If AI Is Sentient Then So Is ‘Age of Empires II

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The 404 Media Podcast — "If AI Is Sentient Then So Is ‘Age of Empires II’"

Date: June 24, 2026
Hosts: Joseph, Sam Cole, Emmanuel Mayberg, Matthew Galt
Episode Focus:
A deep dive into the absurdity of claims about AI/LLM consciousness, centered on the viral “If AI Is Sentient, Then So Is Age of Empires II” paper by Adrian de Winter, and a look into a controversial land use case involving data centers in Texas.

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Main Theme

The episode explores how claims of LLM sentience fundamentally misunderstand both consciousness itself and the technology behind contemporary AI. Using an intentionally absurd “LLM” built with goats in Age of Empires II, the team (especially Matthew Galt, who reported the story) examines anthropomorphism in AI discourse, philosophical implications, and how we risk granting technology human-like qualities through misplaced assumptions.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Age of Empires II "Goat LLM" Paper

Summary of the Paper (05:49–10:46)

• Adrian de Winter, an AI scientist at Microsoft/University of York, wrote the satirical paper “If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II.”
  • Quote: “I have this tendency to dial up things to 11 when I really think I need to make a point. I should also note the absurdism is pretty standard in philosophy and theoretical computer science.” — Adrian de Winter, recounted by Matthew (05:07)
• De Winter built a rudimentary neural network using goats as “bits” in Age of Empires II’s level editor, using gates and paths to create basic logic circuits and a one-bit perceptron.
• The point: If you claim LLMs are sentient based on their underlying tech, you’d have to make the same claim of goat-powered logic in a video game.

Anthropomorphism & Interface Bias (08:51–13:12)

• The group discusses how people ascribe sentience to LLMs because their interfaces (chat windows) evoke human communication. Strip away the UI and the anthropomorphism vanishes.
  • Quote: “If we think they [LLMs] have sentient traits, then we must understand those traits also exist in any system with similar underlying technology.” — Matthew Galt (08:51)
• The experiment leverages absurdity to show how LLMs’ “sentient” qualities are a projection, not evidence.

Philosophical & Practical Skepticism (13:12–16:44)

• Emanuel notes the problem of discussing LLM consciousness is that it drags everyone into the age-old philosophical swamp: after millennia, we still can't define consciousness, so making claims about computers is preposterous.
  • Quote: “The claim that an LLM could be conscious or not is just inherently ludicrous because it would first require you to understand what consciousness is.” — Emmanuel Mayberg (13:14)
• De Winter is careful not to call LLMs “artificial intelligence,” preferring technical precision (“LLMs” only), to avoid semantic drift that feeds hype or confusion.
• Example: Bees have problem-solving skills, yet we don’t call them conscious in a human sense—why would we let the chat format trick us into doing so for LLMs?
  • Quote: “He was very careful...to be very precise about all of this. He also brought up...bees have rudimentary problem solving...it probably has some awareness...but not the way we’d think of as consciousness.” — Matthew Galt (14:35)

Takeaway

The notion that LLMs—or any computer program—are conscious is rooted more in human projection than in any scientific framework; the “Goat LLM” is a satirical device to jolt the conversation out of its anthropomorphic rut.

• Quote: “The point of the paper is to formally show that we anthropomorphise too readily and that sometimes the claims we make with regards to LLM capabilities are too strong.” — Adrian de Winter, via Matthew Galt (11:32)

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2. The Texas Data Center Land Controversy

(25:17–39:11)

Overview of the Story

• A farming family deeded land (87 acres) to the City of Taylor, TX in 1999 for $10 with the express intention to make it a public park.
• Over the years, the land changed hands multiple times, each time repeating the “must be a park” condition.
• In 2025, the city sold the land for $10 million to a data center developer (Blueprint), ignoring the original deed’s constraints.
  • Quote: “From $10 deeded to turn into a park to $10 million sold to a data center developer.” — Matthew Galt (31:42)

Personal Voices & Legal Context (25:17–34:32)

• Pamela Griffin, who lives adjacent to the site, recalled the land’s intended use. As activists unearthed records, they found solid legal documentation of the park condition.
• In Texas, deeds and property-use covenants are strongly enforced. Griffin’s family is currently in legal battle; local courts punted, but an appellate process is underway.

