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Speaker 1: Hey, there, don't go just yet. We want to tell

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Speaker 1: you about a new series from our colleagues here at Bloomberg.

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Speaker 1: It's called Levetttown.

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Speaker 2: It's about a technology that's moving faster than the law.

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Speaker 2: About dozens of young women in a New York suburb

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Speaker 2: who discover manipulated photos of themselves on a porn website.

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Speaker 1: Told there isn't much the police or anyone else can do,

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Speaker 1: they decide to fight back, joining a global battle against

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Speaker 1: deep fakes. Please note the trailer for the show you

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Speaker 1: are about to hear features adult themes.

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Speaker 2: Why Five years ago this was a vast checkerboard at Potato.

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Speaker 3: Farms on New York's Long Island.

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Speaker 2: Today this is Levittown, one of the most remarkable housing

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Speaker 2: developments ever conceived.

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Speaker 4: Livettown, new York, America's first suburb, row after row after

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Speaker 4: row of cookie cutter homes, the picture of the American dream.

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Speaker 4: But recently, underneath the facade of perfect order, a group

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Speaker 4: of young women found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.

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Speaker 2: Someone was posting photos of many of the girls that

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Speaker 2: we had gone to school with.

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Speaker 5: There was one picture of me in a bathing suit,

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Speaker 5: and I didn't have a bathing suit on anymore. It

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Speaker 5: was just me naked, well not me, but me with

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Speaker 5: someone else's body parts that looked exactly like my own.

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Speaker 6: Over the last few years, rapid breakthroughs and machine learning

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Speaker 6: have made it a lot easier and cheaper to make

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Speaker 6: real looking photos or videos, pretty much anything you can

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Speaker 6: think of, But innovation comes at a price.

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Speaker 4: I felt gross, I felt I don't need to take

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Speaker 4: a shower.

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Speaker 6: I felt like I wanted to cry, I wanted to

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Speaker 6: throw up, I wanted to scream.

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Speaker 4: This is a story about a technology that is moving

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Speaker 4: faster than the law, where everyone is a suspect, even

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Speaker 4: your neighbors.

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Speaker 5: It was always in the back of my head, like, oh,

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Speaker 5: it's someone that I know, But how do you find

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Speaker 5: out who that someone is when you know so many

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Speaker 5: people from school, soccer, all these things.

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Speaker 6: What we discovered in Leavertant led us on a winding journey.

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Speaker 6: I just always had in the back of my mind

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Speaker 6: that any of them could be the one. Through the

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Speaker 6: darkest corners of the Internet, they call it an arms

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Speaker 6: race between law enforcement and technology, and it's just we're losing.

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Speaker 5: We are absolutely losing.

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Speaker 3: Well.

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Speaker 6: Online vigilantes and enterprising detectives are joining forces.

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Speaker 5: If you're given prey, you want to go and get it.

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Speaker 4: In this story, the victims flip the script, band together

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Speaker 4: and fight back alongside some unexpected global allies. I'm Margie

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Speaker 4: Murphy and I'm Olivia Carvill.

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Speaker 6: This is Levittown, a new podcast series from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg,

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Speaker 6: and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Tape podcast.

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Speaker 6: Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

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Speaker 6: you get your.

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Speaker 7: Podcasts, Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.

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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Jill Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.

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Speaker 2: Tracy, as you know, I am a sucker for any

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Speaker 2: conversation that involves reminiscing about the dot com bubble or

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Speaker 2: the telecom bubble, really anything in the late nineties when

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Speaker 2: that came of age as a young man.

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Speaker 1: Well, that makes sense. I think a lot of people

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Speaker 1: tend to do that. I like just bubbles in general.

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Speaker 1: I do not put a time period on my bubble

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Speaker 1: interest any bubbles all the time.

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Speaker 3: Let's do it.

