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Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
2/23/26: Mexico Cartel Violence Explodes, Big Tech Freaks Over Data Center Backlash
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
is US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis
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Hunter Woodhull
Woodhull, and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull.
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
As athletes, our lives are about having
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Hunter Woodhull
a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust.
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
So when it came to getting the
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Hunter Woodhull
best mortgage, we chose PennyMac.
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
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- [01:10]
Charlie Craddeville
Who decided beauty ads need this much drama?
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Hunter Woodhull
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
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Hunter Woodhull
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
It's very funny.
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Elf Cosmetics Advertiser
Yeah. Watch the full episode of their new elf novella on soyunbanyo.com hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here.
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Breaking Points Host
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Hunter Woodhull
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Breaking Points Host
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Hunter Woodhull
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com
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Breaking Points Host
all right guys, We've been following some significant unrest in Mexico after the killing of a top cartel leader. We can put this article up on the screen from the Associated Press. They say here that Mexican army kills leader a powerful Jalisco new generation cartel during operation to capture Him. The Mexican army killed the leader of that cartel, El Mencho. He's known as, on Sunday, decapitating what had become Mexico's most powerful drug cartel and thrusting swathes of the nation into chaos. Cars burned out by cartel members blocked roads at more than 250 points in 20 Mexican states, authorities said, and left smoke billowing into the air. Alisco's capital, Guadalajara, was turned into a ghost town Sunday night as civilians hunkered down. School was canceled Monday in several states, and authorities in a variety of states reported at least 14 dead, including seven National Guard troops. Joining us to discuss these developments is the Latin America desk head of drop Site News, Jose Luigi Granados Ceja. Great to see you, Jose.
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Hunter Woodhull
Good to see you, man.
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
See you again. Hi.
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Breaking Points Host
So we can put some of these images up on the screen of, you know, cars burning. You can see fires all over the place. And, guys, you can just let this run as Jose brings us up to speed. You know, just give us a sense of what the. What the mood is there in Mexico and how significant of a development this
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
is, you know, in terms of how significant this. This is probably the biggest fish they could possibly catch. Nemesio Osegueira, or Mencho, as he's more commonly known, was the major player when it came to organized crime here. It can't be overstated how significant, how big of an impact against organized crime groups. This, well, capture and then his subsequent death really is for Mexico. And that's why we saw sort of this response in the streets from his associates in these organized crime groups. Cartel, Jalisco Nueva Generacion, cjng, or Las Cuatro Letras. The four letters, they have various names. They're kind of. They are the largest organized crime group here, the most powerful, the most well connected. It's said that they were rivaling, you know, intertransnational corporation in terms of their reach and their international business connections. What was interesting about them is that they sort of were, in a way, a kind of a new manifestation of organized crime groups. I think a lot of times people think of the cartels, you know, you know, Sinaloa, El Chapo, right? Felix Arellano, all of these different groups from, you know, the series Netflix that covered, you know, the Mexican organized crime situation, this one was a little bit different in that they were able to fill a vacuum incredibly quickly, grow incredibly quickly. And that's because they operated sort of learning the lessons of the previous cartel groups of not necessari, kind of wanting to vertically integrate everything. They were kind of almost Like a. A franchise model where, you know, people kind of pay tribute to the central organization without necessarily being tied to it. And that's generally true of organized crime groups. They're far less organized than I think people think. But this is, of course, huge. I mean, he was the top of this organized crime group. They had presence quite literally in every corner of this country, obviously mostly concentrated in the states where they were most active, like Jalisco. And that's where we saw the most violence. And I think to explain that, obviously we all saw these scenes of, you know, billowing cars and roads being blocked. And of course, you know, those are disturbing to see, but they shouldn't be overstated. You know, the article that you read to introduce this piece talked about the chaos and things like that. But that's precisely what these groups wanted to do. So they had their leader captured. And so as an act of protest, you can think of, they go and unleash these kinds of acts of violence, these acts of intimidation, in a sense, to send a message, to say they're unhappy with what just happened, to deliver a message to the federal government, the Mexican government, which was responsible for this operation, but also to show who's the strong actor. Because now there's going to be, as always happens when you take out the top, when you decapitate these organizations, a bit of a competition in terms of who's going to now try to compete to become the new head of the organization. And what we saw yesterday, in a sense, is that is people trying to flex their own muscle to show, look how many men I can mobilize, look how much, you know, unrest I can cause. I'm the one who should really rise up to be the next leader of this organization.