City’s Perspective and Broader Patterns (34:51–39:11)

• The city is notably candid: the data center brings $30 million/year in tax revenue and requires no new infrastructure, jobs, or resident services.
  • Quote: “We’re going to clear, I think the number is like $30 million a year on tax revenue and we basically won’t have to do anything for that money...It’s not going to make any new jobs. But that’s good actually...so it’s just this building that’s going to get built that generates money.” — Taylor city official, via Matthew Galt (34:51)
• No one, including the city or the developer, could answer for whom the data center is being built—suggesting a speculative wave of development.
  • Quote: “They make the entire city council sign NDAs and they start building. And every time I ask who the client is...no one knows the answer over and over again.” — Matthew Galt (36:46)

Reflections

• The story resonates as an example of small-town America’s recurring struggle between short-term economic gains and lost community legacy.
• It raises the larger issue of the opaque, almost extractive nature of modern data infrastructure development.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On LLM Anthropomorphism:
  “If you pull away the chat window...nobody’s going to look at these goat tracks and say ‘oh my god, it’s sentient,’ even though it has many of the similar traits that...ChatGPT and Claude do.” — Matthew Galt (09:21)

• Cultural Detachment from Consciousness Debate:
  “Once you kind of dip your toe into that question, you realize that the claim that an LLM could be conscious or not is just, like, inherently ludicrous...” — Emmanuel Mayberg (13:14)

• On the Data Center’s Benefits (or lack thereof):
  “It’s just this building that’s going to get built that generates money for us tax revenue, and that’s great.” — Matthew Galt, on Taylor city’s stance (35:20)

• Meta-Observation:
  “We tend to believe the way that humans view the world is prime...there’s all these other different ways to interact with the world and solve problems that don’t necessarily rise to [consciousness].” — Matthew Galt (15:25)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00 – Opening thoughts on LLM consciousness (Emmanuel)
• 05:49 – How the Age of Empires II “Goat LLM” experiment works
• 08:51 – Reframing LLM “sentience” via interface/anthropomorphism critique
• 13:12 – Deep dive: The impossibility of defining/assessing AI consciousness
• 25:17 – Introduction to the Texas data center land controversy
• 29:10 – Verifying the original 'must be a park' land deed
• 31:42 – The legal and ethical maze of land repurposing
• 34:51 – The city’s candid rationale: tax revenue > all else
• 36:46 – Speculative nature and opacity of data center construction

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Conclusion

This episode skewers misconceptions about LLM sentience by exposing the infrastructural, logical, and philosophical fallacies at play—using both humor (goat tracks) and grounded reporting. The hosts pivot from philosophical debate to real-world implications of tech development, highlighting the chasm between Silicon Valley rhetoric and lived reality (whether in neural network theory or local land law). Unmissable for anyone interested in the intersection of AI philosophy and tech accountability.

Transcript

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

The claim that an LLM could be conscious or not is just inherently ludicrous because it would first require you to understand what consciousness is. And it's like whatever computer scientists at Nvidia or OpenAI or Anthropic which would make the claim, it's like we've achieved consciousness internally. No, you didn't, because you like probably don't even understand what that is. Even like the greatest mind on this issue don't fully understand what it is.

[Joseph]

Hello and welcome to the 404 Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404Media co. As well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404 MediaCo. Also remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can watch all all of our podcast episodes. [e-mail] 04mediaco I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are 404 Media co founders Sam Cole. Hello. Emmanuel Mayberg. Hello. And our regular contributor, Matthew Galt.

[Matthew Galt]

Hello. Hello.