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Speaker 2: One thing that I think is really interesting about that

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Speaker 2: time period is obviously you know it was a bubble,

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Speaker 2: but I think right now, obviously people are really curious

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Speaker 2: about the AI build out, and that really was the

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Speaker 2: last time the late nineties when there was a specific

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Speaker 2: costly capax tech infrastructure part of the story because at

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Speaker 2: that time it was the telecom bubble, everyone laying all

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Speaker 2: the broadband to power the high speed internet that we

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Speaker 2: have today. It's not a perfect analog, but it's something

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Speaker 2: that I've wanted to talk about and probably want to

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Speaker 2: talk more about on the show just because of Yeah,

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Speaker 2: some of the parallels to what we're seeing right now.

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Speaker 1: Right it is the analogy that everyone uses, primarily because

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Speaker 1: of that big, expensive capital buildout that you just mentioned.

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Speaker 1: I will also say, the telecoms bubble, it's kind of

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Speaker 1: mixed up with the Internet bubble, right or people tend

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Speaker 1: to mix your Yeah, and actually it was different anyway,

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Speaker 1: So we should talk about that.

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Speaker 3: Too, totally.

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Speaker 2: Well, I'm really excited. Tracy and I were recently down

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Speaker 2: in Washington, d C. Where we recorded a live show

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Speaker 2: and you've already heard some of them if you've been

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Speaker 2: listening to the podcast, but this was a really fun

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Speaker 2: little chat that we had. We spoke with Blair Levin.

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Speaker 2: He's currently a policy advisor at New Street Research, but

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Speaker 2: he was actually the chief of staff at the FCC

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Speaker 2: in the late nineties and to who's involved in some

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Speaker 2: of the deregulation that gave rise to all of the

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Speaker 2: telecom bubble build out, all of the telecom build out.

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Speaker 2: Then he went to work on Wall Street, so he

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Speaker 2: really had like a front row seat the story that

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Speaker 2: we're talking about. And so take a listen to our

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Speaker 2: chat with Blair. People do forget that, like they talk

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Speaker 2: about the Internet bubble, but it really was like it

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Speaker 2: started or at least a huge party with the telecom

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Speaker 2: It was.

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Speaker 3: A dual bubble. That is to say, there was a

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Speaker 3: bubble relating to Internet applications, but there was also a

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Speaker 3: bubble related to telecommunications infrastructure.

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Speaker 2: So other people could debate whether there is an AI

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Speaker 2: bubble happening right now, but there is certainly an AI

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Speaker 2: boom in terms of infrastructure spending. We talk all the

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Speaker 2: time about data center buildout, et cetera. Arguably, I mean

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Speaker 2: it's been going on for a while. Arguably, the sort

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Speaker 2: of the catalyst, the moment that it captivated captivated everyone

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Speaker 2: was the release of chat GBT in late twenty twenty two.

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Speaker 2: What was the moment or what was the catalyst in

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Speaker 2: the late nineties that suddenly got people so excited about

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Speaker 2: building out te broadband infrastructure.

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Speaker 3: It was a release of Netscape, an operating system that

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Speaker 3: caused people to understand what the Internet could actually be,

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Speaker 3: and of course had existed previously, but with Netscape, Silicon

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Speaker 3: Valley got very excited, Wall Street got very excited, and

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Speaker 3: a few political leaders like Al Gore, who was then

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Speaker 3: Vice President, got very excited because he had always wanted

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Speaker 3: the information Highway to connect the child in Carthage, Tennessee

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Speaker 3: to the Library of Congress. Right now there was really

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Speaker 3: a vehicle that could do it.

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Speaker 1: Joe knows a lot more about this topic than I do.

