 Department of Justice and the AI litigation team to town, but not staying at a Best Western when
00:07:52.200 they arrive. And they're going to start to look at your community and sue you for onerous regulations
00:07:57.700 against data centers. This was part of that executive orders and executive actions at the
00:08:02.740 very beginning of Trump's presidency. So glad we have an AI litigation team in place.
00:08:07.440 Wait, so our Department of Justice, which I thought we owned as citizens, is now working on behalf of private companies, which we do not own, in order to force communities to subsidize those private companies?
00:08:21.720 Yes. So under the attorney general, under this AI litigation team, this task force, we'll go out and they'll see, hey, did this community in upstate New York put in place some toxic diesel particulates zoning law that's not going to allow this data center to be built because they'll need backup diesel generators.
00:08:45.700 And when they kick on every 30, you know, every few days to test the diesel backup, and it's going to shoot off these particulates and so forth.
00:08:54.640 We don't want that here.
00:08:55.900 We don't want it polluting our air and our waterways, by the way.
00:08:59.560 So that's what this task force will look at.
00:09:01.860 Well, maybe we just don't want it.
00:09:03.360 Maybe we just don't.
00:09:04.180 We think it's ugly or we disagree with the whole project or it doesn't matter what the motive is.
00:09:09.100 It's our community.
00:09:10.180 And don't we have some right to shape its future because it's ours?
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00:12:04.500 And there's going to be, you know,
00:12:05.780 the loopholes that'll be used here
00:12:07.760 and we'll see what this data AI litigation task force does.
00:12:11.680 It's like the, you know,
00:12:12.700 the white supremacy task force 0.59
00:12:14.200 or the anti-Semitism task force
00:12:16.020 that'll be deployed across the United States.
00:12:18.500 So it'll be interesting to see like
00:12:19.900 what loopholes are employed.
00:12:21.280 But good news is like 500 or so different communities
00:12:24.860 have already fought back against this.
00:12:26.560 there was a friend of the show, Derek Brose, and Hakeem Anwar put on a day of action on the
00:12:31.480 beginning of August against these data centers. So people around the country to come out and say,
00:12:36.580 we don't want these things in our backyard, at least kind of drawing attention to them.
00:12:41.260 We don't want the noise. We don't want the pollution. And there's so much just misinformation
00:12:47.420 and there's fear about all of these data centers right now. And there's just a lot of BS that's
00:12:56.440 kind of floating around about how these things operate.
00:12:59.520 Maybe we could talk about it
00:13:00.580 if you want to kind of dive a little more deeply.
00:13:02.780 Well, I want to dive very deeply into it.
00:13:04.640 I mean, you've already, you know,
00:13:06.300 we're 10 minutes into this, you've already shocked me.
00:13:08.240 So I had no idea that was happening.
00:13:11.480 And, you know, if you were to have dinner with me,
00:13:14.220 I would pretend to be highly informed on everything.
00:13:16.700 But obviously that's not true
00:13:17.940 because I didn't even know this.
00:13:19.000 I didn't know that there was a Department of Justice
00:13:21.100 AI task force designed to pummel communities
00:13:26.320 into accepting things they don't want,
00:13:28.840 which is to say taking sovereignty
00:13:30.040 from American citizens.
00:13:31.080 So, yeah, I do want to go into greater depth.
00:13:34.380 So tell me about the misconceptions
00:13:35.840 or as you said, misinformation.
00:13:38.520 Well, for one thing, there's,
00:13:40.860 if you listen to Wall Street
00:13:42.060 or you listen to the people that the sycophants,
00:13:45.140 you know, like on CNBC
00:13:46.420 are the people that love to have these CEOs
00:13:48.360 on their shows and, you know,
00:13:50.240 access journalists, you know,
00:13:52.100 who loves to have these CEOs on their shows
00:13:54.340 and kind of promote AI data center build-outs
00:13:57.260 and all the new technology that they're rolling out.
00:14:00.080 And so some of this technology is good, right?
00:14:02.780 There is actual good cooling technology
00:14:05.820 that's emerging from companies like Vertiv, VRT,
00:14:09.780 which instead of using water that would cool it
00:14:13.620 with using evaporation technology,
00:14:15.660 which is one of the biggest problems.
00:14:17.920 Forget the electricity piece of this for a second.
00:14:20.040 That's the other big part of the story.
00:14:22.080 By the way, this energy, it's like you can rob Peter to pay Paul.
00:14:27.740 We're not using water.
00:14:29.140 Oh, yeah, but you're using the energy now, the electricity, to use dry cooling to cool.
00:14:33.480 Okay, so it's like the shell game.
00:14:36.520 You say moving things around a board.
00:14:38.380 So when you see these CEOs come on CNBC or Bloomberg or whatever and tell you how they've solved the cooling problem because they don't need water.
00:14:46.520 Okay, now what about the massive amounts of electricity that you need now to use dry cooling?
00:14:50.760 Well, it takes resources to make things.
00:14:54.440 That's just the bottom line.
00:14:55.540 It takes resources to make things
00:14:57.060 and the supply of resources is finite.
00:14:59.340 So anyone, it doesn't mean you shouldn't make things,
00:15:02.040 you should, but every act of creation is a trade-off.
00:15:06.560 So it's not clear why we have to lie about that.
00:15:09.500 Let's just be honest about it.
00:15:11.480 But anyway, to the question of water,
00:15:13.660 can you go into that?
00:15:14.780 How much water, exclusive of this new
00:15:17.800 and promising technology you just described,
00:15:19.480 But like in general, how much water does it take to cool a data center?
00:15:24.160 Hundreds of millions of gallons.
00:15:26.160 And most, let's be clear, most of the data centers are using this evaporative cooling system.
00:15:31.740 And I mean, by a huge percentage.
00:15:33.700 So, you know, that's great that we've got some new technology out there that uses cooling plates and it keeps it in like a closed loop.
00:15:40.660 So the water is like right up against the computers, the GPUs, and then it kind of flows through and it gets cooled almost like by an air conditioning unit.
00:15:48.680 and then comes back a little cooler.
00:15:50.660 But still, that excess heat needs to go somewhere, right?
00:15:53.860 So it pushes off somewhere.
00:15:55.780 It's not...
00:15:56.340 But the water usage, yes, you're limiting that.
00:15:58.340 But on most of them, overwhelmingly, it's evaporative cooling.
00:16:03.360 And so it's all just being wasted.
00:16:06.320 Hundreds of millions of gallons.
00:16:07.880 If you think about an average American home,
00:16:09.900 about 200 gallons to run an American home,
00:16:14.400 300 million gallons or 500 million gallons of water
00:16:19.960 just for these data centers.
00:16:22.080 And we're talking like small data centers.
00:16:24.920 So these communities are already seeing,
00:16:27.560 they're already pressed.
