Andrew Ross Sorkin and Zanny Minton Beddoes on Markets, Crashes and The Future of The Global Economy (Part One)

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Intelligence Squared
Episode: Andrew Ross Sorkin and Zanny Minton Beddoes on Markets, Crashes and The Future of The Global Economy (Part One)
Date: July 5, 2026
Host: Zanny Minton Beddoes (Editor-in-Chief, The Economist)
Guest: Andrew Ross Sorkin (journalist, author of Too Big To Fail & 1929)

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode explores the dramatic parallels between the financial exuberance and innovation of the 1920s and contemporary financial markets. Drawing from Andrew Ross Sorkin’s latest book on the 1929 crash, the discussion centers on the interplay of technological disruption, shifting political winds, and the psychological and structural ingredients that can lead to market bubbles and economic crises. The conversation pivots specifically to AI's role in shaping present and future markets, the risks of runaway speculation, and the personalities driving today's technological revolutions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The 1920s and Today: Parallels & Differences

• Technological Excitement and Fear (03:20–05:21)

  • In both eras, transformative technologies—automobiles, radio in the 1920s; AI today—drive exuberant market speculation.
  • Sorkin observes how today's financial innovation mirrors the past: “We're also seeing the financialization again of industry...whether it's crypto or these prediction markets...it's things like that where there's not enough people, I don't think, sort of throwing the red flag.” (06:55, Andrew Ross Sorkin)

• Cultural and Political Climate

  • Both the 1920s and today feature anti-immigration sentiments, rising tariffs, and geopolitical shocks.
  • The conversation highlights how these cyclical attitudes have material consequences for markets and policy.

The AI Boom: Speculation, Productivity, & Disruption

• The Nature of the AI Bubble (08:11–09:14)

  • Sorkin warns AI can go wrong in two ways: bursting economic bubbles or being too successful, resulting in automation-led job destruction.
  • “There's a very narrow sort of landing strip you have to land that plane on to make this thing actually work.” (08:40, Andrew Ross Sorkin)

• Massive Disruption or Gradual Adoption? (09:25–10:38)

  • Sorkin is in the “painful transition” camp, suggesting significant job losses will precede new opportunities: “I would have to imagine there's going to be some period of pain...in between.” (09:44, Andrew Ross Sorkin)

• Pace of Change

  • The speed with which AI is adopted will influence economic pain—rapid transition could be disastrous, slow change may be manageable. (10:10–10:38)

Existential Risks and Political Blowback

• AI Catastrophe: Likelihood and Timescales (11:07–13:13)

  • Beddoes: “There's a non-trivial risk that this [AI] annihilates all of us.”
  • Sorkin downplays imminent existential risk, seeing acute dangers as decades off, whereas Beddoes focuses on nearer-term “AI Three Mile Island” type accidents.

• Political Anxiety and Potential Regulation (17:49–20:38)

  • The growing backlash in the US—especially among young people struggling to find jobs—could spark a major political movement against AI.
  • However, Sorkin points out, “the money and influence...is controlled by people who run the world of AI...we do have this growing oligarchy.” (19:17, Andrew Ross Sorkin)
  • This oligarchic control could blunt regulation or slowdowns, paralleling elite-driven policy in the 1920s.

Valuations, Market Dynamics, and Unstoppable Forces

• Is AI Adoption Unstoppable? (20:45–21:36)

  • Sorkin: “I think that it is unstoppable unless the math doesn't math...If a lot of other companies...aren't seeing the return on investment...we're going to slow things down.” (20:54–21:36, Andrew Ross Sorkin)

• Executives’ Current AI Attitudes (21:36–23:33)

  • Many CEOs are not seeing a clear ROI from AI yet, echoing recent remarks from Uber’s CEO.
  • There is a “fear of missing out,” leading to continued investment despite uncertainty.

