DEWs and Data Centers - The Spokane Fire Conspiracy Theories (E384)

Summary

QAA Podcast, Episode 384: "DEWs and Data Centers – The Spokane Fire Conspiracy Theories"

Released: August 6, 2026
Hosts: Julian Feeld, Travis View, Jake Rockatansky (with Corey, Producer/Editor)

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Episode Overview

This episode investigates the wildfire crisis in Spokane, Washington, and the rapid emergence of conspiracy theories surrounding it. The hosts mix reporting, sharp humor, and insightful commentary to pry into how disastrous events—especially wildfires—increasingly spawn online conspiracies, focusing this time on theories about direct energy weapons (DEWs) and AI data centers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Fires and the Birth of Conspiracy Theories

• Wildfires as a Magnet for Speculation

  • Disasters with confusing or incomplete information create fertile ground for wild speculation and conspiracy theories.
  • Julian (01:20): “These devastating events […] are just a reliable source of, you know, conspiracy theories and wild speculation because it’s […] a chaotic event. You just don’t know how to make sense of it.”

• Personal Proximity

  • Corey, the show’s editor, shares his personal experience being near the fire zone, helping with evacuations, and reflecting on the stress and devastation.
    • Corey (03:17): "As we were driving over there you could just see these like little plumes of black smoke around all the forests. And so you knew these were like structures burning. And so it was pretty obvious that it was going to be pretty bad very quickly."

2. Facts on the Spokane Wildfires

• The Fires

  • Three main wildfires: Old Trails (most property damage), Autumn Lane/Meadow View (largest by acreage), Fairview (northeast of Spokane).
  • As of August 4th, 10,280 acres burned, 0% contained, and 65,000 people evacuated.
  • More than 700 structures lost.
  • One arrest for suspected arson: Aaron Farinacci.

• Travis’ Humor:

  • Jokes about the irony of the area names (“Nine Mile Falls sounds nice, too bad it’s on fire.”)
  • Jake (07:26): “...that river sounds nice. There’s falls. You know, it’s almost like a little tourist brochure. Except that everything covered is currently on fire.”

3. Online Theories: Lasers, Colors, and Land Grabs

• Recurring Conspiracy Claims

  • DEWs: Wildfire damage explained by “directed energy weapons,” commonly citing selective burning of structures but not trees.

    • Unknown YouTuber (16:26): "[...] Trees are still standing all over the place, and the metal has been melted in places. [...] You’ve got things melted down… hot enough to melt aluminum and glass, but not hot enough to burn up the grass and shrubbery right next to it."
    • Jake (17:06): “Dry thing burn, wet thing not burn.” (mocking the misunderstanding)
    • The hosts explain: dry buildings are more flammable than sap-filled trees; these claims resurface after every wildfire.

  • Blue Deflects Lasers:

    • Claims that blue-colored buildings are spared by DEWs.
    • Julian (18:18): “People say it’s like, oh, you know why like, Scientology buildings are blue is because they know. They know the secret about the weapon.”
    • Jake (18:32): “Well, have you ever wondered why lakes don’t burn down?”

  • Land Clearings for Infrastructure:

    • Fires alleged to clear space for projects, like the California high-speed rail.
    • In Spokane, the claim identifies the fire as clearing land for a proposed AI data center.

4. The Data Center Conspiracy: Fact vs. Paranoia

• TikTok Speculation:

  • Viral video links data center plans and the fire location, citing recent city opposition to a West Plains data facility and fire outbreak in the same area.
    • TikToker (19:36): “Spokane was fighting city council…the mayor and all the citizens were fighting this data center coming to Spokane… Where does the fire start? Airway Heights, part of West Plains… I don’t know. Take it as you will.”

• The Actual Data Center Plan

  • Spokane Data Center Details:

    • Apricus Energy proposes a 514-acre data center and hydrogen plant.
    • Energy needs could nearly double regional consumption.
    • Poor transparency: County Commissioner Al French conducted undisclosed talks with Apricus, contradicting previous statements.
    • Apricus is a new, opaque company with no proven projects; its HQ is a PO box, with a previously listed home address in Arizona.

  • Citizen Journalism:

    • Brittany Anderson, a Spokane mother, uncovers emails showing coordination between county officials and Apricus, raising legitimate transparency issues.
      • Julian (24:48): “This is someone who like actually did it […] Simply someone who started reading about the effects that large data centers have on electricity rates, water supplies and the communities built around them…”.

  • Red-Scare Rhetoric:

    • Commissioner French frames opposition as possibly influenced by U.S. rivals.
      • French (27:18): “It’s been suggested that to be against data centers is to be anti-American. Because we know…that China and Russia have engaged in activities to oppose data centers…”

  • Satirical Takedown:

    • Travis (26:56): “We live in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ass world. The shadowy Organization wants to put the data centers, that’s going to suck up all the energy. It sounds like a cartoon bad guy…”

  • The Real Reason for Paranoia

    • Even without arson or DEWs, the data center plan is opaque, enormous, and involves officials being less than upfront. Natural for the public to become suspicious.

5. The Arson Arrest: Real Crime or Patsy?

• Aaron Farinacci Case:
  • Arrested on witness statements and circumstantial evidence (was near ignition, had lighter/matches, prior criminal record for parricide).
  • Julian (41:44): “This sounds like kind of like a flimsy case to me, I’ll be honest.”
  • Hosts highlight risk of scapegoating based on weak evidence and a troubled person’s history.

6. Climate Change and Willful Ignorance

• Denial Tactics:

  • Some claim the presence of an arsonist negates the climate crisis, ignoring how drought and heat make fires larger and more destructive.

  • Julian (38:26): “They are denying the possibility that climate change is having a role in these fires because there’s an arrested arson suspect. This frustrates me…”

  • Jake (39:08): “These are people who… bring snowballs onto the congressional floor…”

7. On the AI & Data Bubble

• Economic House of Cards
  • Hosts mock the ‘inevitability’ of massive AI/data center expansion, describing it as a bubble with severe economic consequences for ordinary people if it bursts.
  • Jake (49:09): "It's the money, the markets… they have to constantly create new value and usually new value is created by innovation… all our money, the market is being held together by a handful of companies that are so deep in AI..."
  • Travis (49:34): "[If it collapses,] it's not just rich assholes losing their dumb investment… it's wiping out people's 401ks…"
  • The first trillionaire gets roasted for vapid taste and amoral profiteering.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Mocking Conspiratorial Pattern-Recognition

  • Jake (17:06): “Dry thing burn, wet thing not burn.”
  • Julian (17:09): “It’s just not intuitive to them.”

• Dark Absurdity on Political Rhetoric

  • Travis (26:56): “We live in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ass world. The shadowy Organization wants to put the data centers… Sounds like a cartoon bad guy.”
  • Jake (27:10): "You sound exactly like a Russian or Chinese agent when you say that, Jake."

• On the DEW Theories

  • Travis (18:41): "We’ve invented one of the most powerful weapons in the world is a directed energy laser. The only thing that can defeat it, a color."

• Cynicism on Bubbles

  • Jake (48:37): “The thing with bubbles is they have to pop eventually.”

• On the Proliferation of Conspiracism

  • Julian (53:42): “…more and more people are going to be that kind of conspiracist where they just have a general sense that something [is] not right.”
  • Travis (54:16): “Conspiracy has crept into nearly every single aspect of our human lives.”

• Somber Reflections

  • Travis (57:04): “Sometimes how shitty the world is makes shitty things in your life feel not so bad.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:34 – Show intro; Corey’s proximity to fires
• 03:17 – Corey describes Spokane evacuation and fire escalation
• 06:46 – Laying out facts: property damage, fire locations, arson arrest
• 14:43 – Return from tangent ("dog vacuum" haircut machine) to fire disasters
• 15:46 – How disasters feed conspiracy thinking
• 16:26 – Sample conspiracy video: DEWs and selective burning
• 18:08 – The "blue deflects lasers" canard
• 19:20 – Local TikTok example: "data center" theory emerges
• 22:37 – County commissioner’s secret ties to Apricus, data center details
• 24:48 – Brittany Anderson exposes hidden communications
• 27:18 – Commissioner French’s red-scare rhetoric
• 29:42 – Jokes about grift and local government incentives
• 34:49 – Apricus' non-existent track record
• 36:45 – Failed past projects, lack of real facilities
• 41:44 – Farinacci arson case, police affidavit, doubts
• 44:05 – The personal and community trauma of wildfires
• 52:31 – Data center suspicion even among family and "normies"
• 53:42 – Conspiratorial thinking as the new norm
• 54:46 – Hosts reflect on life under rising paranoia and dysfunction

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Final Thoughts & Tone

The episode blends skepticism, black humor, and genuine investigative rigor. The hosts highlight the fine and sometimes frustrating line between justifiable community suspicion, fueled by opaque deals and lack of transparency, and the fast-multiplying–but sometimes understandable–fantasies of covert evil actors.

