Factually! with Adam Conover - Boomers Are Wealth Hoarders, the AI Revolt, and California’s Cursed Governor’s Race with Brian Merchant and Andrea More

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

(In addition to your regularly planned episode of Factually, we’re bringing you a Friday news roundup where we check in on the week’s biggest stories as well as some that need amplification.)This week, Adam is joined by journalist Brian Merchant and comedian Andrea More to talk about the mountain of wealth that boomers have hidden in a figurative mountain hoard, like some kind of greedy dragon that’s way too into Western shows on Paramount+. The group also talks about the growing cultural rejection of AI (whew!), and the already exhausting state of the California governor’s race. --SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. Hey, everybody. It's Fridays on Factually. So this is what we do on Fridays is I break down the news with a smart person, a funny person, and me. And also the smart person is funny and the funny person is smart and I'm neither. And we're calling it a crisp 45. That's the name. We need to come up with a name for the segment.

And what we're going with is welcome to a crisp 45 because that's how long we're going to do it for. Can I change my mind about what we should call it? Yes. Okay, I think we should call it the Joe Rogan experience because I'm thinking about search optimization. Yeah. And you're just, you know how when you Google like Macy's but Nordstrom comes up first? Yeah.

So I just want, I want you to be successful. Right. Because when you're successful, I'm successful. And we should probably use like a thumbnail of Joe Rogan so it matches, right? And we should call it talking to Alex Jones about fentanyl. See, I think it just shorter is. better. I don't think you need the subhead. This is Andrew Moore, everybody. Welcome, Andrew Moore.

A writer, comedian. And we also got Brian Merchant. Hello, hello. The wonderful tech journalist and newsletter writer. How else do you describe yourself? That works. You can do it. Author? You can get author. Author, yes, of course. Yes, you were in the book Blood and the Machine, which you came on factually to talk about last year, I believe.

Yeah, we had a good time, didn't we? It was great. That was one of my favorite episodes. Well, I'm really excited to have you guys here to talk about how fucked up the world is. Topic number one is the California governor's race, which is making a little bit of national news, mostly because it's stupid. Like, it's like a bad race. Like, ballots are out and everyone is saying, I don't know what bubble to fill in because I'm not happy about any of them. Yeah. And also because they're looking at the wrong page. They're looking at the superior judges. they're going, I don't know who any of these people are. You're against governorships in general.

Yeah, I don't want, I don't think we should have them. I think we should have. President of California. There you go. Yeah. I mean, we've got a billionaire running named Tom Steyer. We had a guy named Eric Swalwell who was left the race because of massive sexual assault claim, just like, you know when you, there's like you, you see a cockroach.

and then you open the drawer and there's a million in there. That's what happened with his sexual assault. Yeah, the dammed really burst there, didn't it? Yeah. So he's out of the race. And then there's a bunch of other Democrats who nobody likes that much. There's Katie Porter. There's Javier Bessera, each of whom is just like stepping into Rakes like,

Saitjo Bob. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I just want to make one thing clear because there seems to be some confusion. within my friend group at least, which is that Tom Steyer and Howard Schultz are two different people.

So let's just like get that out of the way. Both of them are billionaires and ran for president in 2020. And yeah, they're just one is a lot more richer than the other. Tom Steyer's kind of like the poor man's billionaire. So this is the big question about Tom Steyer

because he's running as like a billionaire says ACAB. like that's his campaign. I hate the cops. I'm a billion. James Adomian did a really funny impression of him where he's like, I'm Tom Steyer, I'm a billionaire, and I'm against that. It's really weird, right?

Yeah. What do you, do you believe this either of you? Yeah, you know, I've been watching a lot of clips of him. I just find him really endearing, and I've never said that about a billionaire before. But, you know, he became a billionaire from founding this hedge fund company. He left 12 years ago in part because of their fossil fuel holdings.

And since then, like in the last 16 years, it seems like he's been on this journey to like write his wrongs. You know, he is adamantly for single payer health care, which, you know, it has been on the California State Assembly docket time and time again. I mean, Javier Bacera just flip-flopped on that like two weeks ago. He was like, I don't believe it anymore after a lifetime of saying he believes. in it. And so it is notable that Steyer is like, he's kind of the only guy running who is unequivocally in favor of single pair. Yeah. I mean, Steyer said this on a interview I was listening to where he said he's the only billionaire running, but he's not the only billionaire in the race, which is either really smart or really dumb, depending on how long you break down the sentence.

But I feel like he's the only one who can't be bought because he already has billions. And the others are all taking like the maximum amount of money from Chevron and the doctor's lobby that oppose single payer. But it also kind of brings up this interesting idea that I have, which is that like if I ever run, I am going to take pack money. Like I'm going to take the most amount of money, but then not, but then have a very progressive policy once elected. Like if Chevron wants to throw me $35,000, like, yeah, I'm going to take it. And I'm going to buy an electric car or two. It is true.

