The AI Power Backlash, the NYMag David Ellison profile, Google Personal Intelligence | Diet TBPN

Diet TBPN delivers the best of today’s TBPN episode in 30 minutes. TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with each episode posted to podcast platforms right after. Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” the show has recently featured Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. TBPN.com is made possible by: Ramp - https://Ramp.com https://ramp.com/ AppLovin - https://axon.ai https://axon.ai/ Cognition - https://cognition.ai https://cognition.ai/ Console -https://console.com https://console.com/ CrowdStrike - https://crowdstrike.com https://crowdstrike.com/ ElevenLabs - https://elevenlabs.io https://elevenlabs.io/ Figma - https://figma.com https://figma.com/ Fin - https://fin.ai https://fin.ai/ Gemini - https://gemini.google.com https://gemini.google.com/ Graphite - https://graphite.com https://graphite.com/ Gusto - https://gusto.com/tbpn https://graphite.com/ Labelbox - https://labelbox.com https://labelbox.com/ Lambda - https://lambda.ai https://lambda.ai/ Linear - https://linear.app https://linear.app/ MongoDB - https://mongodb.com https://mongodb.com/ NYSE - https://nyse.com https://nyse.com/ Okta - https://www.okta.com https://www.okta.com/ Phantom - https://phantom.com/cash Plaid -https://plaid.com https://plaid.com/ Public - https://public.com https://public.com/ Railway - https://railway.com https://railway.com/ Ramp -https://ramp.com https://ramp.com/ Restream - https://restream.io https://restream.io/ Sentry - https://sentry.io https://sentry.io/welcome/ Shopify - https://shopify.com https://shopify.com/ Turbopuffer - https://turbopuffer.com https://turbopuffer.com/ Vanta - https://vanta.com https://vanta.com/ Vibe - https://vibe.co https://vibe.co/ Follow TBPN: https://TBPN.com https://tbpn.com/ https://x.com/tbpn https://open.spotify.com/show/2L6WMqY3GUPCGBD0dX6p00?si=674252d53acf4231 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/technology-brothers/id1772360235 https://www.youtube.com/@TBPNLive

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01John Coogan?

  Microsoft, who's making some waves because they jumped, they were on Truth Social scrolling as they do. Their comms department was probably like, what's going on? No, of course, they were talking to the Trump administration.

• 0:12Jordi Hays?

  Have you ever scrolled through Social, by the way? It's like five, five ads for every one post.

• 0:19John Coogan?

  The ads are crazy.

• 0:21Jordi Hays?

  And they're crazy.

• 0:22John Coogan?

  They're crazy.

• 0:22Jordi Hays?

  Crazy.

• 0:24John Coogan?

  The ads are like, are like, are you a real patriot? Yes or no? And no matter what you click, you just immediately go on to the next phase of the funnel. And then it'll just be like, glad to hear it, patriot. How about $200 donated? You're like, actually 100. And they're like, 200 it is.

• 0:40John Coogan?

  This is, I'm clearly clicking an entire image that just has buttons there. They're not actually buttons.

• 0:46Jordi Hays?

  They have a Truth Social ETF now.

• 0:49John Coogan?

  Wait, what? What's in the Truth Social ETF?

• 0:51Jordi Hays?

  Invest in the patriot economy.

• 0:53John Coogan?

  Oh, okay. I wrote about Microsoft and how they are negotiating the political backlash to AI, data centers, increasing power prices. Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, he, and the key, the key line in here is really, you know, he's talking to all the American tech companies, but mostly he wants to make sure Microsoft is going first. And they will make major changes beginning this week to ensure that Americans don't, quote, "pick up the tab for their power consumption in the form of paying higher utility bills." There's been a number of AI backlashes that have happened over 2025. You know, the new technology came out, everyone was, there was a lot of excitement in 23, 24. In 25, things got serious, the numbers

• 1:38John Coogan?

  got really big, the impacts got big, and the stories about the potential risks to the rewards started cropping up.

• 1:46Jordi Hays?

  And one of the challenges is the early AI-generated videos were pretty bad. And so people were like, these are bad, my power bill is going up, I don't like this.

• 1:54John Coogan?