The Spokane story becomes a microcosm for American malaise: as institutions fray and technological boondoggles multiply, conspiracy theories don’t just fill gaps—they become a coping mechanism in a world ever less legible and trustworthy.

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Summary by section:

• Real experience (Corey): Fires' overwhelming impact on lives and communities.
• Fact-checking: Separating real-world greed, secrecy, and institutional failures from cartoonish laser and "blue roof" fantasies.
• AI/data center paranoia: A genuine issue of opaque deals and environmental risk is hijacked by internet mythmaking.
• Conspiracism's spread: As the system fails, malaise and distrust are rational—even if the stories we invent to make sense of them go off the rails.

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"Sometimes, how shitty the world is makes shitty things in your life feel not so bad."
— Travis, 57:04

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Transcript

[Jake]

Sam, if you're hearing this, well done.

[Travis]

You found a way to connect to the Internet. Welcome to the qaa podcast. Episode 384, Dews and Data Centers. The Spokane Fire. Conspiracy theories. As always, we are your hosts, Jake

[Julian Field]

Rockatansky, Julian Field, and Travis View. So, guys, how many, like, wildfire episodes do you think we've done so far?

[Jake]

One million and one.

[Travis]

Let's see, there's wildfires that were started by the space lasers.

[Unknown Caller 1]

Yeah.

[Travis]

I mean, space laser fires.

[Jake]

There were the fires in our city.

[Travis]

There's the fires here, and then the. And what were they doing here? They were destroying evidence or something.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Travis]

Destroying the Getty Museum. Bodies in the Getty.

[Julian Field]

Something like that.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Julian Field]

There's Hawaii. The Hawaii fires over there.

[Jake]

Oh, yeah, the Hawaii.

[Julian Field]

So, yeah, I mean, the problem is that, like, you know, these devastating events, which just feel like they're getting just worse and more frequent, are just a reliable source of, you know, conspiracy theories and wild speculation because it's like it's unfolding chaotic event. You just don't know how to make sense of it. So it's like, it's natural to try and fill in those gaps with some speculation.

[Jake]

Bodes very well for climate change slowly moving in. Our reaction to it has been very healthy and good, and I'm sure we'll be able to organize as human beings in an orderly fashion and, you know, come up with common sense and useful solutions instead of spinning out.

[Travis]

Well, and typically, you know, the world is burning only metaphorically. So, you know, when it. When it actually is on fire, I think, you know, the conspiracies, they. You know, there's a lot more room to spread all these horrible fire puns. I don't mean to do them. They're just.

[Jake]

It's very literal. I mean, I don't think it's metaphorical at all that the world is burning. The world is literally getting hotter and hotter. We're recording record temperatures and more and more wildfires are happening. Yeah, I'd say the world's burning for real in. In all ways possible.

[Julian Field]

Yeah. And in this particular situation, our editor, Corey, happens to be, like, literally miles from where the fire is.

[Jake]

Happens to be on fire. We're cutting out a Corey, whose hair and body are on fire. He is rolling around on the floor trying to put himself out.

[Travis]

He will still be expected to deliver.

[Jake]

We thought his screams. His screams would make a great soundtrack that we'd later make him edit in, you know, to give this a little bit of flavor.

[Unknown Caller 2]

Right.

[Julian Field]

He had to drop his, you Know, noble work helping his friends and family to make some content. But he is, he is on the scene right now and he doesn't. So as a consequence he doesn't have as good mic which is why he doesn't sound as good as us. But like Corey, like what, what. What is going on over there?

[Corey]

Yeah, so I had just came into town for the weekend for some family stuff and then yeah, when I think we were maybe recording or working and then my mom came out and was like there's a fire over near our friend's house and we had stored some stu. He was looking at evacuating. And then yeah, as we were driving over there you could just see these like little plumes of black smoke around all the forests. And so you knew these were like structures burning. And so it was pretty obvious that it was going to be pretty bad very quickly. And I think when we went out There it was 200 acres and then by the time we left they were saying it was closer to 1500 and had jumped the river. And that was only within a few hours. And yeah, the winds were blowing 30, 40 miles an hour. And yeah, things just kind of escalated from there.

[Travis]

What was it? Have you ever been like, have you ever been like close to a blaze that large or kind of.

[Corey]

Three years ago my parents house burned down and the medical lake fires out here. So I was over in Seattle but had immediately driven back that same night when we heard that the house burned down. So a little too close to home.

[Travis]

My God, what does fire have against Corey is the real question, I think.

[Julian Field]

Well, I think we're all going to experience the feeling of fire chasing us no matter where we run eventually.

[Jake]

I think so too.

[Travis]

But you were able to get like your friends, you were help, you were able to help them evacuate some stuff or.

[Corey]

Yeah, they were just right on the edge. I don't think it actually ever crossed or the evacuation zone never crossed the road. So they didn't have to fully evacuate but we were just kind of making sure that one our stuff. So it wasn't fully unselfish reasons but our stuff was going to be good if they did suddenly get the evacuation order. But they were closing down roads left and right. The road that we came in on actually closed by the time we left so no one was able to come in if we had gotten there an hour later. But their house is fine, everything's good over there. Luckily for them anyways, the wind was going the opposite direction so it just kept blowing towards town instead of west into the Airway Heights area.

[Jake]

Yeah. The evacuation being one road away, it's also, like, doesn't sound super comforting.

[Corey]

Yeah. The east side of the road was evacuated. The west side was not, so.

[Unknown Caller 1]

Hmm.

[Julian Field]

Close. Damn. Well, real spooky. Well, stay safe out there.

[Jake]

Yeah, that goes for all of you, by the way, listeners. Stay safe out there in the fire season.

[Unknown Caller 3]

Yeah.

[Travis]

Yeah. To let you know what a dedicated. What a dedicated editor and producer Corey is he. You basically texted me something like you were like, well, like, I'll get the episode back in a little bit. Like, wait, what did you. Hold on. I have the text just about to

[Corey]

publish with the blurb or something. Yeah, yeah.

[Travis]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. You're going to send me a blurb for the app and you go, all right. Send you one in a bit. And that was at 102. And I was like, perfect, thanks. And then at 1:18, you go, okay, it'll be a little bit. Now there's a fire and we have to go help a friend evacuate some stuff. And just for everybody to know what a good boss I am, I went, holy shit. Go in all caps.

[Unknown Caller 1]

And then.

[Travis]

And then let's see if this was okay. And then a couple hours later, you're like, okay, I'm back. We'll send blurb soon. And then just sent me a picture of a massive plume of smoke. And that was when you said it went from 200 acres, and by the time you left, it was 2,000. Oh, man, I'm glad you're all right.

[Jake]

You're covered in soot and you've got, like, patches of extinguisher foam still on you, but you're back here with your headphones on, you know, being. Being a real professional, doing better than

[Corey]

tens of thousands of people in Spokane.

[Jake]

But, yeah, that's what we ask. I mean, is that. Is that unless it's third degree, the burns should be livable and podcastable through.

[Julian Field]

So, yeah, before we, like, get into, you know, some of the speculation that people are engaging in online, let's try and sort of, like, lay the facts of the matter. So there are currently three fires around Spokane. First there is the Old Trails Fire. This is like, the most devastating in terms of property damage across the. The Spokane River. The largest fire in terms of, like, pure acreage is the Autumn Lane fire, which was reported separately as the Meadow View Fire is burning in an area northwest of Spokane around Nine Mile Falls, Five Mile Falls, and the Little Spokane River. And the third fire is the Fairview Fire. This is northeast of Spok Near Mead.

