← The Times Tech Podcast
The Times Tech Podcast
Why the Pope is taking on Silicon Valley and AI
00:34:08
And why Anthropic has joined forces with the Catholic Church
Loading summary
Transcript72 lines
- [00:01]
Progressive/Aura Advertiser
From globalization to innovation sustainability to market volatility, there's always more than one side to a story. Explore different perspectives on today's most important business and economic issues with the Flipside podcast from Barclays Investment Bank. Hear two research analysts in a lively debate and get insights from every angle. To further inform your view. Listen to the Flipside on your favorite platform. Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why drivers have enjoyed Progressive's name your price tool for years now. With the name your price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool Progressive Casualty Insurance company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by State law Foreign.
- [01:03]
Danny Fortson
Welcome to the Times Tech Podcast where we unpack how technology is reshaping business, culture and everyday life. I am Danny Fortson out here in Silicon Valley. Katie isn't here this week, but stepping in is another brilliant member of the tech team here, my colleague Mark Selman, technology correspondent for the Times.
- [01:25]
Mark Selman
Hello. It's good to be back.
- [01:26]
Danny Fortson
It's great to have you. Good sir. Today we have a few light subjects. We're talking about the partnership in the world of Czech between Anthropic and the Catholic Church.
- [01:38]
Mark Selman
That's right. This week Pope Leo presented a major statement on AI at the Vatican alongside one of the co founders of the AI company Anthropic. And we'll be digging into what was said and why it matters.
- [01:52]
Danny Fortson
Plus we'll be talking about why social media is as dangerous to your kids, apparently as smoking or not wearing a seatbelt.
- [02:01]
Mark Selman
And later on we'll be hearing from the CEO of Proxima Fusion, a German startup trying to provide limitless clean energy by recreating the very same reaction that powers the sun. We'll find out how they do it and how far away this technology is from being a reality. But first, let's talk about that strange partnership between Silicon Valley and the Vatican.
- [02:26]
Danny Fortson
Yes, this does this gives you the real sense of like, you know, truth is stranger than fiction. So Pope Leo, who is the first head of the Catholic Church from America, has become the latest voice to join the debate over AI. And he's just released the first AI encyclical of his papacy, which is a major teaching document in which he has warned about the dangers of AI and what it poses to humanity if left unchecked. And speaking at a Vatican conference, he warned that AI risks becoming, in his words, a quote, instrument of domination, exclusion and death in the hands of big tech.
- [03:06]
Mark Selman
Okay, so it's about 42,000 words. Yes, it's about half a book. And you've got to sum it up for our listeners. Listeners in about 10 seconds.
- [03:15]
Danny Fortson
Yeah, we got about 10 minutes to do all that. No problem. First of all, Mark, I want you to be honest. Have you read it?
- [03:23]
Mark Selman
No. AI helped me read it for everyone. But I have to say, I didn't really have time to read 42,000 words. And this is exactly what AI was created for, surely.
- [03:34]
Danny Fortson
Indeed. There's almost an irony in what you just said. The framing he puts out is there's two examples. There's the Tower of Babel and then the Book of Nehemia about the rebuilding of the wall in Jerusalem. And the Tower of Babel is, in his estimation, what we don't want. It's this thing that was driven by hubris where all of these humans got together, tried to build this tower to the heavens and basically pushed God to one side and wanted to kind of show how kind of amazing and supreme humans were. Nehemia in this, in his other example, his walls destroyed and it is rebuilt by the community. Everybody coming together, taking a piece, and together they build this thing that benefits everyone. And he's like, these are our two options, right? And I think it's really interesting that he lays out these are our two options with this very, very powerful new technology and how are we going to go about it? And I will say, living here, out here in Silicon Valley on the west coast, it feels very bablish out here. But he also had an odd kind of bedfellow in rolling this out to the world, did he not?
- [04:50]
Mark Selman
Yeah, you've always got to have a tech founder beside you when you start essentially destroying the technology. But yeah, it was a very strange thing to have a co founder of the a AI company Anthropic there at the same time as denouncing the technology essentially and the way it's being built by a few companies.
