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

Summary

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Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Episode: 10/2/25: Trump Cuts Blue State Funding, Job Losses As Gov Shuts Down, Data Centers Surge Electricity Prices
Date: October 2, 2025
Hosts: Sagar Enjeti and Ryan Grim (Krystal Ball not present in this episode)
Podcast: iHeartPodcasts

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Overview

This episode of Breaking Points delivers an in-depth analysis of the ongoing government shutdown under the Trump administration, the targeted defunding of "blue" (Democratic-leaning) states, looming job losses for federal employees, and the growing—and troubling—impact of tech-sector data centers on U.S. electricity prices. Sagar and Ryan approach each topic with their characteristic blend of skepticism, irreverence, and policy detail, interrogating partisan narratives and highlighting underreported consequences for everyday Americans.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Government Shutdown: Political Gamesmanship and Job Losses

Why the Shutdown?

• The government is officially in shutdown mode, with the White House signaling "reduction in forces" (RIFs)—i.e., layoffs—for federal employees.
• The Trump administration is leveraging its authority to target funding and jobs in Democratic strongholds, especially blue-state infrastructure (NYC, California, etc.).

Messaging Battles: Democrats vs. Republicans

• The hosts discuss the shifting partisan scripts: “There’s something so beautiful about everybody just switching sides on the shutdown. … Now the Democrats are shutting the shutdown. I love it personally…” (Sagar, 07:13).
• Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, are focusing public messaging on healthcare and the impact on everyday Americans.
  • Chuck Schumer on Kitchen-Table Consequences (09:00):

    “What happens … when the family sits around the kitchen table and says, how are we going to pay the bills? … The average American is going to say, what the heck happened here? And we Democrats are going to be there every day… It happened because our Republican colleagues wanted to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut their health care.”

• GOP narrative blames Democrats for the shutdown, as seen on every federal website.

Strategic Questions Within the Parties

• Democrats are in a bind: let Trump cut blue-state funding, or cave and risk base backlash?
  • Sagar: "Are they really gonna sit by and allow tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands to be fired and eventually cave? I don't know. … that almost seems worse to me from a Democratic base perspective." (12:13)
• Moderate “gang” in both chambers reportedly searching for a deal, likely around ACA subsidies.

Comparing Past and Present Shutdowns

• The Obama-era 2013 shutdown was a huge national event, with a clear push to make its effects visible. This time: “weirdly like a low-key shutdown” (Sagar, 17:56).
• Ryan: “There’s a boredom with 20 years at this point almost of Washington doing shutdown drama, fiscal cliff drama, the debt ceiling drama, super committees. … It all adds up to just blips for people.” (19:21)

Notable Quotes

• On executive power games:

  "Elections have consequences as, as Obama famously said." (Ryan, 17:56)

• On the effectiveness of shutdowns:

  "What they cared about was the exercise of power in and of itself." (Sagar, 27:26) "Shutdown politics actually did work ... the Republican stars of that period—every single one of them remains prominent to today." (Sagar, 28:02)

2. Trump’s Targeted Funding Cuts & DEI Backlash

• Russ Vought (OMB): Announced $18 billion worth of NYC infrastructure halted and a further $8 billion in “green scam” funding canceled across Democratic states, specifically to cut off funding tied to DEI initiatives.

  • Sagar: "What connects all of those states? … Not that they all voted for Democrats in the national." (11:39)

• The hosts emphasize how this is unprecedented targeted action, noting the overtly partisan rationale.

3. Economic Fallout: Data Freeze and Jobs

Federal Data Blackout

• During the shutdown, key federal economic indicators (payroll, unemployment, CPI, PPI, GDP) won’t be released—crippling economists, businesses, and even the Fed.
  • Sagar: “We’re entering a data freeze. So historically, the Fed would shift more dovish on average during US Government shutdown…” (34:13)
  • Only one BLS staffer is considered "essential" and remains on duty (35:15).

Job Losses and Economic Weakness

• ADP reports a loss of 32,000 private sector jobs in September, with especially sharp declines in hospitality/leisure.

• Growing uncertainty and potential increased hardship as hundreds of thousands of federal workers miss paychecks.

• Ryan notes the cumulative effects of inflation, high costs, and now job insecurity could be severe: “People have less breathing room going into this time.” (40:09)

Tourism & Trade Policy

• Trump’s ongoing trade wars, especially with Canada, are hurting tourism in U.S. cities like Vegas and LA, further compounding the economic pain. (41:03)

BLS Nominee Pulled

• Trump’s own nominee for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, E.J. Antoni, is withdrawn after pushback from within the GOP for incompetence.
• Illustrates the chaos and politicization of federal workforce and data management.
  • Sagar: “Not one senator, not two, but four Republicans came to the White House and they’re like, hey, this is not happening, period.” (43:26)
  • Notable Quote:

    “There are a lot of competent conservative economists that could do this job. EJ is not one of them.”
    —Kyle Pomerleau, AEI, via Ryan (43:54)

Fed Governance Fight

• Supreme Court stalls Trump’s attempt to remove Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook over disputed mortgage fraud charges, temporarily maintaining Fed independence (45:19).

4. Data Centers and the Electricity Crisis

Hidden Costs of AI and Cloud Boom

• Sagar exposes shocking data: In Virginia, 39% of all electricity is consumed by data centers; 33% in Oregon.
  • "That’s an absolutely insane amount of power consumption" (Sagar, 49:07)
• These centers get tax giveaways while the public pays for higher electricity costs—even facing the prospect of utilities shutting off or raising household thermostats for the benefit of data centers.
  • Sagar: “Your house has to be hotter so the data center can crunch Sam Altman slop.” (53:38)
• New Ohio bill allows utilities to “voluntarily” adjust home/business thermostats during high demand—but no accountability or limits on datacenter usage.

What Are We Funding?

• Sagar draws a stark contrast between historic infrastructural investments (rural electrification, railroads, telecom) and today's cloud/datacenter buildout, which “fundamentally has no value proposition” for the public.
  • “We can’t be living in the world where everybody else has to absorb all of those increased costs. … for what?” (49:07)
• “If this were the Manhattan Project … maybe. But for AI-generated slop? No!” (53:39)

Populist Challenge

• Sagar calls for state-level populist pushback:
  • “If you’re going to consume 40% of power, I’m sorry, you gotta be paying a hell of a lot more and making sure there’s some offset for consumers.” (55:08)
  • Legislators, he argues, are cowed by tech giants’ political money and PR about "good jobs."

5. The AI Slop Dilemma: Sora and Deepfakes

• OpenAI’s Sora 2 video generator is released. The hosts are highly skeptical:
  • Sagar mocks the demo videos (“Wow. So cool.” 57:46), highlighting that one of the first viral uses was a fake surveillance video of Sam Altman.
  • "So you basically created slop video which will be used for YouTube shorts ... and also you created a technology which makes it … possible so that surveillance video and deep fakes … could be immediately employed." (57:46)
• They warn that these developments—enabled by public-subsidized power and infrastructure—serve only to further “addict kids on TikTok and YouTube shorts.”

Existential Reflections

• Ryan: “A lot of people in the AI world are like, yeah, there’s a 20% chance of an existential event as a result of this.” (61:11)
• Both ask: for what societal purpose are we taking on these costs?
  • Sagar: “AI to the extent that it’s used in the workplace is for shit that nobody thought is game changing.” (62:20)
  • Entry-level jobs are being automated away, but no transformative value is being delivered.