  What's the point?

• 1:54Jordi Hays?

  Now, this move from Trump and Microsoft almost seems a little late because the videos are getting.

• 1:59John Coogan?

  They're really good.

• 2:01Jordi Hays?

  So I think people might start saying, hey.

• 2:03John Coogan?

  It's totally worth it.

• 2:04Jordi Hays?

  It's actually totally worth it. Yeah. You saw those, those four cats on the boat? That was.

• 2:09John Coogan?

  I haven't seen that one.

• 2:10Jordi Hays?

  Pull it up, Tyler.

• 2:11John Coogan?

  We gotta see that.

• 2:11Jordi Hays?

  Find the four cats. See, I think most people would see this and say, can we get some sound?

• 2:17John Coogan?

  There's no, yeah, there's no amount of, of power bills.

• 2:22John Coogan?

  That's pretty fun.

• 2:23Jordi Hays?

  Okay, turn it off. Turn off the sound.

• 2:26Jordi Hays?

  But anyways, I

• 2:27John Coogan?

  Yeah, it's worth it. Worth it.

• 2:28Jordi Hays?

  I think.

• 2:28John Coogan?

  It's worth every penny, clearly. Yeah, you see that and you're like, yeah.

• 2:32Jordi Hays?

  I think most people would see their power bill ticking up and realize that they're getting this content for free.

• 2:38John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:39Jordi Hays?

  They gotta pay for it somehow. There's no free lunch.

• 2:42John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah. The power bill narrative is the one that I think stuck the most. The water debate was sort of debunked pretty quickly. There were a number of just, it seemed like mathematical errors in some of the reporting that was claiming that data centers used a lot of water. And then you just talk to the data center guys and they're like, yeah, we actually, we do use a bunch of water, but then we recycle it. We just circle it, circle it around and we actually don't dump it out and waste it. There were other AI backlash narratives that were cropping up. The one-shotting stories were very harrowing and a lot of people experienced someone who sort of went off the rails, went GPT psychosis, like that one felt real. But it also seemed very preventable with aggressive guardrails. The power one was tricky because with power, you know, the data seemed

• 3:27John Coogan?

  real on the actual price increases. You looked at the power usage numbers and then you just see, demand is increasing, supply is staying flat, as it always has been for decades in America. We haven't been building a lot of power infrastructure. When, when demand increases and supply stays flat, we know what happens to prices. They increase. This is basic supply and demand. A 267% wholesale electricity price increase, if you're near a data center. So basically, if you're within 50 miles of a data center, this is probably affecting you in some way, although it's, there's a huge amount of variation. Even if you were able to pass that cost on to consumers, which is what's happening in the short term, it's starting to actually cause delays in data center buildouts. So there's $64 billion.

• 4:12Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, one, one thing here that I think is worth noting is consumers if, have, have very real reasons to push back, right? It's not like if they don't have a local data center, they can't use AI product. Like, it doesn't impact them at all. Maybe there's some jobs, maybe there's some jobs that come.

• 4:28John Coogan?

  I'm kind of, I feel like I'm missing out. I want one.

• 4:30Jordi Hays?

  I know.

• 4:30John Coogan?

  I want one. There's empty buildings all over LA.

• 4:33Jordi Hays?

  We did, we did joke about moving the show to Abilene. It's not like, hey, you know, there's a new football stadium being built and suddenly you're going to be able to go watch.

• 4:41John Coogan?

  Yeah, like you could be a football fan.

• 4:42Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 4:42John Coogan?

  But even if you're an AI fan, you're like, I don't need it in my backyard.

• 4:45Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, you're just like, I already have all the product. That's the big thing. It's like, power bill goes up, what do you get in return? Nothing.

• 4:51John Coogan?

  Aura.

• 4:52Jordi Hays?

  Aura.

• 4:53John Coogan?