[Jake]

I have to say that this is making the area seem really charming, even though unfortunately it's a list of fires. I'm like, oh, well that sounds like a cute place. You know, that river sounds nice. There's falls. You know, it's almost like a little tourist brochure. Except that everything covered is currently on fire.

[Julian Field]

As of this recording, which is the afternoon of Tuesday, August 4th, the fires have burned approximately 10,280 acres and are 0% contained. Approximately 65,000 people are under a vacuum. Evacuation orders now. No deaths or major injuries have yet been confirmed. But U.S. forest Service spokesperson Benjamin Cossell has said that there's a high probability that that will change as search and recovery expands into currently inaccessible areas. Reuters reports that at least 700 structures have gone up in flames since Saturday, mostly in residential areas, with another 400, including homes damaged or destroyed. Now, the causes of the fires are under investigation, but an arrest has been made on suspicion of deliberately start one of the three fires. The suspect, 37 year old Spokane resident Aaron Farinacci, was jailed on Monday on a $1 million bond on a count of first degree arson.

[Jake]

No, he set the fire.

[Julian Field]

Now these blazes are the largest and most devastating fires in what is shaping up to be an especially active fire season. The Interagency Fire center has tallied 44,722 wildfires nationwide this year. The highest number for this time of the year in at least a decade.

[Jake]

Jake, I hear that you've been coming up with a way to beat the heat. Do you want to tell us maybe about your haircut mechanism that I thought. I mean, I know it's kind of off topic, Travis, but we can't just let this pass. We have to talk about it.

[Travis]

Do we have a minute?

[Unknown Caller 4]

Yeah.

[Jake]

Okay. What's going on over here?

[Travis]

Oh, man, I wish. Sometimes I do wish this show was video so you could see some of my wonderful colleagues expressions when you work together for some so long and you know that Jake's about to launch into like a 7 to 10 minute story that's gonna have nothing to do with anything that we're talking about.

[Jake]

How possibly could this take seven to ten minutes like I asked, I said, hey, nice haircut. You look kind of like military today. What did you tell me?

[Travis]

Well, cause Julian knows what the answer to the question is because we talked about it before. Hitting record. And the answer, and I'm still reeling,

[Jake]

I'm reeling from this.

[Travis]

The answer is is that for the last, I don't know, six months, maybe Better part of a year, I've been using a dog vacuum to cut my. Now, I didn't buy the dog vacuum specifically for cutting my hair. I originally got it to cut Teddy's. But after a very bad day where I learned a very important lesson, which is that you shouldn't. You can't use clippers on papillons. The thing was sitting in my. You know, the upper storage cabinets. Everybody's got those. The shit that you can't reach, you shove it in there, hoping you can never get it back. That's where it was sitting forever. And then a friend of mine, I was hanging out with him. I was like, man, your hair looks really good. Like, where'd you get. Where did you get it cut? And he was like. He was like, I've been using it. I've been doing it myself. He's like, you can't get the flow be anymore because it's like. He's like, it's discontinued, basically. He's like, but this. They make the same thing in the form of a dog vacuum. And I was like, oh, well, I have one of those. He was like, oh, yeah, that's what I use. And so. And so, yeah, I've been using it to, like, cut my hair.

[Jake]

Your whole house has been using this, right?

[Travis]

You know, it's just me. No, it's just me.

[Jake]

I know. You'd be shaving that dog, too.

[Travis]

No, it's just me. And you know, want to know. You want to know, like, the sort of, like, M. Night Shyamalan, like, twist of the end of this. Is that my buddy who ended up, like, who recommended it to me? He and his wife were over at my place, and she. And she turned to him, and she was like, hey, Jake's hair looks really good. Like, why don't you ask him, like, where he gets his haircut? Oh, no, you don't have to keep using the dog vacuum.

[Jake]

She's desperately trying to get him off it. She's desperate to get him to stop. And she. She said it about the one friend that he had convinced. There are dozens of you. There are doz of you out there. So, yeah, everything's fine. And, yeah, to beat the heat, to beat the fires, you know, in a world on fire, start using the dog vacuum thing to cut your hair. Beautiful stuff. Thank you, Jake. I appreciate you.

[Travis]

It comes with a bunch of different lengths. It vacuums all the hair up, right? It's so easy. It's so nice if you're a person. Look, if you're a Person whose hair looks okay if it's the same length all around your money. If you're a person that has to have different lengths, like, you're kind of out of luck.

[Jake]

Okay.

[Unknown Caller 1]

Yeah.

[Jake]

Well, I mean, a lot of people do use, like, electric razors and stuff to cut their hair. I just think that it is unique that you use a dog vacuum cleaner specifically. See, that's where that differentiates it. I don't think people are like, oh, the problem with the dog vacuum cleaner, what's funny about it, is that it's the same length everywhere. Well, Travis, you gotta save us. You gotta save us.

[Travis]

You can get creative with shorter paired clippers. Like, you know, you could do, like, one. You know, not shorter on the side. You know, the combs or whatever that you clip onto them. You can do a little shorter on the sides, length on top. I mean, it's not that difficult.

[Jake]

Before Travis takes us away from this conversation, which he should.

[Travis]

Yeah. Do you have any other questions?

[Jake]

Admit that you've used it on the dog. That's all I want.

[Travis]

No, no, no, no. I. The fir. I. I got it initially to use it on the dog the first time, but you have to use scissors with Papillon.

[Corey]

They.

[Travis]

They don't have an undercoat, and so you actually can't use clippers on them. It can, like, totally, like, destroy their beautiful coats. It was actually a really bad day. We got into a big fight with the dog.

[Corey]

Yeah, with.

[Travis]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Teddy was very upset.

[Jake]

You're ruining my beautiful sheen. So he's only used it once on the dog before.

[Unknown Caller 2]

Before.

[Jake]

You dare think this is funny, listener? Just know he only used it once on the dog, and it caused a huge fight. That's. That makes it a lot less funny.

[Travis]

I'm such a fucking man.

[Unknown Caller 4]

I really.

[Travis]

I don't know how I've made it this long.

[Jake]

My favorite part of that story is that it's. It somehow didn't start during COVID Like, that is such COVID lockdown style behavior.

[Unknown Caller 4]

But you.

[Jake]

You're like, it's been six to eight months. I mean, I know Covid is still happening in many ways. Please don't write in and yell at me. But. Yeah, I just mean that during the lockdown would have been a logical time to start using the dog vacuum as a haircutter.

[Travis]

That makes so much more sense. No, no, no. After it. After the world reopened, I decided to retreat, but I decided to take a thing I did out in public and take it back into the bathroom.

[Unknown Caller 4]

Yeah.

[Jake]

The best part about using the Flowbe is that you can use it while you're the sandwich between your thighs. The peanut butter and jelly pre made uncrustable.

[Travis]

You know what? I'm off the uncrustables, man. There's too much sugar in them. I'm really trying to. I'm really trying to be like.

[Jake]

The world of Jake is like endlessly changing.

[Travis]

It's always changing. I'm constantly evolving and devolving, falling in and out of favor.

[Julian Field]

Boy, you've matured. Certainly.

[Jake]

It's really beautiful to hear. We'll have to get more updates later.

[Travis]

Sure, sure. I could do a whole show probably just like of my like chaotic philosophy.

[Julian Field]

Yeah, about how you, how you groom and what you eat. We'll talk about that in a future episode. Certainly.

[Jake]

That's right. Take us back to this.

[Travis]

All right, here we go.

[Jake]

Awful.

[Travis]

All right, back to the tragedies. Different types of tragedies. I think many would argue that the dog haircut vacuum machine on a human head is, is a tragedy in and of itself. But please, I digress.

[Julian Field]

All right. People are losing their homes, Jake.

[Jake]

All right.

[Julian Field]

Whenever there's any kind of major disaster, you know, including wildfires, you know, the chaotic, rapidly changing situation creates mysteries and information gaps which always leads to the spread of conspiracy theories. To fill these gaps. We talked about some of those when we covered like the Hawaii wildfires of 2023 and the Eaton Fire in LA last year. By the way, just a few hours ago, before we recorded, the Los Angeles county fire officials, they released a report on the cause of the Eaton fire and they say it was caused by sparks from an out of service transmission tow owned by Southern California Edison. So there we go.