• Wasteful AI Implementation and Open Source Threat

  • Companies are currently inefficiently stacking AI tools, which can't last; open source AI from China could disrupt the competitive landscape cheaply. (23:33–24:14, Andrew Ross Sorkin)

SpaceX, Data Centers in Space, and "Weird" Tech Leaders

• SpaceX’s Role and Valuation Rationale (25:02–27:12)

  • Sorkin now believes data centers in space are plausible, and SpaceX is uniquely positioned to dominate.
  • Despite “math never making sense” for Musk’s companies, “he finds a way for it to math.” (27:06–28:35, Andrew Ross Sorkin)

• “The Five Weird Americans” Driving AI (28:35–30:14)

  • Beddoes: “...this world-changing technology is driven essentially by five weird guys from America whose names we know.”
  • Sorkin draws an explicit parallel between today's tech titans and the eccentric tycoons of the 1920s like John Raskob: “A lot of the great innovation has been led by weirdos.” (29:47–30:14, Andrew Ross Sorkin)

• Motivation and Psychology of Disruptors (31:39–34:06)

  • At the heart, both eras’ leaders are driven by deep insecurities or chips on their shoulders. Sorkin quips: “Chips on shoulders equal chips in pockets.” (32:29–32:33, Andrew Ross Sorkin)
  • The urge to prove something—a need for significance, legacy, or revenge—drives them to upend markets and norms.

Lessons of 1929: Could It Happen Again?

• Precipitating and Preventing Crisis (34:39–36:16)
  • Sorkin recounts how the Great Depression sprang from a sequence of policy missteps after 1929’s crash—not the crash itself.
  • Today, bailouts and “throwing money at the problem” are common—but too much confidence in this playbook (and excessive debt) can backfire:
    • “My bigger worry is that...we'll say: ‘We know what the playbook is, we're going to write the check.’ ...and at some point the bond market will go, ‘Okay, we're not doing this anymore.’” (35:48–36:16, Andrew Ross Sorkin)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the psychological roots of bubbles:
  “We're also seeing the financialization again...some of the guardrails...had been put in place, some of which were put in place, by the way, in the '30s and '40s...Not that that unto itself is going to be the thing that, you know, pushes us over the edge, but it's things like that where there's not enough people, I don't think, sort of throwing the red flag.” — Andrew Ross Sorkin (06:55)

• On AI’s double-edged impact:
  “If they're to justify the valuations...they have to create a remarkable amount of productivity...take out a shocking amount of cost. Where does the cost come from? You and I are the cost, we're all the cost.” — Andrew Ross Sorkin (08:36)

• On the personalities behind transformative change:
  “...all of these guys sort of have a little bit of a screw loose, but you kind of need that.” — Andrew Ross Sorkin (31:15)

• On what really drives visionary entrepreneurs:
  “Same thing that drives everybody in this room. A need to prove something to somebody about something...Chips on shoulders equal chips in pockets.” — Andrew Ross Sorkin (32:33)

• On the risk of overreliance on bailouts:
  “...we'll say, ‘Oh, we know what the playbook is. We’re going to write the check.’ ...and at some point the bond market will go, ‘Okay, we're not doing this anymore.’” — Andrew Ross Sorkin (36:16)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:20 – Parallels between the 1920s and today
• 06:55 – Financial innovation and risk
• 08:11 – AI speculation and risk of bust/success
• 09:44 – Sorkin’s view on painful transition with AI
• 11:07 – Existential AI risks: doomer vs. optimist
• 17:49 – Political backlash against tech in the US
• 19:17 – Oligarchy and elite influence in AI
• 20:54 – Is AI adoption unstoppable?
• 21:36 – CEOs’ skepticism on AI ROI
• 24:14 – AI cost curve and the open-source threat
• 25:02 – Space-based data centers and SpaceX
• 27:06 – Musk as the “man who makes the math math”
• 29:47 – The significance of eccentric innovators
• 32:29 – "Chips on shoulders" insight
• 34:52 – Lessons from the 1929 crash for today
• 36:16 – The dangers of overconfidence in government bailouts

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Final Thoughts

This densely packed conversation draws a living connection between bygone eras of excess and today’s AI-fueled boom. The dialogue is equal parts cautionary and admiring, blending historical insight, journalistic inside baseball, and a dose of psychological realism about the people who construct—then sometimes crash—our economic realities. Sorkin and Beddoes leave listeners feeling that history is not destined to repeat, but the same human forces will always be at play.