- [05:13]
Danny Fortson
Yeah. So the person who was there is a guy called Christopher Ola who's a co founder of the AI company Anthropic. And he was at this event kind of sitting just a few seats down from the Pope and where the Pope is talking about like, look, this technology is being driven by effectively a handful of, of companies that are what he called, I think Transnational was The word he used that are basically more powerful than governments, which feels right. And he's kind of just raising all of the potential issues that comes along with that. And it was just quite extraordinary. These are strange times in which we live where you have a San Francisco AI developer, one of the founders, sitting three seats away from the Pope as he releases a book length warning about the technology that they are building. And I think it's worth saying that the Pope doesn't come off as like anti technology. He does lay out like this is can do amazing things, but he's also really warns about a few different things. One of them being like, this is not human. This is built to imitate humanity. But humanity is separate, apart and beautiful and should not be kind of shunted aside by this technology. In other words, don't effectively, don't put this technology that is built in our image above humanity itself.
- [06:41]
Mark Selman
Yeah, I mean you hear this criticism from people very much in the camp of criticizing social media and they've moved on to AI and the way they position AI as a technology that is essentially anti human. It is there to replace humans. And they and many others are very concerned about it and where it's leading us.
- [07:03]
Danny Fortson
He does talk also about jobs, which again, it's almost like it's a theological document, but it's also almost like a policy document around like what does this leave human work, human dignity. And those two are very linked. Right. And it made me think of when Eric Schmidt from Google was giving his commencement address at a big university here in the US and got booed off. He didn't get booed off stage, he got heavily booed as soon as he brought up the two words that everybody hates. Artificial intelligence. You have a bunch of 21, 22 year olds getting out to the world in this world where anthropic, who was sitting three seats away from the Pope has been saying, oh, we're gonna eliminate 50% of entry level white collar work very, very soon. This is gonna completely upend society. Get ready.
- [07:56]
Mark Selman
If you go through that document, it is like a shopping list of all the worries about AI from power, concentration, accountability, regulation, et. I think that's why obviously anthropic were there who have always been front footed when it comes to arguing for regulation, which obviously some say is good and some say is very self serving. And that argument will always continue when it comes to tech companies. But it also is part of this interesting part of the soap opera between the Pope and the Trump administration who have obviously been at odds and then You've got anthropic who's at odds with the Trump administration, and then suddenly anthropic turns up at the Vatican. And it's a very neat circle.
- [08:38]
Danny Fortson
The last thing this made me think of is I spent close to three weeks in the courtroom in Oakland this past month listening to Sam Altman and Elon Musk duke it out over the founding of OpenAI. And when Elon Musk was testifying, he talked about the origin of the story, how OpenAI came to be. And it was at his birthday party, he was talking to Larry Page from Google. And they got into this argument because Larry Page was, like, basically insultingly referred to Elon Musk as a speciesist. In other words, you're too worried about humans. They were talking about AI and how AI is going to be the greatest thing ever, and it's going to surpass us in every way possible. And Elon said basically, like, that's a little worrying, that vision of the world and. And your kind of values. At the heart of that is you kind of don't care what that means for humans. That was his view of what Larry Page was saying. And Page, in response, apparently said, well, you're just a speciesist. And he was like, yeah, I'm team human. But it just struck me that that kind of story about the founding of OpenAI, which, of course has kicked off this whole revolution, struck me as reading through this encyclical called Magnifica Humanitas about the kind of, let's not forget the humans here, because out here, there is this sense, almost religious, that we are entering this new age where the machines are smarter than all of us, where we are going to be effectively become pets to the machines. And this is the Pope being like, whoa. Even if these machines are truly capable, we have to really think hard about what we value here and how this is going to play out, because this could go very badly.