00:16:28.600 And if you go to the desert Southwest
00:16:29.920 or you move out towards Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming,
00:16:35.900 a lot of the ranchers in these areas
00:16:37.880 are at their limit with their ability to get water
00:16:40.840 to just feed their heads of cattle.
00:16:42.580 So everything is so dry.
00:16:44.400 I just interviewed a rancher who's dealing with this right now.
00:16:47.260 So in order to get permits to pull, you know, to pull water to feed their heads of cattle,
00:16:52.680 they have to go to the city, the municipality, they have to get those rights.
00:16:56.180 But most of those permits are already used.
00:16:57.900 Like they're not, there's no like new permits just like sitting there for Bob Rancher to come grab.
00:17:02.700 So they're already tapped, tapping into these aquifers.
00:17:05.980 I mean, requiring them to go down, pull out any kind of water they can from these aquifers, right?
00:17:10.600 So those are already tapped a lot in the West of the United States.
00:17:15.200 And then on top of that, now you have these data centers that are coming in and all these
00:17:18.860 ranchers are asking the question, how are they able to get water?
00:17:23.920 Like we've applied for permits and we as ranchers are not allowed to get water, but they are.
00:17:28.900 Where are they getting the permit?
00:17:30.400 So they're carving out these special permits for these ranchers, which is, excuse me, for
00:17:36.440 these data centers, which is unbelievable on its surface. And so these ranchers then are having to
00:17:42.960 compete for what little water scraps are left to feed their head of cattle, which brings up a
00:17:48.040 larger question about wanting to decimate the beef industry, of course. And you have 68 million heads
00:17:52.600 of cattle. How many of those are being whittled away, whittled away, whittled away? And then
00:17:57.260 you've got wildfires out West on top of that, which is destroying the grazing land. So they
00:18:01.320 don't have enough water for that. But the data centers are fine to get these water rights
00:18:06.300 somehow. People should ask questions about that. How are they able to get these carve-outs to tap
00:18:11.540 into these aquifers in ways that these ranchers are not? It's very interesting. So the misinformation
00:18:19.240 right now is this idea that, well, now we've got this new sort of liquid cooling setup, and so
00:18:26.420 therefore we're not using as much water and that is the case in some in some cases with some of
00:18:31.800 this new technology but a lot of that is even built out yet um but you're seeing like these
00:18:37.080 companies like vertive like exploding i think they're even more valuable now like share price
00:18:42.320 not more valuable but like more than amazon because they're selling these these cooling
00:18:48.200 technologies that they can use in these data centers so that's just one piece of it but the
00:18:52.600 majority of these data centers are using an enormous amount of water that we simply don't
00:18:57.880 have. And you're having these communities now fighting over it in order to, you know, homeowners
00:19:04.660 who are having to deal with this now. And of course, the other big piece of this is the smart
00:19:08.340 meters. So just take, for example, like Aurora, Colorado, not too far from me, where they
00:19:15.280 implemented these smart water meters. So they can monitor at every 15 minute increments, like the
00:19:20.180 amount of water that you're using as a, you know, as a, as a private citizen compared to the water
00:19:28.280 that's being used from these data centers. I don't know what sort of metering system they have on
00:19:32.420 these data centers, but there's a, there's a massive data center called QTS in Aurora, Colorado,
00:19:39.960 massive, huge. And in that, in that setup, they've got, they're using an enormous amount of water
00:19:47.360 and the homes around Aurora, Colorado
00:19:50.420 are using now these smart meters
00:19:51.960 to monitor how much irrigation,
00:19:54.020 how much water they're using.
00:19:55.520 And they've sent out thousands of notices
00:19:57.460 to people that live there
00:19:58.520 that, hey, you've used too much water,
00:20:01.760 you're using too much water.
00:20:02.960 And these smart meters
00:20:03.940 are only going to increase
00:20:04.960 across the United States.
00:20:06.040 There's many communities
00:20:06.880 that are now rolling out
00:20:07.820 these water smart meters
00:20:08.900 in order to make sure
00:20:10.460 that you're not using enough water.
00:20:11.840 But are those same municipalities
00:20:15.400 sending out notices
00:20:16.580 to the data centers to let them know
00:20:18.700 how much water they're using.
00:20:20.340 You know, a lot of people hit that afternoon slump
00:20:22.160 and immediately reach for another cup of coffee.
00:20:24.060 Guilty!
00:20:25.280 But is the answer always more caffeine?
00:20:28.000 Well, sometimes you just need hydration.
00:20:30.760 Thing is, a lot of people are already drinking
00:20:32.580 a ton of water, but they are not fully hydrated
00:20:35.200 because water alone isn't always enough.
00:20:37.320 Your body needs something called electrolytes,
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00:22:37.560 your next move tomorrow. Chew on this bold question from Dantene Gum.
00:22:41.780 Is it ever okay to compliment a millennial on their skinny jeans in 2026?
00:22:51.820 Dentine, too bold.
00:22:55.200 I'm confused.
00:22:57.020 I mean, so one of the long-term and distressing trends in the United States is the explosion in population in places that don't have the resources to sustain that population.
00:23:09.340 So I'm thinking Clark County, Nevada, Maricopa County, Arizona, you know, Phoenix, Vegas, Denver, parts of California, like they don't have the water for this number of people.
00:23:22.100 So we know this, no one seems to care.
00:23:24.840 This is going to be a huge issue going forward, but there are other parts of the United States, upper Midwest, for example, that have a ton of water and not a lot of people.
00:23:32.220 So why would you ever build a data center in Colorado, for example, which already doesn't have the resources to support the people?
00:23:40.720 Like, who's making these decisions and why?
00:23:42.680 Do you have any idea?
00:23:43.580 Why is every data center not being built on Lake Superior?
00:23:47.900 Well, because the money.
00:23:49.320 So just take, for example, I believe it's probably the money.
00:23:52.200 But a lot of it is these data center buildouts now.
00:23:56.460 Well, a couple pieces.
00:23:57.580 I'll take Quincy, Washington.
00:23:59.220 I think it's an interesting sort of anecdote of a story.
00:24:03.080 So the propaganda around Quincy, Washington
00:24:08.600 is that data centers saved this town.
00:24:12.940 Data centers came in, used the hydroelectric power here
00:24:16.360 and the influx, the tax basis now,
00:24:19.320 I think it was like three different centers
00:24:20.820 that were built, three different data centers.
00:24:23.280 The amount of influx of like a 56% increase in taxes
00:24:28.080 flew into like Quincy, Washington.
00:24:30.500 So they built $120 million new school.
00:24:33.640 They built all new sewer infrastructure
00:24:35.400 inside of Quincy, Washington,
00:24:38.020 parks, water slide parks for the kids.
00:24:42.220 Crime has dropped.
00:24:44.200 And they point and they blame it
00:24:45.860 specifically on the data centers.