Bubble Economics & Power Concentration

• AI/data centers are driving much of U.S. GDP growth. Absent tech investment, the country would be in a recession.
  • "Without the data center capital expenditure from the technology industry, there is no GDP growth." (63:23)
• The tech bubble’s inevitable pop is expected to benefit the rich—who will buy distressed assets at fire-sale prices—while harming ordinary people.
  • “If you’re worth 150 billion ... if you’re 100,000 and you go to 75,000, that means a lot to you. ... The people who suffer from these financial bubbles are not the people who cause them.” (66:15)

Creeping Dystopia: AI in Hollywood and Beyond

• Highlight: There is now an "AI director" for movies, AI-generated actors, and “virtual auteurs.”
  • Sagar: "This is basically an erasure of humanity as we know it."
  • Ryan: “What is humanity bringing to the earth other than misery and despair if we’re not producing more Shakespeares?” (70:46)
  • Sagar: “We’re all paying higher electricity bills so that Sora can generate slop videos for kids to be addicted on TikTok.” (71:22)

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Memorable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• “There’s something so beautiful about everybody just switching sides on the shutdown.”
  — Sagar, 07:13

• "What connects all these states? … not that they all voted for Democrats"
  — Sagar, 11:39

• "You know, when you lose power, you’re left with like bad and even worse."
  — Ryan, 17:44

• "This seems weirdly like a low-key shutdown. … Do the Democratic base feel the responsiveness here? Cuz I haven’t seen that quite yet…"
  — Sagar, 17:56

• "There’s a boredom with 20 years … of Washington doing shutdown drama, fiscal cliff drama, the debt ceiling drama, super committees."
  — Ryan, 19:21

• "Elections have consequences as, as Obama famously said."
  — Ryan, 17:56

• "What they cared about was the exercise of power in and of itself."
  — Sagar, 27:26

• "So you basically created slop video which will be used for YouTube shorts … and also … makes it … possible so that surveillance video and deep fakes … could be immediately employed…"
  — Sagar, 57:46

• "We're all just circling the drain."
  — Ryan, 31:39

• "…Without the data center capital expenditure from the technology industry, there is no GDP growth. … The people who suffer from these financial bubbles are not the people who cause them in the first place."
  — Sagar, 63:23 & 66:15

• "What is humanity bringing to the earth other than misery and despair if we're not producing more Shakespeares?"
  — Ryan, 70:46

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 06:40 – White House Press Conference: Looming Federal Employee Layoffs
• 09:00 – Chuck Schumer Kitchen-Table Messaging Clip
• 11:35-12:37 – Russ Vought Details on Targeted Funding Cuts
• 13:45 – Moderate “Gang” Seeks Deal in Congress
• 19:21 – Reflections on Past Shutdowns and Public Sentiment
• 34:13 – Economic Data Freeze, Impact on Fed and Markets
• 39:51 – Jobs Report Discussion
• 43:26 – Trump BLS Nomination Pulled
• 45:19 – Fed Showdown: Lisa Cook and the Supreme Court
• 49:07 – Data Centers' Electricity Usage Exposed
• 53:38 – Utility Thermostats Bill, Impact on Consumers
• 57:26 – Sora/AI Slop Demo and Deepfake Risks
• 61:11 – Existential Dread: Is AI Worth It?
• 66:10 – Populism, Power, and the Inevitable Tech Bubble Pop
• 67:47 – AI in Hollywood—Director Bots, Digital Actors, Human Displacement
• 70:46 – Moral and Artistic Costs: Are We Losing "What Makes Us Human"?

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Conclusion

This episode paints a grim—and at times darkly humorous—portrait of a political and economic system caught in cycles of self-destruction, manipulated by partisanship and industry alike. Sagar and Ryan diagnose a malaise at the heart of American governance, one where the most consequential battles are being fought over symbolism rather than genuine progress—and where ordinary people are footing the bill, whether through lost jobs, higher utility bills for AI "slop," or a culture sliding toward soulless automation.

Overall tone: Sceptical, urgent, at times fatalistic, with flashes of sardonic humor and clear-eyed policy analysis.

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Transcript

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[A]

Hey guys, Sager and Krystal here.

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This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

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[A]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see [e-mail] Good morning everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Bro Show. Good to see you Ryan.

[B]

Good to see you Sagar.

[A]

All right, dad. Show, bro. Show. That's what people live for. The pound. I gotta get all my content.

[B]

Gotta get the T shirts.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. We gotta get the T shirts. All right, so we've got a great show for everybody today. Let's do this. The hardest part of the job. What do we have? We're gonna start with the shutdown. We are officially some 24. What? 2448 hours. 48 hours, something like that. 36 hours. All right, we'll go with that. Time is a blur. When you.

[B]

Nobody knows the government.

[A]

We have an infant at home. Yeah, exactly. We have a shutdown that's going on. We're gonna break down all the politics for everybody. Some of the developments from the Trump administration, we're gonna get then to some of the Democratic response and some of the internecine warfare about whether the shutdown was a good idea or not. We have a lot of economic news, actually, in fact, because the government shutdown, some of the key government indicators maybe not be released by the Trump administration, as well as some news on the BLS nominee. That's one of those key data points that the Trump administration had been at war with. They nominated this new guy and now all of a sudden his nomination has been pulled. We are going to talk about Sora. Sora, is this new Ryan OpenAI video generator deeply dystopian AI.

[B]

Today's show is produced by that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I wish it was produced by Sora. It would save us a lot of money, wouldn't it? Although the whole point may, you know, in terms of what we're giving up, what are we getting for all this? And in particular, the amount of money and power that these data centers, which power this AI are consuming is astronomical. I knew it was high, and even I did not know what the actual numbers were, including in the state where I live. We're also gonna talk about Qatar. And it's funny, Ryan. We are very often accused of being Qatari assets for being critical of Israel. So I do hope that this block will set the record straight. Donald Trump, out of thin air, created Article 5 style protections for Qatar. Why exactly? Because Israel attacked them. Hmm. Seems better to just constrain Israel than just unilaterally grant Article 5 protection. And also, Steve Wyckoff, you know, you and I have been joking the last 24 hours. I always kind of thought it was a Zionist talking point that Qatar, that Steve Wykoff is bought by Qatar, have a little bit of point. All right, you know, listen, if he Actually had followed through with a ceasefire deal in Gaza. Maybe we could. You know, it's like, what's a few billion here between friends? But if we're gonna be where we are now and you're gonna be straight, you know, in some sketchy dealings, it needs to be called out. It needs to be called out.

[B]

You can imagine being a guitar, you're like, we gave this guy billions.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. We're still getting money.

[D]

We're still getting money. It's ridiculous.

[B]

You can't buy good assets anymore.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So good.

[A]

And then finally, we're gonna talk about TikTok, some of the new pro Israel censorship rolling out across TikTok. And Ryan, you have a TikTok creator who you are friends with who has been massively suppressed in the algorithm. Tell us about him.

[B]

Yeah, he goes by your favorite guy. He's kind of tutored us over at dropsite a little bit about how to do TikTok. Because this is a foreign. Well, not only a foreign company, but a kind of used to be foreign. Foreign in the colloquial sense, too, to old people like me and Sagar. And so he. Since this new rollout, I think it was September 13th or 23rd, we'll get into it with him. These new community guidelines are. Are presaging the extraordinary amount of censorship that we're gonna see interesting on TikTok going forward. So, like, his politics. Don't like his politics. Whatever. He's gonna talk. Talk to us about what it's doing for his ability to express those politics on this. On this platform.

[A]

Yeah, I don't care what his politics are. Right. So, you know, for me, it's just more interesting about the censorship guidelines and the things that have come into place. And some place previously, there was a lot of discussion around Israel and in particular really had an effect on youth culture, and it's been hit like that overnight. So we're very curious to see how that goes. Thank you to everybody who's been supporting the show. BreakingPoints.com if you are able to. If you're not, no worries. To become a full subscriber, just please go ahead and hit the subscribe button on YouTube. If you're listening to this on a podcast, send an episode to a friend and. Or rate us 5 stars. It really helps other people find the show. So let's go ahead and start with the shutdown. As you said, the most consequential news is that the White House is telegraphing rifts or reduction in forces of US Government employees, given their unilateral authority. Authority on how to run the government when there is a shutdown. Here is the press secretary, Caroline Levitt, speaking yesterday at a press conference. Let's take a listen. I'm just gonna clarify the timing of.