- [10:41]
Mark Selman
Yeah, I mean, look, the industry really does have to start really grappling with this potential backlash, because Pope is obviously extremely influential, more than a billion people. And if he's standing up and putting into an intellectually coherent way all the fears of all the critics across the world, that's not going to stop this backlash. That's just going to keep it going. And I think that the industry has not really come out with a coherent way to deal with the backlash, because obviously, most of the time it's like, yes, but we've got to save cancer. We are going to create new materials. We are going to have Great leaps forward in science, but that's a promise. And I think we are starting to see that the problems emerge, whether they're geopolitical or economic, in the labor market. And that comes before the promises.
- [11:42]
Danny Fortson
I mean, the marketing has been a masterclass in how not to do it. It's been stunningly bad. Silicon Valley tech companies are just like, don't worry, guys, it's all going to be wonderful. We're all heading toward this incredible age of abundance. But to get there, it's going to be really messy and you're all going to be put out of a job and it's going to completely upend society and it's going to make a whole small class of trillionaires, and all this economic value is going to be funneled to the controllers of these models, et cetera. But just like that, just to put a fine point on it, I think the four hyperscalers are set to spend something like a trillion dollars this year on data centers. So Anthropic's co founder can sit next to the Pope, but they're not slowing down. Right. They are accelerating at a pace that is unprecedented in the history of capitalism. If you look at what's happening with their sales. And so this train is gaining steam. Not losing steam. Yeah. And the stakes feel like they're getting higher. And Silicon Valley is just doing such a poor job of taking responsibility. And if, from my view, being thoughtful about how this is what this is going to mean out there in the
- [12:57]
Mark Selman
world, well, that does bring us on to the next story quite beautifully. Did anyone say social media?
- [13:04]
Danny Fortson
Yes, exactly.
- [13:05]
Mark Selman
Yeah. Because, you know, we're still dealing with the previous technology that. That looks like it's got out of hand. And that's really the conversation that we've been having in the UK this week.
- [13:17]
Danny Fortson
So what's been happening? I hear there is a report.
- [13:22]
Mark Selman
Yeah. So this is the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. They brought out a report that claims that medical professionals view the use of smartphones as on a par with not wearing a seatbelt in the car. And that report was essentially submitted to a government consultation on what to do with social media. And that finished this week. And it's really all part of the pressure on the Prime Minister and the government to act and deal with the effects and impacts of social media on kids. If you were to wind this back about six months, six to eight months ago, this government didn't really want to do. The Prime Minister was not really in favor of banning or a blanket ban on social media, but a Lot's happened since then. Obviously his authority has weakened. We've had a blanket ban introduced in Australia and there's been a very effective campaign both within Parliament and outside of Parliament for something to be done regulatory wise to deal with social media and kids. And so that's where we are. And in three weeks, two to three weeks time, we're expecting an announcement from the government explaining what they're going to do next and we're expecting some kind of ban.
- [14:40]
Danny Fortson
Is this report part of that consultation process? In other words, in the two to three weeks when we hear the final thumbs up, thumbs down from the government, this is part of that, kind of what's going into that process?
- [14:52]
Mark Selman
Yeah. So the government, when it has a planning on big laws like this, they have a public consultation. Now whether or not that is a genuine process or whether they just have to go through that is a matter of debate. But yeah, they have this national conversation. There's sort of up to 80,000 submissions. It's a massive project. But obviously politically they kind of have an idea of what they want to do. But this process is, you know, all the stakeholders, so to speak, you know, try to get their tuppenie hapenness worth and this was the medics doing it.
- [15:26]
Danny Fortson
I'm curious to get your sense of the vibes, so to speak, in the uk, but certainly out here it does feel like we had Biba and Kidron on I think last month or two months ago talking about this as well and she's been right on the forefront of it in the uk. Like it's like a switch has been flipped where it's like, you know, after years and years and years of like being like, it's not conclusive, there's not enough evidence, etc. Like it feels like one, the evidence is piling up. So that argument has been harder to make. And also lawmakers around the world have decided to like not wait around anymore for social media to effectively police itself in a real way. And so as you mentioned, you have what's happening in Australia. Australia, we talked about it before in the pod. I covered the, the first big social media trial in LA that was found against Meta and YouTube where they were found to, yes, you did create these addictive products. So after that LA case, you then you had this new federal case coming up where you had a school district in Kentucky saying, look, you ruined our kids. We've had to divert our very limited resources to mental health services and other things to deal with this kind of the fallout of social media all Four social media companies that were defendants in that case have all settled as well. So that snowball is very much rolling down the mountain.