00:24:47.840 So all of the money that flows
00:24:49.640 into these communities from their taxes
00:24:51.760 is exorbitant.
00:24:54.820 So they don't want to turn away
00:24:56.400 from this additional tax revenue
00:24:58.040 in these communities.
00:24:59.640 And that to me is,
00:25:00.400 it's always the money, right?
00:25:01.740 That's at the heart of it.
00:25:03.000 It's clearly the tax revenue
00:25:05.260 that's coming in.
00:25:06.560 The other piece of this
00:25:07.600 is that I think these companies
00:25:08.780 are telling,
00:25:11.140 I'd say they're telling lies,
00:25:13.260 but they're certainly
00:25:13.900 structuring these deals
00:25:17.560 in a very interesting way,
00:25:18.780 which is we will,
00:25:19.860 we're not going to pull
00:25:20.760 from your resources.
00:25:22.000 So we're not going to tap
00:25:23.180 the electricity in your town.
00:25:25.200 We're not going to tap
00:25:25.980 the excess water.
00:25:27.440 we figured that out, which is laughable because there's always the spillover effect of these
00:25:34.580 things. It's not self-contained. But a lot of these new data centers being built professed
00:25:38.880 to be self-contained, which is we're going to produce our own power. So you don't have to worry
00:25:44.640 about it. So we're going to use these SMRs, these small nuclear reactors, these modular nuclear
00:25:50.280 reactors. There's companies like New Scale Technology, which are exploding these. And so
00:25:56.300 So Amazon can put a nuclear reactor at one of these data centers, a small nuclear one.
00:26:01.620 We don't need to rely on Three Mile Island, which, by the way, is being revitalized right
00:26:05.040 now in order to power data centers.
00:26:07.620 I don't know if people recall the fun that happened at Three Mile Island, but so that's
00:26:12.040 being revitalized right now for data centers.
00:26:14.440 So they can build self-contained power, modular nuclear technology.
00:26:19.380 The other story, and I was speaking to a source at Amazon who, it was just crazy to hear,
00:26:26.300 what their build-out looks like right now.
00:26:29.400 And said that when they go in,
00:26:32.060 they're looking at like defunct coal plants
00:26:34.460 or other power plants that are nearby these data centers.
00:26:39.700 And if they can't get the power they need
00:26:42.980 from the local community,
00:26:44.060 they just buy up the coal-powered plant
00:26:48.300 or the other power plants that were there.
00:26:54.660 They buy them up.
00:26:56.300 And then they revitalize them, bring in a couple thousand people, build it out to a new energy
00:27:02.260 complex. And then, oh, you think, oh, that's great. So now that coal plant that you're taking
00:27:08.920 over, which is defunct, it closed three years ago or four years ago or 10 years ago under regulations
00:27:14.420 and onerous regulations and so forth, you're going to revitalize it and then the community
00:27:18.960 will benefit. No, no, no, no, no. They're going to get all the power. So they're not giving any
00:27:24.400 it has power back to the community.
00:27:27.420 The coal plants specifically,
00:27:30.220 and the ones that are in Nevada and Colorado
00:27:32.600 where Amazon is coming in and building these facilities,
00:27:35.180 they're buying them up and revitalizing them
00:27:37.100 and they're turning them into natural gas facilities
00:27:39.740 so that it's far cleaner.
00:27:42.300 They don't have to deal with the coal regulations
00:27:43.840 and then they will use all of that energy.
00:27:47.340 Oh, okay.
00:27:48.360 So then it won't have an effect on the community then, right?
00:27:51.180 So then energy prices won't have gone up in the community.
00:27:53.640 Oh, no, no, no.
00:27:54.400 In fact, the sources I've spoken to at Amazon said, absolutely, the energy costs will go up in those communities, and they already have.
00:28:03.020 So they're self-contained. Why are my energy costs going up?
00:28:07.500 It's because the spillover effect of it all and the grid capacity and everything else.
00:28:13.140 So you're already seeing this across the country.
00:28:14.840 People without data centers, even in their backyard yet, are seeing increases to their
00:28:20.160 kilowatt hours, their per kilowatt hours, upwards of 12%, 13%, 14% just in prices.
00:28:27.040 We in Colorado have already seen prices skyrocket, even without the massive data center buildouts
00:28:32.800 because it's future projections.
00:28:35.200 So it's the auction process of electricity.
00:28:38.660 So the future projections on the auction process believe that they will be overcapacity.
00:28:44.840 they believe, and local communities are saying, expect blackouts.
00:28:49.880 If I could, I'll give you an example.
00:28:51.780 Homer City, Pennsylvania, Western Pennsylvania,
00:28:54.220 near where I went to college out there, University of Pittsburgh,
00:28:56.980 and that whole area in Western PA.
00:28:58.820 This is a really interesting anecdote because Homer City,
00:29:03.080 their energy prices have already increased,
00:29:08.080 but they're building this...
00:29:09.680 the data centers that have come in there
00:29:13.040 have revitalized the old coal plants that are there
00:29:16.560 and were shut down in 2023.
00:29:19.540 Now they're building this massive Homer City energy complex
00:29:24.240 on top of it, converting it to natural gas.
00:29:27.220 But the people of Homer City don't get the benefit of it.
00:29:29.840 They don't get any of that.
00:29:31.260 It's going to go to the data center build out.
00:29:34.540 And I think the mayor,
00:29:36.520 members of the local city council have already seen those prices go up and have said that we
00:29:44.440 will expect blackouts. This is Pennsylvania. This is in Texas where you get incredible heat waves.
00:29:50.780 You'll still get heat waves and things, but not like Texas or Arizona. So expect blackouts.
00:29:56.280 Over the next few years, our grid cannot handle this. And so the people of this area
00:30:02.940 that live in the surrounding area
00:30:05.040 can expect to see their homes affected by this
00:30:08.620 and blackouts that will unfold in these neighborhoods.
00:30:12.500 And again, that's Pennsylvania, Western Pennsylvania,
00:30:15.340 nowhere near like Abilene, Texas or Arizona.
00:30:19.080 So these things are very real for people
00:30:21.360 and the costs that will be passed on to the consumers
00:30:26.240 where energy costs are already skyrocketing is very real.
00:30:30.720 I know the Trump administration says,
00:30:32.100 well, we're putting this cap on as part of this AI bill that we're putting this cap on it so that
00:30:36.360 we're going to make these producers pay that. But there's no evidence that they are.
00:30:41.720 We are already paying more for electricity. Already. I don't know what it is for you in
00:30:47.640 Maine. If you've seen it there, if you know what data center... Because it seems like I'm looking
00:30:51.880 at the data center map in Maine as very minimal for buildouts from what I can tell.
