10/2/25: Trump Cuts Blue State Funding, Job Losses As Gov Shuts Down, Data Centers Surge Electricity Prices

12:14Krystal Ball:And I think we can put up a six as well, because this goes to it as reporting from Capitol Hill saying that a gang of moderates in both parties, they're starting the old old the age old gang process in search of a deal centered on ACA subsidies. What this means basically is that you'll get enough Democrats sitting down in a room with enough Republicans that if they all agree, they can no matter what the leaderships want to do, they can they can break the logjam. And so I think it I think this is where it heads, because from Democrats perspective, the base and Schumer, they just want to show that they put up a fight.

12:54Krystal Ball:And now they've kind of showed that. and if they can get something then they can move on and say we're gonna fight fight on this another day schumer's strategy here is very clear and i get it like he's he in january uh you and i'm talking about all of you and particularly soccer are gonna you know get hit with the if you're on the exchanges which is about 20 million people yes the subsidies go away and boom all of a sudden your affordable payment for the affordable care act is now deeply not that affordable by the way But it's more affordable than when they strip the subsidies away. And Democrats want the public to know why that happened.

13:33Krystal Ball:And they're hoping that this big storm that they're creating now will then remind people, okay. So they're hoping, I think, that they make enough of a storm. And then once you've done that, you've kind of scratched all the different itches. You still have this fundamental philosophical question that actually, speaking of AOC, goes back to her debate with Joe Crowley, where she had gotten Crowley to say that ICE is fascist. And then she'd be like, but then why would you vote to fund a fascist agency? It's like when, that's why a lot of politicians don't want to call what's happening in Gaza genocide.

14:09Krystal Ball:Because once you call it a genocide, on what planet can you fund a genocide? On what planet can you fund a fascist agency? So Democrats have said, this is an authoritarian crackdown. This is the end of the American Republic. Oh, and here we're going to fund it. But that is just a— That's what they did earlier, right? I get it. So they have to do something.

14:30Saagar Enjeti:But then doesn't it seem as if shutting it down for messaging purposes only to cave in a couple of days, isn't that worse, right? And how would Schumer and Jeffries and them handle it? So again, to explain just a little bit to people, the House bill has already passed, right? You only need a couple of senators to buckle and to just vote for the, quote, clean CR or whatever to go through, and then you're done. And so the majority of the Democrats could stand against the bill. But if a couple of the, quote, moderates do, well, you still lost. And that's going to affect the national party at a major level.

15:01Krystal Ball:And maybe they get it. And it'll be interesting to see how they work the details out. Because, yeah, you can make a deal around the subsidies, pass a clean CR, and then try to implement it in the next thing. Then you're at the whim of Republicans again. So really you have to get it passed. But then it then Johnson and Republicans in the House would have to then agree to it, which goes back to a question I've been wondering from the GOP perspective. Why fight this, actually? Well, they don't care about deficits anymore. But why not just say, OK, fine, you know what? These subsidies going away would suck for us in an election year anyway.

15:34Krystal Ball:Fine. Keep them.

15:35Saagar Enjeti:Yeah. You know, because I wonder how much of this about health care and how much is about the executive just basically doing backflips on, hey, we've been wanting this. They're like, we want the OMB director, for example, I can read this just this morning. There's a new Trump truth quote. I have a meeting today with Russ Vogt of Project 2025 fame to determine which of which, by the way, hilarious, because now now Project 20.

15:57Krystal Ball:Because he said I have nothing to do with Project 2025.

16:00Saagar Enjeti:I'll fire anybody who has anything to do with Project 25. Anyway, whatever. To determine which of the many Democratic agencies, most of which are a political scam he recommends to be cut and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent. I can't believe the radical left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity. They are not stupid people. So maybe this is their way of wanting to quietly and quickly make America great again. I mean, he's kind of correct, right, in terms of they knew that this was the likely outcome. The Democratic response I have seen is if you look at Russ Vogt's tweet on New York City, it has nothing to do with the shutdown.

16:34Saagar Enjeti:He said it was about DEI. So the point that I've seen the base and them make is, guys, they're going to cut funding whether there's a shutdown or not. So who cares? Why should we buckle to this? I just personally think that they can't sit by for that long and let the government just cut whatever agency or whatever people put entirely on furlough. In particular, if you see a straight-up targeting of all democratic states and of their funding, how long are they really going to go with it? before some mealy-mouthed Nevada Democrat is going to be coming and voting for the CR. I could see that happening very quickly.

17:12Krystal Ball:It could. It could, for sure. But yes, Democrats also do have that point that Russ Vot's going to do this stuff anyway. Right. So the threats and the... He's probably going to do more with the shutdown. But yeah. Democrats, when you lose power, Your left would like bad and even worse.

17:34Saagar Enjeti:Elections have consequences, as Obama famously said. I do wonder here, with the shutdown again, how the Democratic base is feeling. Because something that is mystifying to me is, if you recall in 2013, the shutdown was the biggest story in the world. It was everywhere. I was going to college here in Washington. But the Obama administration made sure that you knew about the shutdown. Like they had – I remember even in the place where I would walk sometimes, which is near my university, was technically National Park grounds. And there was a big sign over. It was like, this place is shut – you could still walk there.

18:10Saagar Enjeti:But it's like it's shut down because of the shutdown. The Trump administration is doing some of that. But the Republicans also, their full media, Fox News, the radio stations, everybody was mobilized. This seems weirdly like a low-key shutdown almost. Like do the Democratic base feel the responsiveness here? Because I haven't seen that quite yet in terms of their media, in terms of maybe like their feeling as if they're being responded to. And that feels relevant as we transition to the next part about how the Democrats themselves are kind of handling the shutdown.