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Hunter Woodhull
That's very interesting. I didn't realize that, Jose, as I understand it, as well, part of the reason that they do this is to inflict pain on the Mexican government. Not only is it bad publicity, but, you know, there's a significant number of us tourists who are in the region who are, you know, some of them were sheltering in place in their hotels. And obviously, you know, these things go viral, it'll impact their tourism industry. How does the Mexican government come to the conclusion to carry out something like this? Because we've seen in the past, you know, with the Chapitos, that famous raid, and there was a massive gunfight, and people were, you know, there were bullets spraying in the streets and all of that. So they know this is going to happen. How do they come to the conclusion ultimately to conduct a raid like this.
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
So here in Mexico, we have a national security cabinet, and that is essentially the body that's tasked with making these difficult decisions. And part of the kind of calculation is that, in fact, under the previous government, Claudia Sheinbaum's predecessor, Lopez Obrador, there was that famous case where one of El Chapo's sons was ultimately let go because they made the evaluation that the kind of violence that this was going to unleash was basically not worth it. You know, there was a calculation like, should we proceed with his detention and allow them to unleash the kind of violence that we expect them to, or should we kind of walk away and find a better moment for this? I think what's important about this one is that there's a couple of things. One, there was important intelligence that was shared from the United States. Apparently, both the US Government, the Mexican government have now said as much, that there was key intelligence here. It sounds like they knew where he was, that this was a good chance to grab him, where he wasn't being heavily protected, where they were less able to kind of mobilize. And so it seems that that's the reason they took the decision. This was a good moment. They had good intelligence. They could act on it. But the other one was also kind of understanding that they needed to strike against these organized crime groups. They needed to, I think, in a lot of ways, send a message, not just to the organized crime groups themselves, to say that we're serious about going after you, that this is a different kind of administration in terms of a much stronger, heavier hand when it comes to these groups, but also a message to Donald Trump, to the White House, to say, you know, that right now the debate that seems to be happening in the United States is whether there should be unilateral military action by the United States and Mexico. Mexico, obviously has said no, that's a red line for this government. They would view it as a violation of sovereignty. But you have to continually make that case, because Donald Trump has said on many occasions he wants to send troops into Mexico, he wants to use drone strikes. And Mexican President Claudio Shambham has said, you can share intelligence, but when it comes to military action, we conduct it because this is our territory. And I think this is, in a lot of ways, really good for the Mexican government in that sense to say, look, share us information. We can act on it and we can take care of it. And obviously, now the task is to deal with the fallout, to deal with these incidents, although they've largely been under control. As of yesterday, 90% of all the roadblocks had been stopped, have been kind of de established. But this morning, Gladys in her morning press conference now, and she's giving the message as we speak, essentially giving the same thing, that things are now fully under control.
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Hunter Woodhull
Interesting.
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Breaking Points Host
Is there a fear that, you know, you're sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you don't strike this cartel leader and, and take him out, then the U.S. government says, see, they're not dealing with the cartel, so we have to go in and take unilateral action. But then when you do take out the cartel leader, it leads not just to these flare ups, but the expectation is there probably will be some sort of turf war and potential increased violence. And then the US Government can look at that, Trump can look at that and say, see, look at all this escalating violence. They need us. We have to go in.