[Joseph]

All right, so this first story, really, really fun, really, really interesting. The headline, which is probably also just going to be the title of the podcast, to be honest, is if AI is sentient, then so is Age of Empires too. Before we get into this, what's everybody's experience of Age of Empires? Matthew, I'll ask you first, as you wrote this, were you a big Age of Empires guy?

[Matthew Galt]

I played Age of Empires, but I was not a big Age of Empires guy in this space. I was much more of a Starcraft. There was a lot of Starcraft growing up. That kind of filled the Age of Empires niche for me.

[Joseph]

Gotcha. Sam, were you into it?

[Sam Cole]

Not really. I mean, I was aware of it. I wasn't like Age of Empires head. I guess I was, I don't know, I was into command and conquer and stuff like that. I wasn't super into the world building games.

[Joseph]

I'm kind of blown away by the lack of response to age vampires here. Emmanuel, please save us.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

Surely I've played it a bit. I agree with everyone else that it's like I've played other and I would argue better strategy games at the time. However, what I do remember about Age of Empires more than anything is that it had really amazing cheat codes. Do you remember this, dude?

[Matthew Galt]

Yes.

[Joseph]

E equals MC squared to get the robot or the car Right. In age of Empires 1.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

Yeah. There's the car that shoots lasers which I always thought was very fun because you're playing like a historical game and there's like Iron Age, whatever, spearmen and then you spawn a car that shoots lasers and melt them. And I thought that was fun.

[Joseph]

I fucking loved it. I played so much age of Empires 1 using the cheat codes often because I was a literal child and very, very bad at the game. I would start it with oh, you know, build a fishing hut and then do this. And then by the start of the second age be like, okay, it's time to bring out the robots I think and that sort. And then age of Empires 2 I played an absolute ton of as well. I might actually go back now because they've re released some of them.

[Matthew Galt]

Yeah, they just remastered it.

[Sam Cole]

Right.

[Matthew Galt]

Like it's a little bit updated and nicer.

[Joseph]

Right. And that would be very interesting to see if the person we're going to talk about could build their goat based LLM in the remaster of Age of Empires. But so we have this paper which we're going to talk about and the title is if LLMs have human like attributes, then so does age of Empires 2. Obviously this is surreal. It is supposed to annoy people and I'm sure it did.

[Matthew Galt]

It really did.

[Joseph]

Yeah, it really did. Yes, in a very, very good way. We'll get into the arguments, but who wrote it first of all? Matthew. And like what is their affiliation? Because that's pretty important.

[Matthew Galt]

His name is Adrian de Winter and he is an AI scientist working at Microsoft and the University of York. He's like kind of a top level applied scientist and researcher.

[Joseph]

This didn't come out of Microsoft.

[Matthew Galt]

No, this is his own independent study. I would say he's got, if you go back and look at his website and other thing, paper that he's written and he has a substack version of this paper that kind of breaks it down into more I guess non scientific language that's pretty entertaining and like mixes some memes and such in there. He's got a couple different experiments and things that he's done. Experiments, a couple different, like white papers that he's written about different topics that are pretty entertaining. A lot of absurdism kind of just all over everything.

[Joseph]

Yeah. And I'll just pull out this quote from the piece that he told you. He said I have this tendency to dial up things to 11 when I really think I need to make a point. I should also note the absurdism is pretty standard in philosophy and theoretical computer science. I mean, that first bit of the quote is the energy we definitely need.

[Matthew Galt]

Absolutely. And it's kind of interesting because he was very entertaining to talk to. Actually. We were talking back and forth through emails and a lot of subjects are kind of like, oh, wrote. And you get the basic standard stuff. There was a whimsy and chaos to him that I found very engaging and entertaining, even in written communication.

[Joseph]

Nice. So I'm going to massively oversimplify, obviously, just to get us there, but basically, he built an LLM with the goats in Age of Empires to make this point that we'll go on about. Just drill down. What did he actually do to build this LLM with goats in a way that listeners are going to be able to grasp without necessarily reading the paper, which is a fine line to draw right now.

