‘Uncanny Valley’: Tech Elites in the Epstein Files, Musk’s Mega Merger, and a Crypto Scam Compound

Leah Feiger: Talking about him. Yes. Absolutely.

Brian Barrett: Yes. It's just this web. It fills this web.

Leah Feiger: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, these are the tech titans.

Brian Barrett: Yes. Until as recently as 2019 I think some of these people were actively in contact.

Leah Feiger: Wow. Speaking of Elon, he was also in the news this week for a completely different thing, aka rolling xAI into SpaceX, officially making it the world's most valuable private company. We need to talk about that.

Brian Barrett: Yes. And I know you love… This combines your two favorite things.

Leah Feiger: Oh, yes. Absolutely.

Brian Barrett: AI and Elon Musk.

Leah Feiger: Uh-huh.

Brian Barrett: Leah, could I also interest you in a potential third favorite thing?

Leah Feiger: Oh, hit me, Brian.

Brian Barrett: Can I interest you in data centers in space?

Leah Feiger: That's what he 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 at the science desk, has completely turned me on to how important it is to engage with her. I hate them, but I am very interested in them. So he wants to build a data center in space. What does it mean? What is a terrestrial solution? Please explain all these things.

Brian Barrett: Well, basically, yes. So Elon Musk's pitch for combining SpaceX and xAI. And just to back up a second, SpaceX is probably Elon Musk's most mainstream non-controversial company.

Leah Feiger: It's his rocket company.

Brian Barrett: Yes. It's his rocket company. They basically privatized NASA, in part because NASA gave up. Anyway…

Leah Feiger: No.

Brian Barrett: The future of American space really depends on SpaceX in so many ways.

Leah Feiger: When Jeff Bezos listens to this podcast, he just has a real-

Brian Barrett: Sorry, Blue Origin. Yes. Oh, gosh.

Leah Feiger: Internal.

Brian Barrett: Terrible day. Blue Origin there too. So on one hand you have this sort of future of American space travel, and on the other hand you have xAI, which is Elon Musk's AI company that continues to undress women without consensus.

Leah Feiger: And is also X, formerly known as Twitter.

Brian Barrett: Yes. And now they will all be the same.

Leah Feiger: Former Twitter employees, did they make a lot of money from this? What is happening? How are all these companies the same thing now? None of this has relations with each other but Elon Musk.

Brian Barrett: So he would say otherwise. And so the case he would make is that to get AI to where it needs to be, wherever that is, undressing more women faster, to get there, there's literally not enough energy on Earth to make that happen. So what you need to do is you need to go out into space and use the energy of the sun to power AI. And who is really good at going into space and exploiting things? SpaceX.