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Billionaires Go to China with Trump & Americans Aren’t Talking to Neighbors Anymore
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Consider this comparison. PwC data found the percentage of CEOs who report revenue gains or cost reductions from AI is almost equal to the percentage who say they're still stuck. What separates these two groups? PwC points to a clarity issue. Even for CEOs, it's hard to tell what's AI hype, what's reality, and where this tech can make a tangible difference. Learn where AI can actually make an impact and what successful adoption looks like at pwc.com us brewai that's pwc.com/us/brewai Good
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morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.
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And I'm Toby Howell.
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Today, President Trump is in China with a billionaire posse in tow.
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Then Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank is building a data center in Utah and people hate it. It's Thursday, May 14th. Let's ride.
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Good morning and happy Thursday. Thursday RIP Bathroom breaks during the World Cup Final FIFA announced this morning that Madonna, Shakira and BTS will headline the first ever halftime show at the tournament's final game July 19 at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium. It's a huge intergenerational flex, bringing together some of the biggest musical acts of the 80s, 2000s and 2000s. Plus, it's truly a World cup of style, showcasing Latin pop and K pop music. Toby, given the reach of this event, it could make the super bowl halftime show look like your local Battle the bands.
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I was reading the New York Times article about the decision and I liked this part. The artists for the World cup halftime show were selected by Chris Martin, which is the lead singer of Coldplay, who shared the lineup in a video on social media that featured characters from Sesame street and the Muppets. It's a chance to show how amazing all different kinds of humans are, martin explained to Elmo. Elmo is doing our best at musical journalism at this point. The other news too is Shakira is releasing the official song of the tournament, die Die, which Neil, you've been humming
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nonstop like Mariah Carey is to Christmas. Shakira is to the World Cup. She just emerges from a cocoon every four years. Yes, this song is a bop. They've only released a 60 second clip so far, but the full track is coming out today and from what I've heard, it's not going to reach the levels of of waka waka because nothing ever will. But it is one B. And now a word from our sponsor, AT&T Business. Toby, how does connectivity impact your business?
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Well, I can now work totally remotely, which is great because I don't have an actual office. So staying connected is huge.
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And AT&T business totally gets that. Their network is built to work together for connectivity you can depend on. That means easier collaboration, project management and communication, which helps maintain productivity.
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Explore connectivity solutions that keep your business moving at att.com/small business for the first
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time in nine years, President Trump arrived in China for a high stakes meeting with his counterpart, Chinese President Xi Jinping. He didn't come alone. Trump brought along 17 executives representing America's most powerful corporations, including Tim Cook of Apple, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs, and Elon Musk of. Well, there's too many companies to count. But perhaps the most intriguing name on the invite list is Jensen Huang, CEO of the world's most valuable company in video Initially, Jensen was snubbed from the trip to China. But at the last minute, Trump gave him a call and asked, hey, how would you like an all expenses trip to Beijing? And Jensen rendezvoused with Air Force One while it was refueling in Alaska. So what is the point of this meeting anyway? Depends on which leader you are, Trump or Xi. For Trump, the posse of 17 business leaders tells you all you need to know. He wants deals, whether for planes, agriculture, or tech. He said he'll be asking Xi to, quote, open up China so that these brilliant people can work their magic to Trump is also looking to China for help ending the war in Iran. Xi, on the other hand, wants predictability from the White House. Last year, if you remember, the US And China escalated their trade war to the point where each was slapping over 100% tariffs on each other before an agreement was reached to cool things off. No one expects a big breakthrough from these talks, but the goal is to establish a more stable working relationship between the world's two great superpowers. On the one hand, China and the US Are crucial business partners doing hundreds of billions worth of trade with each other each year. At the same time, they are fierce rivals locked in an existential battle for supremacy of the next great technological age, artificial intelligence. It's a I don't want you, but I need you kind of relationship. Should be interesting to watch.
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One thing that stands out to me about this trip is just how much power CEOs now wield in geopolitics. Because if you go back, even a couple of decades ago, it used to be diplomats went to other countries and handled diplomacy and CEOs were focused on their businesses. Now it's all mixed. The lines are all blurred now because executives like Elon Musk, executives like Jensen Huang, Tim Cook. They are an integral part of national security conversations as well as a business conversation. Because when you talk about AI dominance, that is not just a business proposition. That is something that a lot of these countries thinks is existential to their security as a nation as well. So the fact that he came with this cadre of business leaders just shows how mixed and masked politics, geopolitics, business has become.