  $64 billion in data center projects are currently held up and they face delays or cancellation because of opposition from local communities who say, we don't want this data center because prices are growing up. Now, there's a couple of other reasons. Some communities are still focused on the water issue. There's environmental impact questions, noise pollution during the construction process, and even aesthetics. There are some people who say, not in my backyard. I just don't want a big, white, square building. Yes, there's a Walmart there, but I know a guy who works there and I know the cashier and I go there and I walk in, the data center, you'll never go in. Interestingly, the anti-AI issue is seemingly very bipartisan. Data Center Watch, which is this research group,

• 5:38John Coogan?

  claims in the affected districts, the opposition is 55% Republican, 45% Democrat. So, pretty much just across the board, a bipartisan issue. And, you know, tech has obviously been worked very closely with Democrats in the past, worked very closely with Republicans in the more recent history, but now they're facing...

• 5:59Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, and I think it's easy for people in tech to say, oh, you're just, these are Luddites, blah, blah, blah. But it's actually not that. What's the incentive? Why do I want this?

• 6:10John Coogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially because it's going to get built somewhere. It might as well not be in my neighborhood. It's the easiest NIMBY argument to make. So, Trump picked up the story on Monday. He says he's working with American tech companies to make major changes to ensure that Americans don't pick up the tab for their power consumption. We're going to talk more about how that actually works out in the form of higher utility bills. Microsoft stepped up first, and I think the first mover advantage here from a messaging perspective is pretty strong, actually. I think it's a very good move. Now, to be clear, this isn't entirely new for the hyperscalers. Google actually has a program called the Clean Transition Tariff, where they overpay for electricity in certain markets, certain

• 6:50John Coogan?

  data centers. And Amazon pays a surplus above electricity costs already. But Microsoft is unique in the timing and in the volume of the announcement. Like, it's a whole story in the Wall Street Journal. Microsoft is planning to be, I think, completely net zero on the carbon emissions by 2030. And by 2050, they want to be so carbon negative that they will, that as a company, since the dawn of Microsoft in the 70s, they will have... emitted negative carbon emissions over the entire life cycle of the company. Which is interesting. So, Microsoft's exact language is they are committed to paying high enough electricity rates to cover the electricity costs of the data centers so

• 7:31John Coogan?

  that they aren't passed on to consumers. Now, a true free marketer is probably against this.

• 7:37Jordi Hays?

  It would be cool to see a Microsoft liquid death collab for water that was used in a data center.

• 7:42John Coogan?

  Data center used water?

• 7:43Jordi Hays?

  That's.

• 7:45John Coogan?

  The diehard free marketers would argue that the government should stay out of supply and demand issues, let prices rise and there will be more of an incentive to build more power generation capacity. Prices will stabilize naturally. But there are political realities and new capacity cannot be brought online in the blink of an eye. It takes time to build these things. Even if you're just going with natural gas, it takes time. There are backlogs. Basically, Microsoft and the big tech companies, I think, will be saying, hey, look, we want no excuses from power companies to ramp up production, ramp up capacity, and so we're willing to pay higher rates. Hopefully, you can pass those, that revenue on into bringing up capacity. It seems like Microsoft can afford this. So, some numbers.

• 8:27John Coogan?

  Electricity represents 40% of data center OpEx. About $7, $7.5 million annually per major facility. Now, Microsoft has over 400 data centers. And so, energy is a significant line item. I think like $3 billion a year in electricity, something like that. That's very rough. Probably got to go to semi-analysis for the real number. But $3 billion in energy costs for $245 billion in revenue. Microsoft's going to be okay. If they pay a 50% premium on all of their electricity across the entire portfolio, we're talking about $1 billion of extra cost. That's less than 1% of their operating income.

• 9:08Jordi Hays?

  Satya is simply the GOAT. He's my GOAT.

• 9:11John Coogan?

  He does, he does appear to be the GOAT.

• 9:13Jordi Hays?

  No, I think it's, I think it's super smart. I think it was inevitable. Trump needs this for the midterms. He's putting pressure on everyone, right? Credit card stuff, data center stuff. We'll see more of this. And, yeah, being, being the first mover ultimately. Only the first mover, the one that sort of like says like, hey, yeah, we're excited about this, is the one that gets any credit, right?

• 9:34John Coogan?

  Tyler, what was your reaction to this news? You're in favor of data center subsidies, right? Like you want the data centers to pay lower rates because it's more valuable to have.

• 9:45Jordi Hays?

  Government-backed data centers, electrical subsidies.

