Speaker 1Hello, AI Daily Brief friends. Today, I'm launching a new podcast. It came directly out of making AIDB. Pretty frequently, there are important topics that just have way too much backstory to fit into a daily episode. This new show is the place for those stories. It's called How We Got Here, and it's the deep dive story of how today's most important trends, events, and phenomenon came to be. The first episode starts with anger over data centers, then goes back 15 years to explain how America fell out of love with the tech industry. Episode two is about how stuff got cheap while life got expensive. So it's not just tech. Anything in society, culture, or economics is fair game. The bigger idea behind it is that a lot of modern cynicism comes from feeling like the way things are was inevitable when really it was the outcome of a set of decisions. When we understand the decisions that got us here, we realize we have a lot more agency to shape what comes next. New episodes come out every Monday, run for about 45 minutes to an hour, and each one comes with a fully illustrated companion essay. So here's what would be so helpful from you. Go follow How We Got Here wherever you listen and rate and review it. The link is in the show notes, and launch week is when those things count the most. In just a second, you'll hear the first five minutes of episode one, How Tech Lost America. Back in June of 2025, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro made an announcement that had become an increasingly common type of announcement at that time. Excitedly, he shared that Amazon planned to invest $20 billion into his state, representing the largest capital infrastructure in Pennsylvania Commonwealth history. That $20 billion, in fact, was, of course, to build new state-of-the-art data center campuses across the state. This was, Shapiro made clear, a thing to be excited about. Governor Shapiro said it would create thousands of good-paying, stable jobs, generate new revenue for Pennsylvania's local communities, and, quote, ensure that the future of AI runs right through Pennsylvania. Fast forward just 14 months later, and what Governor Shapiro had to say about data centers had changed quite a bit. On August 18th of 2026, he posted, I just signed an executive order implementing the strictest standards in the nation for AI data centers because I will not allow Pennsylvanians to be bullied by greedy developers and bulldozed by the lawyers working for these big tech companies. I'm putting these developers on notice and letting them know that we will not let them bully Pennsylvania. So what happened to get this sort of head-spinning shift in just a little more than a year? Well, what happened is that data centers, which were never particularly popular, but also weren't really on most people's radars, went from benign disinterest to hot-button oppositional political topic du jour. Right around the same time that Shapiro was signing that first deal, back in August of 25. A pollster asked American voters whether they'd support a data center being built near their home. It was basically a tie. In fact, the in-favors slightly nudged out the opposed 43-42%. By February of 2026, things had shifted, with 51% opposed. By May of this year, it was up to 70% opposed. And by August, a full three-quarters, 75% of Americans who were polled, were opposed to local data center development, with more than 60% strongly opposed. Wrote journalist Robinson Mayer, Americans have swung a remarkable 33 points against data centers. It's a faster and deeper shift in American public opinion than I would have once thought possible on any issue. Over the past few months, as the midterms creep closer, broad bipartisan and growing discontent with data centers has made it an issue on both sides of the aisle. In fact, in at least one key senatorial race in Ohio, the Senate GOP's campaign arm warned in a memo that the data center issue was likely to lose them the election. The memo was sent out not just to campaign staffers in Ohio, but to all of the key tech companies and hyperscalers as well. And even as President Trump has tried to push back, arguing that data centers are good for communities, that AI, or as he now calls it, SI, superintelligence, is essential and vital to American national success, his message has not resonated even with his base. An Economist and YouGov poll from August of this year found that while 35% of 2024 Trump voters supported a data center near them, 46% of them didn't. And that's because the data centers are good for communities. And that's because the data centers are opposed them. Part of this is, of course, about AI itself. What's fascinating, though, is that when you dig into the numbers, it's very clear that this is not the AI industry's problem alone. In fact, what becomes clear is that generative AI came into public consciousness with a handicap, handed down from the perceptions of previous technology platforms, movements, and leaders that had nothing to do with AI. Here's the reality. Over roughly 15 years, tech went from being the best in the world to being the best in the world. And that's because one of the most admired and trusted large industries in America, to the embodiment of people's deepest anxieties about money and power. Back in 2013, technology was, according to Edelman's Global Trust Survey, the most trusted industry, at 77%. It had been the number one industry the year before as well. In 2015, 71% of Americans told Pew that tech companies had a positive effect on the country. But by 2019, just four years later, that number was down to 50%. This decline was also not partisan, with both Democrat and Republican attitudes cratering. In Gallup ratings of people's overall view of different industries, the computer industry peaked at 75% positive in 2017, and has come all the way down to 48% this year. The internet industry, meanwhile, went from 59% positive in 2017 to a net negative by 2021, with just 35% positive ratings compared to 40% who viewed it negatively. To understand how we got here, you have to go back to when we first started. We started in the mid-90s, and we started in the tech industry, when the tech industry was nothing but promise and potential.
PodcastTranscript AI