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For part two and other episodes, visit Intelligence Squared.

Transcript

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[Mia Sorrenti]

for details welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I producer Mia Sorrenti what can the crash that shook Wall street in 1929 teaches about today's age of technological disruption and market speculation. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with author, New York Times columnist and CNBC presenter Andrew Ross Sorkin. Sorkin joined us at the Royal Geographical Society to discuss what history can tell us about the future of capitalism in conversation with Editor in Chief at the Economist Zanny Minton Beddoes. Sorkin explores the forces behind one of the most consequential financial in modern history and why its lessons still matter. Today, let's join our host Zanny Minton Beddowes now live at the Royal Geographical Society.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

Thank you, thank you. I am delighted to join you. And I'm delighted to join you with my friend Andrew, who basically needs no introduction. But just in case you didn't know, this is one of the world's foremost financial journalists, if not the most foremost financial journalist. No, no, it's, it's true. You have your finger on the pulse of the day to Day of Global Markets more than anybody else. Three hours on Squawkbox every day. DealBook Newsletter but you also now have a tremendous historical perspective, both from Too Big to Fail, the canonical telling of the 2008 financial crisis, and now this book, which I am assuming you have all read since it's been out in hardback for about eight months now. It's the paperback edition. It's. It's an extraordinarily good book. If you haven't, and if you're coming here to get a crib of the book, we're going to disappoint you because we will talk about the book a bit. But what I really want to talk about is the lessons of this book for today, Andrew does all of this because he's extraordinarily productive. We've been comparing sleep scores off stage,

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

the auras, the rings and the whoops.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

Andrew's ahead of me, but he's also someone who is incredibly well prepared. I'm just going to tell a little story, which you will remember this, I think, but we both go to various conferences and occasionally, actually, usually we both end up moderating something or interviewing somebody. And last year at one of these conferences, Andrew was supposed to be interviewing three very prominent CEOs. And you know, 24 hours before or 48 hours before, he got some terrible sickness and couldn't come. Do you remember this? And I got a text saying would I stand in for Andrew? And I thought, okay, fine. And it was. I won't say who they were, but they were very prominent CEOs. And I said, okay, but is there anything he's done? Is there any prep notes that anyone's done? And Andrew very sweetly sent me his prep notes where I saw why this man is so good at what he does. Oh my God, the amazing amount of preparation and thought that had gone into this interview. And so basically I just parroted what he'd written. And afterwards everyone came up and said what a fantastic interview it was. So this is an extraordinary journalist. You have written this book, 1929, and you've said on several podcasts that there are flashing light parallels between the 1920s and today, and obviously markets at record highs. Obviously not today. Those of you who've been looking at what's been happening in the markets today, and presumably going to go down even further now that we've heard the Iranians have downed a US helicopter, but notwithstanding a war, markets plumbing record highs. But there are also, I think, sort of really deep parallels. Technological revolution, huge geopolitical shifts the US in the 20s became very anti immigration. It became embraced tariffs.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Where are the.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

When you look at today, where do you think the real echoes are and what is different?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