- [16:50]
Mark Selman
A lot of this actually you can trace back to Jonathan Haidt's book. He's the social psychologist who wrote the Anxious Generation. You cannot underestimate the impact of that book on policymakers, on parents. And once that happens, the politics changes. When this becomes a popular measure, then guess what? Politicians there is prick up and they realize they've got to do something because hey, what, it's popular, it's a vote winner, and that's all. That's what happened in Australia. It was the wife of a premier in southern Australia read that book. She, you know, she tapped her husband on the shoulder, said, you got to do something. He brought in a law that was popular, and then the Prime Minister of the whole country acted, and guess what? It was done very quickly. So that is the dynamic at play here. And here we're talking, you know, we're slightly dancing on the head of a pin as to, you know, what kind of ban is an Australia style ban. Is it a ban, a conditional ban, basically, that says, hey, guess what, companies? Unless you make that product safe and get rid of all these algorithms and you know, auto scroll, et cetera, you won't be able to serve it to children, you won't be able to offer it to children. So that kind of ban, we think it's the latter, but we're not obviously 100% sure we went to here. But whether or not they're going to act the same way with AI, we don't know. But actually, interestingly, I think that some of the proposals that come out in a few weeks will be dealing with AI chatbots, because the government's been very worried as a lot of people individually about the impact of AI chatbots on kids and even adults. So that's where we're going anyway. Should we move on to our guest today? He is the CEO of Proxima Fusion, a German company attempting to provide Earth with limitless clean energy. The process they're trying to recreate is called nuclear fusion, and it's the same reaction that powers the sun. It involves heating plasma to more than a hundred million degrees.
- [18:50]
Danny Fortson
And that sounds very hard, but in this moment where we hear Elon Musk talking about putting data centers in space to solve this problem, perhaps this does actually make sense. But scientists all over the world have been trying to crack this problem for decades, and they hope it could eventually provide huge quantities of clean energy for the world. Because it doesn't rely on fossil fuels and produces no harmful greenhouse gases and very little nuclear waste. And it has nothing. It's very different from what you would expect or comes out of nuclear fission. But anyway. Proxima recently secured 400 million euros from the state of Bavaria and is seeking further investment of more than $1 billion as Europe tries to compete with the US and China in the race for fusion technology. Francesco Shortino, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the pod.
- [19:46]
Francesco Shortino
Very happy to be here.
- [19:48]
Danny Fortson
So, I have many questions for you. I don't know if there's a. If you've heard there's this thing called artificial intelligence that needs lots and lots and lots and lots of power.
- [19:56]
Francesco Shortino
Tell me about it.
- [19:58]
Danny Fortson
And fusion is one of these things. It's like. It's like the energy white whale, right? It's like it produces tons of continuous clean power. The only exhaust, if you will, is water, I believe, or something like that. Could you just explain what nuclear fusion is? I know this is basic, but can you explain what nuclear fusion is and where we are? Because this feels like this is a thing that we've been talking about and hoping for decades and just trying to understand where we are here in 2026.
- [20:29]
Francesco Shortino
As you said, it's the ultimate source of clean energy. And the right tense there is. It will be fantastic because we will make fusion energy quite not at the scales that are useful for commercial fusion production. The fusion concept, the fusion physical process, is nothing new. We've known it for more than 100 years. We can do it in the lab, but doing a little bit of it and making instead copious amounts of clean energy is a different level. So we've been chasing fusion for commercial civil energy production for 60, 70 years. And the UK has actually had a really big role in the history of fusion. There has been a pretty significant acceleration in the field in the last 20 years or so, and I think that has been really on the exponential side in the last two years. Especially in the domain where Proxima operates, there's been more progress than in the previous 20 years, quite objectively. And this is happening across a number of topics in fusion because of computation, better electronics, much stronger magnets, so there are a number of tailwinds. Artificial intelligence is one of those. So in some sense there is a coupling of AI and fusion, where AI is helping us to get to fusion much faster. But you also need fusion, supposedly to feed the AI at some point. It's pretty hard to imagine a future of humanity where There is growth in the sense that we want to see it that does not involve clean baseload energy from fusion. Of course, fusion needs to be not just clean, but also commercially viable. And that's the ultimate challenge of fusion, which every private fusion company is pursuing. There is a zoo of concepts in fusion.
