Big Tech

I want to touch on one point that we haven't gotten into and that I think was a sleeper.

So one way also to interpret the U.S. results is like an uprising of anger against big tech, whether it's the AI bros.

There was a lot of anger about data centers coming into rural communities.

using up water and electricity resources and not actually creating jobs.

So we are going to see more energy and action in that space, which will have ramifications here.

But I think there's still a wait and see approach because it's just not clear yet.

And I mean, to tie this conversation about the tech and AI to our earlier conversation, I think the big tech CEOs who started the presidency of Trump standing behind him at the inauguration was a really indelible image that sort of tied together with the sense that these issues around data centers, around losing ground, around people and big companies getting richer and average people getting poor and then that sense that the president and the party was not going to be on their side was sort of crystallized if you look back at that those photos of two years ago and it's hard to disentangle and you could see how this became the stew that resulted in these these election results.

And Carrie, staying with you for the last question, you're going to D.C. next week.

Well, it is a film which is quite anti-AI and

big tech.

It's downfall.

Yeah, okay.

Take that

as you will.

Talking of anti-big tech, did you see a rather interesting article in the Media Leader this week? Oh, yeah.

Was that the

This is an industry that is... advancing at a very quick scale but for his benefit you know and all signs when we see sovereignty seem to be pointing at more or less the same companies benefiting and there's really brilliant research from SOMO that I'm sure you're aware of which points to this and I would encourage anyone listening to read it because it kind of tracks the companies who are building out and that kind of power mapping I suppose is very important when we discuss this especially for policy makers.

I think it's always interesting to hear about these government initiatives that big tech are pushing for disseminating the use of AI and creating demand for data centers across the state, across public bodies and across industry.

Because what it shows is that this is a top down initiative to build out data centers.

The estimate of seven trillion US dollars being spent in five years is not coming from People demanding extra data center capacity.

In fact, there was a recent Bains & Company report that showed a revenue gap of $4 trillion annually in 2030.

They're spending so much money on data centers, they're not even clear where the revenue to pay for that and get a return on that is coming from, which is what's leading to all of the discussion about it being a bubble.

And that demonstrates something quite important, I think, which is that this is an initiative from big tech who've amassed huge money piles from their monopolistic practices, arguably, and from investors who see this as a way of capturing rents into the future and dominating the future global economy.

But it's an investment cycle, and there's very worrying signs that it is a bubble, and there's very worrying signs that actually this isn't something which people, workplaces, or enterprises are demanding at the scale at which it's being built out, which leaves the question, What are we going to end up with when a devaluation takes place and the rest of it? And policymakers, I think, would be incredibly wise to question what that means.

And I am Danny Fortson.

And this week, we're asking, what do the results of the US midterms mean for big tech? While it's a very clear loss for Trump and the Republican Party, in many states, tech billionaires and AI were very much on the ballot.

And my, how the world has changed since the last set of midterms in 2022.

I mean, just back then, OpenAI hadn't released ChatGPT.

sure but they're usually quite quiet they're usually have more space but people often still work in the big city yeah there's 20 000 people small place and the town is encircled now by seven different data centers that are either already operating or being built.

And really, really, really big ones, right?

Really big ones, right? And it's kind of been seized upon by Gina Hinojosa, the woman who just was elected the new governor, Democrat, as an example of just like, you know, because a lot of the way these data center projects have been pushed through is is that you have an alliance between big tech, big tech billionaires.

Elon Musk obviously has most of his businesses are now in Texas.

That's essentially where we're at at this point.

The companies that run our country are discriminating against the people that compose our country, and the big tech and big investment companies that support and invest in the other companies all demand that they discriminate against white people openly.

I mean, they celebrate it.

They write big articles about how they're doing it.

And actually, he made a good point.

I saw a clip he said today where he's basically talking about if you give them your vote unconditionally, then you really have no leverage.

So when it comes time to negotiate, if you know that everybody else has leverage because their support is conditional, If you go to Big Tech or Israel, their support is conditional.

So you have to give something to them.

I mean, truly the correct direction is to eliminate Section 230 of the Communications Act and hold these social media companies responsible for the content from which they profit.

But since apparently there is no will in the Congress to stand up to big tech unless it's data centers... we're reduced to a half measure.

It is, however, a substantial half measure, and clearly it could be effective.

Why do I say that? Well, because Google, Meta, and TikTok have all filed lawsuits seeking to block the law.

They're suing to not be good corporate citizens.

They're facing a ton of scrutiny over the harm that these platforms cause to children, and they should be.

The parallels between big tech and big tobacco are jarring.

Big tech knows that the content that they're sharing to kids is harmful.

I saw a clip he said today where he's basically talking about if you – give them your vote unconditionally, then you really have no leverage.

So when it comes time to negotiate, if you know that everybody else has leverage because their support is conditional, If you go to Big Tech or Israel, their support is conditional.

So you have to give something to them.

You have to capitulate to them or concede to them in some way.

You'll always disadvantage the voters because they'll just eat it no matter what you give them.

And so actually, this would help if Trump felt like actually negotiating on behalf of the American people.

It would actually help him do that because he can go to big tech in Israel and go, look, I'd love to do this for you.

But like, I got pressure on me from this side.

And they basically helped bring down that whole free trade area of the Americas, which was going to go like NAFTA on steroids.

for 34 countries of the Americas over that experience of seeing what it meant really for people's lives, entirely unrelated to trade, to have big pharma hijack trade agreements, just like big tech is now, just like big ag did back then.

Yeah, I could go on about pharma, as you know, but I probably shouldn't.

Why don't we talk about some of these other areas? So tech, you've been talking about, and again, just to emphasize the point you already made, that when you're sitting down at the negotiating table, basically what you have are the country's trade reps, obviously the U.S.

I mean, they list, actually, it might be a secret, but you've gotten their advisors.

They're all industry people with almost no exceptions.

So anyhow, so in the case of tech, what have been some of the items that they've gotten into trade agreements to protect our big technology companies?

Before I go into that, just in case you think Dean and I might be exaggerating about how great this advisory system is, go to our website, which is rethinktrade.org, rethinktrade.org. And about two years ago, we got the list of all of the advisors and some wonderful colleagues of mine categorized every one of them by sector, by geo-rotated them.