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
Yeah. And it's quite likely that there'll be some actors who will make that kind of case and say, well, look, look what everything that's happening you clearly don't have under control. And that's actually why I think we saw online yesterday just fake images, artificial intelligence. There was this image of a plane on fire that was not real whatsoever. You know, somebody apparently triggered an alarm inside of the airport in Guadalajara and that made some people panic. And then somebody took that image and said, look, the commandos from the organized crime groups have taken over the airport because they want to sow this chaos. They want to sow this kind of sense of a lack of control in order to, I think in one regard, try to support this argument that it's out of control and the Mexican government can't handle it, but also to try to, like I said at the beginning, to send this message that they are more powerful than perhaps people account for. Right. And you know, I think one of the reasons they also acted yesterday is that there's very small windows of opportunity. These are wily actors. I mean, how many times did El Chapo escape from custody? Right. It's only because he's been extradited and it's more difficult for him to be able to kind of engage in the bribery that it takes to be able to get free, that he's still in custody today. And so I think that window, they saw it as a good one to act and yes, cognizant of the consequences in terms of what will happen next. The case of cartel Jalisco Nova Generacion is curious too, because, for example, with the ex. I don't know what to call it because he wasn't extradited. The kidnapping of El Mayo, that created a lot of unrest as well. But I think that's because there was already kind of a dispute internally between rival factions inside of that cartel where you had the Chapitos and the Maitos. And so that, that's part of why we saw so much more violence. And this one, it doesn't look like there's a natural successor. A lot of his closest associates and Mentos closest associates are either dead or in jail. And so, you know, his son is. Is already detained. His daughters are not that active. So it's not clear who will take over. There's likely going to be a lot of internal power disputes, and they're going to do it through violence. And so there, it's important to see in terms of what's the actual capacity of the Mexican National Guard, the Mexican armed forces, to ensure security, particularly in these kinds of hot spots where they are most active. That really is the major challenge today.
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Hunter Woodhull
Jose, how does the Mexican government deal with the. It's kind of a maybe too broad of a question, but with US Security. So, like, for example, you've had the US Intelligence sharing that happened that led to this red. But we also saw earlier there was an incident, maybe you can tell us about where a drug dealer, international fugitive, was seized by the United States and Cash Patel took credit for it. But the Mexicans were like, hey, man, you weren't supposed to talk about that. Like, we don't like to acknowledge how much we share back and forth. How does, how does the Mexican government handle that domestically? Like, why are they so reticent to admit US Cooperation to the Mexican public? Is there a political dynamic I'm missing? How does that work?
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
Yeah, so the case you're referring to is this Canadian, apparently an Olympic athlete, who was accused of being well positioned, an important player in organized crime. And yeah, it's still actually not clear exactly whether or not he turned himself in, whether it was an operation, was it done by Mexican forces? Did the FBI participate directly? That would be extraordinary and unusual. I have trouble believing Kash Patel sometimes because we know he has a penchant for wanting to tell his own story in his own way. That kind of inflates his role in all of this. So I would be hesitant to take his totally as believable. But you're right, there is a certain kind of reluctance on the Mexican government to admit this, and a lot of it is because of the nationalist sentiment Morena, her political party is a very Mexican nationalist movement. It's kind of one of the pillars of their political ideology. And it is seen as almost as offensive that we would need the support of the United States for all of this. Right. That's why it's such a hard line to not permit unilateral military action by the United States or even the presence of US Troops in actual operations. They are US Troops here for trainings. One was recently approved by the Mexican Senate, for example. So there's a dislike for it amongst the population and I think because people are worried that it would be a slippery slope. Right. How do US Entanglements abroad always begin? It always starts with that, with training, with advice. Well, she abused some information, but you were right to point out that there's extraordinary amount of information sharing. In fact, more than we probably know. Gladly. Sheinbaum and Donald Trump apparently had more than a dozen phone calls, but we only really know the details of a handful of them. So they're obviously high level negotiations and that's how the Mexican government likes to do things, I think, particularly with the administration we have in the United States now, where they are boastful and they like to stretch the truth to be polite about it. Right. And so she's like, I often, she says, I often don't like to respond to whatever his public statements he makes. We have our conversations, they happen at the table, they happen behind closed doors. That's what's actually important in the bilateral relationship. Got it.
