462 The Doomer Industrial Complex

0:00Thanks for pressing play. This is Christopher Lochhead. And man, am I sure glad you're here, especially for this episode.

0:24I was in my 30s when the Y2K fears happened, when we switched from 1999 to 2000. And here's what happened. People were freaked the fuck out. They weren't a little worried. They weren't mildly concerned. They were freaked out. They were stockpiling food, buying generators, pulling their cash out of banks, talking about power grids going down, talking about hospitals going offline, telecommunications collapsing, banks failing, airplanes falling from the sky, talking about civilization itself being destroyed. And this wasn't just some group of tiny friend survivalists. The fear went mainstream. In January 1999, one survey found that 53 % of Americans considered Y2K one of the most important issues facing the country, and only 10 % expected no problem at all.

1:22And our friends in the media were all over this, all over this, with stories of people buying wood stoves and canning potatoes and pulling out cash. And then it got worse. By March 1999, 54 % of Americans said they planned to avoid air travel around January 1, 2000. I, of course, got on a plane and went skiing in Whistler. 39 % of people said they planned to stockpile food. 30 said they planned to withdraw large amounts of cash. 24 % said they planned to buy a generator or a wood stove. These aren't fringe numbers. That's millions and millions and millions of ordinary people changing their behavior because they were in fear.

2:06By November of 1999, the numbers had gone insane. 55 % said they would avoid air travel. 40 % said they were stockpiling. 28 % said they were stockpiling gasoline. And 25 % were withdrawing large amounts of cash. Now, here's the really interesting part. The Y2K problem was real. Old computer systems were generally vulnerable to these errors, okay? There was a problem, and there was important work to get done. Companies and governments really did spend billions fixing systems. And Y2K bugs did really happen. The technical problem was real, but, and it's a Kim Kardashian-sized but, the fear flywheel was something else entirely.

2:55The Y2K Doomer industrial complex was on fire. And here's the key distinction. The Y2K bug was a real thing. It was a real problem, but it was not an apocalypse. It was not a seminal threat, and it was not going to kill anybody. And that one distinction is the whole point, because the Doomer industrial complex is always looking for a problem to monetize. As more and more people discovered that fear was profitable in 1998 and 1999, the fear flywheel started to spin. Here's how it works. One, start with a real problem. This is the critical part. The best fear campaigns don't necessarily begin with pure bullshit.

3:41They begin with something real. Y2K was perfect. There was a real computer problem. There was uncertainty. And there was real work to be done to fix systems. So far, so good. Two, take the worst case scenario that you can possibly think of and market it everywhere. Get it everywhere. What if the power goes down? What if the banks fail? what if godzilla shows up what if society collapses what if the final financial system crashes etc etc etc things shift from there are systems that need to be fixed and we might have some risk to it's the end of the world as we know it now you've got what you need to really control people and make masses amounts of money.

4:29Three, the attention on the topic creates the fear. People start thinking, holy shit, what if they're right? What should I do? Should I get my cash? Should I buy food? Should I cancel my flight? The pulling from back then shows that this wasn't theoretical. People were actually preparing for Armageddon. Four, fear creates urgency. and now it shifts right from you need to do something to you need to do something now january 1st is coming oh my god the clock is ticking there's not enough time five urgency unlocks beaucoup buckets of cash budgets get approved consultants get hired new software gets purchased audits get commissioned contingency plans get funded experts get booked on tv books get sold, conferences get filled, and suddenly the doomer industrial complex is making billions.

5:24Six, more money attracts more money and more doomers. This is where the flywheel gets really interesting. The consultant has an incentive to keep talking about Y2K. The software company has an incentive. The journalist gets attention by talking about it. The politicians get credit for doing something. I'm doing something about Y2K. The experts become authorities and they get control. The preparedness company sells generators, food, supplies, et cetera, et cetera. And everybody has their own reason to keep the flywheel spinning. Seven, more fear creates more money. And now the flywheel feeds itself.

6:03Fear, attention, urgency, money, control. And it spins and spins and spins, more fear, spins and spins and spins, and around and around she goes, right? Now, there's a couple of critical things here. It got so crazy that people started to lose their minds. So when the fear flywheel starts to spin out of control, what's required is thinking. so here's a lens to spot the doomer industrial complex the next time you see a massive fear narrative forming don't ask yourself is the problem real ask yourself what's the real problem and be specific don't accept the entire scary narrative as a giant blob for example in the current AI doomer flywheel, people point to this hugging face incident as AI taking over.

7:06It's bullshit. That's not what happened.