00:30:57.360 but so you have the future projections of costs of this energy build out that are already affecting
00:31:03.800 people i mean i guess i'm really i'm struck by so many parts of the story but the one that
00:31:12.240 i'm fixated on maybe most is the total powerlessness of the people who live in this
00:31:18.720 country to have any effect on any of this at all going back to what you said at the outset of the
00:31:23.940 conversation about the Department of Justice targeting anyone who complains about this or
00:31:28.080 tries to slow it down. Have there been, I don't think most people are for this. I don't think
00:31:32.980 people understand exactly what the purpose of it is. I don't think there's been much of an attempt
00:31:37.840 to convince us that this will improve our lives, which is to say the technology itself, AI,
00:31:42.460 data centers, is that, how is that good for me? How does it make this a better country for my kids?
00:31:48.180 No one's spending any time trying to convince us that it is. It's all scaring the crap out of
00:31:53.220 people, maybe for good reason, maybe not. I really don't know what the motive is.
00:31:58.060 You talk to an AI person, someone developing AI, and they spend very little time telling you how
00:32:03.800 this is going to cure cancer and a whole lot of time telling you how it may end humanity.
00:32:08.520 So it's like, I don't really get what's going on here, but I know that people aren't for it.
00:32:12.720 Has anybody had any success in protecting their own communities from destruction by this?
00:32:20.620 I mean, maybe New York State is the only real story right now from a state level where you have the state now banning the build-out of data centers right now.
00:32:31.920 So, and, you know, you have Governor Abbott in Texas who is now putting a one-year moratorium on data center build-outs through an audit process.
00:32:43.380 So, you have to prove, like, your energy efficiency and all of that in order to be built out in Texas.
00:32:48.320 um but i also i i love i love the hypocrisy there so it's okay that we can have like massive child
00:32:54.460 trafficking operations like happening right right the state of texas and right under your nose and
00:32:59.260 old walmart facilities and thousands of children being trafficked and but we're gonna we're gonna
00:33:05.260 audit data centers abbott has has overseen the total destruction of texas and that's um i don't
00:33:12.260 yeah i'm not saying he's evil he's just weak but uh yeah it doesn't get the credit he deserves for
00:33:17.220 that but it'll be obvious in the next 10 years uh but new york i mean so we'll see i mean i don't
00:33:23.480 know and i don't know what's going to happen in texas i mean you have this project stargate
00:33:26.300 project in abilene texas arguably the large one of the largest data center build out in the world
00:33:33.260 uh in project stargate one that president trump has championed so i wonder if there's going to
00:33:38.220 be any pushback from his uh the ai task force um you know if anyone speaks out against that
00:33:44.320 in the state of Texas.
00:33:45.900 But New York,
00:33:47.000 and I don't know how much of this is,
00:33:49.980 you know, how much of this will continue
00:33:52.060 and will New York be like the state
00:33:53.900 that says we're done
00:33:55.020 with data centers altogether.
00:33:56.540 Sorry, go someplace else.
00:33:59.500 What will that look like?
00:34:01.260 And I don't know.
00:34:03.100 And I don't know if this will be rolled back
00:34:04.940 pending some,
00:34:06.800 hey, we now feel that
00:34:08.120 they're self-sufficient.
00:34:09.800 The power is self-sufficient.
00:34:12.000 They don't need to rely on us at all.
00:34:14.320 for energy, for water. And they figured out the diesel generation backup so that's not
00:34:20.900 spilling off particulates and all of these other things. And now we can welcome them back
00:34:25.420 to the state. And then you have governments, you have local governments like in the state of
00:34:31.860 Georgia, of course, who are going after and using eminent domain to seize land, just like you would
00:34:39.860 to build a new highway, 0.79
00:34:42.220 seize people's homes
00:34:43.180 in order to build AI data centers?
00:34:45.680 Because it's a,
00:34:46.580 as President Trump,
00:34:47.280 as part of these executive orders,
00:34:48.640 I mean, he was explicit
00:34:50.500 that this is a national security issue
00:34:53.080 for the United States of America.
00:34:54.800 So this is another big piece of this.
00:34:57.260 And I don't think enough people
00:34:58.360 are talking about
00:34:59.140 what the Trump administration
00:35:00.340 just did even just a few weeks ago
00:35:02.120 with the FCC ruling.
00:35:03.280 I don't know,
00:35:03.540 are you familiar with the FCC ruling? 0.99
00:35:05.240 Totally ignorant as usual. 0.98
00:35:06.920 And I'm also confused 0.99
00:35:07.800 as to why this is
00:35:08.520 a national security issue.
00:35:09.860 I don't even know what that means.
00:35:12.560 I mean, China, China, China, China, China,
00:35:14.500 but okay, how is it a national security issue?
00:35:17.100 What are you talking about?
00:35:18.020 Do you have any clue?
00:35:19.640 So, I mean, I guess if you look at
00:35:21.520 from a military perspective,
00:35:22.980 to make sure that we have the AI infrastructure
00:35:26.100 that can deal with the future of modern warfare,
00:35:29.480 whether it's drone capabilities,
00:35:31.660 robotics on the battlefield,
00:35:33.280 it all comes back to war, of course. 1.00
00:35:35.700 So to make sure that Palantir,
00:35:37.600 you know, Palantir using AWS.
00:35:40.240 It's not really public,
00:35:41.020 but they really use a lot of Amazon web services
00:35:43.120 as the back end of Palantir
00:35:44.960 with their own sort of proprietary front end
00:35:46.780 of all of this.
00:35:47.820 Then you're building out all of these
00:35:49.320 new government data centers
00:35:50.940 that Amazon is helping build.
00:35:53.500 And what's interesting about these data centers
00:35:55.640 that Amazon is building for the military
00:35:57.860 or for the Pentagon or the CIA
00:35:59.660 is you've got like eight layers of security
00:36:01.740 in these facilities.
00:36:03.100 So that even if President Trump
00:36:05.280 wanted to go through them,
00:36:06.060 he has to go through like eight layers
00:36:07.520 of like, you know, bioscanning and I don't know.
00:36:11.280 It's like the movies where you walk through a corridor
00:36:13.040 and one door opens and scans your eyeballs.
00:36:15.760 Get smart, yeah.
00:36:17.280 Yeah.
00:36:17.880 So like eight layers of this stuff in these facilities
00:36:20.320 and Amazon builds this for the CIA and others.
00:36:23.620 And as they get to a certain level of the build out,
00:36:26.180 they basically hand the keys over to the guys on the inside
00:36:29.600 and they say, we'll take it from here.
00:36:31.420 And so then Amazon's like, okay, we built, you know,
00:36:34.200 now if you call us, if you need us,
00:36:36.020 and that's how this operates.
00:36:37.240 And so they will only come back, I've learned, if there's some sort of massive power outage
00:36:42.900 or something like that, they have to come back in.
00:36:44.740 But otherwise, it's like the CIA then runs these facilities.
