Kara, it's good to visit with you.
Hi, Jason. How's it going?
It's excellent. You're coming back to Minneapolis, back to Minnesota. Why are you coming back?
I like you people. I don't know. It's questionable, but I think Minneapolis is one of my favorite places and we love the audience there. Smart, engaging. We were in Chicago last year and so we obviously always want to be in the Midwest, and so that meant Minneapolis this year, perhaps another city another year. But we love Minneapolis and we had such a good time there when we came to raise money for efforts to help people who were abused by ICE and stuff.
ICE obviously has been a massive driver for Minnesota voters, and you'll have a better sense Wednesday when you're here if people are motivated more by ICE. Are they motivated by Trump, by national issues, or the fraud scandal, which has been part of life here in Minneapolis too? It'll be interesting, I think, to see which way people go.
I have a feeling people are focused on one thing. Well, it's anti-Trump in that it's lack of affordability and blaming it on the gas prices and things like that. Obviously, ICE and the fraud scandal on both sides of the equation are issues. Probably ICE more so than anything else, I think, because it affected and sort of I think everyone felt it in Minnesota from what I can understand. But you know, it just depends. It's a get-out-the-vote thing, but to me everything hinges on accountability and affordability. Those are the two topics: what is happening in our federal system, is it fair? And you know, and it'll be the strength of Amy Klobuchar as governor. I think she'll carry a lot of people whether people get to the polls, and that gives Peggy Flanagan a boost presumably, or whether Michelle — is it Letoya — is, you know...
Yeah, she seems rather whiny to me, just listening to her. But if you know she can continue to sell the Trump agenda because she's quite aligned with him, I'm not so sure that's a really strong argument these days as it was previously, and it certainly was previously, but right now...
But it's certainly not what she's trying to sell to voters right now, is what she's saying: 'I'll stand up to Trump when I disagree with him.'
They don't. He might be able to now, you know, if he suffers losses, sure, right. You may have more... easy to be courageous when someone's a lame duck, deeply lame, an extraordinarily double-lame duck, you know, a duck with no ability to walk essentially. I think that's much easier to do that, and you'll see a lot of Republicans doing that. They suddenly find their, you know, they reach down and find a set, I guess. But it's easy to do that when it doesn't cost you something.
You mentioning Amy Klobuchar, she has written on the topic of antitrust.
She's written a book that could kill a poodle, as I told her. Giant book she wrote. It hasn't been the topic of the campaign, and obviously she's running to be governor of a state. You have different topics you're thinking about.
But I am curious, especially considering your background in tech, with your thoughts about sort of the universal — regardless of political party, people hate data centers.
They hate tech and they hate tech. Yeah, I think they... Hang on, let me text 10 people about how much I hate tech. That's sort of the problem.
I think data centers are the proxy for this hatred, right? It's about AI. It's about what's it going to do to my job. It's why do those billionaires get to go to the White House all the time? Why are those billionaires getting money from Trump all the time? It's a whole package. It's a sort of turducken of what is happening here. Why are the world's richest people getting richer? And why do they get the access they do? It's about why do they get to put data — and it becomes real when it's data centers because it's in your thing. It's like they don't just get to run everything. They get to do things in our locality that we don't like and we get no say. And I think it has to do with not just wealth, because I think people like wealth, everybody wants — you know, that's sort of the American way — but extreme wealth that gives you access that lets you run over people, not so much. And that's the Gilded Age, right? That's where everything shifts to: why are these people getting so much of everything when I'm struggling to pay basic grocery bills or gas bills or things like that? And why are they noisy? And why don't we — why are there NDAs? And why do they get to do whatever they want? And I think that's not the America — there's a real reaction to that. And so data centers are just the proxy for that.
But I just saw some numbers that were just put out, which is really interesting to me. Let me find them. Just give me one second. Right now, voters in key states want AI safety measures. I mean, by a lot. I mean, the GOP's even in Iowa is at 50%. Iowa is 86% — Democrats and independents are 72%. Same thing in Ohio. Like, these are conservative states, right? And they're at 56% think the US should prioritize AI safety over deregulation, and most people don't feel hopeful about it. And so you know, you're seeing that, and it's going to be a big deal in the presidential election, I think. And Democrats are talking about it, which is good.
Do you think that a point in this conversation comes where people do analyze maybe the legitimate needs and the ways that...
I hope so. I hope so, because it's not an overreaction, because these people have taken and taken and taken. So no, it's like: stop acting like you don't deserve regulation like everybody else, or that you can do whatever you want when Elon Musk spends $500 million on the midterms. That's enormous, that's like unprecedented. What does he want? Like, he wants betterment of society by one person making decisions for the rest of us? No, he wants — the getting's good, and he wants to buy politicians. James Talarico's had a lot of success with that message in Texas, and Texas, like, they want to buy a US senator there, and he's precisely right to say that. I mean, $158 million for a single candidate. That is...
You know, and Elon tried it in Wisconsin. It didn't work. 25 million to try to buy a judge, essentially.
Again, didn't work. So you know, I think people are reacting absolutely positively in the way they should. The question is then: can we have a real debate on what's safe and what's not? That's — but all of us, not them, not them deciding, not the people with the financial interest making all the determination. And the only people you see at that White House — I don't get to go to the White House and express my reservations. Scientists don't get to go there. Major academics, the creators of this technology, people like Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, they don't get to go to the White House to discuss it because they don't have an economic interest in it, and they might be critical, which they should be appropriately. And then at the same time, we can have government, academics, critics, and the industry all talk together about what's right. But ultimately, in local areas, the local citizens should be top of the heap on making decisions. Always, always and forever.
