Data centers face bipartisan backlash, but votes may not follow

Elections (6)

• Tucker Carlson says the DSA differs culturally from Republicans but has not shown a clear alternative on Iran, taxes, or improving ordinary Americans’ lives; he rejects rewarding Republicans for letting Israel push the United States toward war with Iran.
• Tucker Carlson supports forming a third party because he believes neither major party reflects majority preferences; he argues that ignoring those preferences for decades undermines democracy and risks unrest, while polling can reveal public views without governing by poll.
• Tucker Carlson names Marjorie Taylor Greene, Joe Kent, and Thomas Massie as his three best politicians, praising their willingness to challenge party leaders; he says donor pressure and political campaigns pushed all three out of favor.
• Tucker Carlson says Charlie Kirk filled the organizing role left by a weakened Republican National Committee through Turning Point, and argues Kirk’s murder and the donor-led takeover of the organization damaged the Republican coalition that elected Trump in 2024.
• Tucker Carlson says Trump betrayed the issues he campaigned on and argues loyalty to a politician must be mutual; Carlson says he still feels affection for Trump but will not defend actions he believes are false or harmful.
• Tucker Carlson says leadership starts with love for the people being led, using his brother Uncle Buck as an example of someone who enjoys being around people across backgrounds; Carlson says he would vote for him for president.

Religion (1)

• Tucker Carlson calls James Talarico’s use of Christian identity blasphemous, arguing that Talarico’s politics oppose biblical Christianity; Carlson says Talarico’s public presence also gives him a strong sense of personal revulsion.

War (1)

• Tucker Carlson says both parties support wars against Russia and Iran, and argues Democratic leaders helped set the Russia conflict in motion by backing Ukraine’s path toward NATO; he expects little change without pressure from voters who oppose the wars.

Corruption (2)

• Tucker Carlson argues that money makes politicians vulnerable to donors who use government for private or foreign interests. He cites Miriam Adelson’s support for both Donald Trump and James Talarico, and says Fox regained pharmaceutical advertising after Carlson was fired.
• Tucker Carlson argues the public owns the Epstein files and says the government has a duty to investigate people named in them; he links Trump’s resistance to releasing the records with lost voter trust.

Labor (1)

• Tucker Carlson says widening inequality has made the United States cease to be a majority middle-class country, creating demand for socialism; he warns that economic upheaval may replace one wealthy elite with technocrats who control the state.

Psychology (2)

• Tucker Carlson doubts political parties will learn from electoral losses without severe consequences, but says he sees people’s relationships, family ties, and loyalty becoming stronger and more honest in recent years.
• Tucker Carlson distinguishes verbal fluency from wisdom, criticizing Ted Cruz as an example of someone whose high verbal ability does not guarantee sound judgment; Carlson says leadership requires willingness to sacrifice for the people being led.

Iran (1)

• Tucker Carlson says he spoke with Trump repeatedly about Iran before the war and visited Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Jordan shortly beforehand; Carlson regrets not believing the war was imminent and predicts voters will punish it.

Markets (4)

• Aaron Griffith says Anthropic’s S-1 gives public investors their first full view of a frontier LLM company’s business, after years of private valuations and heavy investment across the AI economy.
• Aaron Griffith says Anthropic reported an $80 billion net loss because convertible debt was counted as a loss, while its actual operating loss narrowed sharply year over year. The filing puts first-half 2026 revenue at $16.3 billion.
• Aaron Griffith says investors will look for Anthropic’s next growth engine beyond coding, including drug development and legal technology. The IPO roadshow will give the company a chance to explain whether slower growth reflects competition or weaker demand across the AI market.
• Aaron Griffith says the IPO will test private-market AI valuations against public investors’ financial models, though Wall Street can also be driven by hype and momentum. The opening voiceover framed a possible $100 billion raise at a $2 trillion valuation, with much less fundraising potentially rattling markets.