00:36:48.180 And by the way, some of these facilities are being built kind of in plain sight, but inside
00:36:53.620 of other facilities like Veterans Affairs buildings.
00:36:57.420 So you think, oh, that's a Veterans Affairs building.
00:36:59.500 But inside is a hidden operations data center inside of some of these facilities that I've
00:37:05.720 learned as well, which is interesting.
00:37:06.960 So a lot of these government buildings, you think on the outside are one thing, an IRS building, but on the inside is a hidden data center for monitoring its citizens.
00:37:18.260 So national security, the idea that we don't want China to have this AI layer for all of the data collection that we're doing in the United States, whether it's flock safety.
00:37:28.080 I know that's the most like kind of public facing one right now, but that data goes somewhere and it goes through AWS. 0.78
00:37:33.960 It goes through Amazon Web Services the same way that Palantir does and all of it.
00:37:38.540 And it needs to be stored somewhere.
00:37:40.260 So it needs to be stored in these massive facilities, whether it's Nevada and other places,
00:37:44.540 and all of this data that's being collected on Americans from, you know, phone calls to
00:37:49.520 email, everything that they're using to scan and track us at this moment.
00:37:55.740 And so they don't want China involved in this, of course.
00:37:58.300 And that's the outwardly facing, you know, enemy. 0.62
00:38:02.640 We don't want to use, we don't want any of their models, their AI models.
00:38:08.660 We want to use our own models that are helped inside the United States and funded by the United States government or in part with large grants and so forth.
00:38:16.860 So that's like the national security piece of this.
00:38:20.300 So about a week ago, there's a story that really didn't get much attention, but it's huge.
00:38:25.060 And it's going to further bring more AI build-out and infrastructure into the United States in a huge way.
00:38:34.320 And that is the FCC's ruling on hardware.
00:38:38.580 Basically, the components for robotics cannot be built outside of the United States.
00:38:44.880 So 65% of the component parts in your humanoid robots or robotics need to be built within the United States now.
00:38:53.340 Well, Elon Musk, I mean, and Tesla and Optimus,
00:38:56.240 like that's a huge, they're gonna have to shift dramatically
00:38:58.080 so that now instead of the most of it being built in China,
00:39:01.760 most of it will need to be built in the United States.
00:39:05.240 The actuators, fingers for robots,
00:39:07.680 all of that stuff needs to now be built
00:39:09.320 in the United States, 65% of it.
00:39:12.360 So that's another big piece of this war right now
00:39:16.340 over AI between China.
00:39:17.980 That's gonna increase though to over 80% by the year 2030.
00:39:21.600 So that ruling is like, hey, get your stuff figured out now at 65% because it's going to go up to 80%.
00:39:27.980 So all of this stuff will be built in the United States, or at least presumably it'll be built in the United States.
00:39:34.240 And then this AI layer inside the United States is just going to grow.
00:39:38.740 So speaking to sources at Amazon, they're billed out.
00:39:43.000 They are sold out.
00:39:44.080 This blew me away.
00:39:45.340 They are sold out for eight. 0.59
00:39:47.940 If I wanted to redacted news, my little crappy show,
00:39:52.800 if I wanted to build an AI data center
00:39:54.820 or even just use a part of compute
00:39:57.320 like with Amazon Web Services for my show or something,
00:40:01.760 or you wanted to do it with the Tucker Carlson network
00:40:05.080 or something, Amazon is sold out through 2030 for capacity.
00:40:09.940 Like we want a portion of this data center
00:40:11.960 to be devoted to whatever.
00:40:14.520 Sorry, we're sold out through 2030.
00:40:17.200 and we don't have enough capacity now
00:40:19.340 and we have projected to be building out
00:40:21.600 thousands of additional data centers
00:40:23.380 in the next few years.
00:40:25.580 So when I said at the beginning,
00:40:26.620 we're not even at the beginning of this
00:40:28.240 and people are already talking about a bubble
00:40:30.180 and this, no.
00:40:31.540 And there's so many other pieces to this.
00:40:33.240 I'm sorry, I'm just kind of rambling here,
00:40:34.540 but all these ideas kind of fly into my head
00:40:37.920 about how crazy this is
00:40:39.080 because there's so many pieces of this.
00:40:40.300 You got the robotics piece of this.
00:40:42.380 You have the information layer.
00:40:44.400 Then you have like the factory piece of this.
00:40:47.200 then you have the efficiency piece of this
00:40:50.640 inside of these factories.
00:40:53.420 Then you have just the actual infrastructure
00:40:55.800 to build out all of these different data centers.
00:40:57.940 And then all of the companies surrounding those buildouts,
00:41:01.700 like this blew me away.
00:41:05.100 I don't know if you've heard of United Rentals.
00:41:08.700 Have you heard of this company?
00:41:09.840 No.
00:41:10.080 It's just one example.
00:41:11.500 So when you think about Amazon goes in
00:41:13.140 and builds a new data center,
00:41:15.040 well or meta or google or whomever they hire they don't like come in there and like change the
00:41:20.840 community and like thousands of people get jobs like people come in for like about 18 months at
00:41:27.140 most and they leave so it's kind of like the gold rush or like you know saint elmo's in colorado
00:41:32.180 ghost towns you know they come in they do what they need and then they leave so they hire these
00:41:35.980 companies to bring in caterpillar earth digging machines and united rentals is one of those
00:41:40.500 companies. And they've got now sites in 1,000 different locations. So, hey, United Rentals,
00:41:49.060 we're building out a data center in Reno. Do you have a location nearby you can bring earth
00:41:53.160 diggers, movers, generators, backup generators, all of that? Yep, we got you down. And so then
00:41:57.380 they'll come in and bring all that equipment, build it out, and then it leaves. That's just
00:42:02.260 one piece of the puzzle. Then you've got the porta-potties companies. You've got so many
00:42:07.520 pieces of this build out that's happening. And so people are like, well, it creates jobs
00:42:12.020 temporarily. And a lot of those people come in for every job. They're not creating new jobs every
00:42:17.860 time. They just go to a location and they go to the next location. So they're not creating new
00:42:22.820 jobs. And these data centers really only employ at the most around maybe 50 people. And even that
00:42:28.600 number is dwindling. So sorry, there's just so many pieces of this that it's like... And there's
00:42:35.840 just like a lack of information out there about it.
00:42:38.340 And I just find it just so fascinating
00:42:40.320 and frustrating and terrifying all at the same time. 0.67
00:42:43.400 And maybe also a little bit silly.
00:42:46.760 I mean, this is happening so fast. 0.85
00:42:49.400 And as you've pointed out, it's so complex.
00:42:52.420 But it's also so expensive
00:42:53.920 that you have to ask like, well, what is this?