Like, Tom Steyer, he's been at it for a while. Like, whatever it is. I mean, he would, like last, he ran, didn't he, did he run for governor last time? He ran for president. Present. He ran for president. That's right. Vanity president campaign.

Yeah. And it was all, it was all climate. It was all. And, you know, I talked to some climate people and they're like, you know, he's got, you know, he's got some real bona fides. He's not wavering from it. I don't know if I buy this whole. class trader schick that he's doing. But at least

it's like, at least he's kind of planting the flag, I guess. And you're right, like the field is so is so bizarre that it's like, you know, who's better? Who are we going to vote for here? What's, what's better than the, than the billionaire who at least he's saying he wants Medicare

for all. I mean, Gavin did too, for what it's worth. Yeah, well, and the reason Gavin was able to say it, and sort of the baseline political position about single-payer in California has been say that you're in favor of it because you know it'll never happen. Yeah. And you'll, it'll never get to the point where Gavin Newsom has to say yay or nay on it.

Although I think recently he's come out against it a little bit, whatever. Well, talk about the other candidates like Katie Porter people were excited about for a bit. Were they? Kind of, I mean. Do you know anyone who's excited about Katie Porter? Okay. He's got the whiteboard. Or do they just like that she...

Right. Everyone's like, oh yeah, I saw a good clip with a whiteboard like five years ago of her going like, do you... She's like yelling at some CEO holding a whiteboard. And then, since then, it's just every clip you've seen of her has her been face plan. I mean, the clip of her... Like berating that staffer. Yeah, she's...

Okay, well, first of all, that was really funny. Let's just say that. Okay. Get out of my fucking shot. It was so funny. Why were they, like, in? In her house, it seemed. Yeah, it was, because her staffer was in the background going like, oh, Katie, like, in the middle of a Zoom interview.

But then there's her, like, getting mad at a reporter for absolutely no reason. And, like, that's the only part of the interview that went viral. And then the last time she made headlines, it was because she put out an ad that referenced her bad viral videos in a way that drew more attention to them. People are saying that was like the worst political ad they'd ever seen. Yeah, and there were other things that were really bad about that ad as well, because she's like talking about how she's sort of like this woman of the people, you know, she's like, I drive a minivan with 250 miles on it. It's like, first of all, why? Get a better car. You are a congresswoman. Come on. And then also it's like, okay, so you're talking about how you're noticing like the price of the pump and the price of everything going up in grocery stores. But then your policy like isn't truly progressive. Like, you can't have it both ways. Like, you know, what you should be is a billionaire who's a class traitor. Yeah.

Is what I'm trying to get at to kind of bring it back. It's a vibe's problem all around. They all, all of them have one vibes problem or another. Javier, like, also did nobody give any of these guys media training? Yeah. He just had one where he's sitting down for, was it, it was like a profile or something? And he's like, yep, this is a profile, right? It's like, the cameras are clearly there and rolling.

What are you? And she's just like, well, I'm going to ask you some questions. And he's like, no. He said this isn't going to be a gotcha interview, right? This is a profile. And the reporter's like, what? It's an interview. What do you think of profile is?

He's like, well, don't ask me tough questions, but not exclusively tough questions. Well, he really evokes that tweet that's like my shirt that says I'm not a human trafficker is really bringing up a lot of questions and I've already answered. Yeah, he also had a clip where he was defending. He's like, Chevron. gave me money, but like what, what's bad about that? Like, they can give money. Anybody can give money. It's like, Chevron's not the bad guy. Well, yeah, on that point, like, I first started paying attention to this race when I started seeing the attack ads against Steyer because they were so off putting to me that they made me really like Steyer. And I noticed at the end, like, whenever these

ads come up, I always look at the end to see who paid for it. Yeah. And it was, you know, the people who are putting out these attack ads against him are Chevron. It's, PG&E. It's the California Realtors Association. And partly that's because, you know, California, 16 million people use PG&E, which is an electric monopoly. That's more people than the population of the state of Pennsylvania. And those people pay about twice as much as the national average. And he wants to break that up. And like, he's talking about how it's a monopoly. And PG&E. They start fires all the time. They start fires, they have pled guilty, and they pled guilty to several, I think it was homicide or manslaughter charges from the fires. Jesus Christ.

And so, yeah, like these are the people who are going after him, which to me suggest that he is progressive because it's not just that he's talking a progressive talk, but it's that these moneyed interest, these corporate lobbies are like, we don't like this guy. And when people like Bloomberg or Howard Schultz won, those were the type of corporate interest. that really tried to elevate the candidate. So I don't know. Like, yes, people are sort of saying, like, he's the best we got and lamenting it. But I actually think it's kind of an exciting candidate in a weird way. And I talked to you last week. You've become more styre-pilled since last week.

