Tech World Says Get Rich Now, or Fuhgedaboudit!

< the future|308||The oligarchs are raising the drawbridge.>

The panjandrums of Silicon Valley see a future, largely of their creation, that prompts this warning: If you want to get rich, you’d better be about it, because it won’t be possible once AI takes over.

Having spent trillions building an archipelago of data centers across this country and beyond, they will own the technology that runs the world. They few foresee that their infinite wealth will make them a superclass well removed from the rest of us. We will get the crumbs. AI will destroy work and eliminate opportunities for us to generate money, much less get rich. Well get to what that leads to, but first a look at the here and now.

current data

The effect on jobs is already making itself known. New college graduates are having difficulty finding employment with companies deciding that AI can handle entry-level work.

In January 130,000 net jobs were created. Significantly, health care, not, say, manufacturing, accounted for more than half. The number that drew greatest attention is that, after backward revisions a from laggard data that trickled in, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says only 181,000 net jobs (new hiring offset by jobs lost) were created over the entirety of 2025, about 400,000 fewer than the 584,000 that were initially reported for last year and far below the 1.4 million net gains of 2024.

Today, we are seeing layoffs announced almost daily. Amazon plans to do away with 30,000 corporate office employees. UPS is shedding 30,000. Microsoft has cut about 15,000 jobs, while investing heavily in AI data centers. Salesforce slimmed its customer support workforce by 4,000; CEO Marc Benioff says AI now handles up to half of the company’s work.

Layoffs announced in January alone totaled over 108,000 jobs, the largest amount for January since 2009 in the wake of the Great Recession. And for the remainder of 2026, more than 100 companies, from Nike to Verizon, have filed legally required WARN notices about their intent to reduce headcount this year.

Factors additional to AI contribute to these job cuts, but the promised efficiencies of AI no doubt encourage these companies to think they can do more with less. Aggravating the current job market, says a January Harvard Business Review article, is that companies are laying off workers now not because AI is performing so well in their stead, but because of a belief that in time it will.

the years to come

It is difficult to predict just how significant job erosion will be, with the result that estimates vary to extremes. The International Monetary Fund estimates, without venturing a time span, that globally 300 million full-time jobs could be affected by AI. Separately, they estimate that over 40% of workers will require significant “upskilling” by 2030.

The World Economic Forum estimates 92 million jobs will be displaced by AI by 2030. Black and Hispanic workers will be hardest hit because they are overrepresented in roles more likely to be replaced by automation and AI.

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, an AI developer, warns that AI could eliminate 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years, potentially pushing U.S. unemployment rates from 10% to 20%.

what jobs?

Microsoft has put out a study listing the 40 job categories that will be most “impacted” by AI. Leading the list in number of persons affected are almost three million customer service workers and 1.1 million sales representatives. Accompanying the list, Microsoft wrote,

”Our research shows that AI supports many tasks,…but does not indicate it can fully perform any single occupation.”

That’s undercut by Microsoft itself laying off 30,000 in its corporate offices due to the “application” of AI.

Just a few years ago, the word was that everyone should learn software coding. It was a job opportunity bonanza. Hundreds of thousands were hired, no matter how inexperienced. Today, AI savants are hired, some for astronomical paychecks, but the bottom has dropped out for software journeymen working in traditional languages. Eric Schmidt (former CEO of Google) predicts that within one year, most programming work will be done by AI.

Suddenly it has become one of the most vulnerable job categories, thanks to code creation AI such as Anthropic’s Claude Code. Unlike OpenAI, which went after the general query market with its chatGPT series, Claude specializes in coding. In an article for The New Yorker by a skeptical programmer, who “even celebrated its shortcomings”, writes that he had to learn AI for his job only to find that his “conversion was swift”:

“Eventually, I gave [AI models] real work — the kind I’d trained my whole career to do. I saw these models digest, in seconds, the intricate details of thousands of lines of code. They could spot subtle bugs and orchestrate complex new features.”

code red

The consensus has it that AI may reshape employment far more profoundly than previous technology upheavals. The administration wants AI development to proceed at full throttle. The industry lobbies against any regulation. Said Senator Bernie Sanders in an interview Tuesday:

“We have not a clue. We are totally unprepared for what is coming.”