[B]

These potential layoffs to federal workers.

[A]

You said imminent.

[B]

The vice president seemed to say in a couple of days. It looks like Russ Vogt maybe said in two days. What is.

[A]

When would these layoffs begin? Two days.

[B]

Imminent.

[A]

Very soon. You will expect more announcements right now. Is it just not clear or are you waiting? Is it. No, it's not unclear. All of those things are very synonymous with one another. These rifts are unfortunately going to have to happen very soon. Let's fix our policy after the shutdown. Where have I heard that before?

[B]

Where have I heard of that before?

[A]

On the other side, there's something so beautiful about everybody just switching sides on the shutdown. You know, Republicans shut down the government multiple times. People just tore their hair out over the norms. Now the Democrats are shutting the shutdown. I love it personally, you know, I like to see people be responsive to their partisan bases. But, Ryan, tell us a little bit your thoughts here in terms of the messaging wars on the shutdown before we get to Schumer.

[B]

I mean, I think there might be something to that. Regarding Schumer. I don't know if it's just AOC threatening to challenge him in a primary. It's just generally this sense among Democrats that he is failing at his job and he's not being tough enough. I've heard of him going into spaces here in D.C. where it's all establishment elite type figures and just getting absolute, like, hammer, cold shoulder.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Just like, oh, right, this guy.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Like, so even like the brass, it's like this. There's a. There's a sense that going from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, some. Some real ballers. Yeah. To Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries is a massive step down in, like, talent and strength.

[A]

I mean, that's objectively true.

[B]

It's objectively true. But even the establishment, like, understands that.

[A]

Yeah, but I'll save some of my commentary. But isn't that kind of their fault? Like, they're the ones who wanted people who were more agreeable and more poll tested.

[B]

I mean, they voted for.

[A]

Right. They voted for these guys. They supported their candidacy.

[B]

And Reid helped usher in Schumer and Pelosi helped usher in Jeffries. It's really AOC's fault for knocking Joe Crowley out. He'd be House Speaker Right now, it's.

[A]

Actually deeply funny to even consider all of that. All right, let's get to Chuck Schumer, his own response. Some of the framing coming out of the House leadership or the House and Senate leadership from the Democrats. Let's take a listen. What happens on Friday night when the family sits around the kitchen table and says, how are we going to pay the bills? When they see that their Insurance could be $1,000 more a month, health insurance, vital to the parents, the children of the family, what are they going to do? The average American can't afford $1,000 a month or even $400 a month. The average American is going to say, what the heck happened here? And we Democrats are going to be there every day, every hour, Senate House groups that care about health care, hospital groups, health care groups, research groups, and letting them know this didn't have to happen. It happened because our Republican colleagues wanted to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut their health care. So, Ryan, they are going all in on the health care message. We've talked about it here quite a bit with Crystal. It does. Obviously it's the most poll tested. I mean, it's legit. Not even just legitimate. It's a deeply important issue. Obamacare subscribers, you too?

[B]

You're like, come on, Dems.

[A]

I'm just wait. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, you know, maybe it's like a sly thing where I'm like, yeah, it wouldn't be so bad, you know, if they got what they want. It'd be nice, especially with the new addition here to our family plan. The question around it is is this going to satisfy the Democratic base for some of the stuff that they want to stop Trump on? It's not really about healthcare. Let's be honest. They just want kind of throw wrench in the government. And then the secondary question is, can the Democrats withstand what the Trump administration is going to do? So, for example, let's put a 4 up here on the screen. I'll get your reaction. Russ Vogt, who is the OMB director, says, quote, roughly 18 billion in new York City infrastructure projects now been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing based on, quote, unconstitutional DEI principles. More info to come from the US dot. He specifically there was talking about New York City. What is it, the second Avenue subway line as well as another infrastructure project that is currently being funded by the government. And so you see the direct targeting here of New York City. And I can combine it here. Yeah. With a five just so you can tell us a little bit about some of the state. Nearly 8 billion in green. Quote, green. New scam funding to fuel the left's crime agenda is being canceled. Projects are in the following state. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington. For the life of me, Ryan, pop.

[B]

Quiz, pop quiz class. What connects all of those states?

[A]

You know, for the life of me, I cannot figure out what is in common with all these states.

[B]

They have capitals that have three syllables.

[A]

There you go. Right. That, that's got to be it. Right? Not that they all voted for Democrats in the national. So yeah, I mean, what do you think about the way that these establishment Dems are going to handle this? Right. Because they already lost a couple in terms of the vote. So how many do they actually need? Like seven more?

[B]

They need three more.

[A]

Sorry, three more. They need three more to come along with them. You've got the government, New York City obviously being targeted because of Chuck Schumer, the rest of the Democratic states to put a lot of pressure there on the senators, of course, reduction in force. You got Democrats who have a lot of veterans for the government like itself, for the bureaucrats. Are they really gonna sit by and allow tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands to be fired and eventually cave? I don't know. I mean that almost seems worse to me from a Democratic based perspective. So what's your read currently on the situation?

[B]

Right, and I think, and we can put up a six as well because this goes to it as reporting from Capitol Hill saying that a gang of moderates in both parties, they're starting the old, the age old gang process in search of a deal centered on ACA subsidies. What this means basically is that you'll get enough Democrats sitting down in a room with enough Republicans that if they all agree they can, no matter what the leaderships want to do, they can, they can break the logjam. And so I think it, I think this is where it heads because from Democrats perspective, the base and Schumer, they just want to show that they put up a fight and now they've kind of showed that. And if they can get something then they can move on and say we're going to fight, fight on this another day. Schumer's strategy here is very clear and I get it like he's in January, you and I'm talking about all of you and particularly Sager are gonna get hit with the, if you're on the exchanges, which is about 20 million people, the subsidies go away and boom, all of a Sudden, your affordable payment for the Affordable Care act is now deeply sunflowers.

[A]

It's not that affordable, by the way.

[B]

But it's more affordable than when they strip the subsidies away. And Democrats want the public to know why that happened. And they're hoping that this big storm that they're creating now will then remind people, okay, so they're hoping, I think, that they make enough of a storm, and then once you've done that, you've kind of scratched all the different itches. You still have this fundamental philosophical question that actually, speaking of AOC goes back to her debate with Joe Crowley where she had gotten Crowley to say that ICE is fascist. And then she'd be like, but then why would you vote to fund a fascist agency? Which you. It's like, when. That's why a lot of politicians don't want to call what's happening in Gaza genocide. Because once you call it a genocide.

[A]

You can't fund it.

[B]

On what planet can you fund a genocide? And what planet can you fund a fascist agency? So Democrats have said this is an authoritarian crackdown. You know, this is the end of the American Republic. Oh, and here we're going to fund it. That. That is just a.

[A]

That's what they did earlier. Right? Right.

[B]

And they get killed. So they have to do something.

[A]

Right. But then doesn't it seem as if shutting it down for messaging purposes only to cave in a couple of days, isn't that worse? Right. And how would Schumer and Jeffries and them handle it? So again, to explain just a little bit to people, the House bill is already passed. Right. You only need a couple of senators to buckle and to just vote for the, quote, clean CR whatever to go through, and then you're done. And so the majority of the Democrats could stand against the bill, but if a couple of the, quote, moderates do, well, you still lost. And that's going to affect the national party at a major level.

[B]

And maybe they get. And it'll be interesting to see how they work the details out. Because, yeah, you can make a deal around the subsidies, pass a clean cr, and then try to implement it in the next thing. But then you're at the whim of Republicans again, Right? So really you have to get it passed. But then it. Then Johnson and Republicans in the House would have to then agree to it. Which goes back to a question I've been wondering from the GOP perspective, why fight this? Actually, they don't care about deficits anymore, but why not just say, okay, fine, you know what these Subsidies going away would suck for us in an election year anyway. Fine, keep them.