• 9:50John Coogan?

  You gotta feed Claude.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  I mean, I just think like, this is kind of disappointing because it just, it's telling me that like, if you imagine we have like a real free market.

• 9:58John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  There should be already insane incentives to build new energy supply.

• 10:03John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  And that's obviously not happening because energy prices will be going down.

• 10:06John Coogan?

  Yep.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  They're going up. This is telling me that in the future, we're not going to build nearly as much energy power as we want.

• 10:11John Coogan?

  Yes.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Or at least on any kind of like short-term scale.

• 10:14John Coogan?

  Yeah. It does feel, I think it feels like the energy market as a whole is, is at least in the short-term, much more zero-sum than people thought.

• 10:22Jordi Hays?

  Taiwan Semiconductor, last week, spent $200 million at a public auction to buy 900 acres of land adjacent to its existing Arizona property, which will reportedly be used for the planned new facility. So, we're still waiting on this Taiwan trade deal. Seems like as part of that, TSMC will, will expand their operations in Arizona.

• 10:46John Coogan?

  And, and they are basing their design for this off of Costco warehouses, Nick here?

• 10:52Jordi Hays?

  Tom Leonard, candidate for governor in Michigan. This isn't a joke. A friend of mine was offered 70,000 an acre for her farm by a data center company. 11.2 million total. This is what big tech is doing in Michigan. So anyways, somebody willing to basically overpay for farmland in Michigan.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember on the University of Michigan campus, there's like these stickers and posters everywhere that are like, "Stop the AI data center," or it was "Stop the data center build-out."

• 11:19Jordi Hays?

  And that's when you knew you had to drop out.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, "All right, this place is not for me."

• 11:22John Coogan?

  Organ rejection.

• 11:24Jordi Hays?

  Think this is shared as an example of big tech doing a bad thing, but I don't know, man. 11.2 is a lot of money. The USDA says the average Michigan farm real estate value is $6,200 per acre.

• 11:36John Coogan?

  So they're paying over 10x the price.

• 11:37Jordi Hays?

  Yeah, I mean, who knows? I mean, it's, they could easily be paying a premium because of this. Land specific location or proximity to other projects that they have. I wouldn't be surprised if some land maxers are going out and just buying up. You know, why wouldn't you try to buy up the farmland in proximity to some of these other projects? In hopes that you, somebody comes in.

• 11:58John Coogan?

  I wonder how real this, I wonder how real this text message is because I get a lot of spam.

• 12:03Jordi Hays?

  My wife got a spam text today that just said, babe, I dropped my phone and it broke. She immediately texted me and said, this isn't you, right?

• 12:12John Coogan?

  Oh, interesting.

• 12:13Jordi Hays?

  But it's pretty interesting, interesting, kind of like leave to get somebody. And to, I imagine, send, send me a thousand dollars so I can get a new phone.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  Remember the text that Ben got? He was asking him if you want to get steaks?

• 12:27Jordi Hays?

  That was the best spam.

• 12:28John Coogan?

  Elite spam.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  It said, let's get steak tonight.

• 12:31John Coogan?

  Let's get steak tonight. I mean, she said, yes. There's more details about that Apple card deal that Jamie Dimon worked through. We should pull this up. Behind the unraveling of Apple's credit card partnership with Goldman Sachs. After two years of negotiations, one of the biggest credit card deals of all time will see Goldman replaced by JP Morgan on Apple's credit card. In early December, a long delayed deal hung over a call between JP Morgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon. Executives of the two banks had been negotiating for months on trading the massive Apple credit card program. And it's roughly $20 billion in balances, but the talks had stalled.

• 13:14John Coogan?

  Privately, bankers on each side were blaming the other side for needlessly slowing down the negotiations. You're moving too slow. JP Morgan had secured a discount on the balances, but to help cover potential losses. Goldman executives, meanwhile, didn't feel the need to bend much. Dimon and Solomon got on a call on December 8th. They discussed why the Apple deal was taking so long to close and agreed to break the logjam. To see the deal through soon. Just before the new year, the banks finalized a deal that was announced last week, confirming the Wall Street Journal's earlier report. The deal brings two of the country's most influential companies together.