[Matthew Galt]

And there are visual aids in the paper and on his website and in our story that'll kind of help you see. See it if you need that. Essentially what he did is he built a very, very basic. The kind of the underpinnings of the way of, like a neural network. In age of Empires 2, the way you do that is you go to the sandbox mode, which is the thing that Age of Empires has that allows you to make your own maps and crucially, like your own quests. So you can set, like, conditional gates along the way. So, like, if a condition is met, then open this door, let something through. And what he did was basically built a bunch of very simple logic gates, literally like gates that would open and goats would move along a path and go through the gates. And the way you kind of visualize it is like you've got, you know, like all computer code is broken down into ones and zeros. And he had two different tracks. One was for one and one was for zero. And the goats moving along these tracks are like the signal carrier. They're the bits. And doing that, he was able to kind of build out a very, very basic, like, one bit perceptron, which is like a sorting thing, like a thing that takes binary code and sorts it, which is like the very, very basic building block of all of the large language models that we use today. If you visualize it in your head, you imagine just these tracks with grass in them, and the goats just move down the tracks and they hit a gate and the gate opens or closes and kind of sorts them into different areas. And that's very simply all that it is.

[Joseph]

Yeah, it's very similar. As you mentioned in the piece, it's Very similar to what people make in Minecraft, often using Redstone. Yeah. And like, I mean, people have made some absolutely crazy shit in Minecraft, like fully functional computers, basically. But people aren't then going and saying, you know, this is conscious, or they're making a surreal point or anything. They're doing it for other reasons. So it makes this LLM or like the foundation of an LLM in age of Empires 2. How does this relate exactly to the LLMs we all know and maybe don't use, but we all know about them, like Claude or ChatGPT, like, what is the link there? Or the argument that he's trying to like draw between those?

[Matthew Galt]

So essentially what he's trying to do is that he's. It's very interesting because when I talked to him, he was very careful to say that, like, it is not that these things are not conscious. It is that if we believe that they, if we think that they have sentient traits, then we must understand that the sentient traits that are presenting are also present in other things that have the same underlying technology. And he did that by picking like the most absurd version of what the similar traits would be. The place that he kind of started in was he reads a lot of these philosophical arguments in papers and he started to notice that around like 50% of the time, the people that are writing similar white papers just kind of take as given at the beginning of their research that an LLM is conscious or has some sort of sentient traits. And his point was like, if we're starting there, then something's already kind of broken and we need to step back and realize that the reason we're reading these things as sentient is because we're interacting with them through a chat window. And there's something about that chat window that makes us anthropomorphize them. But if you pull away the chat window, which is just like the interaction layer for this technology, and you're just looking at a pure form of like the tech that's underneath it, then like, you don't anthropomorphize it. Nobody's going to look at these goat tracks and say like, oh my God, it's sentient, even though it has many of the similar traits that these like, chatgpt and Claude do. Like, Richard Dawkins is not going to sit down with age of Empire 2 goat tracks and then write like a lengthy op ed about it.

[Joseph]

Yeah. And right at the beginning of your piece, you throw to this Atlantic essay, which I admittedly it's in my to read list, my very long to read list. But I really want to sit down at the weekend and go through it. But they make the comparison of like, I'm going to butcher this, but well, if we think that LLMs are conscious, we need to give that same sort of consideration to like Microsoft Word. But you wouldn't do that because that would be stupid. So it's very, very similar sort of argument. It's just here the observed, the absurdity is obviously turned up to 11 as

[Matthew Galt]

we say turning it into goats makes it. The point is to knock you out of that place where you're interacting with that chat window and anthropomorphizing the technology. And that's what he's trying to do.

[Joseph]

Right, and maybe I'll just read out a quote from them as well that he gave to you. The point of the paper is to formally show that we anthropomorphise too readily and that sometimes the claims we make with regards to LLM capabilities are too strong. It's not an easy task given that human like attributes is a bit of an abstract term. Emmanuel or Sam, do either of you edit this or was it Jason who's not here? I'm just wondering what you guys think on this paper.

