This Week in Startups
00:36:23 · Lon Harris, Jason Calacanis
[00:36:23] S2: They do. [00:36:24] S0: When he does, like, these gaggles, he's like, you know, Iran can't have a nuclear, bomb, and, you know, the war's gonna wrap up, and we can't have Iran having a nuclear bomb. There's no way Iran can have a nuclear bomb. We can't let them have a nuclear bomb. And you're like, bro, you said it four times, and you made five statements, and four of them were the same thing. It's like, yes. Yes. So they just have to say over and over, data centers aren't going to impact your local electrical bill. We use recycled water only. We use much less water than the golf course, and you have seven golf courses there. Of course, we're not going to affect your electrical bill. And we use much less than a golf course, like even just one golf course. We use less than a golf course. And we're going to pay our taxes, and it'll have no impact on your electricity, and certainly no impact on your water far less than a golf course. Of course, and you have seven golf course. And you're just like, Oh my God, it's so annoying. But you know what? As a dad, as a CEO of companies, a leader, man, I know I sound annoying sometime when I do it. I just know if I repeat it three times, the chances of it actually being understood go way up. It's repetition equals people remembering it. So that's what they need to do. They just need to be out there all the time. The leadership needs to be saying it over and over and over again. And, yeah. Man. Great job.
00:37:43 · Lon Harris, Jason Calacanis
[00:37:43] S2: I feel like it is gonna go so far. I really think that it got very tied up in that, that if you were a Republican, you're a pro data center. If you're a Democrat, you hate them, and it's a fascist or whatever. And I think people got swept up in that, and when you really get down to it, it's not really partisan in that way. [00:37:59] S0: There's nothing partisan about it. It's... I mean, if I was gonna build a Walmart in your area, that feels more partisan. You know? It does. [00:38:07] S2: No. For sure. It for sure does. And that's that's what I'd like. [00:38:10] S0: Oh, are you gonna kill Main Street? Right. Are you gonna sell everything? [00:38:12] S2: There's a lot more progressive arguments to be made against the Walmart than there would be, I think, for me, the the data center, but that's Yeah. [00:38:19] S0: I mean, I guess we did have a bit of time where, like, in the nineties where that was, like, a big topic of discussion. It was. Kinda Walmart. [00:38:27] S2: It's where [00:38:28] S0: the data centers at that time. [00:38:29] S2: Well, they were getting public money. Like, the city gave 50,000,000 to Target to build it. You know? Like, it was always that stuff. Like, now there's a whole road the city has to build so you could get to the Sam's Club. That's why am I paying for that? That was always Yeah.
00:38:29 · Lon Harris, Jason Calacanis
[00:38:29] S2: Well, they were getting public money. Like, the city gave 50,000,000 to Target to build it. You know? Like, it was always that stuff. Like, now there's a whole road the city has to build so you could get to the Sam's Club. That's why am I paying for that? That was always Yeah. [00:38:42] S0: That makes no... And and and that's a valid Sure. Criticism of that, 100% all day. I I think looking back on it, the Democrats probably laid down the last two years, didn't fight anything because they knew that Trump... President Trump would not stay focused and that if they just stood out of the way and let him kinda dominate them, that would be a better strategy than fighting them. What do you think? [00:39:12] S2: Well, I mean, I think they [00:39:13] S0: They put up no fight. [00:39:14] S2: I think they recognized there wasn't much that they could do pragmatically other than, you know, a lot of a lot of, people on the far left were calling on them to, like, throw themselves on the railroad tracks metaphorically, like, resign or threaten to resign or do something extreme or, you know, leave the senate floor and stomp out, you know, like, some sort of grand gesture. Because procedurally, there really wasn't much that democrats could do. They didn't have any power in any branch of government. [00:39:44] S0: I think They were o for four.
00:39:44 · Jason Calacanis, Lon Harris
[00:39:44] S0: I think They were o for four. [00:39:45] S2: Yeah. So I think... Yeah. That that was definitely like the Jeffries Schumer philosophy was like, hang back. Let this guy rant and rave and hang himself with all these policies. And I think especially, like, in 2026 when it became clear tariffs are kinda blowing up, Iran war is not going well. It's like, there's no there's no need. We're we're just gonna hang up. Let this happen. And then [00:40:07] S0: Play back. [00:40:08] S2: Yeah. And then when people ask us, be like, well, it's not going well. We'll wait and see. You know? Come vote for us at the midterms. And and, yeah, I think that that plan has has worked out fairly well for them at this point. [00:40:19] S0: What else do we got here on the docket here?
00:40:19 · Jason Calacanis, Lon Harris
[00:40:19] S0: What else do we got here on the docket here? [00:40:21] S2: We follow the the sort of copyright infringement AI story. There's a new wrinkle today. Adweek reports that Anthropic has struck its first content licensing deal with the Associated Press specifically for election coverage. So per two people who were not named or familiar, the deal was signed just before the midterms. No financial terms have been, announced. But on election night, this will be presumably 2028, Claude users who asked for polling updates get up to the minute information provided by and attributed to the AP. Until Tuesday, Anthropic had not struck any content licensing deal with a digital publisher. OpenAI, of course, has more than a dozen Axel Springer, News Corp, The Atlantic, and others. Digital media executives told Adweek in August that Anthropic believes its use of publisher content is legally permissible under fair use, but they're about to go public. Do you think this is an IPO thing? Like, we gotta we gotta close down this line of attack against us before we go public. [00:41:21] S0: It's not fair use to use their information real time. And if they have a competing business in that space, [00:41:30] S2: and
00:41:30 · Lon Harris, Jason Calacanis
[00:41:30] S2: and [00:41:31] S0: you're monetizing it. So people... Pretty clearly Anthropic is monetizing Claude. So it is illegal, it is not fair use, and it's an unknown issue if using it as training data is illegal or not. They've paid huge settlements. They had a billion dollar settlement for using pirated copies of books. There's still a remaining question if you buy the book, if you're allowed to train on it. [00:41:54] S2: They get in trouble for bootlegging those books, not the training itself. The training itself is still merged.