18:41Krystal Ball:Yeah. And while you were in college, I was actually on pool duty with Obama. Oh, wow. That was going on. I remember sprinting up the Lincoln Memorial steps. Yes. Because he went up and did an event at the very top of the Lincoln Memorial steps. I beat all the rest of the pool reporters. They were totally out of shape. That's a good feeling. Yes. And Obama was in much better shape than all of us combined. And yeah, it was a huge deal. I think that there's a boredom with 20 years at this point almost of Washington doing shutdown drama, fiscal cliff drama, the debt ceiling drama, super committees.

19:23Krystal Ball:He's like, and it all adds up to just blips for people. Like there's some for hundreds of thousands of like individuals who work for the federal government, certainly. It's impactful. But for the 300 plus million people in the country, we're just kind of bored of like all of this. But that is a recipe oftentimes for catastrophe because eventually the wolf does show up. Yeah. even if you have been crying wolf a while. People kind of learn the wrong lesson from that fairy tale sometimes or whatever you would call it. It's like, yes, you shouldn't cry wolf, but also there are wolves.

20:08Ryan Grim:This is Ryder Strong and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody. There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened.

20:47Ryan Grim:Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of bitches to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week, we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step.

21:27Ryan Grim:And we're not just lawyers, we're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy?

21:46Saagar Enjeti:Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been.

21:49Ryan Grim:Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? played poker with Harry Truman, and had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film.

22:21Ryan Grim:How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

22:40Saagar Enjeti:This is again kind of to the messaging battle is, again, look, I'm biased, so it's my own personal. But I mean, you have to be honest, like the way that the Trump administration has been handling this, even if you hate the way they're doing it, it's effective. Like every government agency, if you go to their website has a thing at the top. It's like the Democrats, the radical left Democrats shut down the government.

23:00Krystal Ball:They figured out they don't have to follow the law on politically weaponizing the government.

23:02Saagar Enjeti:Who cares? What are they going to do? Oh, you're going to sue them over the Hatch Act violation or whatever? Good luck, right? You know, that seems like quaint in our current politics. And from the Democratic side, like we have Hakeem Jeffries, we have Chuck Schumer. It just, to me, is lame. Like the way that, it just doesn't seem legitimate. It doesn't seem as if they really believe in the fight. And especially when you have multiple Democratic senators who already kind of voted for it, you're like, okay, what are we really doing here? And so our team helped me decipher this new TikTok Democratic meme that was posted by the Democratic Party of a kitty explaining the government shutdown Let's take a listen.

24:08Saagar Enjeti:is about Kitty explains boyfriend to girlfriend, not technically about the government shutdown. I don't know about this. I mean, look, maybe the point about unified government is always one that does hit with the American people, right? Is they're like, hey, you have the House, the Senate, and the White House, and so you guys still can't fund the government. It's like, well, you know, there is the filibuster, which, you know, the Republicans still, I guess, do believe in. Both kind of bases probably would be fine with nuking the filibuster. So technically, you know, if they really wanted to, they could nuke the filibuster.

24:36Saagar Enjeti:And then they could just fund the government, but that doesn't seem like something that they want to do. But more broadly, Ryan, this kind of gets to the shutdown wars and some more establishment voices in D.C. voicing against Democratic embrace of the shutdown. Let's put A8, please, up on the screen. I'm very curious for what you think. So Washington Post, editorial board, you know, one of the classic people used to care, but nobody really cares anymore. Still has some voice in Washington. quote, the Democrats marched into a shutdown trap. They say progressive Democrats, like the Freedom Caucus, are urging their party in a dangerous direction.

25:13Saagar Enjeti:And so what they say is that the Democratic Party shut off any potential escape valve to avoid a shutdown. In doing so, progressives embraced the same disastrous mentality that led the House Freedom Caucus to believe it could come out ahead in previous government funding shutdowns. They strongly assumed, they wrongly assumed their political leverage would withstand the ensuing fallout. Left-wing Democrats like the Freedom Caucus before them enter the shutdown in a position of weakness. They point to the Trump administration saying that they're going to do whatever they want. And they also point specifically to how in their telling, the previous Republican shutdowns, quote, failed to achieve Republican goals every time.

25:51Saagar Enjeti:Do you think that that's true or not? Because I don't think it's necessarily true that the Freedom Caucus didn't achieve their goals. I think they vastly achieved their goals.

25:59Krystal Ball:In a significant way they achieved their goals, particularly when it comes to leveling off government spending starting in like after 2011, which actually slowed the recovery.

26:14Saagar Enjeti:We had sequestration.

26:15Krystal Ball:It got sequestration out of it. And I think without that, they don't win the Senate in 2014. And if you don't win the Senate in 2014, Merrick Garland is a Supreme Court justice. Yeah. And our entire world looks different than it does now. So and I think without actually without what the Freedom Caucus accomplished in slowing the economy and slowing the recovery in those four or five years, you don't even get Trump winning in 2016 because it was such a close election. And people were frustrated at the very slow recovery from the financial crisis. So, you know, they actually got there. They got they didn't get everything they wanted by any remote stretch of the imagination.

26:54Krystal Ball:And we now have, what, 30 plus trillion dollars in debt. So like from their perspective, they were like, well, we totally failed. But, you know, it's marginally they actually did bring about four or five years of austerity with a Democrat in the White House, which was to their political benefit.

27:11Saagar Enjeti:And I would flip it, too, and say, did they really care about austerity? Obviously not. What they cared about was the exercise of power in and of itself. Right. And what they showed is that some 15 to 30 people actually could wield immense amounts of power relative to everybody else in the government. It's almost like a tyranny of the minority part where as long as you're together and you're in lockstep that the rest of the group is going to have to adapt itself to whoever you are. This is part of the problem though with the Democratic Party. Again, I think in my opinion is that by kind of lamely talking about ACA – and again, I don't even think really authentically because the truth is that the Democrats just wanted to shut down period.