First of all, thank you for that remarkable introduction. I actually think of you as the great financial journalist of this age. So I do, I do give her a round of applause because if you don't read the Economist, it's an amazing thing. To me, they're the two biggies, but they're mostly psychological. So I look at, and you mentioned it, one of them, there's the technology itself, which was, you know, in the 1920s, automobiles really were exciting and they should have been exciting. And radio was exciting and it should have been exciting. Rca, by the way, also had the patent for television. So there was a lot to be excited about in terms of the future and what that portended. But the other real shift in the 1920s was the invention of new financial products with lots of debt attached to them that allowed people to trade. And that was part of sort of the gambling culture that emerged. I feel like that more than anything else. So today we're very excited about AI as a. By the way, we're excited and scared of AI, which I think is different in some ways than the 1920s, because I don't remember. I'm sure folks who were buggy whip makers were scared of automobiles, but that was probably the total of it. I think AI is both exciting and scary on multiple ends of the spectrum. But we're also seeing the financialization again of industry, and we're seeing all sorts of new financial products, whether it's crypto or whether it's polymarket and Kalshi in these prediction markets, or whether it's just changing the rules and taking down some of the guardrails that frankly, had been put in place, some of which were put in place, by the way, in the 30s and 40s. So when you see, for example, the SpaceX IPO, which is going to go public on Friday, and you see something like the NASDAQ changing the rules around their own exchange or their own index fund so that they can attract SpaceX to their exchange and effectively create a automated buyer for the SpaceX shares, to me, it's things like that. Not that that unto itself is going to be the thing that, you know, pushes us over the edge, but it's things like that where there's not enough people, I don't think sort of throwing the red flag saying, guys, we got

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

to watch out, but we'll come to the structure of financial markets later. But let's just talk about the technology, because I think you're right. It is weird that essentially stock markets at least, are being propped up by extraordinary valuations based on a vision of AI, and yet we are all terrified of it. And, you know, seven out of 10Americans are worried about it. There's a growing political backlash at some level. Does that make you more or less worried?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No, it makes me more worried because ultimately it can go wrong two ways. One way it goes wrong is that there's an AI bubble and it somehow bursts in the sense that the economics don't catch up to the valuations, don't catch up to the cost of the build out of data centers and the like. That's one version of the bust. But the other side of the coin is success. What happens in success? If these companies are successful, as ostensibly the market wants them to be, if they're to justify the valuations that we all see in the market today, they have to create a remarkable amount of productivity in the system, in the economy, and to do that, they have to show a shocking amount of growth, but also take out a shocking amount of cost. Where does the cost come from? You and I are the cost, we're all the cost. And if you take that cost out, then there's the question about who's going to be able to pay for the stuff on the other side. So to me, there's a very narrow sort of landing strip in the middle that you have to land that plane on to make this thing actually work.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

So does that mean you're more on the kind of Dario Amadei end of this is going to be massively disruptive? 50% of white collar jobs are going in the next few years.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I am more in the Dario camp, but more in the camp of it being a painful transition. I don't know if it's a forever transition, but I don't understand. You know, we were with somebody last night who, who was mentioning this idea that there's more jobs that are being created in this moment as a result of AI. And by the way, I think to some degree that may very well be true too, during the transition of us jumping into the AI world. But I would have to imagine there's going to be some period of pain, I hate to say it, in between.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

And how does that then affect the likelihood of which of these you say it's going to be? It's going to be bad. How do we land the plane in the middle and are we on track to land the Plane in the middle.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I don't know what landing on the plane in the middle, to be honest with you directly looks like. I think that there's a timing element to all of this too, which is that it depends how quickly all of this really gets dispersed into our economy in terms of how quickly. I think if it happens over a period of time, we'll probably be okay. If it happens super fast and everybody starts firing people left and right, we probably won't be okay.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

I think this is the first time I'm more optimistic than you are. I've always thought of you as someone

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

very sunny, very optimistic about a lot of things. But I think there's going to be a period that's going to be very challenging. I think it's hard for me to imagine how it couldn't be.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

Well, let's come to the political challenge of it because I think that may stop it. But firstly, the other thing that I think is different between this and cars and radios is that there's a non trivial risk that this annihilates all of us. I mean, I'm not an AI doomer, but I think it's not zero risk that we do something that is catastrophically bad.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

This is where I'm much more optimistic than you. I am not a doomer. And my view is if in fact you think that AI is going to come up with a way to annihilate us all, that is like a 30 to 40 years out, 50 years out kind of project. Because you're going to have to have so many robots and humanoid, you have so many physical things happening to make it really happen.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

Really?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You don't think there is a LLM on its own?