[Jake]

There we go.

[Travis]

Criminals.

[Jake]

Criminals in many, many ways.

[Unknown Caller 3]

Yeah.

[Julian Field]

All right, so just, yeah, just degrading American infrastructure not merely failing to do its job, but actively destroying people's lives.

[Jake]

This would never happen in communist China.

[Julian Field]

One recurring claim in all of these fires is that the damage is not caused by a totally out of control blaze, but rather a carefully controlled laser or possibly a direct energy weapon or dew. Now the evidence side is always the same. People point out that buildings and cars are set ablaze while trees and other vegetation are not. They seem untouched or at least merely singed. Now this observation doesn't lend any support to the DEW claim, of course, because it ignores the fact that a dry structure has a lower ignition point than a SAP filled tree. One video that conspiracists made about the Spokane fire.

[Unknown Caller 2]

People are asking questions as to why the Trees are still standing all over the place, and the metal has been melted in places, everything else destroyed. Again. Houses you can see here reminds me of the Paradise Palisades, where the houses are burned down and the trees around them still standing. And you've got things melted down. Like this vehicle getting torched and it being hot enough to melt. Melt aluminum and glass, but not hot enough to burn up the grass and the shrubbery right next to it. A lot of odd things start to stand out.

[Jake]

Dry thing burn, wet thing not burn.

[Julian Field]

I mean, like, variations of this video are made during every single wildfire. And I thought this guy even says, like, oh, reminds me of, like, the Palisades fight.

[Unknown Caller 4]

Really?

[Julian Field]

You've seen this before in different contexts. You want to, like, examine that, explore why that is. You want to, like, you know, dive deeper into why you're seeing the same pattern over and over again in every fire you look at.

[Jake]

The problem here is that you could. I don't want to sound like a main. A lame stream media cuck, but you can just Google, why do trees not burn during house fires?

[Julian Field]

It's true, I think. Yeah, they just rather live with the mystery or, like, it's just. It's just not intuitive to them.

[Travis]

Julian, why watch a video when you can make a video?

[Jake]

You don't need a video. You can Google that shit. And they'll probably answer it right there in the fucking AI Overview garbage.

[Travis]

Yeah, yeah, totally. That thing runs my life.

[Jake]

So in this case. In this case, yeah. I'll let AI fucking answer this question for me. Okay. There's certain things that I don't need more complex insights to.

[Julian Field]

Another popular claim, whenever there's a wildfire is that the color blue is able to deflect these direct energy weapons somehow. So buildings with blue roofs are miraculously spared from the fires. You see this again?

[Unknown Caller 3]

Again.

[Julian Field]

Every single time there's a wildfire, I wonder where people got it. People say it's like, oh, you know why, like, Scientology buildings are blue is because they know. They know the secret about the weapon.

[Unknown Caller 2]

Yeah.

[Jake]

Well, have you ever wondered why lakes don't burn down?

[Julian Field]

Yeah, blue rivers, blue.

[Jake]

The ocean has never burned down blue, sir.

[Travis]

We've invented one of the most powerful weapons in the world is a directed energy laser. The only thing that can defeat it, a color.

[Jake]

The energy weapons can't reach me.

[Julian Field]

And still yet another stock claim is that the fire is part of a plot to clear land for some sort of infrastructure project. For example, people have claimed basically, that the California wildfires were designed to Help clear a route for the currently under construction high speed rail system.

[Jake]

Yeah, yeah, that's definitely happening folks. You're about to get high speed rail. They just have to burn down stuff first.

[Julian Field]

Of course in Spokane it was a little different. So people have instead suggested that the fire was part of a plot to clear a path for the construction of an AI data center. Here's how one self described conspiracy theorist described it on TikTok.

[Unknown Caller 4]

Okay, so I'm a conspiracy theorist, realist, whatever the fuck you want. Maybe it's just the truth that's being hidden.

[Unknown Caller 2]

Right?

[Unknown Caller 4]

Like maybe that's what it is. But a of lot. A little over a month ago Spokane was fighting city council, the mayor and all the citizens were fighting as data center coming to Spokane. Right. And where does the data, where do they want to put the data center? West Plains. Okay, where did the old trails fire start on Saturday? Airway Heights, part of West Plains. Where did the trail take it? Along the river. It jumped the river. I don't know. I don't know. I make it as you take it as you will.

[Jake]

This poor lady, she's been the whole video, she's doing the eye opening thing to the point where the white at the top is visible and that really gives you a crazed look, untrustworthy look.

[Julian Field]

Yeah, I thought this video was like really, really interesting because in this clip and in the rest of the video I didn't include like she doesn't really get around like spelling out the conspiracy theory. She's like speculating about like she kind of like lays out a couple facts and then she kind of like, I don't know, she kind of like doesn't take it to the finish line. He said like, I don't know, like take it for what you will, you know, And I thought it was interesting because like if you take the, you know, the facts independently what she's saying, like she didn't say anything untrue. There is a company that has proposed a 514 acre data center and hydrogen production plant in the area that seems

[Jake]

like it's not flammable. That seems really smart. They should definitely build a data center on a big like mass of hydrogen and put it right where recent wildfires happened. Yeah.

[Julian Field]

And then she also mentions that the old trail fire started in the West Plains and that's also true. And then she mentions that the fire jumped the Spokane River. That's also true. But it's not stated as like the relevance of these facts or how they're connected. It's really more Of a kind of like well here's what I know to be true. And when you add it all up there's like something not right there.

[Jake]

Yeah, the special recipe is the whites at the top of the aisle. That's what you add to this to make it into a conspiracy theory.

[Julian Field]

And you know, I suppose like on the like the abstract point of like something's not right about what's going on, I suppose that's like, that's also correct. Like, like it's a vibe and there's something not right specifically about the proposal for the data center. And part of why it's fishy was uncovered by a real life citizen journalist. And what she discovered was that a county commissioner was in contact with the data center company despite the fact that he previously claimed that he didn't know the name of the company. And I want to talk a little bit about that today because I think it's interesting example how of like a lack of transparency from public officials and the dismissal of legitimate concerns about data Cent are helping to like fuel conspiracy theories.

[Jake]

This is once again Eddington esque. I have to give flowers to that movie that I dismissed too soon. Everything seems to be coming up Eddington

[Julian Field]

as reported by the outlet the Spokesman Review. So these hidden communications were uncovered by a Spokane resident and stay at home mother named Brittany Anderson. So like QAnon followers they always fancy themselves as people who like uncover corruption and like oh I'm like exposing like you know the bad guys by posting and stuff. Well this is interesting is like this is someone who like actually did it. Like she's not someone who was like a professional journalist or like a watchdog organization or something like that. She is simply someone who started reading about the effects that large data centers have on electricity rates, water supplies and the communities built around them. And she wanted to know what Spokane county was doing. So on June 12, Anderson filed a public records request and about six weeks later on July 23, Spokane county released the records. The bill was $78 for the records. Now the records revealed emails and zoom calls among Spokane County Commissioner Al French, utility officials and Sean Boyd, the CEO of a company called Apricas Energy Partners. So according to the Spokesman Review, French had been discussing a major development with Apricus for more than a year. A proposed data center and hydrogen production complex on the West Plains west of Spokane International Airport. Planning documents talking about like how much energy this project would need contemplated an eventual electrical load to of 1,000 megawatts. Now for comparison, all of the approximately 422,000 electricity customers for the local utility company Avista in Washington, Idaho use an average of roughly 1100 megawatts combined. So they speculated, like nearly doubling the amount of energy consumed in this 30,000 square mile region just for the sake of the data center. So they're, they're talking about basically adding one customer that would double their electricity needs. That mean that was shocking to discover. I didn't realize like, what an energy drain these data centers can be. The documents include an estimate of approximately $184 million for transmission lines, substations, and grid interconnections capable of supplying up to 650megawatts. The estimate did not include, like, what would be necessary for new power generation, customer specific infrastructure, or everything that would be required to reach the full proposed, like 1000 megawatt load. Apricus has also asked about their eligibility for a proposed data center tax exemption and about finding additional sources of water.