Yeah, I love him. I think, like, more, yeah, more ads. I watch him, and I don't, I go, like, this is someone who's practiced a lot in front of the mirror. Like, this is, like, there's a type of person who loves to get. interviews because they've had so much media training. And I think he loved, I mean, he was on Hassan Piker's stream. He talked to Medi Hassan. And he's kind of dorky, but I find it endearing. Like he really, he divested all of his money from fossil fuels as soon as he quit the hedge fund. And people are saying, you know, like he invested in coal. He invested in private prisons.

That was his firm that did that. He did have like a very, you know, high up role at that firm. but he says he left, like, shortly after that and got rid of his stocks. And look, who amongst us didn't get rich from big oil money or private prison money? Pumping some money into private prisons, yeah. Well, you think, so I think that's all right on climate stuff. I actually trust him. I think he's got the, he's got like the rich, like older white guy, environmental sort of bent, really front and center.

And I think that's his passion issue. So I do think that I think that's why Chevron and PG&E are coming after him. Because I think they think that he will. Like I think that like that's what he probably wants his legacy to be is climate. And he's saying the others. They're all saying the, you know, the Medicare for all stuff because that's the progressive bonifuds. You have to prove to, you know, to get your hat in the ring. But yeah, I honestly, I think that I think the climate stuff he's legit on for sure.

Yeah. And I've talked to people who like, you know, were climate activists like 15 years ago. and like, oh, he would come around and he's, you know, he's legit on that stuff. It is just bizarre to people to vote for a billionaire. You should get him on the show. Yeah. I don't even. I do think he would do it.

Like, he's, you know, he was at, I think, like, East L.A. Community College last night. He went on the Hassan Piker. Like, he seems to be doing the rounds. Dave Roberts does a, has an energy podcast called Voltz. He did that. He did heated. Emily Atkins, climate blog. Okay, so maybe he's trying to use this position to become like a podcast.

There's a substack. There also is something to the idea of when someone has enough money to run by themselves, they are not like beholden to all the groups, right? So the problem with Javier Becerra. That was Trump's pitch, though, too, though. We should note. Yeah, but Trump is actually not beholden to a lot of, he's just a fucking maniac. It's just for the love of the game.

And I was, you know, I lived in New York when Mike Bloomberg was, was the mayor and like, you know, stop and frisk horrible, a lot of bad things about Mike Bloomberg. But like, he wasn't a fucking dope like a bunch of preceding and former mayors. He would be like, I think we should do something.

And then he would do it because he was not worried about, you know, what such and such group coming after him. You always like to say he cleaned up New York. I've heard you say that. That's Giuliani, who I revere. Because he cleaned up Times Square. I can finally take my kid there without them seeing go to the porno theaters.

Hey, I'm Spider-Man over here. Do you think that's how Spider-Man talks? Yeah, and Midnight Cowboy. Oh, okay. Yeah. Or Giuliani as Spider-Man? The problem with Bacera is he seems like a nice man. He seems like a, like, there's a, like, if you were to have an average, you don't think so.

If you had, if you had, like, chat GPT, like, generate, like, democratic functionary. It would just like materialize. That's what I mean. And that is the problem is the reason he's like defending, taking money from Chevron, he's, you know, he's so enmeshed in the system that you're like, he's got no personality. He's just going to be jerked one way or the other.

There are some politicians who are like, they're just the recipients of pressure from other people and they can't do anything on their own. And like the best thing you could say about having a billionaire in office is that they would not be like that. But now there's a lot of bad shit about that is what the flip side. Well, the flip side is like, yeah, you're not beholden to anybody. And so, like, if you come to power because you leaned on the

unions or, you know, on sort of public advocacy groups, then, like, the thinking is at least that you, you know, you have ties to them, that you will be bound by some of those commitments. Like, nothing's stopping Steyer from becoming another total maniac once he gets in office. Or if he was younger, you know, and like really wanted to have a career in politics and was like, you know, a Pete Buttigieg or something. Like, I'm not worried about him using this to try to climb the ladder and then become president and be like, oh, I'm worried about my progressive, you know, like when I was governor, people are going to, like, I think he is doing this because he wants to be governor. And I trust someone more like that than like a career politician. And yeah, the Trump thing is

true, but it's like 12 years before running, Trump wasn't like creating these environmental nonprofits and divesting from fossil fuels. So, I mean, I think, I think it's fine to do something bad as long as 12 years later. That trajectory is like, you know, I'm on the fence. I don't, he might be the, he might be the, I think he might be the best option. I don't know. It's, well, who else would you vote for? Like, who are you torn between? I mean, I, I think we're out of the woods in the, like the two Republicans on the top of the ticket scenario. This is the other thing.