- [22:11]
Danny Fortson
A zoo of concepts. I love that.
- [22:13]
Francesco Shortino
Yeah, you could say so. Yeah. So fusion is, you know, it's not a technology. Fusion is a physical process. And how you implement that process and you make a power plant out of it is a wide field.
- [22:23]
Danny Fortson
So just people understand, I think. And you can correct me while I'm wrong because I'm not a science reporter. You're effectively recreating the process of the sun on Earth and doing it kind of enclosed environment. So you're creating a reaction that will generate something like 150 million, 200 million degrees. Is it Fahrenheit or Celsius?
- [22:49]
Francesco Shortino
It's about Celsius or Kelvin. At the end of the day, what's important is that they're really high temperatures. We're looking at 10 times the center of the sun.
- [22:57]
Danny Fortson
Yes, exactly. It reminds me of my kids when they ever say like, what would happen if whatever you fired a rocket into the sun and be like it would melt. It was like it would melt everything. Right. So it feels like the kind of the challenge is creating something that's 200 million degrees or whatever the number is in a way that doesn't destroy everything around it. Is that basically how to sum it up?
- [23:18]
Francesco Shortino
Yeah, in some of the ways in which we are targeting to make commercial fusion. We are trying to confine the hot ionized matter in a cage of some sort. That's what Proxima does. We create a magnetic field cage. And that cage basically suspending this hot matter away from any material. We use magnetic fields to confine and hold this hot stuff in a stable way for as long as we want it.
- [23:44]
Danny Fortson
Using the very powerful magnets to effectively suspend it.
- [23:47]
Francesco Shortino
That's right. So the magnet technology is one of the key enablers and one of the things that has been accelerating massively in the past few years. The other one is really computational simulation and optimization. So the ability to design these complex donor shaped devices with all these twisty magnets that, you know, we started using supercomputing to design accelerators in the 80s 90s, but the computing of that time was so and so, let's say compared to what we have today. So AI, you know, it's accelerating the way we design because we design also through code and the acceleration of code you, you know very well is something spectacular these days. But AI is also helping us explore geometries. If you look at what a stellarator is, so this DONNA shaped device with twisty shapes, a lot of the complexity is in the integrated geometries. So the design just being very complex for a human brain to really capture in all its consequences. It turns out that an AI is pretty good at doing that.
- [24:49]
Mark Selman
If everything goes right with this, the science of this, can you just explain what the end game benefit will be for everyday people in the UK, in Europe, America, etc. And when that would happen?
- [25:04]
Francesco Shortino
So first, the actual objective is to create clean, baseload, safe energy. And I specify the baseload bit because the fact that it's clean and safe, I think everyone understands. But it's important to understand the place of fusion in a complex clean energy system. The target of a company like Proxima is not to do 100% of the energy supply of humanity. That's a silly kind of objective reality is a lot more complex in energy. You want systems to balance each other and to complement each other in different geographies, different supply chains, different geopolitical conditions. So fusion I believe will take 25% to the grid, give or take. And then the citizen will benefit from fusion, not because they have a fusion reactor in the garden, but because the grid has been balanced by that clean baseload, which needs to be cheap enough that the entire energy system overall is balanced at a lower price. So the UK citizens, like the European one, but more broadly, and humanity just generally needs more energy. Okay, humanity, the wealth of the people scales with the amount of energy that they can access. That's well known. Increasing efficiency of energy consumption, it's great. It won't really get us to the next era of civilization. Fusion will, because fusion can increase the overall amount of energy that humans can access.