[A]

Yeah. Cause I wonder how much of this is about health care and how much is about the executive just basically doing backflips on, hey, we've been wanting this. They're like, we want the OMB director, for example. I can read this just this morning. There's a new Trump truth quote. I have a meeting today with Russ VOGT of Project 2025 fame to determine which of them which by the hilarious. Because now, now Project Point because he said nothing to do with Project 2025. I'll fire anybody who has anything to do with Project 25 anyway. Whatever. To determine which of the many Democratic agencies, most of which are a political scam, he recommends to be cut and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent. I can't believe the radical left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people. So maybe this is their way of wanting to quietly and quickly make America great again. I mean, he's kind of correct, right? In terms of they knew that this was the likely outcome. The Democratic response I have seen is if you look at Russ Vogt's tweet on New York City, it has nothing to do with the shutdown. He said it was about dei. So the point that I've seen the base and them up make is guys, they're gonna cut funding whether they, whether there's a shutdown or not. So who cares? Why should we buckle to this? I just personally think that they can't sit by for that long and let the government just cut whatever agency or whatever people put entirely on furlough. In particular, if you see a straight up targeting of all Democratic states and of their funding, how long are they really gonna go with it before some mealy mouth, you know, new Nevada Democrat is gonna be coming and voting for the cr? I could see that happening very quickly.

[B]

I could, yeah, it could for sure. But, but yes, like Democrats also do have that point that like Russ votes going to do this stuff anyway.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So, so the threats and the, he's going to probably going to do more with it shut down. But yeah, Democrats was what, you know, when you lose power, you're. You're left with like bad and even.

[A]

Worse elections have consequences as, as Obama famously said. I do wonder here with the shutdown again, you know how the Democratic base is feeling. Because something that is mystifying to me is if you recall in 2013, the shutdown was the biggest story in the world. It was everywhere. Especially I was living, I was going to college here in Washington. But the Obama administration made sure that you knew about the shutdown. Like they had sign. I remember even in the place where I would walk sometimes, which is near my university, was technically national park grounds. And there was a big sign over. It was like this place is shut. You could still walk there, but it's like it's shut down because of the shutdown. The Trump administration is doing some of that, but the Republicans also their full media, you know, Fox News, the radio stations, everybody was mobilized. This seems weirdly like a low key shutdown. Almost like do the Democratic base feel the responsiveness here? Cuz I haven't seen that quite yet in terms of their media, in terms of maybe like they're feeling as if they're being responded to and that that feels relevant as we transition to the next part about how the Democrats themselves are kind of handling the shutdown.

[B]

Yeah. And while you were in college there, I was actually on pool duty with Obama when that was going on. And I remember sprinting up the Lincoln Memorial steps because he went up and did an event at the very top of the Lincoln Memorial steps. I beat all the rest of the pool reporters. Totally out of shape.

[A]

That's a good feeling.

[B]

Yes. And Obama was in much better shape than all of us combined. And yeah, it was a huge deal. I think that there's a boredom with 20 years at this point almost of Washington doing shutdown drama, fiscal cliff drama, the debt ceiling drama, super committees. And it all adds up to just blips for people. Like there's some for hundreds of thousands of individuals who work for the federal government. Certainly it's impactful, but for the 300 plus million people in the country, they're like, we're just kind of bored of like all of this. But that is a recipe oftentimes for catastrophe because eventually the wolf does show up. Even if you have been crying wolf a while, people kind of learn the wrong lesson from that fairy tale. Sometimes it's like, or whatever you would call it, it's like, yes, you shouldn't cry wolf. But also there are wolves.

[D]

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[C]

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[A]

Ah come on.

[D]

Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

[E]

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[A]

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

[B]

Out they don't have to follow the.

[A]

Law on who cares.

[B]

What are they gonna do?

[A]

Oh you're sue them over the hatch act violation or whatever. Good luck. Right? You know that seems like quaint in our current politics and from the Democratic side like we have Hakeem Jeffries, we have Chuck Schumer. It just to me is lame like the way that it just doesn't seem legitimate. It doesn't seem as if they really believe in the fight. And especially when you have multiple Democratic senators who already kind of voted for it, you're like, okay, what are we really doing here? And so our team helped me decipher this new TikTok Democratic meme that was posted by the Democratic Party of a Kitty explaining the government shutdown. Let's take a listen. Republican and Democrat kiddies cannot agree on what should be funded. Democrat kiddies want you to have health care. Republican kiddies do not. Republican kiddies control the Senate, House and the White House. So they're using that to cut your health care and give money to billionaires. Democrat kitty tries to negotiate, but Republicans Republican kitty keeps running away. He has a vacation to get to. Oh, suddenly the money you pay for your health insurance has tripled. Thanks, Republicans. Our Gen Z staffer tells us that usually this meme is about Kitty explains boyfriend to girlfriend, not technically about the government shutdown. I don't know about this. I mean, look, maybe the point about unified government is always one that does hit with the American people, right? Is they're like, hey, you have the House, the Senate and the White House and you guys still can't fund the government. It's like, well, there is the filibuster. You know, the Republicans still, I guess, do believe in both kind of bases, probably would be fine with nuking the filibuster. So technically, you know, if they really wanted to, they could nuke the filibuster and then they could just fund the government, but that doesn't seem like something that they want to do. But more broadly, Ryan, this kind of gets to the shutdown wars. And some more establishment voices in D.C. voicing against democratic embrace of the shutdown. Let's put a eight, please, up on the screen. I'm very curious for what you think. So Washington Post editorial board. You know, one of the classic people used to care, but nobody really cares anymore, still has some voice in Washington. Quote, the Democrats marched into a shutdown trap. They say progressive Democrats like the Freedom Caucus are urging their party in a dangerous direction. And so what they say is that the Democratic Party shut off any potential escape valve to avoid a shutdown. In doing so, progressives embraced the same disastrous mentality that led the House Freedom Caucus to believe it could come out ahead in previous government funding shutdowns. They strongly assumed, they wrongly assume their political leverage would withstand the ensuing fallout. Left wing Democrats like the Freedom Caucus before them enter the shutdown In a position of weakness. They point to the Trump administration saying that they're gonna do whatever they want. And they also point specifically to how, in their telling, the previous Republican shutdowns, quote, failed to achieve Republican goals every time. Do you think that that's true or not? Cuz I don't think it's necessarily true that the Freedom Caucus act didn't achieve their goals. Didn't achieve their goals. I think they vastly achieved their goals.

[B]

In a significant way. They achieved their goals. Yeah. Particularly when it comes to leveling off government spending starting like after 2011, which actually slowed the recovery. We had sequestration, it got sequestration out of it. And I think without that, they don't win the Senate in 2014. And if you don't win the Senate in 2014, Merrick Garland is a Supreme Court justice and our entire world looks different than it does now. And I think without, actually, without what the Freedom Caucus accomplished in slowing the economy and slowing the recovery in those four or five years, you don't even get Trump winning in 2016 because it was such a close election and people were frustrated at the very slow recovery from the financial crisis. So, you know, they actually got there. They didn't get everything they wanted by any remote stretch of the imagination. And we now have what, 30 plus trillion dollars in debt. So like, like from their perspective, they were like, well, we totally failed, but marginally, they actually did bring about four or five years of austerity with a Democrat in the White House, which was to their political benefit.