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

I don't think the LLM goes rogue, to be clear. But I do think that the odds of an AI related accident like an AI Three Mile island are really certainly not zero. Because right now we have the two AI leaders, the US and China, barreling forward because they both think that they need to be ahead in this race. This race dynamic means there's remarkably little regulatory oversight and the capabilities are extraordinary. I mean, we are there even since your hardback came out. When this book came out first, we didn't have agents, we didn't have Claude Code doing what it's now doing. We didn't have all of the stuff that's happened in the last three months that has transformed our view of what they could do.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I don't disagree with that. The only thing I'd suggest is the idea of a sort of Three Mile Island. Look, look, we already had the problem in Iran when you think about the school. So yes, it could happen in the context of a war or some kind of something where something goes absolutely wrong, but I'm hopeful that doesn't happen. I don't see.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

Does that mean you think Anthropic was wrong to constrain who could get Mythos because it thought it was too dangerous? Because they did that because they were worried about a cyber security? This was. For those of you who don't follow it, Anthropic comes up with this model that is incredibly good at exploiting cyber vulnerabilities in anything. And it worried that if this was broadly released, we would have some kind of cyber disaster. That's what I'm talking about. I don't know. The health system in some small country goes down because somebody cracks it. If they have access to something like

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Mythos, I think that's possible. I was thinking more about whether you thought that you could have literally a bomb sent to the wrong place. But my version of AI going completely awry is 10, 20, 30 years from now when AI actually is controlling the robots. They're building factories, they decide they need to build more factories and it's sort of a Terminator style situation.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

Okay, I'm less worried about that. So we're both separately optimistic and pessimistic on something.

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[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

The one thing that I think could change this whole dynamic and indeed have a very big impact on valuations today is the very visibly growing political backlash, particularly in the US it's very strong here, too. You see a lot of concern increasingly whether it's, you know, under 16 social media or whether it's concerns about what AI is going to do, but it's on steroids in the U.S. i mean.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, I think you're referring to what's been going on the commencement speeches in the United States. You gave a commencement speech, but I didn't mention AI.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

I did.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Did you get.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

I didn't get booed.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No, you did not get booed, but

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

most people did by the. By the dean of where I was to be careful about what I said about AI.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Really?

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

Yeah. But I didn't get.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So I think there's clearly the instinct in the US is, is there's a demonstrable anxiety. The one question is whether the fact that younger people are struggling to get jobs in. In the US whether that actually is a function of AI or that's a function of something else that's deeper in our economy right now. And I would venture to guess that it may actually not be AI just yet.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

I agree with you on that. But do you think that the growing concern about AI will ferment a political backlash? You see it in the backlash against data centers. Will we see in November, in the midterms, or even in the 28 presidential election. Do you think that AI and kind of slowing it down, a sort of Luddite movement may become a big part

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

of the U.S. the midterm story could become the 2028 story. It could become the 32 story. But here's the flip side. The flip side is that the money and influence, unfortunately in the United States political ecosystem is controlled by the people who run the world of AI. So despite all of their protestations about what it could do to everybody, they are ultimately the ones who to a large degree have influence over the political class. We do have this sort of growing oligarchy rather. And that is a real.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

That's not dissimilar to this period.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No, it's very similar to this period. I mean, back in 1929, when there was German reparations that needed to be renegotiated in Paris, they didn't send politicians, they sent all the CEOs. By the way, not completely dissimilar to the fact when President Trump went to see Xi Jinping in China, he brought all of his CEOs with him. Right. So there is something happening here. And so when you say that there's a political backlash, there may very well be a political backlash, but given all of the money and influence around our political class in the United States, I don't know if there's going to be enough of them that are going to raise their hand and say, we're doing it differently.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

So does that make you think that the trajectory the US Is on Is essentially unstoppable? And if it is, does that mean

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

unstoppable in what direction?

