A War-Sized AI Bet. Private Credit Went All In. Will the Government End Up Owning It?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "The Government Will Own It" | Ben Hunt on World War AI

Podcast: Excess Returns
Episode Air Date: July 31, 2026
Hosts: Matt Ziegler, Jack Forehand, Justin Carbonneau
Guest: Ben Hunt (Epsilon Theory, Perseant)

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Episode Overview

The first episode of the “Why Am I Reading This Now” series explores the massive societal and financial implications of “World War AI”—Ben Hunt’s argument that the US’s AI infrastructure buildout is on the scale of World War II’s total wartime spending (adjusted for inflation). The conversation moves between macroeconomic mechanics, market narratives, political outcomes, and the energy and capital resource shifts that are reshaping the landscape for investors and society at large. Hunt contends this is already putting the US on a path toward government intervention, price controls, and a quasi-war-time command economy, with profound investment and social consequences.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. World War AI—The Scale of AI Investment

(02:26, 03:20)

• Ben Hunt lays out the thesis: The US is projected to spend $4–5 trillion (inflation-adjusted, similar to WWII spending) on AI infrastructure.
• While this figure was 50% of GDP in the 1940s, it’s "only" ~15% today—but the psychological and economic impact is enormous.
• Memorable Stat [04:05]: “Half of that [2026] GDP growth is coming from AI capex. Half.” – Ben Hunt

2. Market & Financial System Risks

(04:20–06:54)

• AI capital expenditures (CapEx) are the marginal driver of current market multiples and GDP growth.
• Companies (e.g., Google) can’t finance this spending with cash flow—now resorting to borrowing and issuing equity.
• Key Quote: "It’s not the commercial banks this time—it’s the private banks, it’s private equity, private credit, the alternative asset managers—they have pushed all the chips in on the AI CapEx buildout." (06:13) – Ben Hunt
• If this buildout falters, the risk is not just recession or a bear market, but a systemic crisis given the exposure of private credit markets.

3. The Crowding Out Effect

(07:00–09:27)

• The all-in pursuit of AI is crowding out other sectors, as capital (and now energy) becomes scarce or expensive.
• Interest rates are structurally rising as more borrowers (governments, AI companies, consumers) chase a finite capital pool.
• Ben: "We’ve gone from the world being awash in liquidity...to having a real dearth of capital. It’s a structural reason why interest rates are going up, up. And it’s not going to stop." (08:10)

4. Energy, Data Centers, and Resource Constraints

(09:39–12:01)

• Data centers currently use roughly 4% of US electrical generation; Hunt projects this could rise to 25%.
  • “We can’t build the pie fast enough to accommodate the enormously growing slice that data centers are going to be taking.” (10:49)
• Implies higher prices, eventual rationing—both for industry and consumers.
• Pressure for government intervention: if the capital or energy crunch forces a halt, it triggers the crisis described above.

5. Government Intervention & Command Economy Dynamics

(12:01–15:37)

• Hunt foresees the government will be forced to intervene, beginning with backstops and progressing to direct financing, ownership, and command-and-control measures (rationing, price controls).
• Key Quote: "If you go to resource reallocation on a level of a World War, the government will end up treating it like a world war because it requires enormous consumer sacrifice." (12:48)
• This will be sold to voters as existential—"it’s a war, we have to do it to survive as a nation."

6. Global Dimensions and Funding Challenges

(15:37, 18:45)

• Not just a US issue; global deficit spending rising (Europe, Japan, UK) mainly due to increased defense outlays.
• Energy risk compounded by the Iran war, which is limiting capital outflows from the Middle East and raising input prices.
• Fewer international capital pools are willing to finance US AI expansion as global needs compete and trust wanes.

7. Shifting Narratives & Market Sentiment

(22:22–25:07)

• The bull narrative on AI CapEx dominated from late 2025 into mid-2026, but the negative/bearish counter-narrative is resurfacing.
• Three trends to watch:
  1. Bearish stories on AI CapEx are increasing.
  2. Political narratives around AI and related impacts (e.g., data centers) are worsening, becoming midterm election fodder.
  3. The narrative around energy is shifting from “temporary shortage” to “structural supply reduction.”