[Jake]

Vampires. Vampires. It never stops. They want everything.

[Julian Field]

This data center, like I mentioned, was not the only industrial project being contemplated. They also described revenue from the data center as a way to help finance a hydrogen production facility. So the project was early stage. There's no permits. Avista's feasibility work reportedly concluded that existing infrastructure could not accommodate a project of that size. But the records uncovered by Anderson show that French had been advocating for it and participating in conversations intending to move it forward at the same time. The proposal's scale and details were mostly not publicly disclosed or even shared with other public officials. Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown said that she knew very little about the Apricots proposal except for a mention from French during an informal discussion. She told the spokesman review, at some

[Jake]

point we were discussing economic development and Commissioner mentioned this huge green hydrogen project and I didn't have any details on it. I don't recall the name of the company, but that the green hydrogen project also had a huge data center component to it.

[Julian Field]

Mayor Brown also said that Commissioner French lashed out at her when she opposed a sales tax break for the purchase and installation of data center equipment.

[Jake]

Al also in a conversation, was very unhappy with me and told me I was killing jobs and not a good team player.

[Julian Field]

Now this tracks Al. French seems to be paranoid about data centers generally. Not about them being built, about them not being built. In a meeting on July 21, he suggested that opposition to the building of data centers was actually fueled by America's geopolitical rivals who want to retain the supposed economic benefits of data centers for themselves.

[Travis]

Of course, we live in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ass world. The shadowy Organization wants to put the data, you know, the data centers, that's going to suck up all the energy. It sounds, sounds like a cartoon bad guy. It's like an Ubisoft bad guy.

[Jake]

You sound exactly like a Russian or Chinese agent when you say that, Jake. I want you to know that right now. And I agree with whatever's coming up in this clip.

[Unknown Caller 3]

I've had multiple developers of data centers approach me about doing something on the West Plains, and they have not been able to meet all of the metrics with regard to power or water or a variety of other things. And Commissioner Kearns has been in the same situation. I know that Commissioner Cooney Brooks is also very familiar with data centers and the importance of them for our economy, for our nation. In fact, it's been suggested that to be against data centers is to be anti American. Because we know, and the FBI is currently engaged in investigations where China and Russia have engaged in activities to oppose data centers because they do not want the United States to take a lead from an economic standpoint with regard to data center development.

[Jake]

Yeah, that's why they want, they can't stand to see you waste all your energy.

[Travis]

And these data centers, they what do they do? This, this good for the nation, how

[Jake]

well, you can make Jake Chinese, for example.

[Julian Field]

I think it's interesting how essentially like red scare rhetoric is like creeping into like county commission meetings, like local kind of like county level discussions about like, you know, the menaces of China and Russia. He doesn't really explain what's going on here. I guess, like there's some sort of agitators that are like, influencing Americans to oppose these AI data centers. And therefore their opposition isn't legitimate. It's not from any kind of like real concerns. It's like part of an international plot.

[Travis]

Yeah, I just don't understand, like, the idea, like this guy is, you know, probably in his early 60s or something and he's like, we need these data. Like, does he even know what he's talking, talking about? Like, I don't know. It's so interesting to me how the data center itself has become such an obscure. It's like we need these data centers to like, does he even know what it's gonna do?

[Jake]

Like, well, if he's, it's gonna get him money, he's getting paid off.

[Travis]

I, I is that's what's going on is the data centers are just coming into anybody who's got a little piece of land, they go, hey, Joe Schmo, you give us this land to do whatever the hell we want with it. Oh, yeah, and you'll be a very, very wealthy, wealthy man. You just. All you have to do is convince all your little buddies around those folding tables there that this is a good idea and you should sign off on it.

[Jake]

How about this? We'll donate to your re election committee. We'll, you know, send you on a nice trip to go and see how other data centers work, maybe in a nice tropical location, all expenses paid. You know, that kind of stuff. And so all he's doing is going, well, I'm just gonna look at the mainstream news. Oh, yeah, the FBI did say that. Oh, yeah. This is what, like, a lot of mainstream outlets seem to think about China and Russia, that they're involved in anything that goes wrong in the United States. Perfect. I'm just gonna say this at the meeting.

[Travis]

Yeah, There. He's following the status quo.

[Jake]

Yeah, he's totally normal. This guy is like, he's basically parroting, like, shit that he probably fucking read very honestly, like in a mainstream media account of the. Of data centers, because guess who else is in the pocket? Everybody's in this fucking pocket. Is the pocket are big. The pocket's big. If this isn't the thing, then the whole economy is going to collapse. So it has to be the next big thing, this AI. It has to be. Otherwise. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

[Travis]

What do you think happens?

[Jake]

The economy collapses. Huge crash. Market crash.

[Travis]

Oh, man. What happens to somebody like me who doesn't give a shit about AI and has never invested it and really never doesn't own anything in it?

[Jake]

Your lifestyle, everything you love about your lifestyle is going to be taken away, except for the. Except for the flowy will be informed. You will have to. You will no longer choose to. You will have to get your hair cut by the flow. Be.

[Julian Field]

When this house of cards comes tumbling down. There be far fewer professional podcasters, I'll tell you that.

[Travis]

So. So you're saying. You're saying that potentially some of the most annoying people, the most obnoxious people could get the rug pulled out from under them and. And they'll suffer. But, you know, regular people, you know, they'll be mostly okay.

[Julian Field]

No, no, no. They'll be destroyed.

[Travis]

Yeah, they'll be also destroyed.

[Julian Field]

Wait, worse, in fact.

[Travis]

So they've ruined it for everybody.

[Unknown Caller 4]

Yep.

[Jake]

And then we'll have to bail them out or something. It'll be like, too big to fail A.I. we have to subsidize A.I. we have to reroute, like, half the budget.

[Travis]

Subsidize A.I. oh, my God. Is A.I.

[Unknown Caller 4]

going to.

[Travis]

Are they going to make, like, A.I. welfare cases? How? Like, oh, we need to adopt? No, you actually have to adopt AI because where will it go? Where will it go? It's so lonely out there with nobody to adopt it.

[Jake]

Oh, you want the Chinese to win the AI War.

[Travis]

Oh, so that's what it is. That's what they've told people. They go, oh, well, but we're in the AI Wars. It's the. It's like the nuclear race or the space race all over again, except with AI which, like, you know, it upscales my games. All right, but what else does it do? A better search engine, maybe?

[Jake]

Yeah, you could have all that without them.

[Travis]

I agree. I totally agree. You know what? I was living on the Earth for a long time before these little programs came around and we were doing just fine.

[Jake]

For a second, I thought you were admitting to eating date dirt.

[Unknown Caller 1]

But

[Travis]

how would I go from where I was to eating dirt?

[Jake]

I'm living on the Earth.

[Travis]

I'm living on the Earth. I've been eating dirt for a long time.

[Jake]

I've been eating dirt for a long time.

[Travis]

Boy, my teeth are black. All right, sorry. Travis, please.

[Julian Field]

Adding to the general sense of paranoia over this data center is the fact that the company proposing it, Apricus, is very young, with no evidence of successfully completing projects. Apricus describes itself as a clean energy developer with expertise in hydrogen renewable power, natural gas generation using hydrogen blending, and carbon capture, and data center development. Its founder and president is Sean Boyd on LinkedIn. He describes himself as having a history of working in the oil and gas, mining, energy and power and seafood industries.

[Unknown Caller 3]

Hmm.

[Jake]

Oh, wow, that's great. I'm gonna put some shrimp in the gas, and then we're gonna. I love how these guys are, like, now gonna. We're were actually the good guys. It's like, no, you're not. You are absolutely not. It's the same thing. It's the same. It's a new. It's a new form of, like, gas rush.

[Julian Field]

Now, LinkedIn lists four employees for the company. That doesn't mean that that's all there is, but, like, that's all that anyone can verify. It's a private company.

[Jake]

Yeah. It has, like, 800 billion market cap and four employees. Yeah. Totally normal.

[Julian Field]

But it remains unclear who exactly is providing the capital for these proposed projects. The company says that its team has decades of energy experience, but Apricus itself is new. So its LinkedIn page says that it was founded in 2023, and its website Was pretty bare bones names, no completed facilities, customers, investors or financing partners.