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And maybe Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is the shining example of this. Nvidia has been caught in this geopolitical tussle between the US And China, perhaps more so than any other company. The Biden administration banned Nvidia from selling its top line chips to China over fears that China would overtake the United States in the air race because China has really good labs, really good AI workforce. But the thing they're missing is those Nvidia chips. And the Biden administration wanted to hamstring Nvidia. Trump administration came in, has has a more cozy relationship with Wang, and recently allowed Nvidia to sell its H2 hundreds, which is its third most powerful trip chip, to China over concerns of China hawks in both Democrats and Republicans. So that's why perhaps he was initially. Jensen was initially left off this list of guests. But seems like Trump wants Jensen toe because he really is a huge geopolitical broker between the US And China.
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Other things that Trump and Xi have already discussed is Iran in opening the Strait of Hormuz. Both leaders agree that the Strait of Hormuz needs to be open. They need to bring stability to global energy markets. Xi also came out in opposition against any tolls on vessels crossing the Strait. He did express interest too, in China purchasing more US Oil to maybe appease Trump and then also to reduce its dependence on Gulf oil because it's rankled their ability to sour reliable oil as well. And then the other key issue is Taiwan. Taiwan has been a major talking point, obviously for Xi. He wants to change how the White House is talking about it because back in December, Trump sent $11 billion in a weapons package to Taiwan that was the largest ever for the island democracy. For Xi, the Taiwan issue is very much core to talking points when it comes to the US and for Trump, it's very much core as well, because it comes to very large weapons deals for US Manufacturers as well. So Taiwan, straight up Hormuz, in addition to AI and all the other business issues we spoke about, are going to be key talking points.
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But all of that pales in comparison to Rush Hour four because for some reason Brett Ratner, who's the director of the Rush Hour movies and is Planning Rush Hour 4 at the behest of President Trump because Trump just loves Rush Hour 4, was on Air Force One and he is in China right now along with the rest of these most powerful people scouting out locations for Rush Hour four in China. So you got Elon Musk, President Trump, Xi Jinping, Jensen Huang, Tim Cook there, and Brett Ratner, who's saying, okay, I got to find a great place for Jackie Chan to fight.
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All right, moving on. Kevin o' Leary is used to rubbing people the wrong way as an investor on shark tank, but Mr. Wonderful is getting some serious flak in one state in particular right now, Utah. O' Leary is not just a royalty hungry reality business star, he's also a major player in the AI data center game, leading a massive project called Wonder Valley that has brought out some of the most intense local backlash to date. This project is huge. If completed, it would span 40,000 acres, which is roughly the size of Washington, D.C. costs $100 billion and would consume more electricity than the entire state of Utah currently uses in a year. O' Leary said the plan is for the data center to generate its own electricity via natural gas, not draw from the grid. But locals remain dubious. Residents in Box Elder county have packed public meetings in the last week protesting the development, citing water consumption, pollution, the land footprint and fear that locals won't benefit economically. As reasons for their displeasure, though, county commissioners still gave it the green light. Residents immediately filed a referendum to try and overturn the approval. But o' Leary pushed back on the loudest critics by repeatedly touting the project as a job creator. Neal Wonder Valley is a microcosm of the larger AI debate. The the people building the data centers promise transformative benefits, while the people who actually have to live with them are vehemently opposed to the intrusion.
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Yeah, sorry, Mr. Wonderful. For many reasons, Americans are out on data centers. The new Gallup Poll released just Wednesday, seven out of 10Americans said they would oppose a data center being built near them. The opposition is so intense that more Americans would rather live near a nuclear power plant than a data center. And this issue has really come to the fore in Utah. Of all I said for that reason. But there are many reasons. One of them in Utah is the Great Salt Lake. As everyone knows, that's the biggest thing going on in Utah. That lake is shrinking because of water being diverted to agriculture and climate change. The Great Salt lake has lost 73% of its water, 60% of its surface area over the past few decades it hit record lows in 2022. There are reports that if this Great Salt Lake does dry up there could possibly release toxic dust clouds onto Salt Lake City and other population centers. So that's just one of the big issues looming over this big data cent or not big, massive world leading data center that's possibly coming to Utah as residents warn of water use and other, you know, climate change concerns.