8. Populism, Policy Horseshoe, and the Path Forward

(26:04–31:46)

• Both major US political poles are converging on interventionist policies: government stakes in hyperscalers, price controls, direct support.
• Ben: “...on the left and the right, there’s a lot of impetus going towards price controls and government ownership of big sectors of the economy." (27:24)
• Market-oriented alternatives (e.g., letting lenders suffer losses) are politically untenable due to the huge GDP and employment stakes.
• Strategic competition with China will drive further intervention, oversight, and “war-time” rhetoric.
• Key Quote: “The train has left the station. The destination is government intervention, bailout, backstop, control of the AI industry. ... Maybe you can slow it down. I ain’t happy about the train, but the train’s left the station.” (31:18) – Ben Hunt

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Half of [2026] GDP growth is coming from AI capex. Half." – Ben Hunt [04:05]
• "We can't get off this hamster wheel but the hamster wheel is getting more and more expensive to manage." – Ben Hunt [06:38]
• "It’s not going to stop because every government in the world is borrowing trillions at the same time that the AI CapEx, the AI buildout, people need to borrow trillions. There’s just so many trillions to go around." – Ben Hunt [08:14]
• "We're going to move from data centers consuming 4% of everything we produce to about 25% of everything we produce." – Ben Hunt [10:23]
• "We can't build the generation pie big enough to accommodate the growing slice that data centers are going to take. So what that means is higher prices and ultimately rationing." – Ben Hunt [11:59]
• "If you go to resource reallocation on a level of a World War, the government will end up treating it like a world war because it requires enormous consumer sacrifice." – Ben Hunt [12:48]
• "This is a structural thing... We're seeing a structural change in the price of energy and ... in the price cost of capital. ... That is what drives the world." – Ben Hunt [21:28]
• "Both on the left and the right, there's a lot of impetus going towards price controls and government ownership of big sectors of the economy... The train has left the station." – Ben Hunt [27:24, 31:18]

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Key Timestamps

• 02:17: Origin and premise of "World War AI."
• 04:05: AI CapEx constitutes half of US GDP growth.
• 06:13: Private equity and credit markets financing AI buildout risks; systemic exposure.
• 08:14: Permanent rise in interest rates due to capital scarcity.
• 10:23: Projection of data centers’ energy consumption from 4% to 25%.
• 11:59: Consequence: rising prices and rationing.
• 12:48: Why this will force government to act as in wartime.
• 15:49: International pressures and lack of overseas capital.
• 19:58: Shift in the oil supply narrative: temporary vs. long-term shortage.
• 22:22: Narrative monitoring: bear case re-emerges.
• 26:04: Political climate and populist consensus on more intervention.
• 27:24: The "horseshoe" effect—convergence on state control.
• 31:18: Strategic competition with China as the next narrative wave.

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Conclusion

In this episode, Ben Hunt and Matt Ziegler paint a sobering tableau: The scale and demands of the current AI investment boom are fundamentally reshaping the US economy, capital markets, and energy landscape. The necessary resources are crowding out other growth, creating bottlenecks and risks that will (if not already) compel unprecedented levels of government intervention and quasi-wartime economic management—irrespective of political party, as both left and right converge on populist, interventionist responses. Investors must grasp not just the market numbers, but the shifting narratives, resource constraints, and inevitable government role coming down the pipeline.

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Find more:

• Ben Hunt on Twitter: @EpsilonTheory
• More analysis at perseant.com

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Transcript

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[Ben Hunt]

See our 7 day return policy at

[Excess Returns Podcast Host]

Carvana.com we are excited to announce the launch of a new podcast, why Am I Reading this now with Ben Hunt. Stories and narratives are increasingly shaping markets, and Ben and his team at Perscient have developed a unique system for measuring how those narratives emerge, spread and change. In each episode, Ben and Matt Ziegler will examine the major issues facing investors through this narrative lens, helping listeners better understand the stories driving markets and what they could mean for the economy, policy and investment outcomes. We have included this first episode in the Excess Returns feed. To continue receiving new episodes, subscribe to the separate why Am I Reading this Now Podcast on all major podcast platforms or follow the show on our YouTube channel using the links in this episode. Description. Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoy the new show.