[Sam Cole]

It was Jason, but I'll let philosopher Emanuel speak.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

So a few. Was it a month ago now, I wrote about this paper that came out of Google DeepMind or at least one Google DeepMind researcher, but it was like on Google DeepMind letterhead which claimed that, and let me try to be accurate, that LLMs can never be conscious. Crucially, the paper argued that they still could be AGI, but they can never be conscious. And I don't even want to attempt to argue or make the argument that the paper is making because it's very complicated. And I'm wondering if Galt had the same experience when he was reporting this story, which is like when you get down to it and you are trying to argue whether LLMs can be conscious or not, you're really,

[Matthew Galt]

you're, you've already lost.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

You've already. It's, it's, it's you. You get into the much bigger, more complicated, arguably impossible task of defining what consciousness is.

[Matthew Galt]

Exactly.

[Joseph]

We haven't even done that. After literal hundreds, if not millennia of philosophic philosophical study, we haven't landed.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

Yeah, but, but it's like what you do understand. And obviously it's like we're journalists, we're laymen, we're not philosophers, and we haven't researched this our entire lives, which is what many, many people have done for hundreds of years. But what you do understand is that once you kind of dip your toe into that question, you realize that the claim that an LLM could be conscious or not is just, like, inherently ludicrous because it would first require you to understand what consciousness is. And it's like whatever computer scientist at Nvidia or OpenAI or Anthropic which would make the claim, it's like, we've achieved consciousness internally. It's like, no, you didn't, because you probably don't even understand what that is, because even the greatest minds on this issue don't fully understand what it is. But. But certainly they disagree with you.

[Matthew Galt]

There's kind of hundreds of books arguing what the definition is. Right, Right.

[Joseph]

Did you have that experience going through it?

[Matthew Galt]

No. No, Absolutely. And I really appreciated De Winter because he was very. One of the things that struck me, like, when I was first reading the paper is the only place that the words artificial intelligence appear in the paper is when he's citing someone else that uses that phrase. He doesn't say it. He always calls them LLMs. And he's like, I want to be very precise about all of this. And he also brought up speaking of this consciousness question, specifically in Sentience, that study that was in science a couple weeks ago where they found out that bees have rudimentary problem solving capabilities. He's like, we look at this and some people are shocked, and they're like, oh, does this mean the bee is conscious? He's like, no, it means that it has rudimentary problem solving capabilities. And, like, it probably has some sort of awareness and interacts with the world in some way, but, like, probably not in the way that we would think of as consciousness. And, like, we do ourselves a disservice by kind of constantly attempting to throw this. We. We tend to believe that, like, the way the humans view the world is prime, I guess, is maybe the way to put it. And like, that anything that we build should be kind of working to that model. And, like, that's, you know, that's what we think of when we. Like the way that humans interact with the world is consciousness. When there's all these other different ways to interact with the world and solve problems that don't necessarily rise to that level. Then you get into the. Then you get into all the discussions of, like, what is this consciousness? Does a dog have the same thing, et cetera, et cetera. And, like, that's when things start to fall apart and people start to believe their LLMs are talking to them.

[Joseph]

Yeah, especially if you're trying to, as you mentioned the piece. Especially if you're trying to do it on a binary model, which is like conscious or not. And you're going to get into a real trap with that sort of approach. People should definitely go read the full article. For a more technical breakdown, I think we link to the GitHub as well.

[Matthew Galt]

Absolutely.

[Joseph]

But with that we'll have a quick break and then when we come back, we're going to talk about another of Matthew's stories about the fight around a data center, or rather how a city basically stole land. I'm saying that he doesn't use the word steal. We'll be right back after this.

[Sam Cole]

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[Joseph]

if you sold somebody a loaded gun who you knew was in a vulnerable state and they shot themselves, I think it is murder. Just because you're using the Internet doesn't mean you get away with murder.

[Matthew Galt]

I'm Damon Fairless, host of Hunting Warhead.