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And then the talking point that o' Leary keeps servicing is that, hey, this is going to be a big job creator. He promised 10,000 construction jobs, 2,000 permanent jobs. But then Business Insider talked to the CEO of O' Leary Ventures who kind of walked those numbers back a little bit. The updated estimates are now construction jobs is going to be closer to 4,000 spread over five 10 to 15 years and then permanent jobs coming in closer to 1350. And that is the big kind of crux of the data center argument is that they are weird economically because they do require a ton of upfront construction costs. You do got to build these things. The capex that we've talked about is massive. But then the on site workforce, once they're done, shrinks 78% after completion. That's according to USC researchers. So it's not a long term job creator because they really don't take that many people to maintain. Moving on, there's a new KPI in corporate America. Use more AI tokens Like a kid on a sugar high at Dave and Buster's, workers at tech companies are burning through tokens at an alarming rate to prove to their bosses they are using AI. Think of tokens like a unit of data, oftentimes corresponding to a couple of words. It's how LLMs make natural human language and turn it into something a model can actually process. So when companies encourage token maxing, it's another way of saying they want their workers to use AI as much as humanly possible. That encouragement has come with weekly AI adoption targets, internal leaderboards tracking token consumption, and pressure campaigns around using the tech, and the humans are maybe too happy to oblige. According to the Financial Times, Amazon's employees are artificially inflating their uses to show how productive they are. Some token maxing strategies include using internal tools to scrape their email and interact with Slack for the sole purpose of juicing their stats. Amazon has told employees that token uses isn't going to be part of their performance and valuations, but many who spoke to the FT think managers are definitely keeping an eye on the data. The issue with this incentive strategy, which has also popped up at other tech companies like Meta and Microsoft is it can create perverse outcomes when you're just saying use AI without specifying what to use it on. You end up with people optimizing for the metric itself. Consuming AI compute for the sake of ranking high on internal leaderboards. Neil, people have faked being productive at work since the beginning of time. Now it's quantifiable.
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Yeah, this is a shining example of what's known as Good Heart's law, which I assume was coined by Good Heart, a guy named Goodhart back in the 70s. It says when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. So companies are trying to figure out Amazon, Metta, all these big companies, but also other other kinds of as well in the financial services sector are trying to figure out how to incentivize employees to use AI. And there have been a wide variety of incentives, cash payments, leaderboards, things like that. But the way Amazon is going about it seems to be off base because they're incentivizing a particular behavior, but employees are just turning it into a game and making up work that they don't actually need to do.
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One person to blame for this is probably Jensen Huang, who has openly come out and said token usage is a productivity metric. He'd said this is a quote from Jensen that he'd be deeply alarmed if a $500,000 engineer wasn't consuming at least $250,000 in AI tokens annually. So he was the one who said token use is a one to one to productivity. And a lot of companies are probably taking him at his word and incentivizing token use. Also, when you think about what this means for internal companies, yes, maybe some people are slacking off or coming up with strategies that just show that, hey, I'm going to be top of the leaderboard without doing much. But also if you zoom out to the broader economy, it affects a lot of things because if AI demand is inflated by all these token maxers and we're plowing all these billions of dollars into building data centers and those two are miscalibrated, that the demand is not actually where it is because people are faking it, that has massive implications for the stock market, for the economy that's being upheld by the AI data center build out right there. So when you are maybe slacking off at work, maybe you're going to bring down the entire world in American economy in the process. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's numbers right after this. Neil Spring is here and I've totally refreshed my wardrobe.
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That's great. Have you thought about taking a fresh look at your finances as well?
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Well, that make me more dapper.
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you know that saying, more money, more problems? Toby of course.
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Why do you think my life is so chaotic?
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Sure. Well, with startups it's more like more money, more security. Big enterprise deals usually come with even bigger security and compliance requirements.
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had an oolong this morning.
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mars.com welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats in the week's news that will wake you up faster than a Red Bull. For my first number, America is on that grind set. The Economist reported that in the past five or so years, productivity has been growing at the fastest pace in around two decades. What it calls the American productivity miracle. After the Great Recession came the great stagnation. For Most of the 2010s, productivity growth measured as non farm businesses output per worker or per hour was barely growing. But since COVID it's doubled to a 2% rise each year. So what changed? Do we all just get faster at typing first. I know what you're thinking, but it's not AI because this productivity surge began before ChatGPT was released. The Economist highlights two possible factors. One is that corporate bosses in non tech companies have gotten really good at deploying technology invented in Silicon Valley. The professional services and management sector has experienced one of the biggest productivity spikes of any and that may be because They've successfully harnessed 2010 stack like video conferencing, smartphones and cloud computing. Another tailwind to American productivity is our prodigious energy industry, which has gone beast mode ever since the shale revolution. Energy is abundant in the US so American firms never have to worry about it meeting their needs like in other countries. Plus electricity, which every company requires, is cheap. Americans pay half as much for electricity as Europeans and a third less than the Japanese, the Economist notes. Toby I am giving every worker in America a gold star.
