Have Donald Trump's Half-Understood AI And Crypto Fantasies Made Us All Rich Yet, And Why Not?
There may be two dolls for Christmas, but Donald Trump is gonna ride AI and crypto to the MOON!
Now the folderol with those Epstein Files is all settled, Democrat hoax, the end! And Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has assured the world that his country has “improved” its “system” so nothing painful like the “things happen” mistake-murder and bonesawing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi can ever happen again. President Donald John Trump has closed the book on those things that he DOES NOT CARE ABOUT, and he would like everybody to focus on how the Republicans are the party of affordability!
Or as he ramble-pounded on Sunday night,
All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT, which is the Economy, “Affordability” (where we are winning BIG!), our Victory on reducing Inflation from the highest level in History to practically nothing, bringing down prices for the American People…
And moaned to McDonald’s franchise owners the next day: “Prices are coming down and all of that stuff.” And he lowered tariffs on beef, tomatoes and coffee. Because as it turns out, consumers pay those.
And Donald J. Trump, Art O’ Deal, is not winning The Affordability, BIG or otherwise, in any sense. Three Tuesdays ago, voters brought home the more-expensive-than-ever bacon, then they fried Republican candidates up in a pan on every level from Seattle to Georgia.
The average inflation rate in 2024 was 2.9 percent under Joe Biden, and it is now 3 percent. And the consumer prices are going through the roof, as they have been particularly since Russia invaded Ukraine. But some prices are shooting even higher, like coffee up a jolting 41 percent, and The Beef, up 14 percent in a year, because, says Scott Bessent, immigrants are bringing their cows, and Joe Biden did it!
That is the Donald Trump way. Is he in those Epstein files 1,600 times? No, he isn’t. Are grocery and gas prices up? No, they aren’t! Affordability, he is the affordability!
It is not happening and Trump didn’t do it, but also he has concepts of frameworks of a plan to fix it, and soon we will all be RICH RICH RICH! How about 50-year mortgages so people can buy a home before they’re 40? Okay, maybe not. How about he’ll have the government stop dealing with those greedy health insurance companies, and let consumers get directly pumped by those greedy companies one-on-one instead! And he will give everyone a cash bonus from those tariffs. And then his rating on the affordability will climb from 38 percent and everyone will thank him with tears in their eyes!
And Trump has a plan — we use the term loosely — to dump the US’s economic eggs in the AI and defense-industry baskets.
Saudi Arabia is going to invest a TRILLION dollars in US technology and war planes, details TBD, and get “Major Non-NATO Ally” status. And then America will ride an AI bubble all the way to the MOON!
We do not remember AI Black George Washington! Black Nazis though.
Anyway, there’s some reasons to be REAL skeptical of this plan. As Trump notes there, China is going to easily catch the US in that race, if they haven’t already, and all thanks to him. China controls like 90 percent the earth’s supply of rare earth minerals necessary to make those AI chips, and the technology to process them. And China has thousands of people working 24 hour shifts to try to replicate the NVIDIA chips that have been powering all of the AI. To say nothing of coming up with AI that uses the processors they have far more efficiently.
We know we sound like the teacher going on about the magnesium in the bottom panel, there, with these minerals.
But the nation that controls the rare earth minerals DOES control the universe.
Trump’s tariff freakout and Chinese-student visa freakout actually set back US access to those minerals for about six months, and it is still not clear if the US has full access to all of them necessary to make the chips and planes Trump has been hawking. November 1st Trump announced a deal that would let the US buy gallium, germanium, antimony, and graphite, but what about the others, the dysprosium and terbium, samarium, gadolinium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium, and the 32-year magnet monopoly? (You’ll have to go find the Tom Lehrer elements song yourself, buster.)
Where will US companies be on the list, and how soon will they arrive? Don’t forget, China can always change its mind if Trump starts acting up and pulls some stuff, now that Trump realizes China has all of the magnets and are the only ones who know how they work. Only by China’s grace will Trump be able to deliver on his promises for this boom.
And, another thing, exactly when and how is AI going to make us all rich? AI can have useful functions, like searching large caches of information, and rendering images, if you don’t mind extra fingers, but the technology, research and energy to run data centers is expensive, and subscription fees are not covering the bill. OpenAI has been losing billions and musing that the government should bail them out by backing a loan. NVIDIA’s Q3 earnings report is due after 5 p.m. today, so we will see if that AI bubble is fixing to burst. Peter Thiel has been dropping his shares like Trump dumping virtual poop, uh oh!
Analytics, supply chain optimization and Black George Washington are nice, but with error rates as high as 60 percent, human experts still have to check everything AI does.
And states have passed regulating laws for good reasons! Like revenge porn, child porn, and AI plundering copyrights. California is never going to be okay with Elon Musk ripping off Blade Runner to make marketing materials for his robo-taxi, and Tennessee doesn’t want anyone stealing Elvis’s voice.
And it’s not in states’ interests to have individuals get ripped off by, like, lawyers using AI for their briefs, or AI telling kids to kill themselves.
Oh, but we will get rich on crypto! This week, the Trump Organization and its Saudi-based development partner, Dar Al Arkan, announced a new project allowing cryptocurrency investors to buy into Trump-branded real estate projects using digital tokens that can be bought and sold on a blockchain platform.
Did we say we? We meant HE. He will get rich. And he is! As for the rest of us getting new jobs fixing AI robots in the robot factory like Howard Lutnick promised, though, we will all have to wait. The private investment rate is down since Trump was elected, and the South Korean workers who might have installed those robots and taught us how to use them have gone away. Hey hey.
And in the meantime, two dolls for Christmas and AI season’s greetings.
[Wall Street Journal gift link / Shanghai Metal Market / CSIS / NCSL]
Thank you for being Wonkette’s friend! We have no paywall ever, and no ads, because we’re brought to you by people like you! The button below will let you donate one time or monthly, in any amount of your choosing.
Comments now set to "everyone." Sorry for the error, and I have fired myself again for it.
Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1.bsky.social
Breaking on MS NOW:
The full grand jury never reviewed the indictment it handed up against Comey.
Prosecutors said, instead of presenting a new indictment after the grand jury declined to approve one of the counts, Halligan simply brought an altered version for the grand jury's foreperson to sign.