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Speaker 1: But one thing I do know is when people start

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Speaker 1: age Joe, when people talk about the telecomps bubble, I mean,

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Speaker 1: the thing that comes up is the Telecommunications Act of

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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six. It goes almost like hand in hand,

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Speaker 1: walk us through the connection there. Why does the Act

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Speaker 1: get the blame for a lot of this enthusiasm or

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Speaker 1: the credit or the credit.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Look, so I think people have to understand back

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Speaker 3: in nineteen thirteen us to do a little history's doing

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Speaker 3: history back in nineteen thirteen, the government essentially allowed AT

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Speaker 3: and T to continue its monopoly. If Andrew had been there,

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Speaker 3: maybe he would have opposed it, but he wasn't there,

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Speaker 3: and that continued until it was broken up. And then

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Speaker 3: once it was broken we had the long distance guys

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Speaker 3: and you had the local guys. And the local guys

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Speaker 3: wanted to get in the long distance business, and the

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Speaker 3: long distance guys wanted to get in a local business,

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Speaker 3: and the cable industry wanted to get into both of

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Speaker 3: their businesses. And so during the eighties and early nineties

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Speaker 3: there were a lot of efforts to say, instead of

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Speaker 3: having one judge in charge of the whole thing, let's

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Speaker 3: do this differently. And the key idea and one embraced

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Speaker 3: really on a bipartisan basis, but really seen clearly by

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Speaker 3: Gored by the chair Red Hunt, was right, now, we

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Speaker 3: have these analog networks that are protected and they just

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Speaker 3: offer a single service. You have analog video coming over cable,

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Speaker 3: you have analog voice going over the copper net. Wireless

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Speaker 3: was kind of a protected thing. Long story, but there

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Speaker 3: were only two wireless providers, so less than ten million

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Speaker 3: people used wireless services, and the idea of the ninety

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Speaker 3: six Act in a way was let's blow this all

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Speaker 3: up by making everything go digital. That was the key

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Speaker 3: because once they're digital, they all compete with each other.

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Speaker 3: We didn't express it quite that way, but that was

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Speaker 3: the real idea behind it, and I would argue, you know,

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Speaker 3: you can say it was a success or it was

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Speaker 3: a failure. But for those of us, I'm showing my age.

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Speaker 3: I was a ten year old kid in nineteen sixty

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Speaker 3: four stood in line for two hours in New York

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Speaker 3: at the World's Fair to watch, you know, a video

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Speaker 3: conference that was like three bucks a minute. Well we

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Speaker 3: all do you know? I do this with my grandkids

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Speaker 3: for free now. So I view it as a success.

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Speaker 3: You know that basically by going digital, we have faster, cheaper,

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Speaker 3: better communications through competition than we've ever had.

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Speaker 2: What specifically did that telecom deregulation a lit wow such

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Speaker 2: that we got this incredible boom in laying fiber, laying

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Speaker 2: copp or whatever it was.

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Speaker 3: It gave the FCC a lot of authority, though that

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Speaker 3: authority was challenged and we did lose a case at

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Speaker 3: the Court of Appeals where the States challenged it because

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Speaker 3: they wanted to have the power, But then the Supreme

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Speaker 3: Court gave the power back to the FCC, But it

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Speaker 3: gave the FCC a lot of authority to do things

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Speaker 3: which are not commonly recognized but turn out to be

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Speaker 3: very important. For example, one of the most important things

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Speaker 3: we did was wireless number of portability. People didn't think

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Speaker 3: about it at the time, but the question was who

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Speaker 3: owns your phone number? Do you own the phone number

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Speaker 3: or does the company on the phone number. If Verizon

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Speaker 3: owned your phone number, you would never leave them, and therefore,

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Speaker 3: no matter how many competitors do you have, there really

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Speaker 3: wouldn't be competition. Another very big one goes to a

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Speaker 3: very obscure thing, which are called access charges. So you're

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Speaker 3: on one network and you call a different network, what

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Speaker 3: does network two charge Network one complete that call. The

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Speaker 3: most important thing for wireless was when we said to

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Speaker 3: the wireline guys, who had you know, we're connecting completing

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Speaker 3: ninety five percent of the calls. You have to charge