[Travis]

The head of Apricus Energy is like old Gil from the Simpsons, being like, well, oh boy, old Gil really needs this data center.

[Jake]

Well, that's it. That is. But that is like the local. The local like administration that is, is actually how they are. Oh boy, I could finally get that third jet ski.

[Travis]

Oh, if we could just get that data center, I'll finally retire. They're like, but papa, but Papa, the water supply, it'll be poisoned if it's even left or, you know, left to drink. And he's like, ah, I gotta get this center. People are literally becoming Robocop villains. It's amazing to me, me.

[Julian Field]

So the company lists a Spokane address as its headquarters, but it's just a post office box. So earlier corporate paperwork used a suburban residential address in the town of Surprise, Arizona, which is just Boyd's home. Now you might question. So this is a like of a big, expensive, complicated projects. Like how many like projects has this company actually like completed? And as far as anyone can tell, the answer is zero. I mean they're. There was a couple instances where they almost got something off the ground, but nothing concrete. So In February of 2024, Apricus appeared alongside several aviation companies proposing a hydrogen production project at Livermore Municipal Airport in California. So the concept involved covering approximately 140 acres of airport land with solar, solar panels using reclaimed water to produce hydrogen and supplying that fuel to emerging hydrogen powered aircraft. Boyd predicted that the production could begin in the middle of 2026, which you might know, we are past right now. We're in August, we're in August of 2026, past the middle. So when the spokesman review looked into it, it found no operating Livermore facility. An assistant airport manager said that she did not remember working with Apricus, and the proposal appeared to have never been advanced beyond the conceptual stage. Earlier this year, Apricots also approached the Kalispell Indian community in Washington state about a problem project. The spokesman review also found that that didn't go anywhere. Here's what they reported.

[Travis]

Brandon Haugen, project and development analyst for the Kalispell tribe, said Apricus Energy Partners approached tribal leaders last winter. We had a handful of meetings with Apricus and some of the folks. They were interested in developing a facility that would help provide energy to support the Big Rock project. Haugen said. As part of the proposal, which would be built on tribal land, Apricot suggested that the tribe could retain an ownership stake. Take it was highly conceptual. They were interested in developing a portion of the tribe's land, Haugen said, we looked at it and decided we weren't going to pursue it.

[Julian Field]

So there's no evidence that the company has ever constructed anything at all in its three years of existence. And there's no evidence that anyone associated with the company built something like the, like, data center, slash hydrogen power plant that they are proposing for Washington state here.

[Jake]

Yeah, but don't you know that people get paid off if it just gets approved? That's all that matters. There's the actual building. Who gives a shit?

[Travis]

Yeah, I wonder if they just googled like, safe to have data center like in your area.

[Jake]

Cool and fun to have very loud things sucking energy and water out of local community.

[Julian Field]

Going back to like the, you know, I guess the conspiracy theories around the fire. So there is a county commissioner who has been having undisclosed talks with a new company with no track record regarding a data center proposal. And then a fire started around the proposed area for the data center center. Now, there's no evidence that these two facts have any connection to each other. And personally, it's unclear to me how this fire is supposed to help this proposal move forward, but I sympathize with the paranoia people are expressing about the situation because, like, once you acknowledge that, like, the people trying to push this project forward are not being as transparent as they should be, and, you know, not sure why they have any business even attempting this, you know, that naturally opens up your mind to speculation about corruption and cover up. I also want to talk about the arrested arson suspect Aaron Farinacci, because sometimes, like a component of conspiracy theories I've read online that is that he's either a patsy or possibly even like he was hired to start the fire and he's like a fall guy or something, I don't know. But there's no evidence of any of these claims.

[Jake]

Solid Gold Magikarp Antifa Incoming.

[Julian Field]

Yes, of course. The other thing that people are doing, it's like, I hate this, is that they're denying the possibility that climate change is having a role in these fires because there's an arrested arson suspect. This frustrates me because I feel like generally people understand the difference between the actual catalysts for an event and an environment that might make that event more or less likely to happen. People normally don't have a problem understanding the difference between these two things, but for some reason they act confused when it comes to fires and climate change. Like, if you can identify the particular cause of the fire, therefore the general environment that made it more likely to happen or more damaging than it might have been otherwise is somehow irrelevant.

[Jake]

Well, that, that assumes that it's good faith. I mean these are people who like bring snowballs into on the congressional floor and stuff like yeah, it's true, they're kooks, you know, they'll take anything. They're, they're trying to find any argument. They are purposefully ignoring some of the most basic and obvious common sense stuff.

[Travis]

Yeah, but to a conspiracy theorist, the most like obvious, like pushback you can give to anything is that climate change isn't causing more fires. You know what I mean? Like, and so anytime there, there is an example of where climate change didn't cause that. I think it's just because they think of fires in general as opposed to this specific fire or that specific fire. I think it's just, well, the fire, there's fires now and where do they come from? Somewhere. We didn't have this when I was young. We did.

[Jake]

Well, there were several fires anyways, even if Farinachi did set this one, there were several of them that broke out at the same time. And even if he did so set, let's say he's like a friggin super, Super Mario, super Furinachi brothers. And he's going around setting fires that fast, even if that happened, the environment is still going to keep those fires alive better. So even if they didn't cause the inciting event, the inciting event leading to devastating forest fires is directly linked to global warming and climate change.

[Travis]

Look, this guy just knocked his head on the wrong block. All right? A flower grew out of it, he grabbed it. Boom.

[Jake]

Oh yeah, the fireballs. Yeah, that's got it.

[Travis]

Boom. He put on a raccoon suit.

[Jake]

Oh yeah. I was gonna say if we had Farinachi in the tanuki suit, like we'd be safe. We'd be safe if he had picked up the feather instead.

[Julian Field]

So here's what the police affidavit says about what Fahrenhacci is being accused of. So three witnesses identified Fahrenhacci as a man they saw near the eventual incident. Ignition point one said that he first saw the man looking toward the trees and approximately 10 minutes later bending over near the brush and appearing nervous. A deputy detained Fari at 12:16pm More than a mile away. He had cigarettes, a butane lighter and a box of waterproof matches containing 14 of his original 25 matches. Veronace said that he carried the matches to light cigarettes. When his lighter failed, he admitted walking along the nearby Railroad tracks as part of a regular 4 mile walk, but denied being at the ignition point or starting the fire. A Washington fire. Investigators said that the origin matched the witnesses location, eliminated train activity and electrical infrastructure as possible causes, and concluded that the ignition was consistent with an open flame applied to vegetation. On this basis, they arrested them. I don't know. That sounds. I don't know, this sounds like kind of like a flimsy case to me. I'll be honest.

[Travis]

Yeah, I don't. Yeah, it doesn't sound like they got much.

[Julian Field]

Yeah, but we'll see if they uncover anything more substantial in the days of ahead. Now, you may have already heard about Fernacci's criminal history. In October of 2010, when Fornacci was 21 and living in Mesa, police said that he became engaged in an argument with his father over washing dishes. Varnacci took his father's handgun from bedroom, fatally shot him, pointed the gun at his father's wife, fled, and subsequently shot himself in the chest. He survived that wound.

[Unknown Caller 3]

Holy.

[Jake]

Oh, my God.

[Travis]

God damn. That's crazy.

[Jake]

What the Is going.

[Julian Field]

Yeah, pretty. Pretty horrifying. He was initially charged with murder, but in 2012, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and aggravated assault. Court records reviewed by Associated Press show that a judge found Fi legally competent to assist in his defense in 2011. Although his lawyer reported that he had undergone multiple psychiatric hospitalizations. The psychological report used that sentence missing was sealed. So not a lot is known.

[Jake]

Yeah, if they're pegging him on this with just like the evidence that you listed earlier and his criminal record, that does seem like they. Not for the reasons that the conspiracy theorists think, but it does seem like he's being used a bit as a patsy for this whole situation.

[Julian Field]

Yeah, Yeah. I don't know if they're arresting anyone who might be. I just vaguely suspicious because, like. Yeah, I mean, it's happening Italian.

[Jake]

Italian, within a range of the fire.