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Breaking Points Host
And how do most Mexicans feel about how Sheinbaum is navigating the relationship with
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
the U.S. well, I think they would, they would be, feel encouraged. I think they feel very positive about it. She has extraordinarily high approval ratings. They oscillate between 70 and 80%. I mean, the kinds of approval ratings people are unheard of in most parts of the world and part of it, you know, one of the places where she does receive criticism, where people feel like more needs to be done, is precisely around security. Under the previous administration of Lopez Obrador, there was a pretty major shift in the security strategy where they went from an all out war. You know, they stopped talking about war, they stopped talking about, you know, the war against the cartels and instead started focusing more on investigation, prevention, above all, this philosophy of investing in communities and, and young people to try to dissuade them from organized crime, unions. And I think in a lot of ways it was affected, but we're also dealing with really violent, heavily armed and extremely well funded organizations where social investment is not going to be enough. Right, exactly. And I do think that with Claudius Sheinbaum, and she probably wouldn't say as much so as to not seem as if she's disagreeing with her predecessor because of the important place he occupies and the kind of political imaginary in this country. But I do think has taken a far more aggressive approach of wanting to go after these major figures of. I think part of it is naturally due to the pressure of the United States to kind of have more things to show off in terms of successes. But I do think that a lot of people are feeling reassured, feeling like actions are being done and that steps are being taken to attend to the kind of quality of life things. Organized crime groups have been active here in this country for decades. Right. But it's sort of their, their interventions, their, their, their, the way that they actually affect the day to day of people that really kind of undermines their confidence in the ability of the state to handle this. Right. So the kidnappings, the extortion, all of that actually under her security chief, Omar Garcia Harfuch, who incidentally was once a target of the very man who was killed yesterday, has been far more on investigation and, and actually, you know, going after the money that provides them the ability to engage in all of this. And you know, we're seeing a very slight increase, I think in the ratings when it comes to security here in Mexico because of that small shift, but important shift in her security strategy.
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Hunter Woodhull
So. Interesting.
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Breaking Points Host
One more question I have for you on a somewhat separate note, and I asked the same question of Professor Jeffrey Sachs who we had on a bit earlier. This is with regard to Cuba. I'm sure you saw Supreme Court struck down Trump's ability to levy tariffs unilaterally using the IPA authority. He had used this to threaten Mexico and to threaten shine bomb to try to enforce this illegal oil embargo with Cuba. Do you think that that decision changes the calcul at all for the Sheinbaum government?
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
Well, it looks like Trump is going to go forward with it no matter what. And you know, Mexico has been threatened with tariffs on half a dozen occasions and has been able to talk their way out of it almost every single time. Even this most recent one where he announced these kind of across the board tariffs on every country. Once again, countries, Canada, Mexico, and that's part of the USMCA are not, are exempt from it. And so the thing about this one in particular, the one about Cuba, is that my reading of it, it was, is primarily addressed To Mexico, Mexico, stop sending your oil to Cuba or we're going to impose this tariff on you. And I think the fact that we saw the government respond and suspended shipments tells us that in those closed doors negotiations, there was definitely a very clear threat to say that this one's serious. You're not going to be able to talk your way out of this one, that we want to choke off the supply of oil to Cuba, and so you better play ball. And that's why we've seen them suspended, because I think, you know, there's a lot of voices out there who are saying, well, why don't they just break the blockade, right? Why don't they just kind of challenge, call us bluff? You know, the United States is having some tricky economic numbers coming published out now, not less job creation, all of that. Can they really afford to put a tariff on its number one trading partner? And I think they would. And I think they've transmitted that message to the Mexican government that this is serious. And so the only way out of this for the Mexican government is through negotiation, some kind of diplomatic breakthrough to convince them that, that if they don't allow Mexico or any other country to provide oil, then they're going to produce a massive humanitarian crisis, which itself is going to produce a huge refugee crisis which is going to land on your doorstep, United States. So I think that's the kind of angle that they've been pushing for. And it seems to be working. There seems to be rumors of at least setting some oil come in so that, you know, that the situation doesn't become such a big problem, that we see, you know, millions of Cubans trying to leave the island because if they get no oil, we're talking about basically the collapse of society.