27:48Saagar Enjeti:Like if you listen and they cite comments from Greg Cesar and others, they're like, it's not about ACA. They were like, we hate Trump. right they're like well we think what trump is doing so horrible we're not going to fund it period right we're going to make his life hell uh it's a question mark of whether they are making their life hell but it's the only thing that we have so we might as well do it and i think that that has a lot of currency but without any uptick and constant browbeat of a lot of the people who are the democratic party faithful accepting that message then you do kind of find yourself in a weird position where if you look at chuck schumer he's not taking what i originally said the smartest thing Mitch McConnell ever said in 2009 was our job is just make sure the president doesn't get reelected, period.

28:27Saagar Enjeti:All right. I was like, they were like, oh, are you going to work with Obama? He's like, no. He's like, that's, we have one job. Make sure that he does not succeed, period. And everyone was shocked by that. It was actually the most honest thing a politician has said in years because he's like, yo, you think we're going to negotiate in good faith? Absolutely not. He's like, we're here to make, to make shit miserable for Obama. And he succeeded 100%. So the point is, though, on the Democratic side, you don't see that level of fight and of energy. And look, McConnell became hated many years later, but he was a hero, right?

29:00Saagar Enjeti:He was a absolute Tea Party Freedom Caucus hero there for some time. Obviously, there were a lot of fights in particular, but Paul Ryan became the House Speaker as a result of this, and he was seen as a credible person who could replace Boehner. So to me, that's where, no, the shutdown politics actually did work in terms of look at the Republican stars of that period. Every single one of them remains prominent to today. Ted Cruz, you could say a lot. Yes, he failed to achieve the Republican nomination. He came in second, okay? Yeah, he got second in the Republican primary in 2016. That's nothing to sneeze at.

29:33Saagar Enjeti:He had real popular currency. If you're a Democrat and you want to be taken seriously, you do need to mount a credible fight against Trump if that's where your party base is. So that's where I feel like the Washington Post is almost being too cute by saying their actual political ends. Their political ends are not about the ACA. That's probably not going to happen. I mean, maybe it will. It'd be great for me if it did and for everybody else. But I don't think that that's the ultimate point of the shutdown itself. And that's why I've seen some more establishment liberals and others being like, guys, this is a bad idea.

30:05Saagar Enjeti:Trump is just going to use it as an excuse. And it's like, yeah, but he's doing that anyway. So why not? It just seems like a Hail Mary approach to government. But I know you have some more mixed thoughts on it.

30:13Krystal Ball:No, no, I think that's about right. The one final point I would have on this is that I was talking to somebody last night who spends a lot of time in China. And they were telling me about all the different projects that they've got going on trying to figure out ways to repurpose waste removal. and all that, like confronting all of the difficult challenges of contemporary life and trying to like move forward in ways that can like make everybody's life better. And it just reminded me of like just how existentially kind of dead and boring our own politics is. Hey, listen, what are we doing here? Like, are we going to keep the government open or not?

30:53Krystal Ball:And why? Is there any effort by any party to actually grapple with the problems that are confronting contemporary society? I don't see it. No, I don't see it either.

31:05Saagar Enjeti:I mean, we're going to talk. What are we doing? We're going to talk in our store block about these data centers and rising electricity prices. Everyone's like, oh, just got to take it. Oh, okay.

31:13Krystal Ball:It just feels like a hollow death spiral. And here we are just like riding it on the way down. Inspiring stuff. Is it good that they do it? Is it bad that they do it? I don't know. We're all just circling the drain.

31:28Saagar Enjeti:Listen, I'm with you. Chinese century it is. I might as well embrace it. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea.

31:42Ryan Grim:In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So no, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody. There were years, right, where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can, to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years.

32:18Ryan Grim:I'll teach you sons of bitches to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers. We're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes.

32:56Ryan Grim:Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy?

33:10Saagar Enjeti:Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been.

33:13Ryan Grim:Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's, played poker with Harry Truman, and had a long affair with a congresswoman? And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film.

33:45Ryan Grim:How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

34:05Saagar Enjeti:Okay, let's go ahead to the next part here on the economy. as you were saying about death spirals and all that. We may not even know if we're in a death spiral apparently. So let's go and put this up here on the screen about some of the key economic data that will be suspended during a government shutdown. The jobless claims from the Labor Department will likely not be released. Non-farm payrolls by the BLS will not be released. The CPI and the PPI, the Consumer Price Index and the Pursuit Producer Price Index, key inflation indicators from the BLS will likely not be released, retail sales, factory orders, housing starts, trade data from the Census and the Bureau of Economic Affairs, the Employment Trends Index from the Conference Board, the GDP data, new home sales and construction permits from the Census Bureau, export and import trade data from Census and Commerce.

34:52Saagar Enjeti:And they say, quote, the next Fed meeting is four weeks away. We're entering a data freeze. So historically, the Fed would shift more dovish on average during U.S. government shutdown, which maybe that might be a blessing in disguise, right? The Fed would become a little bit more dovish.

35:08Krystal Ball:A source of mine at BLS said that one BLS official is listed as essential.

35:14Saagar Enjeti:Wow. That's it?

35:15Krystal Ball:Yes. Out of about 2 ,000 people.

35:17Saagar Enjeti:Should we explain the essential thing for people, for non-Washington people? Yeah, yeah.

35:20Krystal Ball:So if you're deemed to be an essential employee, then you have to keep working. It doesn't mean you get paid. Right.

35:26Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, no one's getting paid.

35:27Krystal Ball:Right. But you do have to keep working. But you have to keep working.

35:30Saagar Enjeti:Yeah.

35:30Krystal Ball:So there's one dude, And it's not apparently, I guess, the guy who just got fired. We'll talk about him in a second. One dude or woman who is deemed to be essential. Somebody's got to make sure you run that coffee maker so it doesn't get moldy or whatever. That's essential. And so the BLS every day, it's thousands of employees are collecting and analyzing data from businesses and other entities around the country. Like, this data does not just appear out of nowhere. Like, it has to be produced. It has to be found. So, like, these employees are on the phone calling businesses. Because if you're a business, you think your top priority is calling BLS back and telling them, like, how many employees you have this month.