00:42:56.200 I mean, it's an effort obviously
00:42:57.360 to snap the control grid into place
00:42:59.200 and eliminate dissent, got it. 0.97
00:43:02.200 It's an effort to stay on par with China, got it.
00:43:04.780 But it's also an investment opportunity for a lot of people.
00:43:08.900 And it's the last hope of states like California, which have been completely hollowed out.
00:43:14.720 I mean, the tax base in California is like disappearing.
00:43:17.040 And so their hope is that AI is going to hit.
00:43:20.180 This is all going to be incredibly profitable and they'll be able to keep their wealth or
00:43:23.080 state afloat.
00:43:24.480 Is this a good bet from a business perspective or is it a bubble?
00:43:29.900 And if it's the former, how exactly does it make money?
00:43:32.700 I don't understand that part of it.
00:43:35.240 Where's the revenue come from?
00:43:37.300 Yeah, no, this is a great question.
00:43:38.920 And so when people say we're in an AI bubble,
00:43:40.680 they don't know what they're talking about, I believe.
00:43:42.740 Right.
00:43:44.160 When Mark Cuban says, you know,
00:43:46.040 we're building out so many of these data centers
00:43:48.620 and we don't need them
00:43:49.860 and they're going to be turned into pickleball courts,
00:43:52.520 I believe he doesn't know what he's talking about.
00:43:54.820 I don't think, from every source I've spoken to,
00:43:58.920 we're not even at the beginning of this
00:44:00.980 and the demand for compute is off the charts
00:44:03.680 from different companies.
00:44:05.440 So I don't know what he's talking about. 1.00
00:44:07.160 Like these are going to be converted
00:44:08.080 to pickleball courts.
00:44:09.260 I think if anything, my theory,
00:44:11.440 my theory is that these are going to be turned
00:44:13.740 eventually, we don't need them.
00:44:15.960 These because they're cement and steel,
00:44:17.540 these are going to be turned into for-profit prisons.
00:44:20.160 That's just my theory.
00:44:21.480 Just throwing it out there.
00:44:22.960 They're out in the middle of nowhere. 1.00
00:44:24.520 They'll be converted and we need them badly. 0.97
00:44:28.040 Of course, the Trump administration
00:44:29.020 loves the for-profit prison system.
00:44:30.960 So I just think that that's a perfect transition,
00:44:33.220 not pickleball courts. But anyway, so right now we're at the beginning of this and I was going
00:44:40.080 through earnings reports trying to find over the past few weeks. The reason I say we're at the
00:44:47.040 beginning of this because I have not seen yet from companies on their earnings reports where
00:44:54.400 they have pointed to the AI build out in their factories equaling a percentage of revenue to
00:45:01.060 answer your question. There's very few of them right now. But I believe that that wave is coming.
00:45:09.100 So I think, and I'm not being hyperbolic about it, I really believe that the wave is going to end.
00:45:15.080 That will increase the demand a hundred times. There are a few companies that have now said
00:45:21.540 in some earnings in small measure, their AI buildout has increased revenue. So I'll give
00:45:28.620 an example. There's like an outdoor furniture company. And I was going through their reports
00:45:33.800 and they were explaining that with their AI layer that they built in, they were able to sort of,
00:45:40.220 I don't know, bunch furniture together in a certain way that was more aesthetically pleasing
00:45:45.120 at their stores. I don't know exactly. And they were able to increase revenue. It also increased
00:45:49.220 the proficiency of their sales associates. So it didn't cost jobs. It actually increased their
00:45:53.840 sales associates proficiency by like 82%, they claim, leading to about a 15% increase in revenue.
00:46:01.880 Might have the numbers slightly different, but you get the point, right? Like they've been doing
00:46:06.000 something the same way for 30 years. And then suddenly they add in this like AI efficiency
00:46:11.140 layer. And suddenly they've increased their revenue by 15% without... They didn't hire anybody new.
00:46:18.900 They didn't build a new factory or a new warehouse.
00:46:22.000 They just like bunched furniture together in a certain way that like increased something.
00:46:28.480 Another company, I was looking at their earnings.
00:46:31.200 They claimed that with the scrap metal that they were able to save,
00:46:35.640 like they put in an AI efficiency layer in their metal processing facility in their factory.
00:46:41.480 And when it would chop off pieces of metal,
00:46:43.940 that would usually lead to about $129 million in wasted scrap.
00:46:49.400 But by putting in this AI efficiency layer,
00:46:52.480 they were able to save almost all of that,
00:46:55.300 like saving hundreds of millions of dollars
00:46:57.500 in non-having like wasted scrap metal.
00:47:00.560 So these are like small little anecdotes
00:47:02.700 from like a few companies
00:47:04.120 that have maybe shown some initiative with AI.
00:47:07.740 Right? And so if we see huge increases in efficiency and revenue, game over.
00:47:18.980 There's no bubble. Like with the dot-com bubble, there were people building fake websites.
00:47:24.620 They didn't have anything. There was nothing there. It was fake. And there were so many
00:47:29.000 greedy people who were building all these fake websites. I remember it well, like
00:47:32.460 pets.com, all these whatever. And it was all just fake. It was all greedy people.
00:47:37.740 And so I don't know. I mean, I'm just going to say, I don't know. I don't know if like this is all greed or if these companies who've been doing something a certain way for 50 years in their warehouse, suddenly they add in like this AI efficiency layer and their revenue increases by 20%.
00:48:01.060 maybe they don't fire anybody maybe they actually hire more people i don't know exactly so anyone
00:48:07.300 who says they know is i just i don't know maybe elon knows he seems to know i just but i yeah i
00:48:14.020 and i'm the last person who would know i'm happy to admit that but whenever i see lemming like 0.87
00:48:20.140 behavior i suspect the cliff is near you know whenever you know every midwit you run across 0.90
00:48:28.220 is saying the same thing 0.81
00:48:29.540 about the future,
00:48:30.800 I generally bet
00:48:31.800 that's not what the future
00:48:32.540 is going to look like.
00:48:33.620 But, you know,
00:48:34.260 maybe I'm the midwit. 0.66
00:48:35.580 But I have noticed
00:48:37.040 all of a sudden
00:48:38.360 when the guy from Shark Tank
00:48:39.600 is like talking about stuff
00:48:40.780 he doesn't understand,
00:48:42.200 the future is data centers.
00:48:43.620 I'm like,
00:48:44.000 I think the future
00:48:45.020 is probably not data centers.
00:48:46.120 But, you know,
00:48:46.800 who knows?
00:48:47.460 Maybe I'm just reactionary.
00:48:49.720 No, can I say this?
00:48:50.520 I think the future
00:48:51.780 is human connection.
00:48:53.960 So I think one of the,
00:48:55.200 I'm always a glass half full
00:48:56.260 kind of person.
00:48:56.860 Um, I think one of the benefits of this, despite all of its downsides is the human interaction
00:49:03.340 layer.