Yeah, we should bring up for people who are out of state. California has a weird ass primary system where all the candidates, Republican Democrat, run against each other. And then the top two, regardless of party, go to the general. So people have observed or they've been worried the last couple weeks that, like, if none of these Democrats break out, it could be two Republicans. There was a moment when they were polling at the top because the field was so crowded that it's so it's like Steve Hilton and this guy, Bianco,

who's like truly just like, like basically like just the hair away from being like an actual card carrying Nazi. Yeah. His name is Chad Bianco, right? Chad Bianco. Chad Bianco. Let's not do the thing that Democrats love to do where we elevate the guy that we don't think has a chance and then get them to be the top two. That's true. Like what Adam Schiff did.

Fair enough. But I think I think it's sailed. Trump picked a, picked a win and that actually helped kind of like consolidate under. So Trump endorsed Hilton, I think. And then now it's he's at the top of the pack. And if it's one in one, we don't care. We should also mention Steve Hilton is British. He has a British accent, which is very strange to see someone running for California governor.

I mean, after Schwarzenegger was the governor with an Austrian accent. Is Schwarzenegger so fresh in our minds, though, as like, you're like, ah, yes, California politics, Gray Davis. I still remember that line. He had a line about Gray Davis having holes in his logic so big that he could drive. his Hummer through it. And he said it in his big Schwarzenegger. He could drive his hammer through it. Thank you. Yeah. And I always remember, I was like, okay. But you know, he was

like a movie star. It kind of like it kind of made sense for California. Well, Reagan had just been like 30 years earlier. And like Schwarzenegger, you know, people actually, there's this sort of general fond memory of him as being this sort of like not bad moderate Republican. Interestingly

enough though, somebody asked me, a friend of mine asked, who do we have to blame for the jungle primary system? And he It is Schwarzenegger. It was like he, it was a ballot proposal, but he backed it and thought it would be a good idea because he literally thought it would make the races less radical. You'd end up with more moderates against each other because the primaries are nonpartisan, which is like, it depends on whether you think that's good or bad.

Do you think it makes for like a more democratic process? Because, you know, like as we see in democratic primaries often, it's kind of like the establishment. person is just going to get the nomination and then that's our person. But in this system, you do get to vote for whoever you want. It's not like, you know, well, I don't think this person can win. Yeah, but you see people do a lot of intense vote strategizing. And the reason people like ranked choice, and I actually know about this because a friend of mine, like, wrote a paper and gave a presentation on it as her like senior thesis in

college and I remember it very vividly. The point of ranked choice voting is it lets you choose who you actually want without having to worry about strategizing. So you can say this person by first choice. If they lose, this is my second choice, right? And so you don't have to do the thing of like make sure you vote for this person because otherwise this person might get in. And what I observe about the jungle primary, which is kind of the opposite of ranked choice voting, is you do see people a lot of times in the governor or like a mayoral election like intensely strategize. And so I don't think it's good on that.

I do think the gold standard of a voting system would be you get to vote for the person that you want and you don't have to strategize and vote for someone who you don't want and do some fucking game theory exercise. Like that, because it gets the intent of the voter away from what their vote actually is, which means it's less representative of like the feelings of the public. Yeah.

So, and I think like, political scientists would say rank choice voting is better on that metric. Yeah, I mean, it is true. When you talk to anybody, that's like, it's all like, well, how do we keep the Republican out? Like, how do we, like, how do we triangulate the vote? So it's not like, who do I think is best necessarily? Again, this field. Why does, like, nobody good want to be the governor of California?

I mean, Steyer sort of feels like he's like swooping in, right? Well, okay, I mean, I got a fucking lane, right? Because we got all these other dopes. Rob Banta declined to run. a bunch of other people declined to run as well. Can I ask a question, which is as Attorney General, can Rob Bonta do more than the governor? Like, could we maybe talk about what the governor is able to do? Yeah, good question.

I mean, so Rob Banta's the current Attorney General. He's doing, like, antitrust. He's going up against Trump. Like, it is a powerful position to be the Attorney General of California. And my understanding is when I talk to friends who are, like, really in politics, is, he felt like, you know, that's his like position of power. He has more he can do. And even if he has bigger ambitions later, better to grow as the attorney general and not

take a risk running for a new seat. And like, yeah, maybe from his perspective, he's like, governor fucking sucks more than, because attorney general, you just get to fight the bad guys. Governor, everybody hates you. Yeah. Well, and because my understanding is the governor can pass or veto legislation that the California State Assembly, like, puts on their desk. But outside of that, I'm not, like, super familiar, to be honest, with what the governor is able to do and not do. Like, my understanding

is that, like, bills are written and passed in the assembly. And then if the governor is a Republican or a centrist Democrat, they're probably going to veto it. I think it's executive function, you know, there's a budget. Yeah, budget and departments that they're in charge of and emergencies and things like that. administrative state. And then the governor's always able to like, you know, incline the assembly and and senators to do something. It's a big, it's a big sort of, um, uh, hammer that you can wield as even just if it's