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Speaker 3: your real cost, not you know, not ten cents a minute,

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Speaker 3: but your real cost is zero to connect. And then

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Speaker 3: suddenly big plans started to come in and wireless really

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Speaker 3: took off, here's another one. In ninety five, before the

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Speaker 3: Act was passed, the Bell companies were trying to say

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Speaker 3: to Congress, we really need to charge access charges to

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Speaker 3: this new dial up internet thing. And we said to

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Speaker 3: Steve Case, we had a meeting with him. We said,

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Speaker 3: you know, here's what's going on on Capitol Hill. They

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Speaker 3: want you to charge you like five cents a minute.

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Speaker 3: Imagine what that would have done to AOL. Though I'm

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Speaker 3: not sure people in the audience can remember able remember

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Speaker 3: they've read about it. Yeah, it was kind of like

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Speaker 3: back in Genesis. But in any event, Steve Case got

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Speaker 3: the message. If I recall correctly, within forty eight hours,

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Speaker 3: there were four hundred thousand emails hitting the hill, not

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Speaker 3: the charge access charges, and we were able to continue

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Speaker 3: that thing. So there were obscure things. We weren't breaking

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Speaker 3: up monopolies in the way that the government is currently

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Speaker 3: thinking about doing with Google, but rather by saying we're

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Speaker 3: going to create competitive position, competitive situations by looking at

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Speaker 3: what is essential and then making sure that those are

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Speaker 3: not barriers in the competition.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so people think they have an entry point into

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Speaker 1: that market, there's deregulation, there's potentially more competition for new players.

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Speaker 1: Why did investors want to fund what seems like a

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Speaker 1: very ex expensive undertaking so badly? And here I have

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Speaker 1: to say the one thing I do know about the

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Speaker 1: telecoms bubble. I used to be a capital markets correspondent,

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Speaker 1: talk to a lot of old school bond investor guys.

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Speaker 1: It was funded with a lot of debt. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: if you ask some of those old school guys about

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Speaker 1: like the big moments in their career, it's okay, the

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Speaker 1: two thousand and eight financial crisis, but easily like the

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Speaker 1: two thousand and one telecoms crash, which was huge for

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Speaker 1: the bond market. Why were people so eager to pour

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Speaker 1: money into this?

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Speaker 3: So first of all, you have to understand that at

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Speaker 3: the beginning of any new, really big thing, there was

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Speaker 3: in the early nineteen hundreds a lot of money going

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Speaker 3: into car companies, and in the seventies there was a

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Speaker 3: lot of money going into computer companies because people see

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Speaker 3: what the opportunity is. So in the case of telecom

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Speaker 3: what happened was we were deregulating and in increasing this

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Speaker 3: digital competition at the same time that the market understood

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Speaker 3: that the future is not these copper networks that the

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Speaker 3: old AT and T local exchange carriers had but big

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Speaker 3: fiber digital networks, And at that point in time, MCI

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Speaker 3: and other people were saying digital traffic is grow, is

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Speaker 3: doubling every quarter. Turned out it was every year, which.

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Speaker 2: Is a hard difference.

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Speaker 3: But if you're an investor and you believe one thing

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Speaker 3: to be true and it turns out the other thing

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Speaker 3: is true, you can make a really big mistake. And

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Speaker 3: they made some mistakes. But I think you know, there's

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Speaker 3: a difference between what happened with the big networks and

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Speaker 3: what happened to pets dot com. Right, pets dot Com

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Speaker 3: went under. Investors loft money and that's what was the

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Speaker 3: end of it. But those networks which were built with

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Speaker 3: that debt and then had to be refinanced. And I

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Speaker 3: remember there was a famous I think it was a

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Speaker 3: Forbes cover about a company called Quest which was building

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Speaker 3: about these yeah w right and they ended up buying

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Speaker 3: an old ilec, an old phone company, and everybody thought

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Speaker 3: it was genius, and that the cover story was making

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Speaker 3: money at the speed of light, and everybody kind of

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Speaker 3: was buying off on this. Well, those networks still exist,

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Speaker 3: and those are the networks which actually made Google and

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Speaker 3: Facebook and others lots of money when they bought them

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Speaker 3: on the cheap years later.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so you have this environment of deregulation in the

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Speaker 2: nineties during the Clinton administration, you have this sort of

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Speaker 2: realization that the Internet is going to be a big deal.