• 13:54John Coogan?

  J P Morgan is adding the flashy program to its credit card lending operation and strengthening its connections to the trillion dollar tech giant at a time consumers are increasingly using phones and watches for payments and managing their finances. Apple gets a new partner with a sprawling consumer base that is eager to build the card. Goldman gets closure on its failed venture into consumer lending that has brought the firm billions of dollars in losses, a chapter it is hoping to forget. OpenAI is going to be running another Super Bowl ad. It's in the Wall Street Journal. OpenAI to run ad during Super Bowl. Oh, we got it. Let's go. We do have the technology. AGI is here. Okay, so there's someone throwing a spear.

• 14:38John Coogan?

  We create fire, then the wheel, then the wheel with spokes, then the horse. The horse came out of the wheel.

• 14:45Jordi Hays?

  Man created.

• 14:45John Coogan?

  We created the horse and corn. We created corn. Maybe they should use a corn song. Freak on a leash. That's the song they should license. And a nod to corn. I mean, the motion design is incredible. Like, it is, it is a very well-done piece. So they go inside the skeleton, build the 747, take a look at DNA, invent movies, TV news, that's us. They go to the moon. Somewhat equally important, create the internet, and then you start talking to the computer. And now.

• 15:18Jordi Hays?

  The merge.

• 15:21John Coogan?

  You got AI. And then you get the blue chat GPT dot.

• 15:26Jordi Hays?

  I love this.

• 15:26John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 15:27Jordi Hays?

  It was just not necessarily.

• 15:29John Coogan?

  I didn't need a Super Bowl ad for me.

• 15:31Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 15:31John Coogan?

  I needed a Super Bowl ad for the Clydesdale crap.

• 15:34Jordi Hays?

  Yeah.

• 15:34John Coogan?

  Right? The people who are maybe on the fence about AI.

• 15:38Jordi Hays?

  This year, I expected to be much more pragmatic.

• 15:41John Coogan?

  About what you can use to. To do something.

• 15:44Jordi Hays?

  Exactly how they want the average American to think about ChatGPT.

• 15:49John Coogan?

  Yes, yes.

• 15:50Jordi Hays?

  Where it integrates into their life. But I expect that this will be, this will be the AI Super Bowl.

• 15:54John Coogan?

  You think there'll be even more ads?

• 15:56Jordi Hays?

  I'm sure there will.

• 15:56John Coogan?

  So for context, tech companies across Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Perplexity collectively spent 333 million on linear TV ads promoting their AI offerings in the United States just last year. They also shelled out 426 million on digital ads, more than triple their 2024 outlays. Anthropic kicked off its first major push into advertising in September and has been blanketing NFL, NBA, and college sports games with ads for its Claude chatbot. It shelled out an estimated 16 and a half million dollars on linear TV ads in 2025. While OpenAI's first big game ad positioned ChatGPT as the next significant advance in

• 16:39John Coogan?

  human innovation, drawing parallels between AI and transformative inventions such as the light bulb. More recent ads frame the technology as a relatable tool. Which way will OpenAI go in the new Super Bowl ad? We'll see. In its ads, Anthropic has been positioning Claude as a partner for problem solvers rather than a threat to human intelligence.

• 17:02Jordi Hays?

  Super Bowl ad concept. We are not a threat to human intelligence. We are not a threat. Don't worry about us.

• 17:09John Coogan?

  Yeah. How about a Super Bowl ad that says?

• 17:11Jordi Hays?

  We hear you. We hear that you're concerned. 5% chance of annihilation by end of year.

• 17:16John Coogan?

  Gemini introduced a more personal Gemini today, designed for you. Personal intelligence, they're calling it. Personal intelligence draws insights from across your Google apps to provide truly customized responses for Gemini. Learn all about it below. They say Gemini already remembers your past chats to prevent. To provide relevant responses, but today we're taking the next step forward with the introduction of personal intelligence. You can choose to let Gemini connect information from your Gmail, Google Photos, Google Search and YouTube history to receive more personalized responses. Gemini will be able to suggest hidden gems that feel right up your alley for upcoming trips or work travel because it'll know where you've stayed before, where you've been.