36:16Saagar Enjeti:No, I've shared this before. Breaking Points was recently selected for, like, the whatever survey. It was so annoying to fill out that survey. The only reason that we did it is because they were like, you will be punished if you do not fill out this survey. I was like, all right, I guess. It just goes two hours of my life. You know, go on.

36:33Krystal Ball:Right. And so it's a bunch of bureaucrats' job to make sure Sagar fills that paperwork out.

36:38Saagar Enjeti:And Sagar does not want to fill out that paperwork. No, I didn't want to. I even asked the accountants. I go, do I have to do this? They're like, yeah, you have to do it. And I was like, okay, fine.

36:45Krystal Ball:And so now they're not going to be harassing you. And so you can be like, you know what? I'm not filling that paperwork out. And so we'll be flying blind into the Fed meeting and elsewhere. Because once they come back, then recollecting, getting it started is a lot harder. And the accuracy, you know, Trump was very frustrated by all the revisions. Can you imagine what kind of revisions we're going to be looking at for these coming months?

37:11Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, government shutdowns always cause just kind of crazy disruptions in service. And, you know, exactly. Anyways, and also, by the way, that's why the market usually reacts negatively. Although yesterday, for some reason, the stock still went green. We'll talk about that with the AI block as to what's actually driving the economy. But we had some very limited data before the government shutdown we can share with you. Let's put this up here on the screen. This was from ADP. They say, quote, that the U.S. lost some 32 ,000 jobs in September, says ADP payroll processor. That is down from a revised loss of 3 ,000 in August.

37:44Saagar Enjeti:Economists had expected an increase of 45 ,000. So the ADP does not include government workers, but they say that they have to give it a closer look. this month because the BLS data is going to be delayed because of the government shutdown. So we are kind of flying blind. As you just said, they say, quote, the surprise job loss in September is the latest sign the labor market is weakening. Job growth has slowed to a trickle this year, even as the unemployment rate has mostly held steady. Federal Reserve last month lowered short term interest rates by quarter point and signaled more cuts are likely, citing weak hiring specifically like this.

38:17Saagar Enjeti:And they say that the leisure and hospitality sector shed some 19 ,000 jobs last month, which was the largest decline among major sectors. Education, health services were still bright spots with a collective gain of 33 ,000. So I think the fact that the leisure and hospitality industry is the one that's getting the most hit, that reminds me a lot of COVID and of 09. Now, it's not in any way comparable to 32 ,000. But the point is when consumer spending starts to soften, And what's the first thing that goes? Flights, hotels, travel, things like that. And if you have that on top of a government shutdown, why does the shutdown matter?

38:53Saagar Enjeti:Well, remember, the federal government is the largest employer in the United States. You know, 2 million people work for the federal government. So let's say that this thing, the last one dragged 35 months. We were doing it. 35 days. Sorry. 35 months. Can you imagine? 35 days. We were trying to do the math on a number of mispay periods, but that's a lot of money. I mean the average margin for the median household income is somewhere between$500 to$1 ,000 for an emergency. So to miss pay periods, you're really starting to cut into credit card debt and to some other issues. I mean we could put the morality or whatever of that aside and say economically that's usually not good.

39:29Saagar Enjeti:That means it's like, OK, we're not eating out. We're not buying the gas. We're making like putting most stuff on a credit card, hoping that stuff eventually – we do get paid. We can back pay our mortgage, our rent, et cetera. So that's a difficult situation.

39:43Krystal Ball:Yeah, right. We're not going to fly anywhere in the fall.

39:45Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, we're definitely not going. We're not going anywhere for Thanksgiving, right? You know, things like Thanksgiving. I mean, I believe Thanksgiving Sunday is like the biggest travel day of the entire year.

39:54Krystal Ball:So tens of millions of people take to the air. And a lot of those people had miserable flights last time. Yeah. So I'm like, you know what? Maybe we're just not going to fly.

40:01Saagar Enjeti:Some of us were there too. Maybe we're not going to fly this year.

40:03Krystal Ball:We'll just, whoever lives close enough to drive together, we'll celebrate with that. And this difficult time is coming as people are stretched ever tighter because of the increase in energy costs and grocery bills and interest rates and housing prices. Like, it's just tougher out there than it was five years ago. And so people have, I think, a little bit less breathing room going this time. But also, Trump's global, whatever you would call it, a global trade war and like attack on Canada in particular has really dragged down tourism from Canada and tourism from everywhere around the world.

40:50Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, I heard this is screwing Vegas. So first of all, I had no idea.

40:54Krystal Ball:Now LA too. Really? Yeah.

40:56Saagar Enjeti:What's up with those Canadians going to Vegas?

40:57Krystal Ball:Canadians love Vegas and they love all of you. That's an indictment of Canada, by the way. You've been to Canada, right? Yeah. You want to stay in Canada all the time? No. Okay, exactly. I'm not Canadian. Closest country, United States. And so they come down here in droves. They go to Florida. They go to Outer Banks. They go to Vegas. They go to LA.

41:18Saagar Enjeti:They're snowbirds. Yes, of course. It's miserable. That makes sense. Yeah.

41:22Krystal Ball:And so if you're in Canada, wouldn't you rather be in LA? Sure. Yeah, definitely. Instead, the Canadians are like, you know what? Screw it. We're not going to LA. so where are they going a lot of them staying home and then i think they're going to europe i don't know what else they're doing it's a good that is that's a good question maybe they're going to mexico just that would actually be flying right over well i'll actually make some calls to like the canadian tourism places i would love where are the canadians yeah because they're not coming here and it's killing you know our tourism industry i knew that about because i've i've seen

41:54Saagar Enjeti:some vegas stuff coming out and be like oh my god vegas screwed poor vegas just one hit after another. I was like, really? Like Canada, that relying on Vegas. Interesting. All right, let's continue to on this, you know, on this train with the BLS news that we could share with all of you. Let's put it up here on the screen. So you'll all recall the BLS commissioner was fired after a revision happened because Trump didn't like the revision. And so Trump nominated EJ and Tony previously of the Heritage Foundation to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Well, it turns out that his nomination has now been pulled from the BLS before the United States Senate to be confirmed.