just the veto hammer because the threat of, of that veto is pretty much unchallenged in California. Like they haven't, you can override a veto if you pass, if you pass a bill through both, both houses. But I forget how long it's been since it's actually. been done. So it's pretty much like it's just dead. So the governor has a lot of power to just sort of say no. And we've seen that in like my area where in tech in AI where they've tried to pass a number of like tech bills. But Gavin is pretty tight with Silicon Valley. And so either

through the threat of a veto or just an outright veto, he can he can still like wield that. And that's a big thing like I literally, you know, for the amount of political work that I do in the in the state like I've noticed I'll get orgs reaching out to me I can't sorry I just got my vote I already sent in my ballot you know I will I will pop off about California politics and what started

happening is every legislative session orgs will reach out and they're literally running a campaign to try to get Gavin Newsom to not veto something they're trying to like you know get ads out there and like get a public ground swell so that he'll feel pressured and an example

of that is Scott Weiner's AI bill where I like, you know, made a TikTok for them and like hosted a town hall that they did about it

because it was a pretty good bill and Newsom ended up vetoing it. So let's move on to talk about AI. It really feels like there's a, there's a groundswell of public opinion. Like the decision makers are starting to realize that there is.

And Brian, you've written about how there's like this nationwide local effort to stop data centers from being built. How much is this happening? Yeah. I mean, it's really sort of blown up over the last year or so. I mean, it's really this interesting sort of political formation that's taken shape. I mean, it is truly, truly bipartisan.

There's data center protest movements in Oklahoma, in Maine, in Vermont, in California. and you have these really interesting coalitions of people who are protesting these, especially the hyperscale data center. So for just like a little bit of background in case folks aren't aware, basically in order to build out AI capacity to train new models and to run them, you need a ton of compute power. You need a ton of sort of basically server farms all stacked up using an immense amount of energy. They also need water to cool them.

And so you have Google, Meta, Oracle, OpenAI, all sort of in this gold rush to build out these huge data centers. And they need to be built somewhere. So sometimes they're 250,000 square foot facilities. Sometimes they're even bigger than that. The most famous one is probably the Stargate project with Or. Oracle and Open AI that they're trying to build in Texas. And the whole scope is like $500 billion it's supposed to be. And so these get set up in people's backyards for any number of reasons, right?

They draw water from local sources. They cause electrical bills to go up. They pollute because you can't run them on clean energy all the time. Even if you try, you have to have backup generators and they're noisy pollution. They don't employ anybody. They employ like a handful of people. Yeah. So like the building trades actually like the data because they're huge construction projects.

Right. But after that, then it's like you have a few techs. And so more and more people are kind of waking up to the fact that big tech essentially wants to build these things in your backyard. We just had one here in Monterey Park, which is, you know, I don't what, five or ten miles away from where we're recording this right now. And when the community got wind of it, they turned out and they, they flood. the city council meetings. You might have seen some clips of people giving these talks and they've become really contentious. And they basically pushed the city council not only to shut down this data center that had been approved by the city council, but then to just ban them

from the city of Monterey Park. It became the first city in California to ban, you just cannot build a data center in the city of Monterey Park, which is the small sort of, I guess, I guess it's a suburb. It's really just a small city east of, east of love. Los Angeles, East of downtown LA. And so, yeah, so you have this real movement. And then that's one half of it. The other half of it is connected, as you mentioned, to what we know about AI and what, you know, people actually stand to get from it and how they feel about AI. Yeah.

So this becomes like a site of public protest where, you know, most of us don't have any say whether or not AI gets built or developed or is used to automate this job or that. And where can you now actually go and kind of like put your hand up and say, this sucks? And now it's a data center. One of the things that really strikes me about it is that like tech companies for the whole history of the industry, one of the advantages they had was they had almost no infrastructure costs and they didn't have to build anything. That's part of what enabled startups to exist as a thing.

You just hire 50 people and you like. Do it in your garage. Yeah, exactly. You rent some Amazon server time or whatever. But to do AI, they have to build huge infrastructure. And it's also the first time that we're feeling that in the real world. Like I remember 10 years ago, people were saying, hey, you know, when you upload something to the cloud, like, that's actually like on a computer somewhere. There's not a real cloud.

And you go, oh, okay, yeah, I guess so. But, like, yeah, I don't know where my fucking Apple photos are stored. But AI is like, it's so big that it is literally impinging on the real world in a way that is. striking, especially because sort of the promise of the technology is supposed to make everything more frictionless, right? More easy. You won't have to think about the real world as much. You'll just sit and talk to your iPhone, except that now there's a giant hulking monstrosity in your town. It's a really new thing that people are confronted. Can I ask what so many people are scared to ask? So I'm kind of playing like the dumb person, but okay, why the data center? Yeah. Yeah. Why

is it just a really big computer? Like, why does it need water? Because my understanding is you shouldn't water in your computer actually don't go well together. And people talk in this shorthand online. And they're like, well, you know, like, you know, if you, like asking Chad GPT a question, the same as pouring out one bottle of water.

