00:25:36 · Max Read, Mike Isaac, Jasmine Sun, Erin Griffith
[00:25:36] S1: I mean I mean, I assume the meetings with the investors are very similar. [00:25:38] S4: How do you tell a labor union that we're gonna be post money in, three or four years? I think that's a hard sell. [00:25:46] S1: This is coming, by the way, like, in the midst of a little bit of anxiety and, let's call it a jittery moment in the market. The elections are next week, and I really wanna talk to you guys about, what we're looking at and what we're what we're waiting to see. Jasmine, what are you tracking for for for the midterms next week? [00:26:04] S2: Yeah. I mean, these are interesting midterms because I think it's the first election where people's feelings about AI, about data centers could plausibly have shown up. I mean, I think the top level on it is even though we saw a lot of discourse, a lot of anger about data centers in particular that's been building up over the last year, I did some reporting on it over the summer in Wisconsin and Michigan, two states where data centers were actually a really big factor in the primaries. In the majority of states, I don't think they are yet shifting people's votes. They're an extremely... They're an eighty twenty issue in the sense that people feel very negatively about data centers. People feel very negatively about AI. This is bipartisan, and in that sense, it seems like a unicorn, but it's also not something that is quite salient yet. I've looked at, you know, a million polls, and AI usually ranks, like, 22 out of 39 issues. [00:26:51] S3: Oh my god.
00:26:51 · Erin Griffith, Jasmine Sun, Max Read
[00:26:51] S3: Oh my god. [00:26:52] S2: It's like even in states like Ohio or Pennsylvania where data centers are a big issue, I think it's usually something like between one or 5% of voters will list it as their number one thing. And so while we're seeing data centers really impact, like, your mayoral election, like we're seeing recall campaigns, city council reshuffles. I don't think like a big senate race is gonna be determined by data center sentiment. [00:27:14] S1: Right. It's like a muni... I mean, this came across in the reporting you were doing that this is a really a municipal issue, and it's gonna get a lot of town managers voted out and and council board selectmen or whatever else. But it's interesting because this was, at least in the summer, it felt like this was a focus of some senate campaigns. Some senate campaigns were in fact putting a lot of resources into being anti data center. Do you think that was wasted money, or is it is it is it just not the... Ultimately the issue that matters?
00:27:37 · Jasmine Sun
[00:27:37] S2: I mean, I think it really depends. I think there are races where there's... They're close enough and, rural voters in particular. You can get a lot of normal rural Republicans or low turnout voters to maybe turn out if there's a data center in their backyard. I think the races that people are really concerned about, Sherrod Brown in Ohio might stage a comeback in particular because of data centers, or a big motivation for Greg Abbott to restrict approvals and connections to the electricity grid even though he's been very, very pro... Built. He's been welcoming the data centers for years, but because of a potential threat from both his Democratic opponent plus all of these rural Texan farmers who are like, what's up with these power lines and data centers? He actually did a pseudo moratorium, which because he was worried about the midterm. So, you know, I think there are a few elections in purplish states where data centers could swing things. But the other thing I'm tracking is like data centers are very concrete, whereas AI generally is still feels so abstract to people that I'm not really sure if, like, data centers are barely swinging some elections. I'm not sure that, like, AI in general is gonna be a voting issue yet even though some people suspect it.
00:28:46 · Max Read, Mike Isaac
[00:28:46] S1: Yeah. I mean, it's a very funny, you know, as you say, if you're on Twitter or if you're if you're, like, reading too much about this, it does feel like a life or death issue. Certainly, is for some people some people writing, you know, introductory letters to s ones. But it hasn't... As you say, it hasn't really trickled down except in a sort of indirect way through the the effect on the economy of AI. Yeah. Mike, what about you? Are you tracking anything on the election next week? [00:29:09] S4: You talked about this in last week's episode a little bit with the head of policy at Meta leaving and sort of imagining which new regime of, like, you know, democratic operatives they might replace them with. But I just wanna see if there's a wipe away. No. Of course. I am a loyal Hard Fork listener. [00:29:26] S1: That's right. [00:29:27] S4: That's [00:29:27] S1: why [00:29:27] S4: we're in. We've got [00:29:28] S1: one. You've got one. Get to two by the end of [00:29:31] S4: next week. Two. I'll I'll get my wife to listen. I do... I do... I really, really wanna see the theater of all the tech companies that have been trying to cater to Republicans suddenly be like, actually, we love the new democratic... Potentially democratic regime in all of these states. And because they have a hold on... Again, potentially have a hold on congress, this is what we really believe in. You know? [00:29:56] S1: And I
00:29:56 · Max Read, Mike Isaac
[00:29:56] S1: And I [00:29:56] S4: I think these swings are valuable because it sort of shows, know, these are corporations that don't necessarily believe in anything except self preservation a lot of the time. [00:30:04] S1: Yeah. I mean, what do you... Are are you seeing any indications besides say... So we're talking about Joel Kaplan, who is the head of policy at Facebook for fifteen years. He's been a sort of conservative whisperer. He he announced his departure last week. Are you seeing any other kind of movements that suggest a little bit of, I don't know what... I don't know how to put it, team switching or sort of, you know, trying to trying to make inroads among, you know, among Democrats? [00:30:25] S4: I think all of the companies are looking hard at their their DC teams and saying, who do we need to sort of elevate and put out front? They're never gonna, like, cut all of their conservative sort of, you know, relations people or whatever. But it's sort of like, actually, look at this guy. The the the guy who wears a blue pin instead of a red one or whatever. You know? That's like... That is... That's all the companies. And, like, that's just the game. I guess I shouldn't be so cynical, but it is worth looking at and seeing [00:30:54] S1: Why wouldn't you be cynical? This seems like exactly the right [00:30:57] S4: thing to be cynical about. Yeah.
00:30:57 · Mike Isaac, Max Read, Erin Griffith
[00:30:57] S4: thing to be cynical about. Yeah. [00:30:58] S1: I know. Yeah. And do you feel like there's a there's a shift? I mean, I I think we all are aware of what felt like, I'm sorry to use such immaterial language here, a vibe shift in Silicon Valley a few years ago. Buddy. Is there a vibe shift swinging back? I'm interested in... If any of you feel like that might happen, or is it... Is this... Was that... Was the first vibe shift an illusion? [00:31:19] S3: I mean, I've seen headlines to that effect. But I think, like Mike said, it's gonna be a little bit more on the DC side of things because, I mean, just from my perspective, a lot of the VCs were really excited to be able to not care about stuff like that Democrats care about, like DEI. Culturally, it seems like we're kind of gonna be still in that, in in that vibe. [00:31:43] S1: Yeah. It doesn't seem like that's changed. Jasmine, we were talking before we were taping about, like, a sense that there's there's a question about how Republicans are gonna react to to this. They're likely to lose the house of representatives. There's gonna have to be a shift in how they approach AI regulation in Silicon Valley.