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Hunter Woodhull
Right?
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
You know, nothing works without energy. There's no food, there's no hospitals, there's no schools. I mean, it'll, it'll be a nightmare scenario for the Cuban people, which would absolutely produce a refugee crisis in the region and for the United States. And I don't think Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller want to be tagged with that to say you're the reason there's a new migrants crisis here in the United States.
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Hunter Woodhull
Good point.
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Breaking Points Host
We will say. Jose, thank you so much. Great to have your analysis.
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Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
Thank you very much for inviting me. We'll see you next time.
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- [21:54]
Breaking Points Host
All right, guys, you know, we have been tracking closely here some of the local pushback against data centers being located in communities across the country. And we are very fortunate to be joined this morning by a grassroots activist who has had great success fighting and stopping a data center in New Jersey. So Charlie Craddeville is a central Jersey organizer with food and he's the founder and editor of New Brunswick Today, a community news outlet that covers the city of New Brunswick, New Jersey. And he just led the successful and viral, I might add, campaign to kill Amzac Capital Management's plan to build a new 27,000 square foot data center near homes and businesses last week. Charlie, welcome. It's a pleasure to have you.
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Hunter Woodhull
Nice to see you, Charlie.
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Charlie Craddeville
My pleasure. Big fan of you guys.
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Hunter Woodhull
Thanks, man.
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Breaking Points Host
Yeah, of course. So let's go ahead and play a little bit of this video and we can, we can take a look at. This is some of the celebration after your successful campaign to fight against this data center. So celebrations in the street, you know, screaming, they, we won. They canceled the data center. And then you also had quite a viral post as well that we can put up here. I mean, just amazingly viral. I'm sure you had no idea the way this would take off when you posted it and could see, you know, your picture here. You say we won. No data center and they have to build a park. So take us behind the scenes Here, what did this organizing effort look like and what was the type of coalition that you all were able to build on the ground?
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Charlie Craddeville
Yeah, there's something really special and unique about this campaign. You know, being a local journalist, I attend all the meetings. And so I just happened to be at the New Brunswick planning board meeting the night that they revealed that this redevelopment plan included a data center that would be right near homes and businesses. You know, we didn't think of New Brunswick as a place where we might be having these types of proposals, but sure enough, this is the first time it's happened and we really only had nine days before the city council was supposed to approve it and finalize the redevelopment plan. And once it's in there, I know from experience how hard it can be to fight the site plans because they'll just say it's a permitted use in the redevelopment plan. And it was a really sloppy redevelopment plan with no limits or controls on how big it is or how many there could be. So yeah, they said a single 27,000 square foot data center verbally at this one meeting, but there would be nothing stopping that private equity firm from coming back with a much larger or more devastating proposal. And so, yeah, I work at Food and Water Watch where we have called for a nationwide moratorium on large scale AI data centers, along with two hundred and fifty other groups. And so I knew the right people to contact and I knew the right information to share. And in those nine days we were able to build a coalition with students at Rutgers University, environmental groups around the state, and the local people who were going to be most affected. So, you know, one of those pictures, I'm there knocking on doors in the Lincoln Gardens neighborhood to warn people that this proposal is coming up and you need to call your council president and show up at this meeting. And you know, I was expecting a big response, but certainly it exceeded my wildest expectations.
- [25:14]
Hunter Woodhull
Yeah, Charlie, I don't. You, you are enemy number one to a lot of people in the tech industry, many of them. I know some of these people, they view you and your ilk, as they would call it, as the vanguard of the de growth movement, as people who refuse to accept this forward progress and productivity in their lives. Why were you even interested in blocking this data center in the first place?