42:33Saagar Enjeti:The, quote, White House official declined to say the reasons for withdrawing the nomination, only to say that he was a talented economist and President Trump plans to announce a new nominee soon. So, Ryan, as you and I know here in Washington, what this means is that not one senator, not two, but four Republicans came to the White House and they're like, hey, this is not happening, period. And so usually what happens then is the White House gets to save face and withdraw and no Republican senator has to come out publicly and say I was not going to vote for this person. But they were willing to do it.

43:07Saagar Enjeti:They called the bluff. They called the Office of White House Legislative Affairs. And they're like, look, it's not he's not getting he's not even going to go through committee. He's not going through the floor. Pull his nomination and let's move on because this is not happening right now.

43:19Krystal Ball:It's how Larry Summers went down. Yeah, there you go. Five Democrats from the Banking Committee just called the Obama administration and said, we're not making him Fed chair. Yep. You can put him up, but he's going down. Yeah. And they're like, you know what? Then we're not putting him up. There was these he had he lacked support within within the right wing. Incredible quote. Do you know Kyle Pomerleau? I don't know him. No, I don't. Tax expert for the for American Enterprise Institute. OK. He wrote on Twitter after his nomination, he wrote, quote, there are a lot of competent conservative economists that could do this job.

43:56Krystal Ball:EJ is not one of them. It's just such a. Very bitchy. I just wants. And that's a baseline. He's just saying he's just not competent. Yeah. So it wasn't a ideological problem. And BLS had a bunch of problems after he was named. Remember, they were like, oh, by the way, we're not releasing our data.

44:15Saagar Enjeti:Yes. Yeah, that's right. No explanation.

44:18Krystal Ball:This is like last week or the week before. Data's late. And Wall Street is just not used to BLS having data late. Wall Street trusts BLS data, and they trust that when they say it's going to post at 830, it posts at 830 precisely. And they're sitting there with their trigger fingers ready to trade on it. Not even their trigger fingers, but their fake algorithmic trading models are ready to start trading. and to have a guy who's like, wait, we're not putting the data out on time?

44:49Saagar Enjeti:Right. Get out of here. It's inconceivable to Wall Street and to others. That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that, but you're right. Last thing here in terms of the White House and the economy, we can put this up here on the screen. The Supreme Court has allowed Lisa Cook to keep her job for now. For those who were not tracking, Lisa Cook was one of the members of the Federal Reserve Board. Is a member. Or sorry, is a member of the Federal Reserve Board who was not going along with the Trump administration's desire to cut rates sooner than – as soon as possible. So Trump and the administration accused her of mortgage fraud based on – what is it?

45:29Saagar Enjeti:Within the executive, they're technically allowed to file people – fire people, quote, for cause. And so basically one of their – what is it? The Federal Housing Administrator, Bill Palti, went out and found this thing, which she allegedly purchased a home for as a vacation home, something like that, some sort of vacation – some sort of mortgage fraud technicality. Based on that, Trump said that she was fired. This led to a showdown with the Supreme Court over whether A, whether the charges are legitimate, and B, whether that qualifies as being fired for cause. So the court, in a brief order, quote, deferred a decision on the Trump administration's emergency request to remove Cook from the bank's independent board while the lawsuit challenged her dismissal proceeds.

46:09Saagar Enjeti:So this is going to take a while, at the very least till January. I think that all of this goes forward. It's going to center on the legitimacy of the charges over Trump's own executive power. But at the very least, for now, Trump is not getting the total control of the Federal Reserve Board that he wanted.

46:24Krystal Ball:So there you go. Right. But he did get his little rate cut.

46:26Saagar Enjeti:Quarter point. Right. He wants more. He wants a lot more, right? I mean, I want a lot more, to be honest. I still think it's crushing a lot of our economy.

46:36Ryan Grim:This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So no, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody. There were years, Ryder, where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can, to try to find out what actually happened.

47:14Ryan Grim:Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of a bitch to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. It's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week, we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step.

47:55Ryan Grim:And we're not just lawyers, we're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy?

48:13Saagar Enjeti:Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been.

48:16Ryan Grim:Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman. And had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film.

48:49Ryan Grim:How did The Secret Agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? and what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

49:07Saagar Enjeti:All right, returning now to Sora. Some of you may have seen this open AI released a new video generator. And while it's cool, I guess, you know, a little bit dystopian, And what a lot of people are missing are some of the backbones of the U.S. power industry and economy that are behind all of this, which are actually wreaking havoc on all of our lives in a hidden way that a lot of people don't appreciate. So let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen. This is new data that has been released and compiled by Bloomberg over consuming the growing share of electricity the data centers are in individual U.S.

49:44Saagar Enjeti:states. So stick with me and let's keep this up so I can read to everybody what the overall total electricity consumption is on a state-by-state basis. Virginia, the state where I live, 39 % of all power consumption is going to data centers, Ryan. 39%. Probably all of that is federal government if I had to guess. Well, Amazon. Amazon as well that are all together. But that's an absolutely insane amount of power consumption. The state of Oregon, 33%. Iowa, 18. Nevada, 15. Utah, 15. Nebraska, 14. Arizona, 11. Wyoming, 10. Ohio, 9. Illinois, 7. Georgia, 6. New Jersey, 6. Washington, 6. Texas, 5. North Dakota, 5.