[Travis]

I think it's probably if you've got matches in your pocket within, you know, you got a lighter in your pocket. Yeah, of course. Hey, everybody, look, I carry lighters. You know, even after. Even long after the sigs have gone, a lighter is a handy thing to have around. No, you'll get no pushback from me. I'm just saying that, like, dumb cops that are looking for any kind of, you know, any kind of person to blame it on. At least one to blame it on. They're like, oh, guy near the location, occasion lighter in his pocket, like, trouble past, like, you know, doesn't have you know, doesn't have the ability necessarily to stand up for themselves. Like boom. Easy.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Jake]

Do you use your lighter to light other people's cigs or do you go to birth? No, I don't like a lot.

[Travis]

I don't like bring it out with me. I just have like lighters around the house. I don't walk a ton of places like with a lighter in my pocket. But like I'm living a very different life than this man very clearly.

[Jake]

So let us hope so.

[Julian Field]

Yeah, it's, it's obviously yeah, another really, really awful situation. Like my sympathy is to the, the people being affected. You know, I, I, I, I live in California. I'm no stranger to having to flee fires. It's like, is really stressful. Even if you are one of the lucky ones who gets to return to an intact home.

[Jake]

Yeah, it's not going to get better.

[Travis]

Yeah.

[Julian Field]

And it's, it's really paranoid. Like one thing that really struck me about the whole Africa situations like you compared him to old Gil. I think the actually the Simpson this guy reminds me of, Shawn Boyd is actually Lyle Landley because like you know the, the town to town monorail salesman. Because like he's like this guy strikes me as someone, you know, who was just working in like, you know, the like energy development sector and saw that this was the big new thing. And it's like I can just fucking like just start a like one person corporation with my home as the address. Just get some, get some people and money together and go to go to towns with more money than sense and convince them that it's in their best interest. Interest to spend you know, millions and millions and millions of dollars, you know, on a data center.

[Travis]

Yeah, lots of money. Little, little morals. This is the perfect kind of gig for you.

[Julian Field]

Yeah, that's right. It's like you're already in the oil and gas industry. So it's like all, it's like who gives a fuck, you know where you're going. So there's really, there's no, no reason to like, you know, to, to try and turn a new leaf now.

[Travis]

And so these data centers like because, because this is just something that you hear about all the time now in the last like, I don't know, year and a half, half or two years. I have a really bad conception of time. So forgive me but like all of a sudden this was like what everybody was talking about and it was what was going to make SpaceX's stock skyrocket is the fact that Elon was going to put the data centers in space and all this data center to run this AI that, like, nobody asked for God.

[Jake]

That's it at the end.

[Travis]

Like, what's a man? Like, what's a guy to do? Like, what's a guy to do? It just feels like it's us versus, like, some kind of evil transformer that, like, has. No. It's not even living in the same dimension that we are.

[Jake]

Yeah, evil transformer also set the fires. Maybe not evil, but maybe, like, defective.

[Travis]

Yeah, let's. Let's, yeah, stop trusting the Transformers. Let's give them their crystal back or whatever. Whatever we've taken from them.

[Julian Field]

Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's a tough sell. Like, they just like, oh, we're gonna build a large facility here that's going to, like, possibly double the energy requirements for your entire region through one single customer. Also, we're going to use it to replace your labor with automation. And also we're going to use this, this facility to bend all the content you see online to the point that you don't know what's real or fake anymore.

[Jake]

But don't worry, there's somebody in San Francisco who's going to be able to better summarize the article. They're too lazy to read.

[Travis]

Yeah, and I guess like a hand, you know, a couple of guys that will be like, I don't know, they'll have like 300 million instead of 200 million.

[Jake]

Yeah, yeah. Well, we had our first trillionaire recently on the back of a pack of lies. So why not create more of them? Why not suck more of the money upwards?

[Travis]

Well, it just goes to show that money really can't buy sense because the first trillionaire in the world streamed Citizen vigilante for 48 hours on his platform as if it was like a good and worthwhile movie, which shows me that he sucks.

[Jake]

I don't think he cares if the movie is good, Jake. I think he cares that it echoes his exact noxious worldview back to him.

[Travis]

Yeah, yeah, but I mean, come on, if you can't tell that a movie sucks, like, even I Knew Ninja Turtles 3 was shitty in the theater as a kid. Come on. If you can't tell a movie sucks, even if it's got the thing that you like in it, then I don't trust you.

[Jake]

Yeah, I mean, the guy doesn't know what sucks and doesn't suck, just in general. He sucks so fucking bad. If he knew what sucked, then he wouldn't be like that.

[Travis]

No, no, no, He's. He's out of the. You can't even judge how much he sucks.

[Jake]

It's a. He's one of the.

[Unknown Caller 2]

Yeah.

[Jake]

The most infuriating man on earth.

[Unknown Caller 4]

Yeah.

[Travis]

He's outside of time and how much he sucks.

[Jake]

One of the stupider human beings. I mean watching him interviewed is always a pain.

[Travis]

But he's going to put the data centers in space.

[Jake]

Yeah, he's not of course, but he's going to lie about it and say he's going to do it in like an insane amount of time. Like oh, three years.

[Travis]

I do hope this bubble collapses. I do. I kind of want. I know that there will be collateral damage. Damage but like I do want this industry to like fold in on itself and all of these people to sort of like get what they deserve.

[Jake]

Yeah. The damage won't be so collateral, it'll be pretty central. But. But yes. I mean it. The thing with bubbles is they have to pop eventually.

[Travis]

I wonder what the odds on Poly Market are for the AI bubble bursting.

[Julian Field]

Well, you know, it's like, you know, if the bubble bursts too big then there really won't be anywhere to collect because all of infrastructure will have collapsed.

[Jake]

Yeah, good stuff. And pleasant.

[Travis]

You think it'll bring down the whole info? Is that how much is being run by AI right now? Maybe I'm just like kind of out of the loop. Maybe I've been.

[Jake]

No, it's not that man. It's the money. The money, the markets, they've created new value which they constantly have to create new value and usually new value is created by innovation and certain like, you know, new market sectors that open up. Except right now, all of our fucking money, the whole market is being held together by a handful of companies that are so deep in AI and the money is so cyclical between those companies that it would profoundly fuck the economy.

[Travis]

I see. So it is, it is like. It's not just like rich assholes like losing their dumb little. Their dumb investment. It's like wiping out people's 401ks and all that kind of stuff.

[Jake]

Yeah, it would be like the market crash in 2008.

[Julian Field]

Yeah, it like tightening up like loans and investment and all that stuff and that. Yeah, that would have lots of domino effects. I mean I lived through 2008 and

[Jake]

that's why you gotta buy silver. Yeah, that's what my ex neighbor who I sometimes have over to take showers.

[Travis]

Well that came up in a way. He might not have fled.

[Jake]

No, that's fine. People can take from that what they want. But he hit me Up. He's like trying to call me and shit. I'm like, hey, what's up? Is it urgent? What's up? And he's just like, buy some silver. That's all he said in the message. He was calling me in an emergency to tell me to buy silver.

[Travis]

Did you?

[Julian Field]

No, no, no. Why silver? Not gold? Maybe I was like, yeah. I was like, why have all the precious metals? Why silver?

[Jake]

Yeah.

[Travis]

Do you think maybe silver is a component needed to make the chips or something and so its value will go up more? I'm just guessing.

[Julian Field]

Suppose it gets. Gold is used in lots of electronic components. So I'm curious when I was like, why, why, why, why silver over gold?

[Travis]

I don't know, they make the Bram with the silver or something.

[Jake]

I mean, you have. This guy is the QAA catalog of beliefs.

[Julian Field]

Gotcha.

[Jake]

He is into everything. He is unbeatable. I could not stump this man. He knew about everything I could ever bring up and he believes in everything. He did lose his job because he wouldn't wear a mask.

[Julian Field]

So maybe not a great fount of financial advice.

[Jake]

That's precisely why the message struck me as quite funny. Not his situation. His situation is quite dire.

[Julian Field]

Yeah.