Anthropic’s Amodei is more outspoken than others. Two weeks ago he published a 38-page essay that warns civilization faces “real danger” from superhuman AI arriving as soon as 2027, describing it as potentially “the single most serious national security threat we’ve faced in a century, possibly ever.” There are many apocalyptic predictions of superhuman AI going rogue and doing away with humans, but Amodei is on a different tack. He foresees a grotesque imbalance in which the AI hegemons, the U.S. and China, will develop ever more powerful systems that will so concentrate wealth that we may see personal fortunes reaching trillions of dollars. He thinks his peers have an obligation to confront this problem, but instead…

”It is sad to me that many wealthy individuals (especially in the tech industry) have recently adopted a cynical and nihilistic attitude that philanthropy is inevitably fraudulent or useless.”

Amodei envisages a future in which 10 million people — 7 million in Silicon Valley and the rest scattered elsewhere — could “decouple” from the rest of society,

The vast majority, even in the tech superpower nations, will be left far behind. That has the savants in the Valley musing about what to do about them. One idea is that the enormously expanded economy they are certain AI will yield could pay a dividend to the populace to help them along.
From Scientific American

Even better: “There will be no poverty in the future and so no need to save money,” says Elon Musk. “There will be universal high income.”

That would presumably take the form of a universal basic income (UBI) as a safety net for everyone laid waste by permanent and massive job loss. It’s a topic reportedly batted around amongst the oligarchs who contemplate ways to placate the serfs.

Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, which produced chatGPT and its successors, voiced some concerns about that in a podcast last year:

“I used to be really excited about UBI…but I think people really need agency; they need to feel like they have a voice in governing the future and deciding where things go. If you just say, ‘OK, AI is going to do everything and then everybody gets…a dividend from that,’ it’s not going to feel good, and I don’t think it actually would be good for people.”

Admirable of Altman to put a moment of reflection on the record. Well to remember, though, that he founded OpenAI as an altruistic non-profit, but further reflection told him he’d better find a way for it to spin off a for-profit subsidiary for him to partake of. He is already worth $1.8 billion according to Forbes.

A universal basic income would be sold by the tech world as a paradise of leisurely living to win over the public on an AI future. But then what? Where would the money come from? The government, with the national debt already verging on $39 trillion? The AI industry? Imagine the tech trillionaires battling Congress, and if they lose that the government collect just enough money per family unit to head off civil uprisings. They’d insist from their yachts cruising the Mediterranean that a bowl of gruel served up with a daily ration of soma to keep us pacified should suffice to achieve at long last Mr. Huxley’s “Brave New World”.

no one’s stopping them

Out of concern for the distorted society that AI’s headlong enhancement portends, are the tech moguls having second thoughts and slowing down? Certainly not. They are going flat out, resisting any rumblings of laws or regulations to hold them in check.

Microsoft spent more than $80 billion last year on AI infrastructure and data centers with $30 billion planned for this quarter. The firm is closely tied to OpenAI, having invested $13 billion in that company.

Alphabet (Google) intends to spend $125 to $135 billion in capital expenditures this year after $92 billion last year.

Amazon, which on Thursday said it expects to spend $200 billion this year, is now looking at negative free cash flow of almost $17 billion in 2026, so it will have to borrow heavily.

OpenAI is looking for $100 billion in additional funding as it works down the last $40 billion from its previous funding round. The company hopes to raise it from its previous
“I do guess that a lot of the world gets covered
in data centers,” Sam Altman of OpenAI.
Illustration by Jun Cen for The New Yorker

investors — Microsoft, Nvidia, Softbank, and the United Arab Emirates. It plans to spend $115 billion over the next four years on software and data centers and has committed to spending $1.4 trillion over the long term. OpenAI brought in $13 billion in revenue last year, loses money, yet is valued at $500 billion, making it one of the world’s most valuable companies.

Mark Zuckerberg says Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) will spend up to $135 billion this year on researchers charged with developing “superintelligent” AI and on building the data centers where the code will plumb ever-larger language models in his quest to leave the human species in the dust. That’s almost double the past year’s $72 billion. Zuckerberg says the data centers will be powered by “tens of gigawatts this decade and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time”, no mention of who pays to build-out electricity production.

Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are expected to spend nearly $700 billion combined this year to fuel their AI build-outs, a 60% increase above last year.

Here’s Sanders again:

”A handful of billionaires. It’s Musk, and Bezos and Zuckerberg and Altman and Ellison…the richest people in the world are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into AI and robotics. You think they’re worried about the implications of that for working people, the middle class? I don’t think so.”

Whatever the outcome, they will own it all, and from the largest corporations to small businesses, all will be paying them for use of their AI to minimize the number of people on their payrolls.

In September, persons from Google DeepMind, OpenAI, the U.K. AI Security Institute, and the OECD concluded,

“AI is likely to exacerbate increasing wealth and income inequality within countries, worsening economic conditions for many working and middle-class people and families.”

Trump Inserts Himself Into Elections Past and Future

< elections|255||And we refer only recent actions with far more to come.>

Donald Trump continued these last 10 days his quest to remake our country to his liking. He wants elections to be nationalized because “Our elections are crooked as hell” he falsely says. For that matter, why have midterm elections, boasting that he had accomplished so much that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” And he’s still working on fixing the results of the 2020 election, having his FBI haul off hundreds of boxes of ballots from a warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, home to Atlanta. He wrapped up the week with a racist slur that tops them all, but we’ll take that up below.

Georgia on his mind

There were a number of oddities about the FBI’s “court-authorized law enforcement activity”, additional to the unexplained reason for the raid itself. The search warrant, which requires listings of what is sought, is under seal and no one is talking. Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, in charge of elections, was not advised of the raid. The special agent in charge in that Georgia district, who would have overseen the raid, “resigned” but may have been fired just days before the warrant was executed.

Raffensperger was on the other end of the notorious Trump phone call after election results were reported in 2020, beseeching that he “find” 11,780 votes, the number needed for Trump to win Georgia, and threatening Raffensperger should he not comply. A Republican himself, he is currently resisting Republicans in the state legislature pressing him to turn over to the Justice Department the state’s complete voter registration rolls.

But the biggest oddity was the presence of Director of National Intelligence
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard

(DNI) Tulsi Gabbard, who, as the highest official on scene in Atlanta, is presumed to have directed the operation. She refers to herself as only “visiting the FBI Field Office in Atlanta” where she did not “issue any directives”. But “My presence was requested by the president”, she says. As her presence drew fiery objections from members of Congress and the media, Trump absented himself from blame and said it was Attorney General Pam Bondi, a cabinet member like Gabbard with no authority over her, had told the DNI to go to Atlanta.

Gabbard arranged a phone call to the White House in which the President extraordinarily spoke directly to FBI agents with attaboys and thanks for their good work. Trump said to Dan Bongino, until recently the deputy director of the FBI who left to resume podcasting, “you’re going to see some interesting things come out” in Georgia.

What has the DNI to do with elections, was the question. It is an oddity for intelligence personnel to travel within the U.S. at all, their concerns being the rest of the world. Gabbard’s press secretary issued a statement skilled in its opacity telling us that Gabbard was on scene in her…

”vital role in identifying vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure, protecting it against exploitation, and coordinating with all Intelligence Community elements under her leadership to integrate and analyze intelligence related to election security”

Ms Gabbard followed up with a letter to the ranking Democrats on both House and Senate intelligence committees emphasizing her statutory authority to oversee efforts protecting American elections from foreign interference and to analyze potential threats to voting systems. But Atlanta? How is Atlanta the epicenter of foreign intrusion?

Gabbard was steamed at the reaction to her presence there:

”Contrary to the blatantly false and slanderous accusations being made against me by Members of Congress and their friends in the propaganda media, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has and will continue to take action under my statutory authorities to secure our nation and ensure the integrity of our elections.”

After the voting records seizure, the Mad King set to posting late at night, bringing back the weird claims that Italian satellites were used to hack into U.S. voting machines to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden in 2020, that…

“China reportedly coordinated the whole operation…the CIA oversaw it, the FBI covered it up, all to install Biden as a puppet.”

recent history

It was Fulton County’s district attorney who developed the vast “Rico” racketeering case against 18 in Trump’s retinue, including his attorney Rudy Giuliani and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, for interfering with the election in her state. But the case was compromised by the “impropriety” of D.A. Fani Willis for hiring her lover to run the prosecution. She was removed and the prosecutor who took over declined to proceed. The case was dropped.