And like, I believe that. I'm not, I don't use chat GPT. I don't pour out water. I only drink Diet Coke. and I try not to have water by my computer but I'm like okay so I've read it uses like this tremendous amount of methane I'm like I thought I was just water

I do just like the image of someone going like I was trying to use chat GPT and I poured the water all over my computer I did what I was supposed to do it didn't work yeah what is Brian I tried to do my research I watched Eddington

it's yeah you know that's all you can do yeah so what the fuck is this So, especially older computers, you know, you would have a computer that's on for a while or a laptop and you're using it for a while. What happens? You know, it gets hot. Yeah. It heats up.

That's why you're, it's running all these computations. It's, it's, it's. So just do fewer computations. Well, you can't. That's why they want to build these big things because they need, they need more and more and more. The data is getting larger and larger. They're starting to combine all different kinds of, they've, you know, they need more, more training material. so they have to run larger and larger computations.

And then basically these computers are running around the clock and then they just heat up. And so they have these tubes, basically, where they pump water through to cool them down. Oh, you're not supposed to do that. Yeah, well, it doesn't spray out onto the computer. And so it's just a really big computer. Like, it's really big hard drives.

Many, yeah. And again, I'm just asking the question that the people at home are wondering, can't they make the data centers smaller? Like the way that thumb drives and hard drives. Like, I don't like what they produce. So I'm not even like, oh, AI would be great if we could just not have data centers. But I'm just trying to like understand all aspects.

And not so much play devil's advocate, but just play like a thinker. Yeah. So why AI not small computer? I mean, I think that question. No one knows the answer. Like they're all acting like they know the answer. really understands, except for you, it sounds like. Well, the only reason that they need more is because they think the current sort of model

or the current paradigm of AI development is based almost entirely on this idea that more is better, more energy, more data, more computations, running more, more, more, at scale. And that, if you read Karen Howe's account of how sort of open AI sort of stumbled on its key insight. It could be boiled down to that one word and they, she says at scale. So you just you need more and then so

Open AI is only one of a number of players doing this. So you have all the major tech companies are basically in an arms race so they're all building these out and do we need this? My opinion, absolutely not. Maybe one. Maybe one company

can expand, build the data centers but wait, it feels You want a monopoly of AI. I want a publicly owned AI system where we could tamp down on all of this. But that's neither here nor there. The fact is, is right now, again, they're all building sort of redundant data centers to compete with one another. And they're all essentially the same. And the real kicker is that because the chips get improved sort of enough every two or three years,

that the data centers that get built right now and the server farms that are, installed all just big computers, lines and lines and rows and rows of computers, they're going to be obsolete in a few years. And they're going to have to chuck all those computers and reinstall them with the cutting edge hardware or not. And then, I mean, honestly, as we, I still think we're probably bound for some kind of a market correction. And then we're going to have all these empty sort of industrial data centers littered around

the country as, you know. Yeah, they're designed to do massive amounts of a. certain type of calculation that might not be, you know, the processes are tuned to do the specific types of operations they need to do. You just keep upgrading the state of the art. Yeah, exactly. It reminds me of when people try to get rid of a prison or even like the argument around fracking where it's like once we have it, we really can't get rid of it.

Like even if a data center came to a neighborhood and then the people were like, we actually don't want this. It seems like it would be incredibly difficult to put the toothpaste back in the bottle. 100%. And that's why I think a lot of people are like, oh, well, the water use isn't that much. It's like the equivalent of a golf course, but like golf courses use a ton of water. But like, but yeah. People do calculations there all the time. They do calculations all the time. You know what it's not going to happen is the industrial buildings of a hundred years ago, right? What is that now? Oh, it's a nice co-working space in downtown Pittsburgh or like they turned it into they put a brewery in there, you know? They like they fixed up. the old factory and they kept the old brickwork. They're not going to be doing it with the data centers. You're not going to be going down and taking your sweetie for a stroll

down by the data center, the abandoned data center, like 30 years from now. Unless you really hate your sweetie. Yeah. I mean, that's what, I mean, that's, and so that's why I could not sympathize more with the people who are trying to fight to get these things shut down, or at least, you know, the

moratorium sort of talk. There's a lot of efforts to pass legislation. would put a moratorium and that say, like, you can't build a data center for 18 months while we figure out what the demands actually. What about the argument that only, you know, wealthy neighborhoods where they have that kind of power are going to have those restrictions. So it's just going to be displaced to, you know, cities where they. Yeah, that's a good idea. Let's do that. No, it's, it's not true. I think a lot of people associate like development projects.

and opposition to development projects with nimbism and with sort of, again, like the affluent environment. You know, you're Tom Steyer types who would say, like, don't build that. Self-made. Right. Self-made. But the data doesn't really bear that out. I've been looking into this precise question, and it turns out more often than not,

they're getting built in lower-income neighborhoods where the tech companies probably think that there's going to be less will or less capacity. to resist. And it turns out that actually some of the communities that are okay with the data centers are, you know, older or already sort of wealthier sort of pro-AI contingents. So the AI companies are sort of making the wrong bet. They're betting that the poorer neighborhoods will accept the data centers and they're rejecting them to some extent.