- [26:29]
Danny Fortson
It's interesting, you talk about like how these AI models are actually helping you move forward in the field. And we're always hearing in this very strange age of AI in which we find ourselves like, oh, we're going to sort climate change, we're going to cure cancer, we're going to live forever. So do you think nuclear fusion is going to, when we look back, it'll be one of those things that was helped, quote, unquote, get solved by AI.
- [26:56]
Francesco Shortino
So for us, AI has to do with figuring out better systems that are manufacturable. It has to do with basically saving time in the R and D process. We cannot build that many stellarators. So we need to advance our modeling tools so that we can iterate in code. You can only iterate in code if your models have been validated in experiments. The truth is that when you. When you go into one of these transformative challenges, you just don't know how long it's going to take. You have a fantastic roadmap, and after five years you're like, ah, little did I know. How naive. Because the challenges you ended up actually dealing with are always somewhat different. But if you have enough tailwinds, every time you discover that something is harder, you happen to also have moved in hopefully the right direction much faster than you had anticipated. And it's the balance of those two things that I think will bring new materials, will bring fusion, will bring better rockets, quantum computers, much faster. Now, it's unlikely, in my opinion, that we will get all of those things to humanity within the next decade. Life is a lot more nuanced when you get to hardware rather than just software systems. The time to pour concrete and to do steel processing. A sort of limits to how fast we can deploy these things. So it does take us, an intelligent investor and a committed government, to understand where these AI tailwinds actually lead. How do we deviate from the narrative of fluff of AI? AI is going to change everything. AGI comes and it's going to be robots all over the streets all of a sudden. That's not the world as I see it. I think that world is coming, but it's not. It's not in three years, it's not in five years. AGI may be sooner rather than later, but then how will it impact hardware like fusion? That's for companies like Proxima to determine.
- [28:50]
Danny Fortson
Can I ask how old you are, Francesco?
- [28:52]
Francesco Shortino
Yes, I'm 33.
- [28:53]
Danny Fortson
Let's say we're still retiring at 65. Do you think the world will be awash in nuclear fusion reactors by the time you retire?
- [29:05]
Francesco Shortino
I will be by mid of my career in a phase where I cannot build fusion reactors fast enough. And I will die without being able to build fusion reactors fast enough. We will just not be able to deploy fast enough because we would be limited by the amount of steel. We'll be limited by the speed at which we can pour concrete.
- [29:25]
Danny Fortson
But the science is sorted.
- [29:26]
Francesco Shortino
We have a clear scientific basis. Science is sorted is something that you will never hear a physicist agree to. It is a meaningless sentence. But having a clear scientific basis, that's a much clearer statement that I can stand by.
- [29:40]
Mark Selman
If steel and concrete are the constraints and building is the constraint. It does feel like eventually China will win this race in the sense that they are very good at building plants, railways, et cetera, et cetera. Whereas obviously we are a little more constrained in uk, Europe and the west by various factors.
- [30:02]
Francesco Shortino
We are more constrained. But I think to abandon this idea that Europeans don't know how to manufacture. We do plenty of manufacturing. In fact, we do a whole lot more manufacturing than the United States for sure. And compared to China, China has perfectioned the art of doing high volume, relatively low cost things and certainly they have an advantage in large scale manufacturing now. Good news is for the foreseeable future I would love to tell you that we are going to be constrained by high volume of Stellareto production. That's not the problem that I have in the next five years, nor 10, nor 15. Let me deal with it when I get there. What I'm concerned about right now is making magnets that are powerful enough and that I can make fast enough. This is stuff that you can do in Europe much better than anywhere else. I believe that there will be a future where fusion is going to be so geopolitical that there will be a fusion champion in the United States, fusion champion in China, and a fusion champion in Europe. So the thought that we give up this to whoever gets there first just doesn't hold up to logic.
- [31:11]
Parloa Advertiser
Nothing tests my patience quite like sitting on hold listening to the same four bars of music on repeat. It turns out all that time adds up. The average person spends over 40 days listening to that dreaded hold music.