The margin of Trump’s loss in Georgia was so tight – witness his “find” plea – that the vote was recounted three times, and by different methods – by voting machines, by hand, and by signature validation. But don’t be surprised if in the near future Mr. Trump tells us that in a fourth recount he won. By a landslide, of course

Had he won Georgia, that would have still left him 42 votes shy with 290 for Biden and 248 for himself, so the point of the Atlanta incursion eludes.

a rehearsal of what’s to come

What is worrisome is what the Atlanta strike portends for this fall’s elections and beyond in 2028. Trump is telling us that he can do as he pleases, pillage any election center that reports vote counts he doesn’t like, and come up with a different count to make his preferred candidate the winner. Just last month he told The New York Times that he regretted not sending in the National Guard after the 2020 election to seize voting machines to look for fraud.

That was not a five-years-later idea. It comes from a heated debate on the night of December 18, 2020, in which lawyer Sidney Powell and Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, proposed martial to do exactly that. The meeting went well into the evening with Rudy Giuliani contacting the Department of Homeland Security to see if it had the authority to confiscate the machines. Telling the president he would be impeached again and that “we would all end up in prison”, as he later related, Giuliani successfully quashed Trump’s interest in the ploy.

It was just after that meeting in the early morning hours of December 19th that Trump, exasperated he could not use the military, sent the email, “Big project in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” It would be an attack on the Capitol instead.

There is now no one to inhibit Trump. After all, didn’t he get away with attempting to overthrow the entire presidential election of 2020 with the Supreme Court rewarding him with immunity for it?

takeover

In Monday’s interview with Bongino, Mr. Trump said that Republicans should “nationalize the voting process”. Referring to immigrants he said (the incoherence is his),

“These people were brought to our country to vote. And they vote illegally. And the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren’t tougher on it. The Republicans should say ‘we want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least, many, 15 places’”.

It is the states that are given control of elections in our Constitution’s Article I, Section 4:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof…”

Trump cannot nationalize elections; if nothing else, the logistics would stop him.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to explain away Trump’s comments saying,

”What the president was referring to is the SAVE Act… The President believes in the United States Constitution, however he believes there has obviously been a lot of fraud and irregularities that have taken place in American elections…”

We need always point out that there is nothing to support Trump’s beliefs which are the products of a demented mind. The Act would require photo-ID and proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections and bans noncitizens from voting, which is already the law but the Act plays along with Republican fictive insistence that there is widespread voting by undocumented immigrants.

Later that day Trump undercut Leavitt at a bill-signing with lawmakers from the Hill hovering over him. Ducking a reporter’s question about nationalization and which 15 states, Trump said,

“I want to see elections be honest and if a state can’t run an election I think the people behind me should do something about it, because, you know, if you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do ’em anyway. The federal government should get involved. These are agents of the federal government to count the votes. If they can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”

Demoting the states to mere agents of the federal government isn’t new. In August he tweeted,

“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”

It hasn’t caused the uproar one might expect perhaps because by now his ignorance of the foundations of the United States has become such a given that counter-reaction is pointless.

On Wednesday, Trump told NBC News he did not say “nationalize”, which he did, and that he will only accept the results of the 2026 midterm elections if they are “honest,” and that if he believes they aren’t, then “something else has to happen.”

the bigot in chief

Apart from its white supremacists, the nation was stunned yesterday to learn that President Trump had reposted a short video in his account at Truth Social in which the heads of Barack and Michelle Obama had been grafted onto the bodies of primates in a jungle setting as seen here.
It’s the oldest of the slurs against Blacks, here applied to the former President of the United States and First Lady. Met with rage, the post was taken down and – as usual – a staffer was blamed, which is how Trump always tries to wriggle free of his hate-filled malaprops. (How likely would a staffer on his/her own post this?)

From in his twenties working for his father blocking rentals of Blacks in Trump senior’s apartment buildings, to his full-page New York Times ads asking for the death penalty of the Central Park Five which he continued to urge even after the five were exonerated, to his campaign to disqualify Obama from becoming president with the false claim he was born in Kenya, this latest brings up to date a lifelong record.