• 17:59John Coogan?

  Shopping Gemini will get to know your taste and preferences on a deeper level, help you find items you love faster. Motivation Gemini will have a deeper understanding of the goals you're working towards. Look at your to do list. Privacy is central to personal intelligence, how you connect other apps to Gemini. The new beta feature is off by default. You can choose to turn it on, decide exactly which apps to connect and can turn it off at any time.

• 18:22Jordi Hays?

  You were sick of switching between, constantly switching between calendars and Chrome and having your personal calendar or calendar. Get ready to be sick of switching between L L Ms.

• 18:34John Coogan?

  It includes Google Workspace. Google Photos is sort of interesting. I wonder if that plays into, you know, Nano Banana, you can have, you know, more suggested images. Hey, do you want to touch this photo up? Do you want to create some sort of holiday card? Like what Chat G P T ultimately wound up doing with?

• 18:51Jordi Hays?

  Go through Google Photos and turn me into a dinosaur in every photo I've ever taken.

• 18:58John Coogan?

  Set the GPUs on fire for sure. Anyway, let's move on to this story about David Ellison, the, the sun king of Hollywood. With help from his billionaire father Larry, David Ellison is trying to become the biggest studio mogul in history. One weekend in 2006, Dean Devlin, a movie producer, was driving across Los Angeles to deal with an emergency. His new movie Flyboys had opened that weekend to reviews so bad that one of the stars has had abruptly checked into the hospital. On his way to visit the actor, another potential crisis appeared on his phone. I was terrified when the phone rang and it was Larry Ellison. Devlin made a name for himself with a string of blockbusters in the 1990s. Stargate, Independence

• 19:42John Coogan?

  Day, Godzilla. Wow, what a run. But he'd struggled to come up with the money to make Flyboys, a script about a band of World War One fighter pilots. Then in a stroke of luck, he learned that Ellison. The founder of Oracle and one of the world's richest men had a college-aged son named David, who was not only trying to break into Hollywood, but was also an amateur pilot. David even had a nascent film production company with an aerial name, Skydance. Larry agreed to help fund the movie, which cost $60 million, and Skydance was listed as a producer. David, meanwhile, got a plum role alongside James Franco as a pilot named Eddie, who can't shoot straight. Come on, Eddie, David says, the climactic fight scene.

• 20:26Jordi Hays?

  Can we try to find Eddie in Flyboys?

• 20:28John Coogan?

  Yeah, let's watch the Flyboys trailer. I'd love to see this. I haven't, I actually haven't seen this movie.

• 20:36John Coogan?

  Franco.

• 20:40John Coogan?

  Maybe this is the movie to watch this weekend.

• 20:43John Coogan?

  I could see it.

• 20:46John Coogan?

  No, that's a cool shot.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  Gentlemen, you have bravely volunteered to preserve freedom.

• 20:56John Coogan?

  We gotta turn this into a gold closet.

• 20:57Jordi Hays?

  I think that's David, right?

• 20:58John Coogan?

  Really?

• 21:00Speaker 04

  Guy sure knows how to make friends.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  This is your quarters.

• 21:06John Coogan?

  That's him. Yeah, wow. Let's go.

• 21:13Speaker 05

  Sorry, fellas. This room's reserved for killers.

• 21:17John Coogan?

  Oh.

• 21:20Speaker 05

  Going to war in two days. Worried about me?

• 21:24Speaker 03

  The Germans are moving toward us.

• 21:27Jordi Hays?

  I definitely saw this movie as a kid, because I just love, I love planes.

• 21:31John Coogan?

  Yeah. Okay. There he is. We'll be back by lunch.

• 21:39John Coogan?

  This is a pretty sweet movie for, about 2001?

• 21:43Jordi Hays?

  Worth the 60 million.

• 21:45John Coogan?

  They underpaid. They gotta steal. If you're, if you're a fan of hyperscale and data center build-out and data center construction, like the rest of us,

• 21:52Jordi Hays?

  You gotta be watching Flyboys.

• 21:53John Coogan?

  You gotta be a Flyboys guy.

• 21:54Jordi Hays?

