Big Tech's AI Spending Has Gone Full Enron... Literally

Dick and Paul take a deep dive into the AI data center spending boom and why it's different from — and in some ways scarier than — the dot-com fiber-optic bust. They break down why lenders are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into these buildouts without much regard for whether the underlying business makes sense, simply because Big Tech's balance sheets are so clean (a dynamic they compare more to the 1880s–1920s railroad boom than the fiber bust). They dig into why so much of this spending is moving off balance sheet into special-purpose vehicles, why that structure echoes Enron, and how a recent SEC "no action letter" is now letting data center debt get syndicated the same way mortgage-backed securities were before the 2008 financial crisis. They also cover data suggesting frontier AI models have largely plateaued in capability even as price premiums stay sky-high, and how a chain reaction from the SpaceX IPO rippled into AI stock selloffs and even the U.S. Treasury's own bond-buying moves. It's a wide-ranging, systems-level look at where all this AI money is really coming from — and where the risk is quietly piling up. --- Two of the sharpest minds in tech, Dick Costolo and Paul Kedrosky, pull back the curtain on AI, startups, and the future that’s rushing toward us. With insider access, fascinating guests, and a healthy dose of irreverence, they’ll make you laugh while they explain how the world might end (and how we might still save it).