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It doesn't sound that impressive when you hear that productivity doubled from 1% growth to 2% percent growth. But just think about Warren Buffett and think about the powers of compounding when you have a compounding effect that is growing at a 2% rate instead of a 1% rate that affects all parts of the economy. Living standards go up quicker, tax revenue goes up quicker, GDP growth goes up quicker. Wages, corporate profits. All of these things get supercharged by just that little bit of a bump. And then you mentioned that it's not AI because this is predates the revolution again. If AI pays off like a lot of people expect it to or are hoping it do, maybe that doubles again and then you are really talking about an exponential growth curve. So AI is the big question mark here. It wasn't responsible, it was just good old fashioned other tech and cheap energy that caused this growth over the last decade. Maybe the decades in the future are going to be even more productive depending on how well people are Token Maxing
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for my next number, think about the last time you talked about to your neighbor. For an increasing number of you, that answer is almost never Americans may be more productive, but we're isolating in our homes more than ever. A new American Enterprise Institute report found that the share of Americans who chatted with neighbors a few times per week has plummeted from 59% in 2012 to just 41% in 2025. You'll be shocked to hear that younger Americans are driving the decline. Today, just 25% of young Americans regularly socialize with their neighbors and down from 51% in 2012. Meanwhile, 56% of seniors chat with neighbors now a slight 7% decrease from 2012. Head report researcher Daniel Cox told Axios that in large part, technology is to blame. He said, in the previous generation, if you sat around your apartment long enough, you started to go stir crazy, and that would often compel people to go out. Now you open Instagram after work and the next thing you know you've blacked out and it's 9pm Tech has also caused us to depend on our neighbors less for everyday things. In 1995, if you didn't have enough eggs for a recipe, you probably just knocked on your neighbor's door to borrow some. Now you can get online deliveries to your door in mere minutes. Toby We've strayed far from the teachings of Mr. Rogers.
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Cox also argues that young people aren't socializing less because they prefer screens. He argues that they're just bad at it because they had less opportunities to do it in their formative years. If you lived through Covid, that means you had less of just the normal interactions that are actually really important for your social development. Talking to cashiers, chatting with your neighbors, very awkward elevator conversations that you should introduce bits into. It is all something that makes up your social constitution. And if you don't have the ability to do that, it atrophies. And I think a lot of people have had this experience with some younger people that they don't look you in the eye, they don't talk to you. I feel like I'm an old man shaking his fist at the clouds right now. But yeah, those repetitions build that social ease that are so important to interacting and talking to your neighbors.
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My final number might make you feel a little under accomplished. Last Sunday, James Chilamigras graduated from Loyola University New Orleans law school at 18 years old. That makes the Mississippi native one of the youngest people ever to graduate from law school, according to the Guardian. Also, think about this. If he finished law school at 18, he means he began law school at 15, which is impressive. But also at 15, I was kind of crushing Franchise Mode and MLB the show early on, Jimmy's parents knew there was something a bit special about their kid. He started speaking in full sentences at age 2, received a high school diploma at age 12, and earned a bachelor's and master's degree from an online school. Three years later, if all that wasn't enough, he became the world's youngest CPA and dominated the LSAT with an elite score of 174 out of 180. And then once he got to law school at age 15, remember, Jimmy continued to crush it. He graduated in the top 2% of his class and earned certificates of concentration in five different areas, which is something nobody has done at Loyola since it was founded in 1914. Does this guy ever relax? Yes. Loyola told the Guardian that a day after his historic graduation, Jimmy was vacationing on a cruise ship.