  Devlin thought he knew why Larry was calling. Flyboys had bombed at the box office and Larry stood to lose millions. As it turned out, Larry wasn't all that stressed about the money. He had spent tens of millions more just trying to win a sailing race. He was, however, concerned about his son, the actor, in the hospital. Wait.

• 22:10John Coogan?

  Whoa.

• 22:12Jordi Hays?

  The reaction to Flyboys had so unsettled David that he was experiencing an episode of atrial fibrillation. This is bullish.

• 22:21John Coogan?

  Yeah.

• 22:22Jordi Hays?

  This is bullish. He was so upset about losing that he was hospitalized.

• 22:26John Coogan?

  That's crazy.

• 22:27Jordi Hays?

  You think he's gonna lose Warner Brothers?

• 22:29John Coogan?

  Maybe not. Maybe he's coming back and getting it.

• 22:31Jordi Hays?

  I think this is a guy you want.

• 22:33John Coogan?

  Yeah, this is good. Okay.

• 22:34Jordi Hays?

  He was thinking, "That whole weekend, I just lost my dad a bunch of money." He was upset about letting his father down. Larry told Devlin to make sure David knew he was still proud of him. Flyboys was the humble beginning of the Ellison's family's adventures in Hollywood. After giving up on acting, David spent more than a decade building Skydance into a player and the blockbuster business, financing such hits as Top Gun, Maverick,

• 22:55John Coogan?

  Crazy.

• 22:55Jordi Hays?

  and Mission: Impossible series, along with a number of largely forgettable movies. He was, in other words, a producer much like many others in town. Then last year, David's father put up billions to help him buy Paramount, one of Hollywood's legendary movie studios, and a company more than 10 times the size of Skydance. This past fall, the Ellison's set their sights on an even bigger prize, Warner Brothers. At 43, David is now the first millennial, let's give it up for the millennials, to control a major Hollywood studio. While running Skydance, he'd built a reputation as someone with an earnest love for the kinds of action-packed blockbuster movies he adored as a kid and the money to actually make them. But his pursuit of Paramount and now Warner Brothers had revealed an empire-building streak in line with his father, who's currently the fifth wealthiest person in the world.

• 23:40Jordi Hays?

  It's possible to sum up the divergent fortunes of the tech and entertainment industries over the past 20 years in the simple fact that when Flyboys came out in 2006, Larry was worth 18 billion and couldn't afford Paramount, which was valued at 22 billion. By last year, the 6 billion Larry spent to help David buy the company barely made a dent. What the Ellison's want with their conglomerate individually and together will affect the future of what appears on all kinds of screens, and the relationship between father and son has provoked no shortage of psychoanalysis.

• 24:08John Coogan?

  Larry wasn't around much when David was a kid, one of the only similarities in their very different childhoods. Larry was born in New York City in 1944 to an unwed teenage mother who gave him up for adoption at nine months old. His adopted father, Louis Ellison, was a Russian immigrant who took his last name at Ellis Island. And a foundational part of the Larry Ellison story is that Lewis regularly told Larry, he would never amount to anything. Why did you adopt this nine-month-old kid just to dunk on him?

• 24:37Jordi Hays?

  Maybe Larry should write a book called Hardcore Parenting. You know, people talk about soft parenting, right?

• 24:42John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 24:43Jordi Hays?

  You want to, you know, you don't, but hardcore parenting. It's like, wake up every morning, tell your children you will never amount to anything.

• 24:50John Coogan?

  For his senior thesis, David wrote, directed, and starred in a thriller called When All Else Fails, in which he plays a billionaire's son who has to rescue his diabetic girlfriend from kidnappers before her insulin runs out. That's an interesting frame for a plot. According to people who worked on the production, David was respectful and eager to learn, if a bit oblivious to the ways in which he wasn't making an ordinary student film. The budget was close to $100,000. While David inherited a love for movies from his mother, it became clear that if he wanted to stay in the business, he needed to think more like his father. David wanted to be an actor, and when that didn't work, he was like, if I'm not going to be on screen, I'm going to be the biggest guy in the room. So Andy Kessler was an investor who worked with David to raise money for Skydance early on, and they had a rule. They

• 25:35John Coogan?

  said, he swore to me, no rom-coms, no touchy-feely, emotional Oscar bait, just explosions. The Skydance thesis, according to a person that worked closely with David, was that Hollywood wasn't prepared for the overwhelming economic force of a Silicon Valley billionaire throwing around his wealth and ambition. Plenty of dumb money came into town, but producers and talent mostly viewed it as something to take advantage of. Money in Hollywood is not appreciated. This was an opportunity to reverse that, to make Hollywood treat money with respect. We got to respect the dollar.