[Joseph]

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[Matthew Galt]

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[Joseph]

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[Matthew Galt]

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[Joseph]

All right, this is another one as I said that Matthew wrote, and the headline is, a farmer donated land to turn into a park. The city is building a massive data center instead. You wrote this a little while ago, Matthew, and I edited it and I, like, really wanted to save it for a slot on the pods. So we're talking about now so we can give it some the proper attention it deserves. I'm just going to read out the lead of the article first of all, so people see where we're going. And I mean, I think it just fully captures the issue here. So it says, Almost 30 years ago, a farming family deeded land to the city of Taylor in Texas on one condition. The city use it for a public park for the nominal fee of $10. The farmers granted the 87 acres to a public trust in 1999. Taylor, the city then sold it to Blueprint, a data center developer, for $10 million in 2025. Now the land that was supposed to belong to the community will become 135,000 square foot data center. That, yep, kind of sums it up. Obviously, there is a lot more to it than that. Let's sort of go chronologically or at least the order of the article. So who is Pamela Griffin? She's sort of one of the main people you spoke to for this piece and who's connected to this story.

[Matthew Galt]

So Pamela Griffin is a woman who lives in Taylor who owns a house that abuts the field where this data center is being built, currently being built right now. She has lived there. Her and her family have lived there for generations. Basically the story that she told me is that her grandmother purchased a bunch of land in that area of Taylor several generations ago, back in a time where in Texas cities were like segregated, like legally segregated. And there were only if you were buying land and you were black and Griffin's family's black, you had to buy it in a certain part of town. And so this was the site of Taylor. That's like literally right next to the railroad tracks and like next to a power substation. And her grandmother and then subsequent generations of the family basically bought a street in this little division. And the family has lived there for, you know, several generations now. And she's kind of the woman at the center of all of this, like

[Joseph]

the fighting back and the raising issues and that sort of thing. So that lays the groundwork. And the family owns this land, as you say, in this area where they were essentially forced to. Then a person called Mr. Bland comes in. What is Pamela's memory of Mr. Bland? Who is this person? Sort of what happens when he comes into the picture.

[Matthew Galt]

I'll back up just a little bit.

[Joseph]

Yeah.

[Matthew Galt]

So Pamela told me that she had no idea what a data center was until people were canvassing. After the, you know, the, the city went through the normal thing that happens with these. This is like a 20,000 person town. And it went through all the normal things that we're hearing that happen with data centers. Like developers come make people sign NDAs or the city council sign NDAs. And it kind of like happens in a rush. The concerns of the citizens aren't listened to, et cetera, et cetera. Kind of see this playbook over and over. Activists concerned about the data center start going to the neighborhood where it's going to be like, built, next to which is where Pamela lives. Start knocking on doors. Pamela opens the door. She's never, she'd never, she hadn't heard this thing was being built, didn't know what a data center was. They start looking into it with her and her family, and they're like, this is terrible. This is bad. And Pamela has a memory from when she was a child. She's like, wait, isn't that Mr. Bland's land? Isn't it supposed to be a park? And she remembers this conversation between Mr. Bland and her father and Mr. Bland and the bland family owned the land where this data center is being built, and they were farmers. And Pamela and her family would play kind of in that field where the data center's being built and had for a bunch of years. And the farmer would be out there on his tractor and he would see them and he would wave and he was friendly and kind. And she remembers when she was a child, her father having a conversation with Mr. Bland, and Mr. Bland saying, hey, we're, we're gonna, you know, my family, we're selling and we're leaving. We're gonna move somewhere else. I know that this area in this land is important to your family and that your children need a place to play. So when I leave, I'm gonna leave it to the city for them to turn into a park. And it's, you know, one of those, one of these kinds of things that's like this half remembered childhood conversation. And like, there could there be any truth to this? Who knows? And you know, spoiler, it turns out that she was correct, that this actually had happened.

[Joseph]

Yeah. And we'll get to that. So Pamela sees this, has this memory. What happens next? Because you see documents which, like, corroborate this account. Like, what are those documents? How did they come about and like, what did you see when you saw them?