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

The rapid adoption of AI and the rapid increase of capability.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think that it is unstoppable unless the math doesn't math. And I think there's genuine questions about what the math is going to math. And what I mean by that is, you know, Dara Khosrowshahi, who's the CEO of Uber, just said last year week that the roi, his return on investment, for the investments he's making in AI don't make sense. And so he's going to be clipping the budget for AI. If a lot of other companies start to say to themselves, you know what, this, this doesn't really make as much sense as it used to make, or as we thought it was going to make, we're going to slow things down. It's not that we are not on the right trajectory. It's just maybe a slower move.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

And do you think that's likely? I mean, you talk to pretty much every CEO in the US I feel

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

like that feeling, what Dara Khosrowshahi expressed, I think is a real feeling in the business community right now that they're not seeing the return on investment in a direct way yet. And they're surprised because they've been told repeatedly by anthropic and by OpenAI and by Google that you need to buy these services to keep up now. At the same time, there's the keeping up with the Joneses.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

There's the fear of missing out, fear

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

of missing out, and the idea that if your competitor's doing it, maybe I have to do it.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

And where do you come out on that? If you were the CEO of a Major company, would you be saying, yeah, I'm going to hold back a bit, or would you be saying, you know what, I've got to be right there because otherwise I might be toast?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think you're going to increasingly see companies actually have sort of SWAT teams that are working with AI in a very meaningful way. But now I think there's, there's a possibility you will see them roll it, not roll it back fully, but slow down what the deployment ultimately looks like or get more efficient and clever about how they're using it. So one of the other things that's happening right now is, you know, companies are using Anthropic, they're using Claude and they're using, you know, version 4.8 opus, and everybody is throwing, or they'll use the new version that's coming out and they're throwing every spreadsheet and document and using it in the most inefficient way humanly possible. There could be a moment where they realize this is not how we should be doing it. And by the way, there's a lot of double counting. The other thing is there's a lot of companies right now that are using all of the services. So people using Anthropic on one end, they're also using, they're, they're sometimes typing in the exact same prompt into two or three different models to try to see which one is better. That can't go on forever.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

I do that, don't you? Come on. Those of you who use it, you put it into multiple ones.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yes, but the question is, is every company ultimately going to have an enterprise level version of this, have multiple versions? And at some point I also imagine they're going to get clever by using open source. And once that happens, I mean, Scott Galloway, I don't know if you heard this podcast a couple weeks ago, had this sort of geopolitical thought, which is that if China was really clever, they would just, you know, dump effectively open source AI software that's as good, if not better than our frontier models on the, on the open market because that would effectively undo the competitive landscape because you wouldn't need to have any of these paid services. And by the way, they're starting to do that.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

That's why, I guess I slightly, I'm less concerned about this because I think the history of all technology has been the price comes down really fast. We're seeing that in, we've seen it obviously, Moore's Law in compute capability. I think we've seen it in kind of capability adjusted AI capability. And so, you know, yes, there's going to be. I'm not sure whether the current valuations make any sense and there'll be some turmoil in the markets. But ultimately, if you think this is a world changing technology, which I do, I do too. I think the adoption, the kind of, the companies that adopt it first and really restructure, because it's not just kind of query, you've got to really rethink what you do differently. They will become massively more productive and you will have massive wealth generation.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think that there is going to be some companies in certain industries where that is absolutely true and others where it will be a lot more complicated.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

Couple more before we get onto the more of the other side of financial markets. And the other crazy part of this is that partly because of the political constraints, people are now talking data centers in space. SpaceX's valuation is based essentially on it getting a large part of the AI economy, which is essentially that it becomes the prime way to get data centers in space. You've talked to all of these people enough. Do you believe what they're saying? Do you think this is plausible? Is it completely crazy or are we in five years just going to have it?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So I will just tell you, I originally thought it was insane when I first heard it. It obviously seems like a crazy, crazy thing. I remember seeing Sam Altman being asked about it originally and he seemed to think it was crazy, crazy. And I thought, oh, okay. But more recently, I've now talked to a lot of people in this space that are interested in space that demonstrably believe that this is very plausible, very doable. They've walked me through how it actually could work and I imagine it is. It's not going to be a data center. I think the we have a misconception, the sort of language we use. It's not going to be a sort of data center the way we think of a data center on the ground. But yes, the compute will take place potentially in space.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