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Speaker 2: You have these inflated claims. In retrospect, turns out it's

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Speaker 2: still incredibly fast, but doubling every year is not quite

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Speaker 2: the same as doubling every quarter. What was the first

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Speaker 2: cool breeze that came in? When was the first moment

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Speaker 2: from a telecom perspective where it's like, Okay, maybe we're

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Speaker 2: not quite so exciting because what people are wondering about

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Speaker 2: with AI is there going to be something? So far

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Speaker 2: we haven't seen any of the major plays forms, the

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Speaker 2: major hyperscalers. They were like massively pulling back on KPAX

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Speaker 2: or whatever. But people are looking out for that moment.

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Speaker 2: What was the first sort of like what's going on here?

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Speaker 3: So in a way you're thinking about there was a

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Speaker 3: kind of a false moment with AI, with deep Sea

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Speaker 3: where there was that moment where maybe a stock went

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Speaker 3: down hugely one day, but then people started to think, yeah, well,

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Speaker 3: wait a minute, we're still going to need the chips, and.

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Speaker 2: Why large everyone is still despite the market sell off.

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Speaker 3: No one is actually like changing either investment commitments. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: though there were lots of smaller companies that are not

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Speaker 3: public because going public is different than it was in

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Speaker 3: two thousand, so we don't really know what's going on

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Speaker 3: with them. But I would say somewhere, actually, where I

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Speaker 3: would place it was the day after Time Warner made

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Speaker 3: probably the worst deal of all time and bought AOL.

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Speaker 3: That's when people like me started to go, wait a minute,

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Speaker 3: someone who's really smoking something here, and that really doesn't

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Speaker 3: make sense because you know, from our perspective, AOL was

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Speaker 3: kind of an obsolete company because broadband was coming on,

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Speaker 3: and in a broadband world, the logic of AOL was

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Speaker 3: not right true. And then then the application started to fold,

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Speaker 3: and then about a year later, a lot of the

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Speaker 3: data network started to fold.

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Speaker 1: So one of the things I remember from I think

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Speaker 1: it was Jason Callicanus when we interviewed you, was he

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Speaker 1: pointed out something interesting about a lot of the latest startups,

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Speaker 1: which is the it's not that they couldn't necessarily make

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Speaker 1: money in the good years. It was that investors weren't

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Speaker 1: asking them to. Investors wanted them to grow as quickly

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Speaker 1: as possible, grow market share, the sort of network effect

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Speaker 1: that we were talking about earlier. And then suddenly, you know,

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Speaker 1: investors start saying, actually, you need to monetize this, and

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Speaker 1: you need to kind of show us where the money is.

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Speaker 1: And so that change in behavior means that now there's

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Speaker 1: pressure to be cash flow positive. Was there a sort

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Speaker 1: of similar moment or similar change in investor behavior aware

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Speaker 1: it didn't become about growth and the build out, but

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Speaker 1: it became about actual reality and monetization.