AI Infrastructure (1)

• Anthropic’s growth depends on whether demand can justify its long-term, often non-cancellable commitments to data centers, chips, and compute. Aaron Griffith says Claude Code drove explosive first-half growth, but Q3 growth slowed to 44% as competitors gained ground and customers cut token spending.

Safety (4)

• Anthropic’s S-1 lists catastrophic or existential harm from advanced AI among its risks, while using passive language that does not directly state the company itself holds that view. It also says model welfare could delay retiring older models, reflecting the company’s unusual concern about possible model sentience.
• Aaron Griffith traces Anthropic’s founding to safety-focused researchers who left OpenAI, after earlier founders had split from Google over concerns about AI’s effects on humanity. Anthropic initially attracted money from Sam Bankman-Fried and other investors tied to effective altruism before enterprise software sales drew broader venture capital.
• Mike Isaac says the PHP vulnerability exposed how widely internet infrastructure depends on old code that can contain serious flaws. AI tools can find vulnerabilities faster, but Isaac doubts defenders will keep pace; Max Reed cites Joshua Sachs’s argument that defenders still have time to strengthen systems before criminals adapt.
• Jasmine Sun says a startup called Cathedral, staffed by former DOGE workers, accessed Anthropic’s Slack and IT systems and obtained trade secrets. The breach showed that even AI companies with advanced cyber models can leave their own internal systems exposed.

Startups (1)

• Anthropic’s founders retain unusually strong control through five stock classes, a majority voting stake, and an independent trust that controls most board seats. Jasmine Sun says the founders pledged most of their equity to charity, while Anthropic’s culture-fit interview asks employees whether they would work there if their equity became worthless.

Elections (1)

• Jasmine Sun says Republican voters broadly favor slower AI deployment with safeguards, while party leaders have largely followed Donald Trump’s deregulatory line. She sees a possible post-midterm split between free-market Republicans and new-right groups advocating rules on children, jobs, and safety.

Big Tech (1)

• Mike Isaac expects technology companies to elevate staff who can build ties with Democrats if Democrats gain power, after years of firms cultivating Republican relationships. Jasmine Sun says the cultural shift among venture capitalists appears limited, especially around issues such as DEI.

Regulation (1)

• Aaron Griffith says California Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5% tax on billionaires’ wealth, including unrealized gains and private startup shares. Opponents raised $333 million to defeat it, arguing the measure is poorly designed and could discourage founders, while some health groups question its long-term funding plan.

Labor (1)

• Aaron Griffith says Microsoft offered buyouts to 60,000 employees, but expected only 3% to 5% to accept, or roughly 3,000 people at most. She connects the cuts to years of tech-sector downsizing and Microsoft’s AI and infrastructure spending, while criticizing the company’s claim that buyouts give workers more control.

Coding (1)

• Mike Isaac says an Amazon engineering memo rejected token use and lines of code as measures of software productivity, calling instead for evaluation based on long-term outcomes. Isaac notes that long-term results are difficult to measure in quarterly employment reviews, leaving the company without an easy replacement metric.

Models (1)

• Jasmine Sun describes an Anthropic randomized trial in which professional statistical analysts often followed AI recommendations and reused AI arguments to justify their choices, while rarely admitting influence. Sun warns that people may quietly outsource decisions to AI without recognizing how much the systems shape their judgment.

VC (1)

• Aaron Griffith says Andreessen Horowitz renamed its crypto fund A16Z Frontier, a sign that venture firms are broadening their mandates as AI absorbs most startup funding. She says crypto funds face fewer investable companies because builders have shifted toward AI, while the firm denies abandoning crypto.