[A]

And I would flip it too and say, did they really care about austerity? Obviously not. What they cared about was the exercise of power in and of itself. Right. And what they showed is that some 15 to 30 people actually could wield immense amounts of power relative to everybody else in the government. It's almost like a tyranny of the minority part, where as long as you' together and you're in lock step, that the rest of the group is gonna have to adapt itself to what, Whoever you are. This is part of the problem though, with the Democratic Party again, I think, in my opinion, is that by kind of lamely talking about aca, and again, I don't even think really authentically, because the truth is, is that the Democrats just wanted to shut down, period. Like, if you listen and they cite comments from Greg Cesar and others, they're like, it's not about aca, okay? They were like, we hate Trump. They're like, well, we think what Trump is doing is so horrible. We're not gonna fund it, period. Right? We're gonna make his last life hell. It's a question mark of whether they are making their life hell, but it's the only thing that we have, so we might as well do it. And I think that that has a lot of currency, but without any uptick and constant browbeat of a lot of the people who are the Democratic Party faithful accepting that message, then you do kind of find yourself in a weird position where, if you look at Chuck Schumer, he's not taking what I originally said. The smartest thing Mitch McConnell ever said in 2009 was, Our job is just make sure the president doesn't get reelected, period. All right? I was like. They were like, oh, are you gonna work with Obama? He's like, no. He's like, we have one job. Make sure that he does not succeed, period. And everyone was shocked by that. It was actually the most honest thing a politician has said in years, because he's like, yeah, you think we're gonna negotiate in good faith? Absolutely not. He's like, we're here to make shit miserable for Obama. And he succeeded 100%. So the point is, though, on the Democratic side, you don't see that level of fight and of energy. And look, McConnell became hated many years later, but he was a hero, right? He was a absolute Tea Party Freedom Caucus hero there for some time. Obviously, there were a lot of fights in particular, but Paul Ryan became the House speaker as a result of this, and he was seen as a credible person who could replace Boehner. So, like, to me, that's where. No, the shutdown politics actually did work in terms of. Look at the Republican stars of that period. Every single one of them remains prominent to today. Ted Cruz, you could say a lot. Yes. He failed to achieve the Republican nomination. He came in second. Okay. Yeah. He got second in the Republican primary in 2016. That's nothing to sneeze at. Like, he had real popular currency for. If you're a Democrat and you wanna be taken seriously, you do need to mount, like, a credible fight against Trump, if that's where your party base is. So that's where I feel like the Washington Post is almost being too cute by saying their actual political ends, their political ends are not about the aca. That's probably not going to. I mean, maybe it will. It'd be great for me if it did and for everybody else, but I don't think that that's the ultimate point of the shutdown itself. And that's why I've seen some more establishment liberals and others being like, guys, this is a bad idea. Trump is just gonna use it as an excuse. And it's like, yeah, but he's doing that anyway, right? So why not? It just seems like a Hail Mary approach to government. But I know you have some more mixed thoughts on China.

[B]

No, no, no, I think that's about right. The one final point I would have on this is that I was talking to somebody last night who spends a lot of time in China, and they were telling me about all the different projects that they've got going on, trying to figure out, you know, ways to, like, repurpose, like, waste removal and all that. Like, confronting all of the difficult challenges of contemporary life and trying to, like, move forward in ways that can, like, make everybody's life better. And it just reminded me of, like, just how existentially kind of dead and boring our own politics is. Hey, listen, what are we doing here? Like, are we gonna keep the government open or not? Like, and why is there any effort by any party to actually grapple with the problems that are confronting contemporary society? I don't see it.

[A]

No, I don't see it either.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, we're gonna talk. What are we doing?

[A]

We're gonna talk in our story block about these data centers, rising electricity prices. Everyone's like, oh, just gotta take.

[B]

Just feels like a hollow death spiral. And here we are just like, riding it on the way down.

[A]

It's like firing, stalking.

[B]

Is it good that they do it? Is it bad they do it? I don't know. We're all just circling the drain.

[A]

Listen, I'm with you, right? Chinese century it is. I might as well embrace it.

[D]

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[C]

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[A]

Ah, come on.

[D]

Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

[E]

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[D]

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[E]

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[A]

Okay, let's go ahead to the next part here on the economy. As you were saying about death spirals and all that, we may not even know if we're in a death spiral, apparently. So let's go and put this up here on the screen about some of the key economic data that will be suspended during a government shutdown. The jobless claims from the Labor Department will likely not be released. Non farm payrolls by the BLS will not be released. The CPI and the ppi, the Consumer Price Index and the Producer Price Index. Key inflation indicators from the BLS will likely not be released. Retail sales, factory orders, housing starts, trade data from the Census and the Bureau of Economic affairs, the Employment Trends Index from the Conference Board, the GDP data, new home sales and construction permits from the Census Bureau, Export and import trade data from Census and Commerce. And they say, quote, the next Fed meeting is four weeks away. We're entering a data freeze. So historically the Fed would shift shift more dovish on average during US Government shutdown, which maybe that might be a blessing in disguise. Right? The Fed would become a little bit more dovish.

[B]

But a source of mine at BLS said that one BLS official is listed as essential.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So one that's it. Yes. Out of about 2,000 people.

[A]

Should we explain the essential thing for people, for non watching?

[B]

Yeah. So if you're, if you're deemed to be an essential employee, then you have to keep working. It doesn't mean you get paid.

[A]

Yeah, no one's getting paid. Right, Right. But you do have to keep working.

[B]

But you have to keep working. So there's one dude and it's not apparently, I guess the guy who just.

[A]

Mr. Antonio.

[B]

We'll talk about him in a second. One dude or woman who is deemed to be essential. Somebody's got to like make sure, make sure you run that coffee maker so it doesn't get moldy or whatever. That's essential. And so the bls, every day its thousands of employees are collecting and analyzing data from businesses and other entities around the country. Like this. This data does not just appear out of nowhere. Like it has to be produced, it has to be found. So you're like, these employees are on the phone calling businesses because if you're a business, you think your top priority is calling BLS back.

[A]

No.

[B]

And telling them how many employees you have.

[A]

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

[B]

Right. And so it's a bunch of bureaucrats job to make sure Sagar fills that paperwork out. And Sager does not want to fill out that paperwork.

[A]

No, I didn't want to. I even asked the accountants, I go, do I have to do this? They're like, yeah, you have. I was like, okay, fine.

[B]

And so now they're not going to be harassing you. And so you're going to be like, you know what? I'm not filling that paperwork out. And so our will be flying blind into the Fed meeting and elsewhere. Because once they come back, then recollecting getting it started is a lot harder. And the accuracy. Trump was very frustrated by all the revisions. Can you imagine what kind of revisions we're going to be looking at for these coming months?

[A]

Yeah, government shutdowns always cause just kind of crazy disruptions in service and. Exactly. Anyways. And also, by the way, that's why the market usually reacts negatively. Although yesterday for some reason the stock still went green. Talk about that with the AI block as to what's actually driving the economy. But we had some very limited data before the government shutdown. We can share with you. Let's put this up here on the screen. This was from ADP. They say, quote that the US lost some 32,000 jobs in September. Says ADP payroll processor that is down from a revised loss of 3,000 in August. Economists had expected an increase of 45,000. So the ADP does not include government workers. But they say that they have to give it a closer look this month because the BLS data is going to be delayed because of the government shutdown. So we are kind of flying blind, as you just said. They say, quote, the surprise job loss in September is the latest sign that the labor market is weakening. Job growth has slowed to a trickle this year even as the unemployment rate has mostly held steady. Federal Reserve last month lowered short term interest rates by a quarter point and signaled more cuts are likely citing weak hiring specifically like this. And they say that the leisure and hospitality sector shed some 19,000 jobs last month which was the largest decline among major sectors. Education, health services were still bright spots with a collective gain of 33,000. So I think the fact that the leisure and hospitality industry is the one that's getting the most hit. That reminds me a lot of COVID and of 09 now it's not in any way comparable to 32,000. But the point is, when consumer spending starts to soften, what's the first thing that goes? Flights, hotels, travel, things like that. And if you have that on top of a government shutdown, why does the shutdown matter? Well, remember, the federal government is the largest employer in the United states. You know, 2 million people work for the federal government. So let's say that this thing, the Last one, dragged 35 months. We were doing 35 days. Sorry, 35. Can you imagine 35 days? We were trying to do the math on the number of missed pay periods, but that's a lot of money. I mean the average margin for the median household income is somewhere between 500 to $1,000 for an emergency. So two missed pay periods, you're really starting to cut into credit card debt. And to some other issues, I mean we could put the morality or whatever of that aside and say economically that's usually not good. That means it's like, okay, we're not eating out, we're not buying in gas, we're making like app, putting most stuff on a credit card, hoping that stuff eventually when we do get paid, we can back pay our mortgage, our rent, et cetera. So that's a difficult situation. Right.