[Travis]

Oh, man, this AI stuff, really fudgeing came around and it, it's coming for us, you know, in a different way than I. I mean, well, in a couple different ways. It's, it's, you know, the Skynet, the autonomous. The autonomous hunter killers is one thing, but then also the. Yeah, this, this sort of, as you've described it, this hijacking of the sort of central economy of the country that is based on, you know, they've essentially forced it on us and they' to take people's jobs. I've said before, I know on the show that at my wife's last gig, they were training, asking her to train AI to help to optimize her processes, which really was just training it to replace her, ultimately.

[Unknown Caller 3]

Wow.

[Jake]

People are going to continue to be paranoid, I fucking tell you.

[Travis]

Yeah, yeah. Seriously, why. Yeah, why is there any reason to trust, like, a single thing? And this is all, by the way, getting the approvals. It's getting ushered through whatever political and legal, you know, routes it needs to be to happen. And I don't doubt that, you know, as you mentioned, that there are officials and local politicians who are making money on this. Probably much, you know, it's probably much bigger than I, you know, than I can even imagine.

[Julian Field]

Well, again, because it's, like happening on the local level, so it flies under the, you know, the radar is like, like, so we probably would not be talking about this. It wasn't for the fact that I was happy to be discussing conspiracy theories related to this fire, you know, as was. It's mostly a local story story, but this is. This is story that's being replicated all over the country.

[Corey]

Yeah, it was crazy. Like, I was not prepared for, like, family, friends and whatnot to approach me with the data center conspiracy. Like, they were the ones that bring it up to me and even like my mom and stuff. And. Yeah, just dealing with it on the podcast all the time. I didn't expect to just have. Have that come out. But then like, yeah, even scrolling X just how fast everyone took it to be. Oh, the mayor is terrible. Like, this liberal city is like burning itself to the ground this way. And like, instead of just seeing it as a fire and a disaster and something we need to work through first before we jump to these crazy conclusions.

[Jake]

And yeah, yeah, these liberals need to trust the Italians less.

[Julian Field]

I was thinking about, like, that woman From. From TikTok that I showed at the beginning of the episode. It's like she didn't even engage in a lot of wild speculation. She has said. Said a couple of facts together and just. Just sort of like, implied that there's something shady going. I feel like more and more people are going to be that kind of conspiracist where they just have a general sense that something not right.

[Jake]

And they're right.

[Travis]

They're right. And that's just about everybody I interact with on a daily basis. Yeah, it's changed over time because I remember what it was like before the podcast. You know, we've only been doing this for like, seven or eight years. So, like, I remember what talking to people was like beforehand, and it was not. Like, this conspiracy has crept into nearly every single aspect of our human lives. It is. It is how we define. It is how we define our reality and cope with, like, what the. What the system is doing to sort of your average person that's not in the sort of millionaire to billionaire range.

[Jake]

If we deny the validity of the malaise, then people will resort to all kinds of things.

[Travis]

Yes, they will. And they have in the past. And I hear people, myself included, getting closer to that. Right. You know, like over little things. Little things not working. Quality going down in the smallest way. You know, quality going down in the smallest of ways. And people even who aren't right. Winger saying, like, Corey, like you said, like, like, hey, it didn't used to be like this. Like, I don't remember it being like this.

[Unknown Caller 4]

And.

[Travis]

And even if they're wrong, that. That paranoia is new in a way, you know, because it wasn't always like that. It. It really wasn't. And it's hard to describe that to somebody that didn't live through that. And I feel bad to all the younger. All of our younger listeners that were born into this, like, conspiratorial sort of. It's really depressing. I'm a. I'm depressed, like, kind of a lot.

[Jake]

I feel bad for them because they live in this age. Forget the conspiratorial element. I mean, that's like, a side effect of how fucked things have gotten. My God, think about the. The hope for the future when you see, like, groceries go up this much in such a short period of time, you know, I mean, it's. It's bad.

[Travis]

And where's fucking Joe Biden, huh? He sold us up the fucking river, man. Where is he? He fucking just was like, well, good luck, buddy.

[Unknown Caller 1]

I.

[Travis]

Well, all right. And here's the keys to the kingdom. Like, you know. You know, after everything. After everything, they just handed it over. And it's like I get a text every now and again that's like, will you help us fight? I'm like, will you?

[Jake]

Have you forgotten yet that I did the genocide?

[Unknown Caller 3]

Hey.

[Travis]

Hey, Bow. Well, let's say. Let's be more. Look, let's think about what have I done for me lately?

[Unknown Caller 3]

Okay?

[Jake]

I think we need to end the episode.

[Travis]

I'm, like, joking. I know I'm joking. I'm just calling out to any. Any wisp of perceived authority to be like, help. Help us.

[Jake]

Don't worry. Kamala Harris is running again. We can fix this.

[Travis]

Do you think she really is.

[Jake]

She could have been discussing her as one of the front runners. No, they've also been discussing. They've been discussing Hillary.

[Travis]

You're kidding me.

[Jake]

No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't joke around. Anyways, we gotta end the episode, you

[Travis]

know, I don't joke around.

[Corey]

Ha ha ha ha ha.

[Travis]

I'm in a purple coat, purple car. I'm here.

[Jake]

I'm the joker.

[Travis]

Oh, no. Oh, no. That would be so. That would be so good for this podcast. You guys didn't even laugh. That's how sad. That's how sad we are. That's how. That's how gone. That's how gone we. We've become. Well, deep dish blessing keeping.

[Jake]

Go ahead.

[Julian Field]

Like, yeah, so there's a whole read the whole outro. Jake.

[Travis]

I know, I know.

[Jake]

That's how checked out he is.

[Julian Field]

That's right.

[Travis]

No, I'm very involved. I'm not checked out. I don't want to be accused of being checked out on, on this, but I'm very grateful to be here. I was looking forward, I was actually having a really bad day and I was looking forward to gathering with you, you fellas and talking about how shitty the world is because sometimes how shitty the world is make shitty things in your life like feel not so bad. So no, I'm grateful to be here. I don't want to be accused of being checked out. I've seen other podcast hosts being accused of checked out on long running hosts. And I said, never me.

[Jake]

No, I was just joking.

[Travis]

No, okay. I'm also like kind of joking, but also like, I think maybe just in a sensitive place and being a little too, a little real, a little vulnerable.

[Jake]

We value you. You are not checked out.

[Julian Field]

I mean like working on this episode allowed me to experience one of the real joys of like working out this podcast where I sort of dive into like conspiracy theories, the things that people are, are chatting about online. Sometimes they're even like way off base. But like they generally point to something actually generally kind of creepy and nefarious and involved suspicious corruption and cover ups. And it's just, you know, it's not. The dots don't always connect like people say they do, but there's something meaty there.

[Jake]

Thank you for listening to another episode of the QA podcast. Podcast, you can go to patreon.comqaa and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second premium episode for every regular one, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes. You can also go to cursed media.net to go check out all of our podcast miniseries. We've got some real fire stuff cooking up. We're going to be recording soon. I'm very excited to unveil all of this, this new stuff to you listener. So go check that out. And also if you'd like, you can check out my solo project@instructure podcast.com I do that with John Gabris. And yeah, it's a bit of a different topic, but we just covered Thomas Sankara and we were continuing to cover power in its various manifestations across the world, including some of my favorite revolutionaries.

[Travis]

A continuation of this discussion, if you will.

[Jake]

Exactly, exactly. For everything else, we've got a website, qaapodcast.com listener until next week. May the deep dish bless you and keep you. We have auto keyed content based on your preferences.

[Unknown Caller 1]

Okay, my last one was immediately removed and that one that I the short one that I just put post is staying up for a second. So I'm just going to try to briefly explain and hopefully not go against their guidelines because I think their guidelines are Anyone that exposes this is definitely going to get taken down anyway. Spokane fire, Maui fire, Palisade fire. Not natural fires. That's not how fires burn. It's not how lightning works. They have the lightning showing that it's going down in the same spot in the Spokane fire. It's not how lightning works. It burns trees as well. Lightning and fire also burn trees if they were actually a fire. So people need to just wake up to the truth. Stop commenting, saying silly things like it's because the trees have water in them. So do the forest fire. Trees that burn down, they all. What kind of logic is that? We have water in us. We will also burn in a fire because they're hot. I live in central Oregon. I'm terrified of them doing it to us. I'm not being insensitive. I'm being realistic. People need to start talking about it.