[Matthew Galt]

So it's all like, it's all in the public record. The Blands leave in 1999 and they deed 87 acres to a, like, public trust that specifically. I can't remember the exact name of the public trust, but it's a trust that specifically, like, develops parks in Texas. They deed it to them for a nominal fee of $10, which is like a normal. Like if you're going to do a real estate transaction for the lowest possible amount, it's like 10 bucks.

[Joseph]

Yeah, like a lawsuit for $1.

[Matthew Galt]

Exactly. It's one of those kinds of situations. And it's, it's a very short deed. It's a very short grant that says, like, the Bland family is deeding this land to this foundation specifically so it can be built and turned into a public park. It's like very clear. It's just a couple sentences. It doesn't get turned into a park. Yes, that, that, that trust, a few years after they leave in 1999, then turns around and sells it or deeds it to the county again for $10. And they kind of copy paste that same language again

[Joseph]

with the condition.

[Matthew Galt]

With the condition, the county, then a few years after that sells it to the city, the city sells it to its own economic development zone corporation that had set up and that sells it to. And every time they're doing this, they're just taking the same deed with the same language over and over again that, that edc, that economic development corporation sells it to Blueprint. Who is the data center developer? A couple, like in 2025, for $10 million. So from $10 deeded to turn into a park to $10 million sold to a data center developer. And now it's being built. It's going to be 500ft away from Griffin's fence, from her property.

[Joseph]

Yeah, I still have a bunch of questions about that. I mean, maybe just to get out of the way first, straight up, is this legal? Because from reading your article, it seems that in Texas, deeds are pretty important. And you know, Pamela says that like multiple times in multiple different ways. It's like they didn't think this would be possible. You can't have a deed with a condition and then like sort of the condition just evaporates somehow. So, like, what is the legality here? At least according to the people you spoke to.

[Matthew Galt]

So the legality is murky, but it doesn't seem good for the data center developer. But the thing that's happening is so Griffin and her family, like, pulled a bunch of money together. They got a lawyer, or they told the lawyer the story. The lawyer was like, I don't know, this seems like a long shot. And they find the deed, and he sees all the paperwork, and he's like, oh, yeah, you have a case. Because in Texas, as Griffin and many other people said, and like, I lived in Texas, so I knew. I know there's two, like, land deeds and what people want to do with their land and, like, what's written down or, like, sacrosanct and, like, land deed stuff is, like, very complicated, and people are very aggressive about it in court there. So the lawyers, they are in the process of trying to get a judge to look at it. The first judge, which was, like, at the local level, looked at it, said, I'm just not going to rule on this. I know that you're going to appeal, but, like, this is above my head, basically. And, like, kind of tossed it out. And they're in the appeals process now. They're still waiting on another court date, which I think is a couple months from now to kind of do the next process. But, yeah, they're.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

They're.

[Matthew Galt]

They're in court right now in the court of appeals, trying to get somebody to look at this and say, like, yes, this was not the intended use of this land when it was deeded 30 years ago for 10 bucks for what is granted, you know, to the city to turn into a park. So, you know, I don't know what will. How that will all play out. It's kind of this race right now because blueprint is out there. Like, they're. They're. They're. They've started. They're building. Oh, wow. They're. They're. They're working on it, you know, and the. The city, when I spoke to them, kind of didn't have a comment specifically on that and, like, referred me to blueprint. Um, and we're much more interested in talking about, like, the benefits to Taylor of the. Of the data center. And so that, like, is this legal? Is a. People on the face seem to say no, but it has to work its way through the courts.

[Joseph]

Yes. And I mean, I was going to ask what the city says, and you say they wouldn't comment on this specifically, but just to hear them out, because I think it might be interesting. What benefits are they claiming of building a data center on this land that wasn't for this purpose? Like, what benefits are they claiming? Jobs and that sort of thing?