[Matt Ziegler]

You're watching Excess Returns, the channel that makes complex investing ideas simple enough to actually use or better questions lead to better decisions. This is our first official episode of why Am I Reading this now where we look at the financial media, what it's actually saying, what the narratives are and what it means for your portfolio. I'm joined by Mr. Charles Epsilon theory Atlas himself. The narrative world heavy on his shoulders. Say hello Ben Hun.

[Ben Hunt]

Hello Ben Hun. Great to be here, Matt. Thank you.

[Matt Ziegler]

All right, so we're launching this because we keep talking about these themes. You've got some amazing stuff going on at Perseant. These decks that I'm getting in my inbox regularly from you guys. Chef's kiss. Check them out. That's Persian.com P E R S C I E N T. I spelled it right.

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[Matt Ziegler]

I'll look at that.

[Ben Hunt]

Perfect.

[Matt Ziegler]

Ziggler family bonus points already today. Give me a gold star. You're updating World War AI. This was a crazy piece. When did the original come out?

[Ben Hunt]

November. Last November.

[Matt Ziegler]

We were, but children in this AI

[Ben Hunt]

cycle feels that way, doesn't it?

[Matt Ziegler]

Sure does.

[Ben Hunt]

I mean it's amazing how long we've been having this really prominent. I wouldn't even call it a debate right now, but this dominance of the AI theme for markets, politics, the world, you name it. Anyway, so I wrote this note. This is called World War AI has got a very simple premise based on the fact that we're going to spend here in the US as much money in inflation adjusted dollars on this AI Capex and data center build out as we did on World War II. It's crazy. I mean we spent again inflation adjusted money about somewhere between four and five trillion dollars to fight World War II. That's what we're going to spend on this AI capex build out. It's the same amount now. It's a bigger economy. It was, you know, 4 to 5 trillion dollars inflation adjusted was about half the U.S. economy in the 40s. It's only about 15% of the U.S. economy today. But this is the phrases in marketing, this is the marginal driver of everything in our markets and our economy. So the US economy is going to grow about 2% give or take a little bit in 2026. Half of that GDP growth is coming from AI capex. Half.

[Matt Ziegler]

I know, you just said it twice. I'm going to tell you to say it a third time because I think this is a fairly shocking statistic on the size of AI Capex contribution to GDP right now. And then why you've been telling us this is such an important government initiative.

[Ben Hunt]

Yeah, we're pot committed. I mean, I mean, so if you took away half of GDP growth, it wouldn't put us in a recession, but it would sure as hell feel like a recession. And for markets, I mean, forget about it. Forget about it. So, so the, the AI CapEx story, this is what's driven multiple for this market for the last eight months. We're, like I said, we're, we're pot committed both in terms of markets, in terms of government wanting to avoid a recession. But the other way we're really pot committed is we've been spending that, this year's down payment on that 4 to 5 trillion dollars. Because what's happened is that all these companies, they can't finance this out of cash flow. So you've got Google now Google is negative free cash flow Google. Google's raising equity, borrowing and selling equity. The companies are trying to finance it themselves. First they did it out of cash cash flow. Now they're borrowing Selling equity. Well who's lending to them? It's, we used to call them shadow banks. It's private equity, private credit. These are the funders of this first big stage of the AI CapEx build out. If, if we get off this hamster wheel, it's not just that SK Hynix or whatever goes down another 40%. It's not just that we have a bear market is not just that we have a recession, we have a full blown systemic ie financial system crisis. Because it's not the commercial banks this time, it's the private banks, it's private equity, private credit, the alternative asset managers, they have pushed all the chips in on the AI Capex build out. We can't get off this hamster wheel but the hamster wheel is getting more and more expensive to manage.