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Speaker 3: Well, again, I would distinguish between the networks which can

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Speaker 3: run for a while, but they can't run forever, and

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Speaker 3: the applications. I do remember Eric Schmidt Reid and I

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Speaker 3: had ben with them shortly after he became CEO of Google,

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Speaker 3: and he said, ubiquity first, monetization later. That works in

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Speaker 3: an advertising model, It does not work in a lot

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Speaker 3: of other models. And one of the challenges for network

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Speaker 3: folks is how do you build this network which is

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Speaker 3: supposed to last for thirty years or fifty years or whatever,

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Speaker 3: and not run out of money before the revenue start

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Speaker 3: coming in. And we saw this with various wireless companies,

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Speaker 3: and we saw it with fixed terrestrial wired companies. And

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Speaker 3: it's interesting because if you look at what the world

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Speaker 3: looked like in two thousand, a lot of the companies

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Speaker 3: on the network side are the same. It's the cable companies,

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Speaker 3: it's the wireless companies, and it's the traditional les, but

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Speaker 3: they've changed their business model. But when you look at

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Speaker 3: the device companies and the applications companies relative to two thousand,

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Speaker 3: totally different set of companies.

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Speaker 2: What were the Selex the cles?

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Speaker 3: What were so the sea lex were the competitive local

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Speaker 3: exchange carriers And the idea was, as one Wall Street

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Speaker 3: analyst said, they are the construction companies for the long

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Speaker 3: distance company. Because the idea was the long distance companies?

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Speaker 3: Would Congress really envisioned?

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Speaker 2: I forgot about long distance?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, here it go. Yeah, as most people as well,

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Speaker 3: you should. But when I was in college again back

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Speaker 3: in the days of Genesis, you know, we stood in

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Speaker 3: line to call our parents because it was really expensive,

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Speaker 3: and we would call and talk for thirty seconds, just yes,

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Speaker 3: I'm okay, talk to you later by you know. And

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Speaker 3: now has anyone paid a long distance? Is there anyone

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Speaker 3: here paying a long distance? Bell?

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Speaker 6: No?

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Speaker 3: Of course not. It was all a matter of regulatory

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Speaker 3: arbitrage back in those days. But the idea I think

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Speaker 3: of the act was that there would be three competitors.

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Speaker 3: You would have the cable guys, the incumbents, and the

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Speaker 3: long distance guys. Everybody knew that the incumbent local exchange

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Speaker 3: carriers could easily go into long distance, So the challenge was,

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Speaker 3: how do we create a path for the long distance

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Speaker 3: guys to essentially build out new networks that'll be superior

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Speaker 3: networks and then they'll come be with the old guys

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Speaker 3: who have the advantages of incumbency, and the cable guys

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Speaker 3: are going to get into this business. Wireless was not

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Speaker 3: really seen as a competitor now it is, and there

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Speaker 3: are again a lot of regulatory reasons. Spectrum auctions played

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Speaker 3: a big role in that kind of stuff, and we

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Speaker 3: had a plan. Now that plan was reversed by the

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Speaker 3: Republican chairman of the FCC, Michael Powell, very good guy,

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Speaker 3: and he basically had the view that that's really it's

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Speaker 3: not going to work. The other problem, which is kind

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Speaker 3: of something you can't legislate around. Bob Allen, who is

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Speaker 3: the CEO of AT and T, was shall we say

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Speaker 3: my age as to the young whipper snappers of SBC

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Speaker 3: at Whitaker or Ivan Seidenberg of what was then called

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Speaker 3: nine X. And in the middle of just after the

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Speaker 3: kind of the law passed, we're in the middle of saying,

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Speaker 3: here's how we're going to make it so that the

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Speaker 3: sea Lects can build these networks for eighteen t to

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Speaker 3: eventually buy and blah blah blah. Alan tries to merge

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Speaker 3: with SBC because he wanted to retire. And people have

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Speaker 3: forgotten this little episode, but it showed up on the newspaper,

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Speaker 3: and a couple days later, my boss, Breetheind gave a

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Speaker 3: speech at Brookings saying such a deal would be unthinkable. Actually, Alan,

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Speaker 3: we were trying to figure out what to do. Alan

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Speaker 3: gave a speech saying such a deal would not be unthinkable,

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Speaker 3: which gave us the open You say, oh really and

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Speaker 3: read who was a former anti trust lawyer just went

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Speaker 3: through this, you know, very intense anti trust analysis why

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Speaker 3: we cannot let them merge. Eventually they did merge and

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Speaker 3: that was the end kind of of the sea Lect dream.

