While the rest of the world worries about rent, the AI hyperscalers have become 'yield-agnostic.' They are issuing debt at a breakneck pace—$1.7 trillion through July—to fund their specialized chips and sprawling data centers. They don't care about the cost of borrowing because they believe the returns on their AI gods will be absolute. This isn't just business; it is a 'reverse crowding out' that pushes government yields higher, making life more expensive for every citizen on the planet.
And what are we getting for this debt-fueled frenzy? Amy Webb calls it 'pilot purgatory.' CEOs are drowning in 'insta-decks' and 'weird decisions,' effectively creating an AI hallucination on an economy-wide scale. They are making production cheap but making everything else in companies much more expensive. Meanwhile, the U.S. government explores spending $20 million on electric shock gloves and $2 million on robot dogs for enforcement. It is the perfect marriage of corporate incompetence and mechanized state power.
In Greece, we are told to embrace the mandatory transition to digital infrastructure and e-invoicing. We are told to balance our sheets while the giants ignore the cost of capital to build 50,000 mirrors in space—a 'starwashing' distraction from the pollution they dump into our atmosphere. They settle for $17 billion over 'architectural liability' and call it a cost of doing business. I am still walking with my lantern, looking for an honest balance sheet. Is there anyone left in the boardroom who isn't hallucinating?