[Matt Ziegler]

How do we think about the all in on this? The word that's coming to mind is the crowding out effect.

[Ben Hunt]

Yep.

[Matt Ziegler]

That's also what we're seeing here. Right. We've seen all these dollars chased into this underinvestment, serial under investment and all these other parts of the market and the economy.

[Ben Hunt]

Well you can see what's happening with interest rates. So the cost of capital, that's interest rates and it's what companies have to borrow to or will have to pay to borrow money. It's what consumers have to pay. I don't, I mean I have a pretty good credit, I don't have a credit card that charges less than 20%. I don't.

[Matt Ziegler]

I bet you got a spam email though that wanted to lend you some insane amount.

[Ben Hunt]

I get, I get easily 5. I mean I really count this. I mean I don't answer my phone anymore because every call I get five a day where I'm pre approved for my business loan I like to kind of track the amount they offer in the business loans. I think it's a good kind of indication of how, you know, desperate the economy is. It was here, then went up, now it's coming back down again. So it's, it's a, it's a pretty interesting indicator. Yeah, I, I mean it's an enormous crowding out effect not just for consumer credit, not just for hyperscalers that are trying to borrow, but for governments, for everyone. We've gone from the world being awash in liquidity I.e. capital looking for a home to having a real dearth of capital. It's a structural reason why interest rates are going up, up. It's not going to stop because every government in the world is Borrowing trillions at the same time that the AI CapEx, the AI build out, people need to borrow trillions. There's just so many trillions to go around. Hear that? That's now crispy and McCrispy strips meeting creamy Caesar sauce sounds extra crispy caesar sauce at McDonald's for a limited time.

[Matt Ziegler]

So when we think about the math of all this, so that's the cost of capital side. There's also just the raw inputs here. There's what happens with energy, water, electricity.

[Ben Hunt]

We stop with energy. We stop with energy. Right, because energy, think about it kind of fundamentally that drives everything. So what drives food prices, energy, fertilizer energy, what drives services energy, what drives shipping, trucking is all energy. Energy is at the core of everything, everything. And I'll focus on the energy consumption of this AI build out because that's the other aspect. It's not just that there's a crowding out effect on, on capital 4 to $5 trillion. There's also a crowding out effect on energy consumption. We're going to go and we can, we can say so, you know, we'd stretch this out. Right? We can, you know, some projects can fall by the wayside. I'm just talking about the core projects here. We're going to move from data centers consuming pretty negligible proportion of our whole American electrical production. Call it 4%. 4%. We're going to go from data centers consuming 4% everything we produce to about 25% of everything we produce. Now that, that includes the energy generation facilities they're just building, call it behind the meter, which is just for them. But my point is that we can't build the pie fast enough to accommodate the enormously growing slice that data centers are going to be taking here. That the math does not check out. And this has nothing to do with, oh, the data center's got to build their own energy generation facility. Fine, they'll do that. That's one less energy generation facility that can be built out for the rest of us.

[Matt Ziegler]

Because you're still talking about 4 to 25, which is 96 down to 75 for the rest of us. And that's exactly another issue.

[Ben Hunt]

And so just, just to keep our energy, energy consumption at the same amount going from 96 to 75%, you've got to build a bigger pie. And conceptually, 75% of a much bigger pie is better than 96% of a smaller pie. We can't get there. It. There's not enough turbines and gas generation or anything. We can't build the generation pie big enough to accommodate the growing slice that data centers are going to take. So what that means is higher prices and ultimately rationing. Rationing. Now we can ration the data centers too. But again, C point 1. If we get off this hamster wheel and these data center projects don't work and you have losses for the trillions of dollars that have being borrowed to build them out, well, then that, that's that. That was door number one of recession, bear market and systemic financial crisis. So we don't have a good show. So look, I'll kind of cut to the chase here. And this is the point of World War the title World War AI. If you go to resource reallocation on a level of a World war war, the government will end up treating it like a world war because it requires enormous consumer sacrifice. So what that means that the government will do is they've got to finance this thing. They'll start with backstops, loan backstops. They'll move to direct financing of this. They'll get ownership or whatever they're going to get out of it. You move to a command economy where you put rationing price controls. You present it to us. Consumers are also the voters. As it's a war, we have to do it to survive as a nation. That's what's coming down the pipe because it's the only way that I see through this. If you want to avoid the bear market recession and the systemic financial crisis. Now you could make the argument that says, look, I'd rather have that I'd rather have a bear market, a recession, and people have made all these loans. Well, they get what's coming to them. I'm actually very sympathetic to that view. Very sympathetic to that view. I promise you. I don't care if it's a Republican or a Democrat or whoever's in the White House. They do not subscribe to that view. They do not subscribe to that.