[B]

We're not going to fly anywhere in the fall.

[A]

Yeah, we're definitely not going. We're not going anywhere for Thanksgiving. Right. You know, things like Thanksgiving. I mean, isn't it. I believe Thanksgiving Sunday is like the biggest travel day of the entire year. So tens of millions of people take to the.

[B]

It might not be making. And a lot of those people had miserable flights last time. So maybe it was like, you know what? Maybe we're just not gonna fly.

[A]

Some of us were there, too.

[B]

Yeah, maybe we're not gonna fly this year. We'll just. Whoever lives close enough to drive together, we'll celebrate with that. And this is. Come. This, this difficult time is coming as people are stretched ever tighter because of the increase and energy costs and grocery bills and interest rates and housing prices. It's just tougher out there than it was five years ago. And so people have, I think, a little bit less breathing room going this time. But also Trump's global, whatever you would call it, global trade war and like, attack on Canada in particular has. Has really dragged down tourism from Canada and tourism from everywhere around the world.

[A]

Yeah, I heard this is screwing Vegas. So, first of all, I had no idea.

[B]

Now la, too.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What's up? All those Canadians.

[B]

Canadians love, they love Vegas and they love, they love all of.

[A]

That's your indictment of Canada, by the way.

[B]

You've been to Canada, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You want to stay in Canada all the time?

[A]

No.

[B]

Okay, exactly.

[A]

I'm not Canadian.

[B]

Closest. Closest country, United States. And so they come down here in droves.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They go to Florida, they go to Outer Banks, you know, they go to la.

[A]

They're snowbirds. That's. Yeah, of course it's missing. That makes sense.

[B]

Yeah. And so if you're in Canada, wouldn't you rather be in la?

[A]

Sure, yeah. Yeah, definitely.

[B]

Instead, the Canadians are like, you know what? Screw it. We're not going to laugh.

[A]

So where are they going?

[B]

A lot of them are staying home and then I think they're going to Europe. I don't know what else they're doing. That's a good question. Maybe they're going to Mexico.

[A]

Just.

[B]

That would actually be flying right over. Well, I'll. I'll actually make some calls to, like, the Canadian tourism places and see, I would love to. Where are the Canadians? Because they're not coming here and it's killing, you know, our tourism industry.

[A]

I knew that about Vegas because I've. I've seen some Vegas stuff coming out. Be like, oh, my God, Vegas Screwed.

[B]

Poor Vegas. Just one hit after another.

[A]

I was like, really like Canada, that relying on Vegas. Interesting. All right, let's continue to. On. On this train with the BLS news that we could share with all of you. Let's put it up here on the screen. So you'll all recall the BLS commissioner was fired after a revision happened because Trump didn't like the revision. And so Trump nominated E.J. antony, previously of the Heritage foundation, to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Well, it turns out that his nomination has now been pulled from the BLS before the United States Senate to be confirmed. The, quote, White House official declined to say the reasons for withdrawing the nomination, only to say that he was a talented economist. And President Trump plans to announce a new nominee soon. So, Ryan, as you and I know here in Washington, what this means is that not one senator, not two, but four Republicans came to the White House and they're like, hey, this is not happening, period. And so usually what happens then is the White House gets to save fate and withdraw, and no Republican senator has to come out publicly and say, I was not gonna vote for this person. But they were willing to do it. They called the bluff. They called the Office of White House Legislative affairs, and they're like, look, it's not. He's not getting. He's not even gonna go through committee. He's not going through the floor. Pull his nomination and let's move on, because this is not happening right now.

[B]

It's how Larry Summers went down. Yeah, there you go. Five Democrats from the Banking Committee just called the Obama administration and said, we're not making him Fed Chair.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

You can put him up, but he's going down.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you're like, you know what?

[A]

Then?

[B]

We're not putting him up. There was these. He had. He lacked support within the right wing. Incredible. Quote, do you know Kyle Pomerlow? I don't know him. Tax expert for American Enterprise Institute.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

He wrote on Twitter after his nomination, he wrote, quote, there are a lot of competent conservative economists that could do this job. EJ is not one of them.

[A]

He's just such a very bitchy.

[B]

And that's a baseline. He's just saying he's just not competent. So it wasn't a ideological problem. And BLS had a bunch of problems after he was named. Remember, they were like, oh, by the way, we're not releasing our data.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, that's right.

[B]

No explanation. This is like last week or the week before. Like, data's late, and Wall street is just not used To BLS having data late. Like Wall street trusts BLS data, and they trust that when they say it's going to come post at 8:30, it posts at 8:30 precisely. And they're sitting there with their trigger fingers ready to trade on it. Not even their trigger fingers, but they're like fake algorithmic trading models are ready to start trading. And to have a guy who's like, wait, we're not putting the data out on time.

[A]

Right. It's get out of here. Inconceivable. Right to Wall street and to others. That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that. But you're right. Last thing here. In terms of the White House and the economy, we can put this up here on the screen. The Supreme Court has allowed Lisa Cook to keep her job for now. For those who were not tracking Lisa Cook was one of the members of the Federal Reserve Board.

[B]

Is a member of the board.

[A]

Sorry, is a member of the Federal Reserve Board who was not going along with the Trump administration's desire to cut rates sooner than as soon as possible. So Trump and the administration accused her of mortgage fraud based on. What is it within the executive? They're technically allowed to fire people, quote, for cause. And so basically, one of their. What is it? The Federal Housing Administrator, Bill Pulte, went out and. And found this thing, which she allegedly purchased a home as a vacation home, something like that, some sort of vacation, some sort of mortgage fraud technicality. Based on that, Trump said that she was fired. This led to a showdown with the Supreme Court over whether, A, whether the charges are legitimate, and B, whether that qualifies as being fired for cause. So the court, in a brief order, quote, deferred a decision on the Trump administration's emergency request to remove Cook from the bank's independent board while the lawsuit challenge her dismissal proceeds. So this is gonna take a while, at the very least till January. I think that all of this goes forward, it's gonna center on the legitimacy of the charges over Trump's own executive power. But at the very least, for now, Trump is not getting the total control of the Federal Reserve Board that he wanted. So there you go. Right?

[B]

But he did get his little rate.

[A]

Cut, quarter point, Right. He wants a lot more. Right. And I mean, I want a lot more. To be honest, I still think it's crushing a lot of our economy.

[D]

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[A]

Ah come on.