It's not this. The story isn't as simple as some people would lead you to believe. Well, I actually, I haven't like released this date yet, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm working with a data scientist who's actually crunching these numbers. And it turns out that more of the sort of data centers that have been proposed in low-income neighborhoods have been fought back against, have been canceled, which does seem to have taken the tech companies by surprise. Because, yeah, usually it's more of a gamble. You want to build a big development project in like a wealthy neighborhood. then it's, you know, who has the time and the organizing capacity to try to fight back against that.

It's usually not, you know, people who are, you know, working minimum wage jobs. In the movie version of this, I feel like it's some CEO who's knocking on people's doors and donating to the, you know, public schools and then ingratiating themselves in the community. Is that happening at all to try to get people to be like fine with the data centers? No, it's all too late. I mean, I mean, this sort of ground swell of protest. has, I think, taken them by surprise. They just didn't think about it. I mean, this is a very sort of blinkered,

sort of ego maniacal sort of class of industrialists here, the tech CEOs and the guys who've been leading this charge. So, yeah, and now, now, especially after, like, some of this stuff has, like, escalated to the level of violence. There was an Indiana. a city council member. I don't know if you saw this, voted to approve a data center and woke up to his front door getting 13 bullet holes in it with a sign slid on his doormat that said, you know, no data centers. So it was very, it's.

What could it mean? Yeah, what could it mean? Who could have been anybody yet? So, and, you know, that was actually the same week that somebody threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's house. So it's like there is this growing sort of. Well, everyone's unemployed. They have all this time on their hands because AI is taking their jobs. So they're using that time to fight back.

And meanwhile, the AI CEOs are out there saying like, yeah, our products will probably eliminate 30% of all jobs. Like, you know, this is. Those things we all hate. Yeah. This data center, that's what it's for. It's for taking away your ability to make a living. And I mean, sometimes you see people on X or whatever say that skeptics. You call it Twitter still?

You know what? Am I dead naming? Good for you. If I could eliminate all of the minutes every podcast spends on what we call it now, it's like, that's honestly the most annoying thing that Elon has done in the last couple years is make us constantly hedge about this. But there's this argument that maybe the pushback against AI is inflated by the skeptics or by the, you know, the Luddites of whether that's complimentary or derogatory. but I feel like the polling is showing Brian you were saying before we started rolling that the polling is showing that like only older and wealthier people are feeling positive about AI at all yeah well there is this great survey that I think it was NBC did this study about sort of sentiment about AI and gen Z like 18 to 34 year olds AI pulled negative 44 like just complete like that That's like that's like Hitler levels of hate. Like Gen Z hates AI.

Yeah. And, you know, it was sort of, you know, women dislike AI more than men, all these things. And then you like the only group that sort of uniformly felt positive about AI were people who made over $200,000 and boomers. Wow. Yeah. So older or more affluent. So it does. It kind of tracks how you feel about AI lines up, you know, pretty.

neatly to sort of class, class issues, your class position and how you, you know, how secure you feel in your job and your place. So if you're rich, you probably think AI is great. Because it's, you know, you're not worried about losing income to automation or, you know, or any of the social issues that go along with it. But yeah, it's, I mean, it's going to, I think, if it has not already become like maybe the most salient sort of political issue, of this election cycle. Sorry, just to bring it back for a second, could a governor of California

pass a bill that says we're not building data centers in the state of California? Like obviously, the house, the houses would have to write and pass it, but then when it comes to the governor's desk, is that something they have the power of? I mean, have you been to San Francisco and seen the billboards?

Like, all of the money in the state is turned towards a, like this is the state where all of the AI people live. This is where the AI money is. They kind of own the state to some extent. In a lot of ways, when you look at how the tech industry is destroyed Los Angeles, it's like San Francisco has eaten up

Los Angeles and is eating the rest of the country. So I don't know if we can rely on like the governor of California. But technically, I mean, so they just, this just happened in Maine. Maine passed the, like the legislature of Maine passed the data center moratorium

but the governor vetoed it. Oh, my God. But, and then she dropped out of the, of the race for a Senate seat, basically seating it to a Platner, who's sort of the upstart, you know, buyer brand challenger. So like it maybe it wasn't the only thing, but it was she, it was an unpopular move. This is like, it's a, it's a unified. It's very popular. Just today, Gallup, I think seven out of 10 Americans do not want data centers built in their cities. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, speaking of boomers and all of the wealth that they have, last story to talk about briefly, there was a recent stat that the Wall Street Journal put out. There's a lot of talk about like, you know, wealth inequality in America, the top 1%, the top 10% of how much wealth they have. Something that people don't talk about enough is how much money boomers have, specifically as a generation. They're sitting on $110 trillion while everybody younger than them. has just $65 trillion. And there are more of us than there are. I know there are a lot of boomers,

but like Gen X and on down, there are more of us. Well, also we tend to be in better shape as well. That's true. But they are living longer than ever, the boomers, because they're using their money to extend their lifespans. And so they're literally just sitting on it.