[Matt Ziegler]

Political suicide. Not a popular strategy.

[Ben Hunt]

Not going to happen. No, not going to happen. So I'm not trying to tell you what I think is the right thing to happen. I'm trying to tell you what I think is going to happen and what's driving this is. And we see it in our data. Let me show you what the data we're looking at here is going. It has. Things have to get worse before the government will come in and say, okay, we're going to give a backstop for this and we're going to. It's a bailout. We're going to get a government bailout in another form. That's what a backstop and that's what energy rationing and, you know, price controls and stimulus is. We're going to get a bailout.

[Matt Ziegler]

How do we think about this? Take me out of the US Too, because I think this is one of the more. This is why it's World War AI, not US Civil War AI.

[Ben Hunt]

Well, honestly, this is why I think there are two things going on. The first, in the developed world, we have so much deficit spending. And definitely spending is going to be increasing in large part in uk, Europe and in Japan because they're increasing their defense spending, which again, you can argue, hey, I'm glad they are. They should be spending more. I get that. But that means they're going to be borrowing more to do that. So the entire world is borrowing more, including our government. We're giving stimulus out left and right. More defense spending. The one big beautiful bill. So reduced tax revenues. All this is happening. Our deficit is exploding again. Every country's deficit is. That's 1, 2 is the Iran war. Okay? There's an energy price increase for you, particularly for Asian countries, particularly for Europe. This doesn't work. Middle east source of capital. As they get their infrastructure blown up, that capital stays home. What the rest of the world is increasingly unwilling to finance. American AI capex build out. I think that if Sam Altman went to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh today, he would get a more lukewarm response to putting billions into OpenAI than he got four months ago. So whether it's Japan explicitly saying we're bringing our investment dollars back home, or whether it's Europe, uk, every other country looking to finance their own economies and spending, whether it's the Middle Eastern oligarchs saying, you know what, this war hasn't really gone the way we were thinking it was going. And we don't really trust the US and their commitments. So we're going to have to keep our money home here too. So again, it all boils down to the ability to finance this AI build out. Here in the US we're finding fewer and fewer sources, pools of capital willing to finance it. Again, cost of capital goes up globally.

[Matt Ziegler]

What's this? Do I want to zoom specifically in on the impact of the oil price around the world? Not at home. Yes. Here in the US but also around the world in this. Because back to the way you highlighted that as the ultimate input cost on a lot of these things.

[Ben Hunt]

Yeah, yeah. Well, this, this is why things are going to get worse before the government steps in with a bailout that is backstopping the loans for aicavx, finding some new way to give government stimulus. Because what we see that the story around the price of oil is starting to shift. What I mean by that is the story around the Iran war really from the outset through, you know, when it's just starting to change. But the story has consistently been this is a temporary shortage. Now if something is a temporary shortage, you look through it, you see this is a, it's transitory. Right.

[Matt Ziegler]

So you know, supply chain disruption.

[Ben Hunt]

The assumption is that's right. It's going to go back to what it was before. Right. If you, if you frame something, if the story is this is a temporary shortage. Supply chain disruption. Exactly, transitory supply chain disruption, then you are looking through the impact and your expectation is that it goes back to the way it was before, starting to see that change. And the story is starting to shift from temporary shortage to long term supply reduction. That's a different story entirely. Long term supply reduction is you don't go where it was before. It's not terrible, but you don't go back to where it was before. The floor gets raised.