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[A]

All right, we're turning now to Sora. Some of you may have seen this. OpenAI released a new video generator and while it's cool, I guess, you know, a little bit dystopian, what a lot of people are missing are some of the backbones of the US power, industry and economy that are behind all of this, which are actually wreaking havoc on all of our lives in a hidden way that a lot of people don't Appreciate. So let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen. This is new data that has been released and compiled by Bloomberg over consuming the growing share of electricity that data centers are in individual US states. So stick with me and let's keep this up so I can read to everybody what the overall total electricity consumption is on a state by state basis. Virginia, the state where I live, 39% of all power consumption is going to data centers. Ryan, 39%. Probably all of that is federal government, if I had to guess. Well, Amazon, Amazon as well, that are all together. But that's an absolutely insane amount of power consumption. The State of Oregon, 33%. Iowa, 18 Nevada, 15 Utah 15. Nebraska, 14 Arizona, 11 Wyoming, 10. Ohio, 9 Illinois, 7 Georgia, 6. New Jersey, 6. Washington, 6. Texas, 5. North Dakota, 5. I find it incredibly consequential that smaller states like Oregon, Iowa, Nevada, Utah, Nebraska, traditional, more flyover states, especially Iowa through Nebraska, are being used by a lot of these data centers because it shows that they're picking those more rural areas and they're getting their state legislators and their municipalities to actually give them tax breaks because their promise is, hey, we're gonna create a bunch of jobs, et cetera. Oh, you know, we're gonna pump all this money into the economy. But the way that our power grid works, which is not a horrible idea, is that, hey, we have regulated public power based on that. It's a platform through which all of us get to build upon our houses, our businesses, and the costs and the benefits are widely distributed across. It's a floor that the government and our power industry sets so that we can build upon it. And yet in a scarce power place, where we are right now, because we have not, we don't have any proper investment or building of nuclear energy. I know, you're more of a solar guy. I'm not personally a solar guy. I'm pretty much all Nixon if you want. Yeah, I'm all. Regardless, the point is, is that we don't have a preponderance of power the way that they do in China and in a lot of other places. Even if we were to go all in on oil, we still don't have new oil refineries, we don't have new natural gas rigs. We are in stasis, effectively in every state in the country. So in a scarce power world, and in which AI data center usage, power and investment is a huge chunk of GDP spending, what does that mean? It means that these industries, which have endless amounts of money behind them, come in Build your data center, use an insane amount of electricity. They don't care if the power bill goes up. It does nothing to their bottom line because all of this is fake. None of it is even making money in the first place. They'll just pay it no matter what. Who's the person for whom a power bill increase is going to affect you? Especially in the more rural areas, the fixed income household and just general suburban residents. That's why I think it's outrageous to have some 39, 33% in places like Virginia and Oregon, 1/3 to almost 40% of power being consumed by a single industry. We can't be living in the world where everybody else has to absorb all of those increased costs. And it's again begs the question for what? So if this was the Manhattan Project, you know, the Tennessee Valley Authority, like any of it maybe, right. Maybe we could all set. Okay, okay. We can all pay a little bit more because this is so important to the country. The Apollo Program.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We are electrifying. There you go. One of my favorite sections of the Robert Caro books. I think he won a Pulitzer Prize for it. It's in the first book called Path to Power is a chapter specifically on rural electrification and what it meant to more rural areas in the 1930s. It was a New Deal style program designed by FDR. Johnson used it as a new congressman that was able to bring power to the hill country of Texas. I highly recommend go and at the very least just read that chapter to understand what that means. That's the level of where. Yeah, okay. I think we could be okay socializing some of that cost. This. No. All right. And see, that's the issue, right.

[B]

For sure.

[A]

For AI generated slop. No, no, no, no, no. We're not doing that. And yet what we see instead of is instead of thinking about the data centers, what people are starting to think about and there's a new bill introduced in the state of Ohio is that the utility companies can automatically adjust a customer thermostat to, quote, reduce the load on the power grid during periods of high demand for the data center. So your house has to be hotter so the data center can crunch. Sam Altman, Slop. Okay, let's take a listen from local news.

[D]

A Republican lawmaker at the Ohio State House introduced a bill this week that would allow utility companies to automatically adjust your thermostat at your House. House Bill 427 would create a voluntary demand response program. Customers would be allowed to sign up to let their utility company temporarily adjust energy use including raising thermostat settings or cycling water heaters during periods of high demand. The bill's sponsor, Representative Roy Kloppenstein, said it's meant to help homeowners and small businesses save money while reducing the load on the power grid. An analysis from the Ohio Environmental Council estimates the program would generate between 34 and $100 million in savings for the utility system, depending on how many customers sign up for it.

[A]

Temporarily adjust home power use in small business. I don't hear any data center being mentioned there. Right. And that's my issue is like these, we don't have any power demands or anything on these folks and they get to just unlimitedly suck from the grid and make sure that everybody else power bills get to go up. No, no, no, no, we can't be having that, Ryan. And instead, like I said, I tweeted something in reaction to this data powers. And I said, hey, state legislators, wake up. You guys have huge amounts of authority, Dominion Power, you know where I live, Virginia legislators could come in and change the way. If you're gonna consume 40% of power, I'm sorry, you gotta be paying a hell of a lot more and making sure that there's some offset or whatever for consumers. And instead, what Virginia political expert was telling me was it's the inverse where what's happening is that the legislators are all bought and paid for by Amazon, by Meta, Google, Google, all these other people. And instead they're throwing incentives at the data centers because they're like, oh, we create all of these amazing jobs for all the people who say, okay, yeah, it's great for the thousand people or whatever that work there, but what about the millions or so people that have to pay a higher power bill in a lot of these other places? So I think this is a major populist issue which everybody is sleeping on. And again, if this were the railroads of the 1800s, it transformed America. Right? Undeniable, I get it, they were the villains of the time, et cetera. But fundamentally they had a good value proposition is you used to have to take a wagon. Now you can go to California in a week. All right, that was a real thing. Telecom in the 90s, same thing. We could say a lot about how much of it was a bust. They overspent on fiber optics. They massively consumed amounts of. Of GDP to invest because they got a little too high on their own supply from the dot com bubble. But that was a real thing. Fiber optic was a real built Internet. What is being built here? Right. You know, we have all these billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars that are being spent all for what? And that's the point where when you see what they're actually releasing. I'm sorry, who asked for this? And here's the new trailer from OpenAI. About Sora 2, here's what you're paying for. Video generator. This is what you're all paying for. Let's take a listen.

[B]

One year ago, Sora1 redefined what was possible with moving images. Today we're announcing the Sora app. Powered by the all new Sora 2.

[A]

It's the most powerful imagination engine ever.

[B]

Built.

[C]

And it's packed with new features.

[A]

I'll pass it to Bill for more details. Now, every video comes with sound. Wow. So cool. New images. And by the way, you know what the funny thing is, is one of the very first images, Ryan and videos that was released on Sora was this. Let's just play this. What we saw was immediately Sora being used to create a surveillance style video showing Sam Altman himself stealing GPUs at Target and being accosted by a security officer. I mean, I don't know. What do you think? It looks real. Ish. Like, I could probably tell it was AI. So you basically created slop video which will be used for YouTube shorts and Instagram and all this other nonsense for scrolling purposes. And also you created a technology which makes it unironically possible so that surveillance video and deep fakes and all that other stuff could be immediately employed, let's say, in a matter of crisis. Think about the Charlie Kirk thing. If this was around at that time and you say, I have surveillance videos showing Tyler Robinson doing X, Y and Z, it would go massively viral. You and I know that. So thank you for creating that. By the way. The amount of power, you know, if you have ChatGPT, I pay for ChatGPT. And even if you want to use it to create an image, it takes forever. You know why? Because it's a shit ton of, you know, CPU use and electricity and all that. It has to crunch through that. So what is the purpose of what we're being created here? The bull case is, you have no idea all of the endless, endless possibilities. Like what? The destruction of Hollywood and creative industry to create like, you know, again, slop video. Because that's where things are mostly trending right now.

[B]

Right? We don't need a video of an elephant going through a. Like a jazz swing.

[A]

Yeah, we don't need that.

[B]

We don't need that.

[A]

Yeah, I Agree with you. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

So the big tech platforms spent the 90s and 2000s and early 2010s basically destroying the news media media and creating this new media where people just create stuff and share it with each other and don't trust any traditional sources of.

[A]

Some benefits of that information.

[B]

Some benefits we're gonna find out. Might be some downsides to that.

[A]

Some downsides as well. Yeah.

[B]

And now that nobody trusts anything and there's no real traditional news media left, they're going to make it so that everybody can just make, you know, authentic looking fake videos. And in order to do that, they're going to destroy as much of the Amazon as they can to like and build data centers all over the United States. Triple or quadruple your electric bill. And yeah, like for that, that the question for what is a key one Chris and I had on an author yesterday who's like, oh, the purpose of this, whether it's intended or not, is it's going to kill everybody. So there's like that. And it is true that a lot of people in the AI world are like, yeah, there's a 20% chance of an existential event as a result of this.