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Not a cruise ship, Jimmy. You know what's going on on cruise ships right now. What is next for Jimmy? Obviously, he's going to keep studying. He plans to pursue a Master of Laws in Taxation at Northwestern University. This would be his first time living far from his home in New Orleans. So I have to wonder though, do we really want the brightest mind, some of the brightest mind in a generation working on taxation? But I don't know. Maybe we do. Maybe that's just what scratches the itch for him. Finally, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Princeton University has ended its hundreds year old self proctored exam tradition because AI cheating has gotten so bad. Princeton's honor code was created in the late 1800s and relied on students pledging not to cheat while professors left the room during exams. But the rise of tools like ChatGPT means cheating is a lot harder to detect and increasingly the norm among students. Since the rise of AI, the university has seen a big increase in academic dishonesty cases. While anonymous surveys showed students are admitting to cheating or ignoring cheating by peers, Neal the Atlantic put it well, the code lasted through two world wars, the upheaval of the 1960s, the disillusionment of Watergate, and even the rise of search engines and Spark notes. It finally met its match in generative AI.
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Yeah, apparently everyone's cheating at Princeton and across colleges right now. There was a survey of graduating seniors last last year at Prince. 30% said they had cheated, 28% that they had used chatbots on an assignment when it was not allowed. 45% said they knew of cheating by a peer and chose not to report it. It feels like this honor code, which was instituted in 1893 is just falling at the wayside when Chat CBT is so pervasive and a lot of students supported removing the honor code as well. And because it feels like when you look to see 30% of people are cheating and you're not, then it feels like you're being left behind like you're, you're a loser by not cheating. So yes, goodbye to the Princeton's honor code which was first floated. Very interesting history. First floated by an editorial in the campus newspaper in 1876 where they argued, if you treat students as dishonest, they'll become dishonest. If you treat them as honorable, then they would learn to become honorable.
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I wonder if back then they're like, I wonder if they're going to buy this, like they're going to leave the rooms right now. We're going to cheat. Everyone talk to each other. But yeah, it obviously made it through hundreds of years. The only defense for this is oral exams or handwritten exams or monitoring students writing histories to see how it changes over time. I really do feel for teachers because right now you are being inundated with so many tools that are undermining your job. How do you fight back against. It just makes the students actually talk to you. The Chicago Fire is building a new $750 million stadium, and McDonald's is sponsoring it. McDonald's park is currently being constructed in the city's financial district close to the company's hq and will of course, include a flagship restaurant inside. It also marks the first time the golden arches have ever splurged on the naming rights for a major US Pro sports stadium. You know, I've seen the renderings. The arches do look pretty dang cool. And also the name just feels like a Soccer Stadium. McDonald's Park. I'm digging it.
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Yeah, it sounds good. It looks good. And it seems like McDonald's in Chicago are making up because those two have had a rocky history in recent years. In 2022, CEO Chris Kamczynski criticized the leadership in Chicago and says there is a general sense out there that our city is in crisis. A number of major companies have left Chicago like Boeing and Citadel, and it looked like perhaps McDonald's was also on its way out. But the fact that they're slapping their name on a soccer arena is a. Is a sign of commitment that McDonald's, you know, McDonald's home is Chicago. And at McDonald's in doing this for the first time, adds to the litany of other fast food companies that have sponsored arenas. And here are a few of my favorites. Little Caesars arena. That's where the Red Wings and the Pistons play in Detroit. KFC Yum center is where University of Louisville plays. Smoothie King center in New Orleans. That's where you got the Pelicans. Then you go down into the minor league baseball Whataburger Field in Corpus Christi, Texas. That's home to the Houston Astros Double A affiliate, the Corpus Christi Hooks. Can you imagine? I mean, I would hit dingers at Whataburger. Whataburger field. I would never strike out. And then finally is actually near my home. We got Duncan park, which is home to the Hartford Yard Goats. They're the double affiliate for the Colorado Rockies. So of all these, I've actually been to one game at Duncan Park.
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It feels like fast food and arenas are just a match made in heaven. Maybe because they're two very distinctly American things. I was just thinking about what a good fast food chain that should sponsor an arena is in its in and out, in and out park or in and out arena feels just right. Obviously, you get delicious burgers, but if it's a baseball stadium, like, you're hidden out of the stadium and then come in.
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I don't know if it's a baseball stadium. You go in and then you wait a long time and then you're out.
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Yeah, there we go.
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All right. That is all the time time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. If you'd like to reach us, send an email to Morning Brew daily at Morning Broadcom or DM us on Instagram at Ambi Daily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milian is our supervising producer. Raymond Lu is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham, and our associate producer is Olivia Lake. Technical direction by Nina Miller. Hair and makeup is Token Maxing. Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Great show, Danielle. Let's run it back tomorrow.