[Matt Ziegler]

This is a, Rupert Mitchell's been raising this point of saying you still have a trading range for it. He actually doesn't think, he's like, yeah, you might have high, higher highs but they might be short lived in the triple digits. That could happen too. The real part that matters here is that floor just jumped up and we are not going to see the crazy lows in oil prices again for a while because now that floor is at a higher, fixed place. And that's going to change CapEx, that's going to change all sorts of stuff in energy infrastructure. And that is a take that out years into the future.

[Ben Hunt]

Right, Exactly. This is, this is structural, it's not a cyclical, you know, up and down thing. This is a structural thing. So we're seeing a structural change in the price of energy and we're seeing a structural change in the price cost of capital. And my brothers and sisters, that is what drives the world is what is the cost of money and what is the cost of energy? We're looking at structurally higher cost.

[Matt Ziegler]

What are the things we watch for now in terms of both political narrative, policy narrative of all stripes? What do we watch to see how this is progressing? And when you say it gets worse, I know you're not just talking about the semiconductor index entering correction mode or something. You're talking about more than what's Happening on a one sector stock chart.

[Ben Hunt]

Right. So what happened from call it Christmas through June was that the bull story around AI Capex remained high. The bear story vanished. Really dramatic in our work. And this is what you see a lot of times and not just what you want to pay attention to is not just the loud narratives, but what narratives have gone dormant when narratives have gone quiet. And the bare narratives around AI Capex, oh, this is going to work. It doesn't pencil out, etc. Those really high around Christmas time and then it just fell off a cliff. Don't ask me why, I'm just reporting what happened. What is now June, early June, you see that bottom out. And now the, now the negative stories, the bear stories about AI Cap X, they are climbing rapidly. They're climbing rapidly. So the, the story around AI is going to get worse from here. These things, they have a cadence. They don't, they don't go up and down really fast. I say it took six months for this for the bear case to disappear. We're going to see a couple of months of that bear case starting to climb again. And so that's the narrative backdrop for the entire AI world is going to get harder for price, not easier for price for a couple of months. So that's one, two is the political narratives around AI are getting worse and worse. The political narratives are really hard here. Really hard. Particularly going into a midterm where this is going to be a significant issue. That'll be a major issue, certainly get smaller because we're getting all these resources reallocated to it. And the third was what I described earlier about the story around the Iran war. I'm really seeing this start to change from temporary shortage to long term supply reduction. Those are the three things that I'm really watching. Resumption of the negative stories around AI CapEx, continued buildup of the negative political stories around AI and data centers, and third, changing story around energy so people aren't looking through it and expecting the price of energy to be back where it was a year ago.

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[Matt Ziegler]

Follow up on the political front, I'm curious what the Runway looks like for when we think about wartime. We think about wartime initiatives, we think about incumbent parties keeping trust and saying, here's the story, we're all on the same page and sticking to it. I'm getting so in Pennsylvania already getting bombarded with political flyers for midterms. Cannot tell you how many of them are focused on groceries are too high, gas is too high, all these inflation things that I don't know how these politicians are going to control these things.

[Ben Hunt]

Right.

[Matt Ziegler]

But I also know that they're all giving me the same message. They're all saying like these are the things our constituents supposedly care about. So we're going to beat these to death in the polls. And kind of feels like there's the odds of a shakeup here come the midterms are pretty high.

[Ben Hunt]

Well, I don't know about a shakeup when it comes to policy because like I say, whether you're a, whether you're

[Matt Ziegler]

a Democrat or this is what I wonder about. Because how can you shake up the policy if you want the gdp?

[Ben Hunt]

Well, if, let's put it this way, a Democratic majority in the House, I just don't know that it matters anymore in terms of policy. But they're not going to be looking to do Trump any favors. Let's be clear about that. Right. But I think you've got this, call it the horseshoe effect. I think that on the both on the left and the right, there's a lot of impetus going towards price controls and government ownership of big sectors of the economy. I mean, Trump's talking about and the hyperscalers say, yes, please, take an equity stake in us. Yes, please, we'll give you stock. Of course we will. Because they want the backstop. If the US Government is an investor, you're going to get the loan.

