Leah Feiger: I’m talking about him. Yes. Absolutely.
Brian Barrett: Yes. It’s just this network. It fills this network.
Leah Feiger: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt are titans of technology.
Brian Barrett: Yes. I think some of these people stayed in lively contact until 2019.
Leah Feiger: Wow. Speaking of Elon, he was in the news this week for a completely different reason, namely bringing xAI to SpaceX, officially creating the most valuable private company in the world. We need to talk about this.
Brian Barrett: Yes. And I know you love… This combines two of your favorite things.
Leah Feiger: Oh, yes. Absolutely.
Brian Barrett: AI and Elon Musk.
Leah Feiger: I see.
Brian Barrett: Leah, could I interest you in my third favorite thing?
Leah Feiger: Oh, hit me, Brian.
Brian Barrett: Can I interest you in data centers in space?
Leah Feiger: So that’s what it promises, right?
Brian Barrett: Yes.
Leah Feiger: I’m actually very interested in data centers.
Brian Barrett: Oh, good.
Leah Feiger: Molly Taft, our wonderful climate reporter on the science desk, completely convinced me how critical it is to connect with them. I hate them, but I’m very interested in them. So he wants to build a data center in space. What does this mean? What is a ground solution? Please explain all these things.
Brian Barrett: Well, basically yes. So, Elon Musk’s proposal to combine SpaceX and xAI. And as a side note, SpaceX is probably Elon Musk’s most mainstream and uncontroversial company.
Leah Feiger: It’s his rocket company.
Brian Barrett: Yes. It’s his rocket company. They basically privatized NASA, partly because NASA gave up. Anyway…
Leah Feiger: NO.
Brian Barrett: The future of U.S. space truly depends on SpaceX in many ways.
Leah Feiger: If Jeff Bezos listens to this podcast, he’s just going through…
Brian Barrett: Sorry, Blue Origin. Yes. Oh God.
Leah Feiger: Internal.
Brian Barrett: Terrible day. Blue Origin is there too. So on the one hand we have this future of American space travel, and on the other hand we have xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company that undresses women without their consent.
Leah Feiger: And it’s also X, formerly known as Twitter.
Brian Barrett: Yes. And now everyone will be the same.
Leah Feiger: Did former Twitter employees make a lot of money from this? What’s going on? How are all these companies the same now? None of this is related to anything other than Elon Musk.
Brian Barrett: Therefore he will argue differently. So he would make the case that in order for the AI to get to where it needs to be, wherever that is, to undress more women faster, and in order for it to get there, there is literally not enough energy on earth to accomplish that. So you need to go into space and apply solar energy to power artificial intelligence. And who is really good at going into space and using things? SpaceX.