50:29Saagar Enjeti:I find it incredibly consequential that smaller states like Oregon, Iowa, Nevada, Utah, Nebraska, traditional more flyover states, especially Iowa through Nebraska, are being used by a lot of these data centers because it shows that they're picking those more rural areas and they're getting their state legislators and their municipalities to actually give them tax breaks because their promise is, hey, we're going to create a bunch of jobs, et cetera. Oh, we're going to pump all this money into the economy. But the way that our power grid works, which is not a horrible idea, is that, hey, we have regulated public power.

51:04Saagar Enjeti:Based on that, it's a platform through which all of us get to build upon. Our houses, our businesses, and the costs and the benefits are widely distributed across. It's a floor that the government and our power industry sets so that we can build upon it. And yet in a scarce power place where we are right now, because we have not – we don't have any proper investment or building of nuclear energy. I know you're more of a solar guy. I'm not personally a solar guy. I'm pretty much all in on nuclear. But yeah, I'm all – regardless, the point is that we don't have a preponderance of power the way that they do in China and in a lot of other places.

51:41Saagar Enjeti:Even if we were to go all in on oil, we still don't have new oil refineries. We don't have new natural gas rigs. We are in stasis, effectively, in every state in the country. So in a scarce power world and in which AI, data center usage, power, and investment is a huge chunk of GDP spending, what does that mean? It means that these industries, which have endless amounts of money behind them, come in, build your data center, use an insane amount of electricity. They don't care if the power bill goes up. It does nothing to their bottom line because all of this is fake. None of it is even making money in the first place.

52:17Saagar Enjeti:They'll just pay it no matter what. Who's the person for whom a power bill increase is going to affect you, especially in the more rural areas, the fixed income household, and just general suburban residents? That's why I think it's outrageous to have some 39%, 33 % in places like Virginia and Oregon, one-third to almost 40 % of power being consumed by a single industry. We can't be living in the world where everybody else has to absorb all of those increased costs. And it's, again, begs the question, for what? So if this was the Manhattan Project, you know, the Tennessee Valley Authority, maybe, right?

52:55Saagar Enjeti:Maybe we could all set, okay, we can all pay a little bit more because this is so important to the country.

53:01Krystal Ball:We're electrifying. Yeah, we are electrifying. Rural America. There you go.

53:04Saagar Enjeti:One of my favorite sections of the Robert Caro books, I think he won a Pulitzer Prize for it. It's in the first book called Path to Power. is a chapter specifically on rural electrification and what it meant to more rural areas in the 1930s. It was a New Deal-style program designed by FDR. Johnson used it as a new congressman that was able to bring power to the hill country of Texas. I highly recommend, at the very least, just read that chapter to understand what that means. That's the level of where, yeah, okay, I think we could be okay socializing some of that cost. This? No. All right? And see, that's the issue.

53:39Saagar Enjeti:Right, for sort. For AI-generated slop? No, no, no, no. We're not doing that. And yet what we see instead is instead of thinking about the data centers, what people are starting to think about, and there's a new bill introduced in the state of Ohio, is that the utility companies can automatically adjust a customer thermostat to, quote, reduce the load on the power grid during periods of high demand for the data center. So your house has to be hotter so the data center can crunch Sam Altman's slop, okay? Let's take a listen from local news.

54:11Ryan Grim:The Republican lawmaker at the Ohio State House introduced a bill this week that would allow utility companies to automatically adjust your thermostat at your house. House Bill 427 would create a voluntary demand response program. Customers would be allowed to sign up to let their utility company temporarily adjust energy use, including raising thermostat settings or cycling water heaters during periods of high demand. The bill's sponsor, Representative Roy Kloppenstein, said it's meant to help homeowners and small businesses save money while reducing the load on the power grid. An analysis from the Ohio Environmental Council estimates the program would generate between$34 and$100 million in savings for the utility system, depending on how many customers sign up for it.

55:08Saagar Enjeti:Temporally adjust home power use in small business. I don't hear any data center being mentioned there, right? And that's my issue. It's like we don't have set any power demands or anything on these folks. And they get to just, you know, unlimitedly suck from the grid and make sure that everybody else's power bills get to go up. No, no, no, no, no. We can't be having that, Ryan. And instead, like I said, I tweeted something in reaction to this data powders. And I said, hey, state legislators, wake up. You guys have huge amounts of authority. Dominion Power, you know, where I live, Virginia, legislators can come in and change the way.

55:41Saagar Enjeti:If you're going to consume 40 % of power, I'm sorry. You've got to be paying a hell of a lot more and making sure that there's some offset or whatever for consumers. And instead, what Virginia political expert was telling me was it's the inverse where what's happening is that the legislators are all bought and paid for by Amazon, by Meta, Google, all these other people. And instead, they're throwing incentives at the data centers because they're like, oh, we create all of these amazing jobs for all the people who say, oh, OK, yeah, it's great for the thousand people or whatever that work there.

56:12Saagar Enjeti:But what about the millions or so people that have to pay a higher power bill in a lot of these other places? So I think this is a major populist issue, which everybody is sleeping on. And again, if this were the railroads of the 1800s, it transformed America, right? Undeniable. I get it. They were the villains of the time, et cetera. But fundamentally, they had a good value proposition is you used to have to take a wagon. Now you can go to California in a week. All right. That was a real thing. Telecom in the 90s, same thing. We could say a lot about how much of it was a bust. They overspent on fiber optics.

56:51Saagar Enjeti:They massively consumed an amount of GDP to invest because they got a little too high on their own supply from the dot-com bubble. But that was a real thing. Fiber optics was a real thing. Built on the internet. What is being built here, right? We have all these billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars that are being spent all for what? And that's the point where when you see what they're actually releasing, I'm sorry, who asked for this? And here's the new trailer from OpenAI about Sora 2. Here's what you're paying for. Video generated. This is what you're all paying for. Let's take a listen.