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[Ben Hunt]

So, so it's, it's now to sell that politically, you'll sell it as an. Oh, we're, I mean, do you sell any of this politically? Right. You sell it by saying, we're going to give you something for it. We're going to give you, whether it's stimulus or. Oh, yeah, we're going to make sure that we put price caps on your electrical bill. All these things. Of course, the price caps on your electricity are what prevent more electrical generation from being constructed. It's like price controls. It's like root controls. But that's what we're going to get. And we're going to get it from Trump and we're going to get it from the Dem side, too. It's this weird horseshoe. Not weird. It's this sad and disturbing horseshoe theory to me, which is that is going to be more government ownership, more government backstops, more government bailouts, more government stimulus, more government price controls. That's coming from the left and the right today. And that's what's going to be the outcome.

[Matt Ziegler]

I'm glad to hear you. Not glad to hear you frame it that way, but it, but it's, it's the thing that I'm feeling where it's. They both want a different version of the same thing here. And that is a problematic, That's a problematic position to be in because this is your widening gyre in a new, in a new light where now we are chasing this different flavor of populism. And.

[Ben Hunt]

That's right. That's right. Do you want salt on the rim of your margarita or do you want tahin on the rim of your margarita? Right.

[Matt Ziegler]

I'd be happy on my roads.

[Ben Hunt]

Right. So that, I mean, it's just, it's totally just a different wavering added to the same freaking thing.

[Matt Ziegler]

You assault rim or a tahin guy.

[Ben Hunt]

What's the go to? I bet. Actually, I'm a neither. I'm definitely not a salt rib. I'll do a tahini maybe, but I'm, I'm kind of neither. Yeah, kind of neither.

[Matt Ziegler]

Tahin in the right place. It's a magical spice, but it, I understand.

[Ben Hunt]

Love it.

[Matt Ziegler]

What, what do you think the next, the next big thing in this narrative, in this progression is? You've been talking about it for a while. We're seeing this progression. It's clearly already happening. We even saw some of the political drama with this. We saw it out in Missouri. We saw it in some other places where this is becoming a central issue. The, the, the spending's not going away. One IPO into this thing.

[Ben Hunt]

Look where it's going from here is it's going to get wrapped up again into a strategic competition with China. Going to get wrapped up into. It's a world war. This is what's at stake. We have to compete with the Chinese. So whether it's around open source, whether it's around whatever, that's going to be the the flavoring that we're going to give to this. And by this, I mean government backstop intervention. It'll come with government oversight and controls and the like. That's where this is going, right? The train has left the station. The destination is government intervention, bailout, backstop control of the AI industry. You're not going to stop this train. Maybe you can slow it down. I ain't happy about the train, but the train's left the station.

[Matt Ziegler]

Bed Hunt People want to bug you on the Internet. Follow the story. Where should we send them?

[Ben Hunt]

I'm Epsilon Theory everywhere on Twitter and just find Epsilon Theory. And then Persian is where we do our research and our publication for investors.

[Matt Ziegler]

So perseant.com this is why am I reading this now? It's our new series with Ben. We're going to put these out probably close to monthly. If you're in the podcast app, look for the secret separate podcast feed. We'll put links to all that stuff in the comments too. Ben, thanks for doing this. Excess Returns, Epsilon Theory, all the places like comment subscribe and all those things below.

[Excess Returns Podcast Host]

Thank you for tuning in to this episode. If you found this discussion interesting and valuable, please subscribe on your favorite audio platform or on YouTube. You can also follow all the podcasts in the Excess Returns [e-mail] if you have any feedback or questions, you can contact [e-mail] no information on this podcast

[Matt Ziegler]

should be construed as investment advice.

[Ben Hunt]

Securities discussed in the podcast may be

[Matt Ziegler]

holdings of the firms of the hosts or their clients.