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Charlie Craddeville
Well, I know how devastating they can be from some of my colleagues around the nation that have helped fight and in some cases have not been able to stop them. So they can be devastating to ecosystems, the noise and pollution can be harmful to humans, and it's the type of development that it's the opposite of job creation. Right. Normally we are in this sort of like environmentalist versus jobs dynamic, but these facilities have very few permanent jobs. And in fact, the artificial intelligence industry is famous for replacing human workers with computer technology and putting people out of work. So those arguments don't carry water. I have gotten a little taste of how strong the opposition is, and I knew that it was something that we needed to tap into here in New Brunswick because at the end of the day, I wanted our city council to remember this moment next time a data center is proposed and they'll just say no because they understand that the people don't want it, at least not here in our city. And yeah, I think Food and Water Watch is right to support a moratorium on this stuff because otherwise we're gonna be making decisions that we're gonna be Locke and we're going to come to regret.
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Breaking Points Host
Let's put E4 up on the screen here because your movement is part of a rising push, rising local grassroots push against these data centers. This was a heat map report from last month which said amid rising local pushback, US data centers can data center cancellation surged in 2025. A Heat Map Pro review. A public record shows 25 data centers scrubbed last year after local pushback. That was four times as many as 2024. You know, I live in rural community in Virginia. Virginia has really been the, you know, the epicenter of these data center locations. And I've seen the way that the awareness and the activism around these data centers has shifted just in the past couple of years here as well. Why do you think that your success, you know, really sort of tapped into a zeitgeist, why it was so important, why people found it so important. What do you think the issues are that you're touching on that are resonating really in a cross partisan and cross ideological way as well?
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Charlie Craddeville
Well, yeah, I mean, in New Brunswick, we have a lot of development and redevelopment going on. So I know there's a lot of frustration over it, but it's often, you know, some people love it and some people don't love it. In this case, this is a piece of land that had been completely vacant for years. The developer kicked out small businesses to, you know, supposedly had big plans and never delivered on them. So I knew the local people were not going to support a plan that was going to, you know, basically change what was supposed to be a park to a big data center. I also knew that more broadly, people are very frustrated with Artificial intelligence and the impact it's having, how we're seeing so much misinformation and slop in our feeds that we didn't see just a few years ago, and how it's ultimately a big, big money maker for the extremely wealthy and virtually nothing is trickling down to regular folks. So different people have different reasons for opposing it, but it is definitely something that is widely felt and we're all sort of on the same side, whether we don't like it because of the impact it's having on our social media feeds, or the impact it's having on our economy, or the impact it's having on our environment, or just the fact that, you know, we don't want developers to be able to make the maximum profit without giving anything back to the community. And that's what we were seeing here with this redevelopment.
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Hunter Woodhull
Yeah, I think it's fascinating. So the response I've seen to you, Charlie, I'll read one from a VC who I know, Gary Tan. He says a fully built data center complex generates $31 million a year in state taxes, 61 million in local. It creates 430 direct jobs as facilities, plus many more indirect construction phase jobs. So clearly you and your community, you're not buying that. Parse that argument. Oh, you could have built a bigger park, Charlie, if you would let it be there and then the new park would eventually materialize. So you're not buying it. Tell us why.
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Charlie Craddeville
Yeah, I mean, those numbers are kind of made up, right? I don't.
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- [30:11]
Charlie Craddeville
The specifics on this project were few and far between. The developer never showed up, up in New Brunswick to explain what they wanted to do or why. This was all just in the early phase of a redevelopment plan, secondhand. And frankly, there were lies involved. Right. We were misled at the initial city council meeting where they voted on this, and they were told this is just minor tweaks that they're making to the commercial component of the project, which was supposed to be offices and retail originally. So, yeah, I have no, no faith or trust in developers and officials who are going to mislead us. And at the end of the day, they're not making the case. They're not making a good case for it. This company basically came in and said, oh, yeah, that developer messed up, but we're going to take over their project. We're the financial backers. And don't worry, he's not involved anymore, so you could trust us. But they're in Palm Beach. They never came to New Brunswick and explained what they wanted to do or why. And you know, ultimately this seemed like a half baked plan all along, but it was so important that we stopped the redevelopment plan because if it got through it would have allowed them to have as many data centers as they wanted.