[A]

I don't really. Yeah, I don't believe, I hope it's.

[B]

Just slop and that it, it plateaus out at slop. That's my hope.

[A]

That's what I think. I mean I think this is the end state. Like this is the reality is if you look at the way that. By the way, how are they even paying for all of this? AI data center, where does it come from? Scrolling algorithm. That's it. Massive amounts of screen time addiction, period. Twitter, Facebook, they all have the same business model. It's just spend as much time on platform as possible, sell as many ads as possible. That's it. And so that's how they're paying for the AI data centers for the project with the hope that you get artificial general intelligence. But the end state seems pretty simple. AI to the extent that it's used in the workplace is for shit that nobody thought is game changing. Oh, it summarized my emails. Awesome. Summarize my note taking. You know I've talked previously because I actually know people who work in like really big corporate and I'm like, tell me about how you use AI. They're like, oh, it's great. We cut out the entry level workers. I was like, so that's it? And they're like, yeah, that's it. You know, we use Microsoft Teams. Lets me summarize my notes. And then we send that for an agenda. Somebody who was entry level used to have to do that before. And I was like, but you're still having the meetings, you're still doing. They're like, oh yeah, it hasn't changed any actual decision making. Right?

[B]

Just hired a bunch of 24 year olds.

[A]

To be fair, let's say encoding and in technology is a little bit different. Right? You can actually have AI. I think AI is quite good at coding, up to like 94, 95% and doing a lot of the previously more difficult or like the time consuming work, leaving time for creative. Great. Okay. But I don't yet see evidence of like a massive game changing thing which doesn't just lead to the tech power law distribution, which makes a bunch of people in Silicon Valley a lot richer. Because instead what's happened is that AI has led to mostly job loss or not, not really real job growth while they're still pumping all this money into the industry. Plus the data center question, it just leads to this thing where like what are we all doing here? You know, for what? And I don't think people understand, if it were not for AI data center spend, GDP would be contracting.

[B]

Right.

[A]

The only reason that we have increasing.

[B]

Gdp, we're in a recession otherwise.

[A]

You're exactly right. And the data bears all of this out, we've played it here on the show many times before is without the data center capital expenditure from the technology industry, there is no GDP growth. And in fact I was just reading this morning, one of the consequences of the 1990s telecom boom, like the amount of money that went into that, is that what private capital all Understood in the 90s, there's only one way to return money in the middle of a mania or a craze is to invest in the mania or the crypto that has a huge opportunity cost. Because what it meant in the 90s was that small businesses that are doing traditional manufacturing were not going to get capital expenditure and or any investment. All private investment was chasing the same thing at the same time of the 1990s. What happened? The end of the Cold War, NAFTA, PNTR with China. Which means not only did they get the reduced amount of money that they should have been owed absent the AI or the telecom boom, they also faced growing international competition. Well, I think we're in a very similar thing right now. You have all of this money, stock, everything, the whole S&P 500, the government shuts down, the S&P 500 goes up. What? Why? Because of Nvidia right. You know, you're looking at these stock valuations and everything. None of it makes any sense. And then at the same time, with the Trump administration's trade policy, what you have is a chilling on domestic investment in manufacturing, which means, again, any money in the economy that people have to spare is just going towards US AI. So I know this is kind of tedious, but there are serious implications for this for all of us, not just in terms of, let's say you own a small business, you wanted to buy a new tractor or whatever, and you're owned by private equity. Well, private equity doesn't have a lot of incentive to make sure that you're buying a bunch of new construction equipment. They would much rather go in and invest in some AI startup or something like that. That's a real effect, and then add the Trump trade stuff on top of that. It's a real problem.

[B]

Yeah. And when that bubble pops, because even the Zuckerbergs of the world think that the bubble will pop, their argument is that it'll pop and it will be like the railroads and it'll be like the telecoms that it will have left behind, the infrastructure.

[A]

You can build something.

[B]

Infrastructure. So bubble pops, a bunch of people get washed out. Zuckerberg, as he said, that'll create a lot of opportunity to buy assets at low cost. So he continues to then concentrate his market power and then builds it up from there. So that's Zuckerberg and others are baking in a financial crisis as like an inevitable result. Just a when, not if financial crisis.

[A]

Means nothing to somebody worth 150 billion, right? 115.

[B]

No, it means something. It means cheaper assets to buy.

[A]

Well, yeah, yeah, great point. If you're worth 150 billion, even if you go in half to 75, that means nothing to you. If you are 100,000 and you go to 75,000, that means a lot to you. Right? Okay. So that's the point that these people never seem to quite understand is that the people who suffer from these financial bubbles are not the people who cause them in the first place. By the way, our producer Griffin has been flagging some of this weird Hollywood stuff to us. Let's go and put these up here on the screen. So there is now a new AI director. The Italian producer Andrea Irvolino has unveiled a feature helmed by a virtual auteur. And what it does is that the Fellini AI would be housed inside of his company, which would act as a, quote, human in the loop supervisor and producer who guides and monitors Technology and, and quote, you can imagine a future in which only 1% of humanity still works, transforming labor into a symbolic ritual while the rest of the population lives in the freedom and leisure produced by machines. The logline states for this new AI produced movie that the last workers become the final masks of a humanity that resists the insolence of labor. I don't know, Ryan. I'm not so bought into some sort of Matrix style fantasy. And then on the right there you see that they talk about the Hollywood AI is ready to crush Hollywood as we have known it with these AI actors.

[B]

Yeah, fake actress who's gonna get an agent.

[A]

That's where I just don't even, you know, I can't even really understand what it all means because they say we may not even have real movie stars anymore. We'll soon have computer generated actors, aspirational celebrities. That is the future currently imagined by the founder of this AI actor. And what they said is that in this new lab they're hyper real digital stars. The actresses said that they would produce sketch video and maybe signing to a future talent agency. Basically their likenesses would be controlled by some sort of corporate conglomerate and that they would then be featured in movies and licensed to different commercials and stars. This is basically an erasure of humanity as we know it. And it's one of those where the Matrix was, I guess, a documentary. And also though the government and the level of skepticism that is required is not happening because I said on the state level, it seems by my immediate perusal that most legislators think data centers are a good thing because of money. Right. Because they're getting donated to and because they've given these fake statistics. But I think the people at the very least are deeply skeptical of whatever the hell all of this is. So I just wonder if there can ever be any sort of democratic pushback. The technology companies are betting that they can leap so forward before any skepticism happens that they can just get there before anybody really wakes up to what's going on.

[B]

Yeah. And when you think about the arc of all of kind of Earth, Earth history and you, you know, people, I, people say that we're now in the midst of the, the sixth great extinction. Like you know, six mass die off.

[A]

I've seen people say that. Yeah.

[B]

And statistically, like it's accurate. Like so many different species, both plant and animal are, are dying off. And they, and scientists can demonstrate that it is because of humanity. Like we just, we gobble everything up. And so when you think about that in a moral sense, which is difficult to do because it's like species are often amoral. You have to think about it in a moral sense because humans are the first ones that have to invent morality. And so you think about, okay, the costs to the earth have been existential to thousands upon thousands of species, but it has produced what humanity can produce, which is love, which is art. Shakespeare as a stand in. Those developments represent a break from what existed before the other five extinctions. Now we're not even going to have that. What is humanity bringing to the earth other than misery and despair if we're not producing more Shakespeares?

[A]

I agree with you. I'm with you. This is what the fundamental anti humanness of it is something that's very concerning to me. I also am just concerned at the lack of interest that legislators and others have in any of what's going on right now. And in particular they seem instead to just be bought and paid for and just waiting for something to happen before we all have to grapple with it. So anyway, yeah, we're all paying higher electricity bills so that Sora can generate slop videos for kids to be addicted on TikTok and YouTube shorts in the future. What a great investment for us.

[B]

Awesome.

[A]

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This is an I Heart podcast.