57:26Ryan Grim:One year ago, Sora 1 redefined what was possible with moving images. Today, we're announcing the Sora app, powered by the all-new Sora 2.

57:38Ryan Grim:it's the most powerful imagination engine ever built and it's packed with new features i'll pass it to bill for more details

57:53Saagar Enjeti:now every video comes with sound

58:05Saagar Enjeti:Wow, so cool. New images. And by the way, you know what the funny thing is? One of the very first images, Ryan, and videos that was released on Sora was this. Let's just play this. What we saw was immediately Sora being used to create a surveillance-style video showing Sam Altman himself stealing GPUs at Target and being accosted by a security officer. I mean, I don't know. What do you think? It looks real-ish. Like, I could probably tell it was AI. So you basically created slop video, which will be used for YouTube shorts and Instagram and all this other nonsense for scrolling purposes. And also, you created a technology which makes it unironically possible so that surveillance video and deep fakes and all that other stuff could be immediately employed, let's say, in a matter of crisis.

59:01Saagar Enjeti:Think about the Charlie Kirk thing. If this was around at that time, and you say, I have surveillance video showing Tyler Robinson doing X, Y, Z, it would go massively viral. You and I know that. So thank you for creating that. By the way, the amount of power, if you have ChatGPT, I pay for ChatGPT, and even if you want to use it to create an image, it takes forever. You know why? Because it's a shit ton of CPU use, and electricity and all that. It has to crunch through that. So what is the purpose of what we're being created here? The bull case is you have no idea all of the endless possibilities.

59:34Saagar Enjeti:It's like what? The destruction of Hollywood and creative industry to create like, you know, again, slop video because that's where things are mostly trending right now.

59:44Krystal Ball:Right. We don't need a video of an elephant going through like a jazz swing.

59:49Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, we don't need that.

59:49Krystal Ball:Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah. Yeah. So the big tech platforms spent the 90s and 2000s and early 2010s basically destroying the news media and creating this new media where people just create stuff and share it with each other and don't trust any traditional sources of... Some benefits of that. ...information, some benefits. We're going to find out might be some downsides to that. Yeah, some downsides. As well.

1:00:20Saagar Enjeti:Yeah.

1:00:21Krystal Ball:And now that nobody trusts anything and there's no real traditional news media left, they're going to make it so that everybody can just make, you know, authentic looking fake videos. And in order to do that, they're going to destroy as much of the Amazon as they can, and build data centers all over the United States, triple or quadruple your electric bill. and yeah like for that the question for what is a key one Chris and I had on an author yesterday he was like well the purpose of this whether it's intended or not is it's going to kill everybody so there's there's like that and it is it is true that a lot of people in the AI world are like yeah there's a 20 % chance of an existential event as a result of this it's like I don't really but even I don't believe that.

1:01:14Krystal Ball:I hope it's just slop and that it plateaus out its slop. That's my hope.

1:01:21Saagar Enjeti:That's what I think. I mean, I think this is the end state. Like, this is the reality is if you look at the way that – by the way, how are they even paying for all of this AI data center? Where does it come from? Scrolling. Investor bubbles. Algorithm. That's it. Massive amounts of screen time. Addiction. Period. Twitter, Facebook. They all have the same business model. It's just spend as much time on platform as possible. Sell as many ads as possible. That's it. And so that's how they're paying for the AI data centers, for the project, with the hope that you get artificial general intelligence.

1:01:53Saagar Enjeti:But the end state seems pretty simple. AI, to the extent that it's used in the workplace, is for shit that nobody thought is game-changing. Oh, it summarized my emails. Awesome. Summarized my note-taking. You know, I've talked previously, because I actually know people who work in, like, really big corporations. And I was like, tell me about how you use AI. They're like, oh, it's great. We cut out the entry-level workers. I was like, so that's it? And they're like, yeah, that's it. You know, we use Microsoft Teams, lets me summarize my notes, and then we send that for an agenda. Somebody who was entry-level used to have to do that before.

1:02:27Saagar Enjeti:And I was like, but you're still having the meetings. You're still doing the, like, oh yeah, it hasn't changed any actual decision-making.

1:02:31Krystal Ball:Right, just hired a bunch of 24-year-olds.

1:02:33Saagar Enjeti:To be fair, let's say in coding and in technology is a little bit different, right? You can actually have AI. I think AI is quite good at coding up to like 94, 95 % and doing a lot of the previously more difficult or like the time-consuming work, leaving time for creative. Great. Okay, but I don't yet see evidence of like a massive game-changing thing, which doesn't just lead to the tech power law distribution, which makes a bunch of people in Silicon Valley a lot richer. because instead what's happened is that AI has led to mostly job loss or not really real job growth while they're still pumping all this money into the industry.

1:03:10Saagar Enjeti:Plus the data center question. It just leads to this thing where we're like, what are we all doing here? And I don't think people understand if it were not for AI data center spend, GDP would be contracting. The only reason that we have increasing GDP numbers—

1:03:27Krystal Ball:We're in a recession outside of—

1:03:29Saagar Enjeti:Otherwise, you're exactly right. And the data bears all of this out. We played it here on the show many times before. Is without the data center capital expenditure from the technology industry, there is no GDP growth. And in fact, I was just reading this morning one of the consequences of the 1990s telecom boom, like the amount of money that went into that, is that what private capital all understood in the 90s, there's only one way to return money in the middle of a mania or a craze. is to invest in the mania or the craze. That has a huge opportunity cost because what it meant in the 90s was that small businesses that are doing traditional manufacturing were not going to get capital expenditure and or any investment.

1:04:13Saagar Enjeti:All private investment was chasing the same thing. At the same time of the 1990s, what happened? The end of the Cold War, NAFTA, PNTR with China, which means not only did they get the reduced amount of money that they should have been owed absent the AI or the telecom boom, They also face growing international competition. Well, I think we're in a very similar thing right now. You have all of this money, stock, everything, the whole S &P 500. The government shuts down and the S &P 500 goes up. What? Why? Because of NVIDIA, right? You know, you're looking at these stock valuations and everything.