[Matthew Galt]

No. So I actually thought this was really interesting because of all of the people I've talked to when I've asked that question, I think Taylor has been the most honest. I was kind of shocked because I was just like, no one ever says this, but I talked to a guy at the city and I was like, why are you doing this? Why do you think this is going to be good for Taylor? And he's like, we're going to clear God. I think the number is like $30 million a year on tax revenue and we basically won't have to do anything for that money. He's like, it's not going to make any. He's like, no, it's not going to make any new jobs. But that's good actually because that means we don't have to build housing or any other infrastructure for people that are moving. And remember, this is a town of like 20,000 people people. It's like, we don't have to build any new housing. We don't have to build like schools or anything. It's not going to create any jobs. There's not going to be any increased traffic out there. So there won't be like accidents or anything to go like, deal with. Like they're, you know, they're going to kind of take care of themselves. So it's just this building that's going to get built that generates money for us tax revenue and that's great. And that, you know, like, because you so often you hear these people are building these things and the developer comes in and the city council says like, oh, it's going to create 200 new jobs in X, Y and Z. And Taylor was like, no, they're just giving us tax money every year and that's it. It's like, okay, it's honest.

[Sam Cole]

I think that's really important to call out in the story. And I'm glad you did. Yeah, of course you would. But like, it's just, it's. It really highlights how just like this is just a black hole of a facility. It's just pure extraction. The tax thing is whatever. It's like you spend the whole story explaining how like they've created these loopholes and these deed fuckeries and then they're like the taxes and it's like this is all a lie. I feel like this is not actually happening.

[Matthew Galt]

The other interesting thing that is like every. So I've been looking at a lot of these and I asked the city who was like, we don't know. Ask Blueprint. And I asked Blueprint, like, who is the client for the compute in this data center, who is going to be using it. And blueprint straight up just didn't return my. Just ghosted me and Taylor said we don't know. They didn't say. And that is a thing. So I've noticed this pattern where there's a lot of big data centers that are built by Google and Meta and X and Amazon and you tend to know where they are, they're reasonably public about where they're being constructed and what they're doing. Like the Stargate one in Michigan that they just broke ground on was like a huge event and we know who's going to be in there. But a lot of these smaller ones where they're kind of coming into a town, it's a developer that was like a set up through an LLC six months ago. They go to a town that's like 20,000 people, they make the entire city council sign NDAs and they start building. And every time I ask who the client is for this thing, no one knows the answer over and over again. And I think that's so interesting.

[Joseph]

I mean, do you think there is one or is it one of these speculative data centers?

[Matthew Galt]

I think this is. And again, this is just me. I don't know this for a fact. This is me intuiting. Based on having looked at all of this for a while, I think that there is a speculative construction boom on these buildings that a lot of these people are building them without having clients lined up. And I don't know like what happens in a year or two or three when a lot of these buildings are built. And maybe they don't have. They're expecting compute clients to show up and maybe they don't have that all lined up. The biggest one of these that I know about is in the one in Amarillo where they're gonna, the guy wants to build like the four Westinghouse nuclear reactors in the desert to power it. And again, that's one where like they don't have clients. And the guy, the guy, at least the guy building that one is like the people will come, it'll be fine. But, but yeah, a lot of these are being I think built on spec, which is crazy.

[Joseph]

Yeah, that's going to be interesting when. Look, I don't know if AI industry is going to crash, but for various other stories that we have coming in the week, there is, you know, some people are getting nervous about it and you know, who knows if this data center that's being built in this person's backyard is actually going to be there or be fruitful or be useful in any sort of capacity in the near future. Everybody definitely go read the article. Very much for the personal story of these people as well, because Matthew did a great job speaking to them. If you are listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are a paying for a four media subscriber, we're going to talk about the big Madison Square Garden hack. We've got a bunch of stories on that and some of us coming as well. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404 Media CA. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you do wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404 Media co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the Subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is produced by Alyssa Midcalf. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really, really does help us out or tell your friends or anyone about it. This has been 404 Media. We'll see you again next.

[Sam Cole]

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[Matthew Galt]

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