00:49:04.360 Um, and you're already seeing it actually, uh, restaurants are reporting that like young
00:49:11.200 people are coming in and they're not drinking.
00:49:12.820 Number one, they don't, they, they don't, they don't drink alcohol and they're coming
00:49:16.520 in, they're bringing like a stack of like playing cards and they're just hanging out
00:49:19.820 all night, like, or a board game to bring in Scrabble, you know, and they're not, and
00:49:24.320 they don't bring their phones at all. And they just come in and are together. And I think there's
00:49:30.600 going to be an insatiable desire for human interaction with this explosion of AI, call it
00:49:36.980 slop, call it fakery, whatever you want to call it. I think there's going to be a really an
00:49:42.780 insatiable desire for human connection and human interaction and human content. People to be able
00:49:50.320 say i'd rather watch tucker's show because it's real human beings having a conversation 0.97
00:49:55.200 than the fake ai generated garbage that you know maybe hollywood is putting out
00:50:00.380 so you know i think that's one maybe benefit uh is that among young people you're seeing this
00:50:06.140 shift and i i hope that that's the case um i don't i don't know i'm just more troubled about
00:50:13.700 how this is going to affect young people than anything i see my kids my son just turned 16 and
00:50:19.380 you know, and he's going to go into the trades because so many of these jobs are just being
00:50:24.920 taken by AI and they will be. And if you don't think that that's the case, you're fooling
00:50:29.740 yourself. Yes. I know all these wall street types, the shark tank types are like, this
00:50:33.680 can create way more jobs. And we don't know, maybe they're right. And maybe there will be 1.00
00:50:39.300 so many jobs created to help the AI efficiency layer or help the robots, you know, help the
00:50:46.220 robots and all of this piece of it, I don't know that there's any evidence that that's true.
00:50:50.820 I think most of the jobs that you can name, you can title yourself, I'm an accountant,
00:50:56.120 I'm a pilot, I'm this, I'm that, are going to be replaced by AI. I mean, at what point soon
00:51:03.620 will FedEx, all of their aircraft be run by AI instead of pilots? Or maybe because of a pilot's
00:51:11.960 union, there'll be one pilot on board just to oversee the AI, but certainly won't be two.
00:51:16.220 It certainly won't be three.
00:51:18.460 So if you're thinking about becoming a pilot,
00:51:20.300 like when my son was,
00:51:21.240 he's kind of like stepped back from that
00:51:22.440 because you're not going to make any money on that
00:51:26.020 and you're not going to be able to...
00:51:27.220 Those jobs are going to disappear.
00:51:28.940 You're already seeing it in the military.
00:51:31.440 It's already happening.
00:51:33.140 So going into the trades,
00:51:35.360 I'm just concerned with my kids.
00:51:37.100 So my son going into electrical engineering
00:51:38.820 and learning how to work with his hands
00:51:42.380 and be able to do something meaningful.
00:51:44.840 um you know i don't know it's a it's a scary time i'm just really worried about the cognitive
00:51:49.460 offload too for children um yeah i brought up the i don't know if you remember that study back in
00:51:57.140 like 2011 that google the google effect study and you know it was the idea how much are we
00:52:06.520 outsourcing search and other things to google instead of doing it ourselves and the sort of
00:52:13.720 idea of search offload or cognitive offload and i'm sure you do it i know i do it it's like oh if
00:52:20.360 i know i can just search for it and find it then i don't need to store it up here yes you know it's
00:52:25.500 like the socrates it's like what uh socrates and plato socrates being worried about uh we won't
00:52:31.480 be able to remember things because we're not you know we're going to write everything down
00:52:34.760 you know um and the only reason we know that is because plato wrote it down but anyway so
00:52:41.220 that was the fear on the Google effect side. Now it's really transitioned to something else
00:52:47.300 entirely with AI beyond just, oh, I don't need to remember it because I can search for it later
00:52:53.280 and Google will just like surface that one page. But even with that, you had to go and do the
00:52:58.580 research yourself. You had to click on the link. You had to read the book. You had to synthesize
00:53:03.820 the information. You had to organize your thoughts. You had to reason. You had to write it down.
00:53:11.220 So I can just think about college for myself,
00:53:13.320 just having to get like five or six books on the topic.
00:53:18.720 I remember writing a whole report on vanilla
00:53:20.840 in Latin America.
00:53:22.360 And I had to go to this special library
00:53:24.820 at the University of Pittsburgh's campus
00:53:26.480 that you had to go under like lock and key
00:53:28.160 because these were old rare books
00:53:29.520 from like 150 years ago
00:53:30.940 and had to sit in that library.
00:53:32.740 I couldn't take them out because they were rare.
00:53:34.120 And I had to do all of this research on vanilla
00:53:36.520 and all of this in Latin America.
00:53:39.500 And after reading these like four or five,
00:53:41.220 books. I had to synthesize my thoughts. I had to organize my thoughts, which I'm not very good at.
00:53:47.400 It's something I've struggled with my whole life, but I've gotten better at it
00:53:50.280 because I've been forced to do it, to write essays, to write, to reason, to think, to put
00:53:55.200 all of these things down in an argument or a narrative, become a better writer just by writing
00:54:01.180 over the years, and then present my paper and then get a C on the paper. It's pretty normal
00:54:08.760 for me or get a B. But now kids are just outsourcing that fully. It's the cognitive
00:54:14.100 offload where they're saying, hey, I'm in eighth grade. So write me a paper as if an eighth grader
00:54:21.340 wrote it about the fall of the Roman empire and don't make it sound like AI. So no amount of
00:54:29.740 research, forget the Google effect. Now you're going to do all the research for me. You're going
00:54:36.260 to synthesize everything. You're going to organize everything. And then you're going to present it
00:54:41.220 and I'm going to turn it in. And so what these studies have found recently is that kids are
00:54:46.440 actually doing really well with their projects, but using AI and they're turning in like great
00:54:52.080 work. But then when they're tested on it, they fail because they have no memory of having done
00:54:58.540 any of the work. They didn't sit in the library and research vanilla all afternoon drinking big
00:55:04.540 gulps, they, they just offloaded all of that. And so they're not remembering anything and being
00:55:11.880 tested on it. They don't, they can't recall anything. So I'm just, I'm really, really worried
00:55:16.880 about, you know, that part of it and what's going to happen to, to my kids, our kids going forward
00:55:24.660 and our ability to have conversations, to reason, to think, to have debates, to present arguments,
00:55:32.780 to support your arguments,
00:55:35.880 organize your thoughts.
00:55:37.540 That's where I'm,
00:55:39.360 that's the real human piece of all of this.
00:55:41.780 Well, that's kind of the question
00:55:42.880 is what's the purpose?
00:55:44.380 I mean, does the machine serve the person
00:55:46.960 or the person serve the machine?