1:04:47Saagar Enjeti:None of it makes any sense. And then at the same time, with the Trump administration's trade policy, what you have is a chilling on domestic investment in manufacture, which means, again, any money in the economy that people have to spare is just going towards this AI. So I know this is kind of tedious, but there are serious implications for this for all of us, not just in terms of, let's say you own a small business, you wanted to buy a new tractor or whatever, and you're owned by private equity. Well, private equity doesn't have a lot of incentive to make sure that you're buying a bunch of new construction equipment.

1:05:17Saagar Enjeti:They would much rather go in and invest in some AI startup or something like that. That's a real effect. And then add the Trump trade stuff on top of that. It's a real problem.

1:05:27Krystal Ball:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And when that bubble pops, because even the Zuckerbergs of the world think that the bubble will pop, their argument is that it'll pop and it will be like the railroads. It'll be like the telecoms. It will have left behind. Yes.

1:05:41Saagar Enjeti:The infrastructure you can build on top of.

1:05:42Krystal Ball:So the bubble pops. A bunch of people get washed out. Zuckerberg, as he said, that'll create a lot of opportunity to buy assets at low cost. So he continues to then concentrate his market power and then builds it up from there. But that's a – so that's – Zuckerberg and others are baking in a financial crisis as like an inevitable result, just a when, not if.

1:06:09Saagar Enjeti:Financial crisis means nothing to somebody worth$150 billion, right? No, it means something.

1:06:14Krystal Ball:It means cheaper assets to buy.

1:06:16Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, great point. If you're worth$150 billion, even if you go in half to$75 ,000, that means nothing to you. If you are$100 ,000 and you go to$75 ,000, that means a lot to you, right? So that's the point that these people never seem to quite understand is that the people who suffer from these financial bubbles are not the people who cause them in the first place. By the way, our producer Griffin has been flagging some of this weird Hollywood stuff to us. Let's go ahead and put these up here on the screen. So there is now a new AI director. The Italian producer Andrea Ervolino has unveiled a feature helmed by a virtual auteur.

1:06:57Saagar Enjeti:And what it does is that the Fellini AI would be housed inside of his company, which would act as a, quote, human in the loop supervisor and producer who guides and monitors technology. and, quote, you can imagine a future in which only 1 % of humanity still works, transforming labor into a symbolic ritual while the rest of the population lives in the freedom and leisure produced by machines. The logline states for this new AI-produced movie that the last workers become the final masks of a humanity that resists the insolence of labor. I don't know, Ryan. I'm not so bought into some sort of Matrix-style fantasy.

1:07:39Saagar Enjeti:And then on the right there, you see that they talk about the Hollywood, AI is ready to crush Hollywood, as we have known it, with these AI actors.

1:07:47Krystal Ball:Like a fake actress who's going to get an agent.

1:07:51Saagar Enjeti:That's why I just don't even, I can't even really understand what it all means because they say, we may not even have real movie stars anymore. We'll soon have computer-generated actors, aspirational celebrities. That is the future currently imagined by the founder of this AI actor. And what they said is that in this new lab, they're hyper real digital stars. The actress has said that they would produce sketch video and maybe signing to a future talent agency. Basically, their likenesses would be controlled by some sort of corporate conglomerate and that they would then be featured in movies and licensed to different commercials and stars.

1:08:34Saagar Enjeti:This is basically an erasure of humanity as we know it. And it's one of those where The Matrix was, I guess, a documentary. And also, though, the government and the level of skepticism that is required is not happening. Because I said on the state level, it seems by my immediate perusal that most state legislators think data centers are a good thing because of money, right? Because they're getting donated to and because they're given these fake statistics. But I think the people, at the very least, are deeply skeptical of whatever the hell all of this is. So I just wonder if there can ever be any sort of democratic pushback.

1:09:10Saagar Enjeti:The technology companies are betting that they can leap so forward before any skepticism happens that they can just get there before anybody really wakes up to what's going on.

1:09:22Krystal Ball:And when you think about the arc of all of kind of Earth history, and people say that we're now in the midst of the sixth great extinction, like the sixth mass die off around the world. I've seen people say that, yeah. And statistically, it's accurate. So many different species, both plant and animal, are dying off. And scientists can demonstrate that it is because of humanity. We just gobble everything up. And so when you think about that in a moral sense, which is difficult to do, because it's like species are often amoral, you have to think about it in a moral sense, because humans are the first ones to invent morality.

1:10:09Krystal Ball:And so you think about, okay, the costs to the earth have been existential to thousands upon thousands of species. But it has produced what humanity can produce, which is love, which is art, Shakespeare as a stand-in. Like those developments represent a break from what existed before, the other five extinctions. now we're not even going to have that like what what is humanity bringing to the earth other than misery and despair if we're not producing more shakespeare's i agree with you uh i'm with you

1:10:48Saagar Enjeti:this is what the fundamental like anti-humanness of it is something that's very concerning to me i also am just concerned at the lack of interest that legislators and others have in any of what's going on right now. And in particular, they seem instead to just be bought and paid for and just waiting for something to happen before we all have to grapple with it. So anyway, yeah, we're all paying higher electricity bills so that Sora can generate slop videos for kids to be addicted on TikTok and YouTube shorts in the future. What a great investment for us all.

1:11:37Ryan Grim:Hey, everyone. It's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week, we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers. We're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Saturday, May 2nd, country's biggest stars will be in Austin, Texas at our 2026 iHeart Country Festival presented by Capital One.

1:12:16Ryan Grim:Tickets are on sale now. Get yours before they sell out at Ticketmaster.com. That's Ticketmaster.com. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature and trees and praying. And drugs. No, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.