I have, for what it's worth, exactly the same journey and I'm exactly where you are. This is crazy. I thought to myself just a couple of years ago, I now think it's going to happen and I'm convinced it's going to happen. Actually, as part of the response to the political backlash, there will be growing antipathy towards data centers on Earth and it will become, therefore it will accelerate the innovation to have data. I use data centers as a broad. Within five years, I think there will be data centers.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And by the Way, if you believe it's in five years, then you can believe in SpaceX, because they will be the monopoly power for a period of time in this area. There's no question they are so much farther ahead than just about anybody else.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

Which brings me, does this valuation, prospective valuation, make any sense?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I mean, not on paper, but

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

look,

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

the thing that's been so challenging about Elon Musk's companies is on paper it's never made sense. And yet in every instance he has figured out a way to make it make sense insofar as people who have invested with him have invariably won. Now, will that streak somehow come to an end? It's possible, but I've been frankly impressed by his ability even to pivot from things that aren't working. We can argue about SolarCity wasn't working and we can argue about governance, but what did he do? He found a way to bring SolarCity into Tesla X. You could argue when he bought it on a sort of pure numbers basis wasn't working. He pivots, he attaches it to his AI product, uses that data feed, which by the way has made Grok actually, I think a meaningfully better product. And now he's wrapped that into SpaceX, he builds a data center ostensibly for Xai, which wasn't working the way you'd want it to, and pivots and finds a way to get Google and Anthropic to buy data services from him. So it's very hard for me to sit here and say the math doesn't math, because even when the math doesn't math, he finds a way for it to math.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

The man who makes the math math. No, but I want to focus a bit more on him and the others. I mean it is at one level kind of extraordinary that this world changing technology is driven essentially by five weird guys from America whose names we know. Elon, Sam, Demis, Dario. Have I forgotten Mark? We'll add Mark in. He's a bit behind, but we'll add Mark. And I thought for a long time this is completely, I mean terrifying and weird because they are all, I mean, you know them much better than I do, but they're all weird. I mean they all are quite weird. But as it happens, reading this book, the 1920s were driven by a bunch of quite weird individuals too.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Absolutely.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

And actually if you then go further back, I mean people's, you know, Henry Ford, whatever else he was, he was a raging anti Semite. Vanderbilt liaised with spirits from the netherworld. Thomas Edison fanatically opposed to sleep perhaps a bit like you. I mean, they were seriously weird, these people. So when having written this and having discovered how the 1920s were driven by individuals, how do you think about our five guys now?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Honestly, I think they're not that different. I mean, that's more of my reaction. It's not, are they weird or they're not weird? I think we've been led, like a lot of. A lot of the great innovation has been led by weirdos. John Raskob was a weirdo. John Raskob changed America, by the way, changed, I would argue, the UK in terms of the ability to get a loan. Nobody, by the way, it was almost considered an immoral act.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

Didn't you call him the Elon Musk?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think of him as the Elon Musk because he changed, changed America insofar as it was an immoral act to get a loan. He's running General Motors, says to himself, how am I going to get more people to buy a car? I'm going to loan them money so they can buy a car. That sort of shifts the perception in the whole country around what a loan even means. Sears, Roebuck starts doing the same thing. And then Wall street and this guy Charlie Mitchell, who's running National City, it becomes Citigroup, clocks what's happening and says, oh my goodness, we can do this too and we can loan people money. So Rathkob sort of was an early sort of. He transformed and he was a very strange individual, got involved, by the way, in politics, very much like Elon was trying to ruin the reputation of President Hoover. I mean, if he had owned Twitter, I can't even imagine what would have happened. He goes and builds the equivalent of the SpaceX back then, which was. He builds the Empire State Building. He's a philosopher king, he's journalists listen to every word the man says. He, by the way, describes how we should move from a six day work week to a five day work week and we should move all national holidays to Mondays so that we can have a three day weekend. Not because he's a nice guy, but because he thinks we could sell more cars and you'd have a longer weekend to go places. And it would change the economy because you'd buy different clothing and you'd buy gardening equipment and other things. So yeah, all of these guys sort of have a little bit of a screw loose, but you kind of need that.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