• 26:06Jordi Hays?

  Some funny dialogue happening. I'll fill you in. The Kalshi market, will Elon win his case against OpenAI? It was at a 36% chance this morning.

• 26:17John Coogan?

  What's it doing now?

• 26:18Jordi Hays?

  He asked, what are the odds looking like? They responded. Now Elon is posting, I've lost a few battles over the years, but I've never lost a war.

• 26:30John Coogan?

  Elon said that?

• 26:31Jordi Hays?

  He just posted this. Matthew McConaughey is taking a novel legal approach to combat unauthorized AI fakes, trademarking himself. The actor plans to use trademarks of himself, saying, "All right, all right, all right," and staring at a camera to combat AI fakes.

• 26:47John Coogan?

  And the print headline is "Actor is Not All Right With AI Fakes." I love it. Over the past year, over the past several months, the Interstellar and Magic Mike star has had, has had eight trademark applications approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office featuring him starring, smiling, and talking. His attorney said the trademarks are meant to stop AI apps or users from simul, uh, from simulating McConaughey's voice or likeness without permission, an increasingly common concern for performers. Maybe we'll have to get a trademark on "You're Watching TVPN," so we will get paid when someone generates a deep fake of us. The trademarks include a seven-second clip of the Oscar winner standing on a porch, a

• 27:30John Coogan?

  three-second clip of him sitting in front of a Christmas tree, and an audio, an audio of him saying, "All right, all right, all right," his famous line from the 1993 movie Dazed and Confused, which I know you haven't seen, but I don't think I've seen Dazed and Confused either.

• 27:46Jordi Hays?

  It doesn't seem like they're gonna trademark this and then go to ChatGPT and say like, "Hey, you wanna license my likeness?" It feels like he realizes the value of like doing a handful of big deals with a Salesforce.

• 27:59John Coogan?

  Sure.

• 28:00Jordi Hays?

  And probably wants to keep, keep doing that. It'd be interesting to see if every, all talent needs to go and.

• 28:06John Coogan?

  File trademarks. I mean, at a certain, at a certain level. Started saying yes to all the apps that can track me prompts. The internet is now noticeably better with more relevant and less spammy ads. Apple did us all a disservice and misplaced emphasis on privacy. He says, "Get into the targeted advertising flow. You wanna see good stuff? Hit yes."

• 28:26Jordi Hays?

  Well, speaking of targeting, Hermes is allegedly stalking their clients. A Glitz investigation has revealed that Hermes employees are Googling clients' home addresses to determine whether they have a prestigious enough address to be deemed worthy of a Birkin or a Kelly. Hermes is also allegedly scrutinizing clients' social media accounts and the content they post. After a quota bag is purchased, they continue to monitor for resale activity, which if detected, results in an immediate blacklist for the client. No surprises there.

• 28:56John Coogan?

  I think OpenAI should do this with their device. And they sell those, they should, they should say, oh, you know, you know, there's a quota, there's an allocation, we'll try and get you in, but

• 29:07Jordi Hays?

  No promises.

• 29:07John Coogan?

  Really not using ChatGPT all that much, and the questions you ask aren't that interesting. So, you know, I don't think we're going to be able to get one for you. I know, by the way, you know, AirPods, we were debating, is the OpenAI device going to cost a hundred bucks, 300 bucks? I think they gotta do like 30K. I think it's gotta be like 30Gs.

• 29:24Jordi Hays?

  And we'll see you tomorrow. We really can't wait.

• 29:27John Coogan?

  We can't wait. 11:00 AM Pacific, we'll be here live.

• 29:31Jordi Hays?

  More great guests.

• 29:32John Coogan?

  Goodbye.