- [31:25]
Danny Fortson
40 days.
- [31:27]
Parloa Advertiser
And this episode is sponsored by Paloa, the AI platform built to make that a thing of the past. Paloa's AI agents are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, fluent in any language, and smart enough to remember every customer across every interaction because no one should have to explain themselves twice.
- [31:46]
Danny Fortson
From payment processing to roadside assistance, flight rebookings to appointment scheduling, Parloa delivers the kind of customer experience that turns a one time buyer into a customer for life.
- [31:58]
Parloa Advertiser
See Parloa's AI agents in action@parloa.com that's P A R L O A.com
- [32:08]
Progressive/Aura Advertiser
you're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12 month savings by $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary. Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam, call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance. All backed by 24, 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price. Competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com safety. Protect yourself now at aura.com safety.
- [34:00]
Danny Fortson
So Mark, you're a tech guy. What do you think of our fusion powered future?
- [34:07]
Mark Selman
Well, it does feel like a long way off. I have to say. The thing that really surprised me was that he said end game, 25% of our renewable power needs. And I expected him to say more not knowing a huge amount about the roadmap of the industry. So I think that was interesting to me and obviously given the challenges he talked about with regards to actually construction and all the kind of the building stuff rather than the physics side of things. I think that was also a surprise to me because I thought once you get this, you know, once you get through the science, then the rest of it will be easy. But actually it does collide with the real world.
- [34:49]
Danny Fortson
It reminds me a little bit of like quantum computing. And I know quantum computing is apparently much closer than it has ever been, et cetera, but and I've said it before in the bot, it's like that feels like something that's five years away from being five years away. This feels like it's like 10 years away from being 10 years away. But you know, it's a huge prize if they can figure it out, but it just sounds 100 million degrees. I don't even know what that. I can't even conceptualize that it's like that amount of heat. I don't understand how you can create anything ever that will control that. Right. And obviously it's a very, very hard scientific problem to sort out.
- [35:28]
Mark Selman
I think that that is part of the attraction of the story is this incredible scientific physics experiment that's playing out before our eyes that's got out of the lab and into semi production, you would call it.
- [35:43]
Danny Fortson
Yeah. And what is interesting is that fusion is having this moment and we talked about it a little bit with him, but there's been several startups who've raised billions of dollars and the one that I knew best and I've written about in the past is Helion, which is funded by Sam Altman. Sam Altman has put personally his own money, $375 million into it. And Francesco not talking out of school because he said, he's said it before, he's a bit skeptical of some of their claims or whatever it may be. It's kind of inside baseball fusion stuff. But it does, it is interesting in the Sam Altman angle of just like, you know, you're creating this demand through one invention, AI, and here's your solution. This other thing you're backing which is like, you know, endless clean power, but it just feels so, so far away. And I know that Francesco is a scientist and he's very excited, but you know, science at this scale, at this type of complexity just takes. It's a lot.
- [36:44]
Mark Selman
It's interesting to see the models as well playing out again, which is the US venture backed, big money, big claims. Europe more institute driven, that gets spin outs from that with a bit of government funding. And then China obviously much more state driven and you see this replication all over again. But he was pretty bullish about the European, European side. I think it's quite nice to have that given, given where we are in geopolitics. It's like we had to blow the whistle, you know, if we are still a part of Europe, obviously. Danny, I'm not.
- [37:16]
Danny Fortson
Indeed. Indeed. Well, look, so that was. I think that's it for this week's episode. Thank you, Mark, as ever, for standing in so ably for Katie as I think she must be swanning around somewhere. I don't know what she's doing. But if you did enjoy the show, please drop us a line to let
- [37:36]
Mark Selman
us know and we'd love to know your thoughts on today's discussion. You can email us@techpodimes.co.uk.
- [37:44]
Danny Fortson
thank you as ever for listening. Bye bye.
- [37:47]
Mark Selman
Bye bye.
- [37:53]
Progressive/Aura Advertiser
You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings by $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, Dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24. 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today@aura.com safety protect yourself now@aura.com safety.