No, I agree with that. But you can sort of more dispassionately analyze the motivations of people 100 years ago. It's probably. It's harder, I think, in the kind of. Here and now. But what have you. What drove these people? The weirdos of the 1920s.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Same thing that drives everybody in this room. A need to prove something to somebody about something. So when you think about an Elon Musk. I know. And by the way, I think about this every time that I'm doing an interview with somebody that's alive or when I was thinking about some of these characters back then, I was always thinking to myself, what is it that they are trying? What is the chip on their shoulder?

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

Okay. What is the chip on their shoulders?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

What is the insecurity that they are? You know what? I'm trying to prove to my mother that I can. I'm capable. No, no, no.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

This was your commencement speech, and it was. It was great. You should watch Andrew's commencement speech.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Chips on shoulders equals chips on shoulders equal chips in pockets.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

Very good.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think there's a truth to that. And I think if you think about Elon's history with his father, I think he's still. It's not that he's trying to just change the world. He's trying to prove to the world that he can change the world. I think if you think about Dario, who left OpenAI and wanted to do it differently, he's trying to prove. He thinks that he's trying to prove to others that he can do this in a way that is more ethical,

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

he would argue, driven by a loathing of Sam.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think there's a bit of that, too. But I think all of these people, I think if you could get them on the couch, you could figure out what it is that is really driving them to do what they're doing. And it's not that different than just

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

about everybody, and not that different to what was driving people down a hundred years ago.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No, I mean, look, Charlie Mitchell, who was running National City, he had never been part of the sort of, you know, true white shoe firms. He never had those opportunities. He wanted people to believe Jesse Livermore, who was a short seller. We talk about someone who thought he needed to prove himself. He was such an emotional wreck, he ends up killing himself when this is all over, even though he makes a fortune in the middle of the crisis. So I think there is this sort of natural human condition that I think is very. That existed 100 years ago and continues to exist today.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

That, for me, was one of the most striking bits of this book, that it is the things that motivate people and the Role people play and the kinds of people there are is just so similar. I mean, to a kind of absolutely terrifying degree. Rascoe and Elon, down to the wanting to influence politics, behaving in a way that was completely sort of not normal then.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And when things are going well, people put blinders on because they're so desperate to keep the momentum going. You saw that then and you see it now.

[Zanny Minton Beddoes]

What does that tell you then about knowing all of that? How is this going to play out? How is it going to play out in terms of are we going to have literally exactly the same thing happen?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No. First of all, I think one of the greatest lessons for me about 1929 is we had this great crash in the fall of 1929, the market drops 50%, and by the end of the year, the stock market was only down 17%. It wasn't preordained that the crash of 29 needed to lead to the Great Depression and 25% unemployment in the country by 1932 and, you know, 9,000 banks going out of business. Those were policy choices. But that was really the first domino, right? 1929 was the first domino that led. That sucked the confidence out of the system. So that when these other dominoes came, whether it be tariffs, which happened in 1930, we obviously have been living through that just now. So there are these sort of parallel things that took place. I don't think that has to happen. By the way, one of the things that we've learned from this period is, you know, this sort of Keynesian idea of bail folks out, throw money at the problem. We didn't do that in 1929, we now do that. We did that in 2008. We did that during the pandemic. In fact, my bigger worry is that the next time we have a crisis, we'll say, oh, we know what the playbook is. We're going to write the check. And in the United States, they'll write a check for $3 trillion on top of the $40 trillion that we have in debt already. And at some point the bond market will go, okay, we're not doing this anymore.

[Mia Sorrenti]

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Margarita Palpato and it was edited by Mark Roberts for ad free episodes and full length recordings. You can become a [e-mail] membership and if you'd like to join us at future live events, you can find our full program or buy [e-mail] attend. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us. Foreign.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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