Moonshots · Nov 7, 2026 · 1h 46m · 94m saved
With Dave Blundin, Founder and General Partner of Link Ventures · Alex Wissner-Gross, Computer Scientist and Founder of Reified
Photo via ted.com
Anti-data-center candidates won or led in 12 governor's races in the midterms, and Goldman Sachs estimates 45% of planned US data-center construction could face restrictions. Alex Wissner-Gross, a computer scientist and founder of Reified, told Moonshots the backlash will hurt but can no longer stop AI, because AI is now doing much of its own research.
"We're at superintelligence escape velocity at this point. You could stop all data center construction tomorrow — yes, it would be painful... but so much of AI R&D is now itself driven by AI, so I'm not sure it would matter. It would be a blip." — Alex Wissner-Gross
Dave Blundin, founder and general partner of Link Ventures, sat alongside him and brought the investor's view, including a portfolio company that a cloud provider turned away for being too small. Salim Ismail hosted while Peter Diamandis was away.
The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 106 minutes of audio, 12 minutes of reading.
Here are the 9 arguments that matter.
Key Takeaways
Anti-data-center candidates won or led in 12 governor's races, and Goldman Sachs estimates 45% of planned US buildout could face restrictions
Alex says local governments should trade data-center approvals for free school lunches or tax rebates before compute moves to orbit
METR found Anthropic's AI research running at about 1.9x its historical pace, roughly 80% of it from AI helping AI research
New York City produces far more GDP per gigawatt than the best AI, by Dave's math about 30 times more
Google, Anthropic and xAI have reserved nearly all US compute and TSMC capacity for years, leaving startups without access
Alex backs the White House's DNA-synthesis screening as a better model than limiting who can use compute
The satellites already crossing the night sky are an early Dyson swarm, in Alex's view
1. AI Became an Election Issue
Dave said Anthropic is unlikely to delay its IPO over the midterms, because Polymarket odds were clear weeks before the roadshow began and Anthropic would have pulled it then. Alex and Salim raised Meta's IPO as a comparison: priced down, savaged by Wall Street, then up 20 to 30 times.
Dave has never seen a technical topic like AI dominate an election
The Democrats swept the midterms, mainly on the war, inflation and tariffs, but 56% opposition to big tech and data centers was a live issue. Dave named Texas as the state to watch.
"I never in my life have seen a technical topic like AI be a dominant topic in the elections... You're seeing the biggest intersection I've ever seen of a technology that wants to grow and a government or election cycle directly commenting on it, saying, 'I'm going to stop you.'" — Dave Blundin
"Elon, as always, has insane foresight — he put all of Colossus in Tennessee, not in Texas. And Tennessee's like, 'let's move it all over here, this is great.'... The buildout is just going to shift to the states that have a desire to have it happen." — Dave Blundin
Both noted that Anthropic, Google and Meta, the companies under political attack, also own much of the media covering them. They read Dario Amodei, who is "coming right after our guy" despite his Democratic-leaning background, as a sign the party has not settled its AI strategy.