00:55:48.360 I think you could make a strong case.
00:55:50.340 I think most people would make the case
00:55:52.060 that for all the benefits of the internet
00:55:53.660 over the last 30 years,
00:55:54.720 it's been a net loss for humanity.
00:55:57.680 We don't live in a more peaceful world.
00:56:00.420 We don't live in a more stable world.
00:56:02.780 And we don't live in a smarter world, a wiser world.
00:56:05.660 We don't.
00:56:06.580 And probably many reasons for that,
00:56:08.380 but the internet hasn't achieved its core promises,
00:56:11.780 peace, stability, knowledge, wisdom.
00:56:13.840 That didn't work.
00:56:15.520 So knowing that,
00:56:17.900 why would you triple down on the effect with AI?
00:56:22.980 And of course you wouldn't if the goal was to serve people.
00:56:27.780 And you really do detect
00:56:29.620 when you listen to technologists speak
00:56:31.360 that their orientation is totally different.
00:56:34.340 It's like somehow we have an obligation
00:56:36.160 to serve technology.
00:56:38.780 No one ever explains why,
00:56:40.100 I guess because it's a god,
00:56:41.360 maybe the only god.
00:56:42.880 And so whether that means higher energy prices 0.97
00:56:44.920 or less water or dumber, 0.95
00:56:47.240 more suicidal children or whatever the result 0.99
00:56:49.420 kind of inevitably will be,
00:56:51.760 that's the price you pay to serve the machine.
00:56:54.260 And it's like, that seems backward to me.
00:56:59.720 It absolutely does.
00:57:01.360 And I, you know, just sitting here thinking as you're saying that, like, have we had a net positive with the internet?
00:57:06.920 And it's hard to argue that we have in any appreciable way.
00:57:12.500 We're sitting in a third world war right now.
00:57:17.460 Think about how the internet moves markets and creates incredible anxiety.
00:57:23.680 You hear this sort of like palpable feeling of anxiety across the United States.
00:57:28.520 I think largely you could blame that on the internet.
00:57:31.360 When people jump on X or jump on social media and they're fed these dopamine hits of 15-second videos, and they're just like, why did I do that to myself?
00:57:41.380 You feel sort of transported.
00:57:45.260 Just getting sucked into voyeuristic content with people getting arrested or whatever it is, it just makes you feel awful.
00:57:54.980 And I don't think that you have influencers on escalators filming themselves and like, what?
00:58:01.360 this is what we want.
00:58:04.620 That's why I'm encouraged that the younger people are saying,
00:58:06.840 I don't want a smartphone anymore.
00:58:09.520 The internet and smartphones, I think you could combine them
00:58:12.200 and then add in this like AI layer on top of it
00:58:14.700 and you're just constantly online.
00:58:17.120 So I don't know.
00:58:17.700 I think you're going to see,
00:58:19.460 maybe you're going to start to see more Amish communities pop up.
00:58:22.200 You're going to start to see like a pushback, 1.00
00:58:24.840 sort of internet-free zones.
00:58:27.740 Do not bring your phones in here.
00:58:29.500 I don't know how big those things will be, and I don't know what kind of pushback we'll have from people who've gone through it.
00:58:38.220 Will we have sort of a moment where we all say enough is enough, we don't want this anymore? 0.93
00:58:45.080 There are the arguments, well, maybe we shouldn't be connected in such a way to these AI models that are coming from China,
00:58:52.480 that are coming from the United States, that are coming from open AI, anthropic, etc.
00:58:57.120 get open source models that you can then store
00:59:00.620 like on your own compute in your own house
00:59:03.600 that is so you have like all of the wisdom self-contained
00:59:08.640 and I know there are like some libertarian friends of mine
00:59:12.720 who believe that that's the way to go
00:59:14.180 is like you have all of this compute sort of living
00:59:17.260 I don't want to say like Hillary Clinton's style
00:59:19.740 like on your own servers in your house 0.95
00:59:21.260 but you're not relying on China
00:59:22.860 you're not relying on the government
00:59:24.240 you're not relying on these companies
00:59:25.680 you're relying on yourself and if you want to do some deep research on a project you have access
00:59:30.160 to it because it lives on your own server in your house disconnected from those people i don't know
00:59:35.460 i don't have that without getting too far afield however i mean i think one of the biggest things
00:59:40.080 that's happened in technology in recent memory was the hacking of cold wallets and the theft of
00:59:46.740 bitcoin from cold wallets and the promise of a cold wallet was it was disconnected from the
00:59:50.540 internet it was it was wholly yours no one could put a finger on it other than you and that was
00:59:57.460 the assurance that your bitcoin was actually yours and to so to see that get hacked somehow
01:00:04.300 suggests that anything with an electrical impulse is not really under your control
01:00:09.960 well we even saw the story was it three weeks ago about the ai model that was offline was not
01:00:18.600 even connected to the internet and managed to somehow connect and get on and hack jump online
01:00:26.120 to hack and then jump back offline right uh and so yeah and then add in the robotics layer to this
01:00:33.780 on top of it all right so the humanoid the the humanoid robot piece of this where you know you're
01:00:40.880 going to have this you're going to have this in warfare you're going to have humanoid robots i
01:00:45.680 mean it's straight it's it literally is straight out of terminator yep um you know this is what's
01:00:51.180 coming um and who can stop it is there gonna be some sort of a kill switch and the ability to
01:00:56.380 turn this stuff off i don't think so so i don't know we're gonna build compounds with you know
01:01:04.420 corrugated i don't know steel walls and and turrets on our houses now to protect us against
01:01:10.280 It's the coming AI robot invasion, but we're seeing it on the battlefield already.
01:01:16.620 And we already know that the U.S. military is years ahead on this planning for where this is going.
01:01:23.340 So, I don't know.
01:01:25.420 To me, this is the greatest, most bizarre, and biggest transformation in human history that we're watching right now unfold before us.
01:01:34.120 Yeah.
01:01:34.940 Yeah.
01:01:35.460 I mean, I hate to say it,
01:01:37.980 a lot of flawed people with true ideas out there,
01:01:42.020 but Ted Kaczynski did call this 30 years ago. 0.96
01:01:46.080 And because he was crazy and violent 0.98
01:01:48.060 and killed innocents, we ignored it. 0.98
01:01:50.380 But we shouldn't have,
01:01:53.040 because he was onto something, I would say.
01:01:55.940 Clayton Morris, thank you for that
01:01:57.240 really informed and kind of amazing rundown
01:02:00.540 of where we're going.
01:02:02.300 I'm grateful.
01:02:03.900 My pleasure, it's scary.
01:02:05.460 Let's hang out and have a human conversation without AI.
01:02:09.720 I can't wait.
01:02:11.280 Great to see you.
01:02:12.540 Thanks.
01:02:13.520 Thanks, man.