- [31:24]
Breaking Points Host
And to your point, you know, I was watching some of the town hall footage from Missouri community where they were pushing back on, you know, efforts to put a data center in their town and the concerns really were everything from the, you know, the, I don't know that I want to call it mundane, but you know, concerned about noise pollution. What's the traffic going to mean? What's it going to mean for the character of our town to the more existential? And to that point I wanted to get your reaction to some recent comments from Sam Altman because I think there's also something, there's a deeply anti human ideology that is at the heart of this. So let's go ahead and take a listen to Sam Altman comparing the energy needs of AI to the energy needs of human beings.
- [32:07]
Sam Altman
One of the things that is always unfair in this comparison is people talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model relative to how much it costs a human to do one inference query. But it also takes a lot of energy to train a human. It takes like 20 years of life and all of the food you eat during that time before you get smart. And not only that, it took like the very widespread evolution of the hundred billion people that have ever lived and learned not to get eaten by predators and learn how to like figure out science and whatever to produce you and then you took whatever you, you know, you took. So the fair comparison is if you ask ChatGPT a question, how much energy does it take once its model is trained to answer that question versus a human? And probably AI has already caught up on an energy efficiency basis measured that way.
- [32:54]
Breaking Points Host
So what do you make of those comments comparing the, you know, the value and the energy needs of, of babies up through adult humans versus robots?
- [33:04]
Charlie Craddeville
Yeah, it's certainly interesting. I think that folks who think of it in those terms are demonstrating the coldness that they have towards society as we know it. And innovation can and is a great thing, but we have to stay true to what we are, you know, as, as human beings, as a society that, you know, loves and cares for one another. You know, we can't just throw it all away and change our physical environment to facilitate technology growth over our own sustainability as a species. And of course, you know, at the, at the end of the Day it's about money, right? These folks are going to make a ton of money off this and they don't want to share the wealth. They want to control everything, including information, including money, including water, including our, you know, electricity and, and, you know, we can't stand for that. You know, it's, it's a, it's, it's a power grab.
- [34:10]
Hunter Woodhull
That's awesome.
- [34:11]
Breaking Points Host
Yeah. All while promising to eliminate all or most white collar jobs. I mean, that's the thing that to me just continues to honestly astonish me me is they have the nerve to say how dare you stand against a data center in your community when the quote unquote deal that they're threatening us with is we want to use up all the power. If we find a robot to be more efficient than you, then we feel perfectly entitled to privilege that robot. Right. We want to suck up, we want to, you know, make spike your electricity bills, we want to suck up the water, we want to suck up the resources, all in service of, of ultimately eliminating your job. And if you object to any of that, even from the hyper local perspective of I don't want to be part of this year in my community for a whole variety of reasons, then you are, you know, anti technology. You're a degrowther, you're enemy number one, as Sagar put it.
- [35:03]
Charlie Craddeville
Yeah. A lot of interesting comments in response to that tweet. Yeah. All I can say is, you know, I support the humans over the machines and I, I think that, you know, know, we should stick together and, and no matter what the development is proposed, whether it's a pipeline or a power plant or, or a, a big AI data center, we should defend our communities. If we don't want those things in our communities, we have a right to stand up and say no. And it's on them to make the case for why that's going to be good in the long run. And they are not making that case.
- [35:35]
Hunter Woodhull
Totally agree, Charlie. They call you an enemy. I call you hero number one. Thank you very much for joining us, sir. Genuinely inspired by what, by what you guys were able to do. Thank you for joining our show. We appreciate it.
- [35:48]
Charlie Craddeville
Thank you. My pleasure. Keep up the good work.
- [35:51]
Hunter Woodhull
All right, thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. We should be back in studio tomorrow. As long as all the roads, electricity and all of that cooperates. And of course, we're going to have our great State of the Union live stream. So we'll see you all then.
- [36:17]
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- [37:45]
Jose Luigi Granados Ceja
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [37:47]
Breaking Points Host
Guaranteed Human.