Elections (17)

• Nate Silver put Democrats above a 70% chance of winning the Senate, with competitive races extending into Republican-leaning states including Kansas, Texas, Iowa, and Alaska. Democrats needed to defend their current competitive seats and flip at least four Republican-held seats.
• Nate Silver said a poor midterm for Trump could make him a super lame duck and effectively start the 2028 campaign once votes are counted. Silver expects AI, alongside the economy, to be a major issue in 2028.
• Nate Silver described the midterm environment as an 11-point shift against the president's party, compared with an average shift of 7.5 points. That swing could turn a state Trump won by 11 points, such as Ohio, into a toss-up.
• Nate Silver credited Democratic prospects to a strong national environment and, in several key races, stronger candidates facing weaker Republicans. Silver said candidate quality might move results by as much as five points; he flagged Susan Collins's history of beating her polls by nine points as a reason to worry about Maine.
• Nate Silver said Democratic polling strength has been concentrated in redder states, where Democrats often chose more moderate or independent-minded candidates. He also pointed to fuel costs and possible voter backlash near data centers as explanations for the pattern.
• Nate Silver said social-media visibility does not reliably track candidate performance. Midterm outcomes depend on turnout from both parties and persuasion among roughly 15% of voters who could plausibly swing; high-profile campaigns may also draw Republicans to the polls.
• Nate Silver warned that a shared polling error of three or four points could flip several close Senate races. He said polls were unusually accurate in 2018 and 2022, while New Jersey and Virginia polls the previous year underestimated Democrats by five to ten points.
• Nate Silver said the 2024 Iowa poll showing Kamala Harris ahead by three points was 13 to 15 points off, despite Ann Selzer's strong reputation. He argued that polls now function partly as models because pollsters adjust samples and turnout assumptions rather than simply reporting a raw snapshot.
• Nate Silver said polls that rely on stated enthusiasm for voting tend to produce more Democratic results than methods using other turnout signals. Early voting data showed low-propensity voters, defined as voting in no more than one of the past three elections, leaning Democratic so far.
• Nate Silver said Democratic results could shape the party's debate over progressive versus moderate candidates, but election-night clarity may matter more than narrow margins to most voters. He argued voters can weigh both a candidate's chance of winning and how much that candidate would advance their priorities.
• Ezra Klein described a rising class of Democratic talent, including James Talarico, John Ossoff, Abdul El-Sayed, and Pete Buttigieg, as more shaped by Obama-era politics and modern communication. Nate Silver said Obama's political style helped establish a model that later candidates adopted.
• Nate Silver's model gave Democrats more than a 90% chance of winning the House, but projected an average gain of only 22 seats because redistricting and voter self-sorting have left fewer swing districts. He said Republican map changes had effectively removed three Democratic seats, while a larger wave could overwhelm vulnerable incumbents.
• Nate Silver attributed Florida's shift toward Republicans mainly to migration, with a smaller contribution from a self-reinforcing decline in the state Democratic Party. He said Democratic voter-registration gains seen elsewhere, including the Midwest and Pennsylvania, had not appeared in Florida.
• Nate Silver linked Trump's declining approval to gas prices and economic anxiety, with a sharper drop during the 2025 tariff announcement he called Liberation Day. Silver said the Iran war and rising fuel costs hurt Republicans, while Trump resisted criticism of data centers partly because of competition with China and fear of an AI-driven stock-market collapse.
• Nate Silver said Trump staffed his administration with people unlikely to challenge him, citing Pete Hegseth and the departure of tariff critic Gary Cohn as examples. Silver argued that Trump could have strengthened Republicans in Texas by backing John Cornyn, but instead prioritized personal loyalty and public credit.
• Nate Silver described the combination of an Iran war, financial-market risk, and rapid AI development as a dangerous test for an aging lame-duck president. Silver said a crisis could be harder to manage with Trump surrounded by loyalists, while the AI transition could remake work within a few years.
• Nate Silver said political money is overrated in high-profile races, where candidates face diminishing returns, but matters more in lower-profile contests. He estimated that Republicans' apparent fundraising advantage translated into roughly even ad exposure, while Elon Musk had put hundreds of millions of dollars into Republican midterm efforts.

History (1)

• Nate Silver recommended Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Kate Hall's You Can Just Do Things, and Al Alvarez's The Biggest Game in Town. Silver said Gordon traces major U.S. gains to roughly 1870-1970, while Hall's book stresses agency and direct communication.