They're not spending it. They're not giving it to their kids. They're not donating it. They're just like hoarding it as a, generational cohort. And I'm against that. I think it must feel really bad to be like, you know, not a rich boomer and be listening to this podcast, you know?

And so my heart goes out to them. How much of the wealth is specifically Tom Steyers? Okay. It feels like an unfair question. Let's try to keep it relevant to the conversation. I mean, you know, it just is like there's this characterization of the boomers as this generation that got, they reaped all the benefits of the post-World War II economy. And then they did not allow anybody else to participate in it. And like, it's true.

Like, if you look at the numbers, it's literally true. They're not even, they're literally not even passing it on to their own kids. And the reason this came up in the Wall Street Journal was because, there's this idea that the economists have of like the great wealth transfer that like as the boomers, some I think more conservative economists will use this as like, hey, don't worry, Gen Xers and millennials, your parents will die and they'll give you some money. Now, of course, a lot of people's parents don't have any money at all. But even if you are in the cohort, like what they are now realizing is, oh, that's not

happening for a lot of people because their parents are still fucking alive. Yeah, we were talking about this a little bit earlier, but I remember reading something about how private equity has taken over assisted living facilities. And so a lot of boomers are spending. And I guess it wouldn't be boomers. It would be the generation above boomers because how old is the oldest boomer? Like 65? No. No, no.

No, no. 75. But they don't surpass 80. But because private equity has taken over all of these senior living facilities, people are spending more and more. retirement than they used to. And so that's coming. So for all of these people's parents who maybe are still mobile, but like in 10 years or so, that's going to be a huge chunk of change. And then even less week, like we were talking about Prop 13 in California, which is, you know, the most populous state in the country. It incentivizes Californians to stay in their homes

because the property taxes. Basically in California, I don't mean to cut you off. No, it's fine. It's not like I'm a woman or anything. And that was, and you know what, that is what flashed through my mind as I did it. In California, there's this weird proposition from the 70s that means as long as you stay in your house, your property taxes never go up. And it incentivizes old people to die in the homes that they've been living in for decades and never move into that smaller apartment and cash out and let someone else have the house and travel the world. They just stay in the fucking place. Or move into an apartment or. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, I hear you on boo. boomers being bad and I kind of feel bad about these systemic, or would it be systematic, I guess, systematic things that make it, you know, disincentivize boomers from giving money away. Yeah. No, for sure. And they're sitting on a huge amount of housing stock, too. I think that's a lot.

I don't know if the study looked at how it's broken down. But like that's a big piece of it. It's just like there's such a housing shortage here in California and everywhere else. Like it's just, it's through the roof. And part of it is because they're, yeah, they're just sitting on it either Airbnb or just, you know. Yep. Yeah. The number of people who have, you know, the number of rich parents who are, you know, they're 70 years old.

They're rattling around inside a four bedroom in a suburb with like a couple of SUVs that they don't need when like they could be, you know, living it. They're old people. They're tiny. They could be in a tiny little space, you know. Yeah. They're so small. And you're right about the retirement communities. Yeah.

That's a great point. That was a good point. I've had a family of friends and people I know who like move into like high end retirement homes. And basically the way they work is that you just shovel all your money in the hole. They're like saying some of you have to buy them in some. You have to buy like a house that you're only going to live in for, you know, if. Yeah. Not to get morbid.

Yeah. I mean it's like I've, I think I read it was like some of these places. It's $20,000 a month to live there. And the services have gotten worse. these companies have like gutted the staff and they're paying these people, you know, like minimum wage to change diapers. So. Yep. And you know, I understand if you're that old, you're like, I want to be comfortable.

You can't take it with you. Who cares what the sticker price is? Except that give the money to the rest of us first. Yeah. Kill yourself is what you're saying. Kill yourself. Yeah. And on that note, we'll end on kill yourself.

Thank you guys so much for being here. Brian and Andrew, where can people find you? Blood in the Machine is the newsletter and the book. And it's an incredible newsletter. Thank you. People wanted to learn more about it. You can watch a past interview that we did last year, which is one of our favorites and best performing from the last couple of years.

And Andrea, you have a wonderful piece in the new or was it the previous N plus one magazine? I wrote a short story that's definitely fiction in the last N plus one magazine. and you can find me on social media a more underscore or less. And of course, if you want to support the channel, head of patreon.com slash Adam Conover, thank you guys so much for listening. And we'll be back next week with more news on Chris 45 minutes. That was a HeadGum podcast.

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