‘Uncanny Valley’: Tech Elites in the Epstein Files, Musk’s Mega Merger, and a Crypto Scam Compound
Léa Feiger: Talk about him. Yeah. Absolutely.
Brian Barrett: Yeah. It’s just this website. He fills this canvas.
Léa Feiger: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, these are the titans of technology.
Brian Barrett: Yeah. Until 2019, I think some of these people were actively in contact.
Léa Feiger: Wow. Speaking of Elon, he also made news this week for something entirely different, namely integrating xAI into SpaceX, officially creating the most valuable private company in the world. We need to talk about it.
Brian Barrett: Yeah. And I know you love… It combines your two favorite things.
Léa Feiger: Oh yes. Absolutely.
Brian Barrett: AI and Elon Musk.
Léa Feiger: Uh-huh.
Brian Barrett: Leah, can I also interest you in a potential third favorite thing?
Léa Feiger: Oh, hit me, Brian.
Brian Barrett: Can I interest you in data centers in space?
Léa Feiger: So that’s what he’s promising, right?
Brian Barrett: Yeah.
Léa Feiger: I’m actually very interested in data centers.
Brian Barrett: Oh, good.
Léa Feiger: Molly Taft, our wonderful climate reporter on the science desk, completely made me understand how important it is to engage with them. I hate them, but I care a lot about them. He therefore wants to build a data center in space. What does this mean? What is a land solution? Please explain all these things.
Brian Barrett: Well, basically, yeah. Hence Elon Musk’s pitch to combine SpaceX and xAI. And just to back up, SpaceX is probably Elon Musk’s most popular and non-controversial company.
Léa Feiger: It’s his rocket company.
Brian Barrett: Yeah. It’s his rocket company. They essentially privatized NASA, in part because it gave up. Anyway …
Léa Feiger: No.
Brian Barrett: America’s space future really depends on SpaceX in many ways.
Léa Feiger: If Jeff Bezos listens to this podcast, he just has a real…
Brian Barrett: Sorry, Blue Origin. Yeah. Oh my God.
Léa Feiger: Internal.
Brian Barrett: Horrible day. Blue Origin also there. So on the one hand, you have this kind of future of American space travel, and on the other hand, you have xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company that continues to undress women non-consensually.
Léa Feiger: And it’s also X, formerly known as Twitter.
Brian Barrett: Yes. And now it will all be the same.
Léa Feiger: Did former Twitter employees make a lot of money from this? What is happening? How are all these companies now the same thing? None of this has any relation to each other other than Elon Musk.
Brian Barrett: He would therefore argue differently. And so the argument he’s making is that for AI to get to where it needs to be, wherever it is – faster undressing of more women – to make that happen, there’s literally not enough energy on Earth for that to happen. So what you need to do is go into space and harness the sun’s energy to power the AI. And who’s really good at going into space and mining things? SpaceX.