7:12I just sighed because it's so fucking crazy. All right. This is what thinking people do. They ask questions. What is exactly known? If you dig the hugging face fiasco, you will find, is it problematic? Yes. Is it some horror movie? No. What is the real worst case scenario? And is somebody quietly turning what could happen or what problem do we really have into what will happen? What's going to happen? You're going to die in 10 years. That's the thinking person difference. How many people are changing their behavior because they're afraid? This is a useful signal. Y2K gives us all a benchmark. It shows us the lens, particularly in hindsight.

8:01When half the country says it's going to avoid planes and 40 % say they're going to stockpile water and food and a quarter say they're pulling out their cash, fear is no longer a media story anymore. It's mass hysteria. And that's when it becomes a purpose-built social contagion. These are the seminal questions. Who gets the money, attention, authority, budget, control, more customers, more political power, etc.? Bigger than analyzing the threat, although that's critical, who is selling the solution, the protection? Look for the incentive of the people who are doing the doomering. I'm not sure doomering is a word, but it sounds funny.

8:47Follow that thread, the incentive thread, you know, follow the money. Does the solution require more and more fear? This might be the biggest tell of all. If you look at the AI doomers, they didn't start being doomers this week. It's been going on for years. So if the people who are selling you the solution need you to stay freaked the fuck out, that's when you can actually watch them spin the fear flywheel. You can watch them spin it. Right now, Dario, the CEO of Anthropic, is saying we did an FDA for AI, and he's proposed an entire slate of people who would control that FDA of AI. And you can guess who they all are.

9:34They're not people who he doesn't know well. There are people he knows very well. Okay, then midnight, December 31, 1999. I spent the day skiing. It was great. And then I went to bed before midnight. I was tired. Woke up on January 1st, 2000, and suddenly nothing happened. Well, a few things did happen. There were some bugs. There were some isolated problems. Y2K was an issue. It just wasn't a freak out. It was nothing like the apocalypse that was predicted. Okay. Planes didn't fall. The nation's power grid didn't collapse. The apocalypse didn't arrive. And that's exactly why this is such a powerful case study.

10:24This teaches us, this shows us where the lens is because afterward, there was an obvious response from the doomers. They said, see, we prevented it. And some of that was true. The remediation that got done on the systems matter. But here's the problem. You cannot use the absence of a catastrophe to validate every catastrophic prediction. It doesn't work that way. If I tell you your house will burn down unless you spend$100 ,000 on fire prevention and you spend$100 ,000 and the house doesn't burn down, I don't get to say, see, I save you life. This is the lens people need now. The Doomer industrial complex doesn't need a conspiracy.

11:10That's the learning. Are there issues with AI? Absolutely. Do we need to pay attention? Of course. Do we need great governance? Yes. So people often, when they hear an argument like this, like the one I'm proposing to you right now, they say, so you're saying everybody got together and planned the Y2K thing as a conspiracy? No, that's not what I'm saying at all. And that's not how powerful social contagions work. You don't need everybody in a room. You need everyone responding to the incentives. One person sees an opportunity. Another sees a headline. Another sees a consulting contract. Another sees a big government budget to go tap into.

11:52Another sees a business opportunity. Another sees a chance to become an expert. Another sees an opportunity to gain control and manipulate us, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's the magic of the Doomer industrial complex. Once the fear flywheel gets spinning, nobody has to control the flywheel. The flywheel, once it gets rolling, spins on itself. and that's why the Y2K example matters. Not because Y2K was fake. There were real issues and problems that needed to get solved. It was not a fake problem. But what was fake was the insanity, the hysteria. Okay? Now, it matters because Y2K shows you how a real problem can become a massive moneymaker for the doomers.

12:42Fear can create enormous behavioral changes that create more and more quote-unquote evidence of the threat. That evidence can be used to justify more and more fear. That fear creates more spending, more control, and on and on and on the flywheel goes. Now, once you see this, you start seeing it everywhere. So today, when somebody tells you, oh, well, experts are warning us, or specifically AI is going to kill you, don't immediately believe them. No, don't immediately dismiss them either. Think. Use this lens. Ask yourself, what's actually true? What's the worst case I'm being sold? Who benefits if I believe their worst case?

13:26Who gets paid? Who gets power? Who gets control? And most importantly, is somebody making money, gaining power, gaining control by freaking me the fuck out. That's the tell. The underlying problem might be real. The risks might be real, but the fear is outsized bullshit. That's the Y2K lesson. And that's the lens on the Doomer industrial complex. Back then I was in my thirties. I remember how freaked out people were. I remember the countdown and I remember saying, fuck it and going skiing in Whistler. I also remember waking up on January 1st, 2000, when nothing close to catastrophic happened. We did learn something.

14:07We got a master class in the Doomer industrial complex. And now you have a lens for spotting it. Real problem, worst case scenario, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin. And once you see the Doomer flywheel of fear, you can't unsee it. Now, tell me again that AI is going to kill us all.