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Speaker 1: This is great and Joe loves reminiscing and war stories.

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Speaker 1: As he said, so I got to ask, what was

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Speaker 1: the craziest thing in retrospect that you saw from this era?

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Speaker 3: Oh gosh, you know what was crazy about it? But

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Speaker 3: totally wonderful was and this will sound odd, Congress gave

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Speaker 3: us ridiculous deadlines. Ridiculous deadlines, and a Republican guys said,

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Speaker 3: you know, Blair, we gave you deadlines. You're never going

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Speaker 3: to meet them, and then you're going to be so screwed.

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Speaker 3: I said, thank you. That great, But Reid understood that deadlines,

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Speaker 3: particlally if you're like a chief of staff, are a

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Speaker 3: great thing. So the day after the Act passed, we

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Speaker 3: had all the lobbyists in. We had here's all the rulemakings,

401
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Speaker 3: here's where we're going to do everything, you know, like

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Speaker 3: just and went to the other commissioner offices and said,

403
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Speaker 3: with each of these things, you're going to have five

404
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Speaker 3: days to read the stuff, you know, like no excuses.

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Speaker 3: And so we felt enormously energized and pressured. The over

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Speaker 3: the heating bill at the FCC for like one month

407
00:23:04,160 --> 00:23:06,439
Speaker 3: was like an extra four hundred thousand dollars. That's a

408
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Speaker 3: good detail. We were all working so hard, but it

409
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Speaker 3: was truly it was a wonderful spirit and we thought

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Speaker 3: we were doing something important. And by the way, at

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Speaker 3: the same time, we were negotiating World Trade Organization agreement

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Speaker 3: to enable digital traffic to travel much more cheaply around

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Speaker 3: the world. It was really exciting and fun time.

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Speaker 2: All right, I have one last question, which is there

415
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Speaker 2: are various ways to play a boom. Right, So some

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Speaker 2: people were buying shares and corning the glass company because

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Speaker 2: I have to lay a lot of glass based fiber.

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Speaker 2: Some people were buying AOL, Some people were buying pets

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Speaker 2: dot com. You know, various different like sort of ways

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Speaker 2: into it. Is it the ISP, is it the website,

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Speaker 2: is it the glass, et cetera. Obviously with AI it's

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Speaker 2: this sort of same thing. Is it going to be

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Speaker 2: the model makers. Is it going to be the companies

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Speaker 2: to make the chips? Is it going to be the

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Speaker 2: companies to make the cooling systems for the data centers?

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Speaker 2: Various different ways into any sort of boom from the

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Speaker 2: telecom era. What is the takeaway about who makes the

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Speaker 2: money in the end, Because who makes the money in

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Speaker 2: the end the lawyer of that story, yeah, Bessess, the lawyers, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: the heat and the heating.

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Speaker 1: Company and the heating companies.

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Speaker 3: You know, I will give you my answer, but I

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Speaker 3: have to tell you, if I actually knew the real answer,

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Speaker 3: you'd have to pay me a lot more money.

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Speaker 2: I'm not even asking for the AI. I'm just like,

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Speaker 2: you know, like.

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Speaker 3: Because I'm just I'm the Wall Street analysis. But I'm

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00:24:25,680 --> 00:24:27,679
Speaker 3: just telling people what the policies are going to be.

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Speaker 2: I'm not telling you people paid fifty dollars to get Oh.

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Speaker 3: That's right, fifty five dollars. You deserve a better answer. No. Look,

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00:24:35,040 --> 00:24:37,280
Speaker 3: what I love about Wall Street is you have these

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00:24:37,320 --> 00:24:40,600
Speaker 3: debates every day, and you know, one of the big

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00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:43,959
Speaker 3: debates in my space is what is Charlie Ergan going

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00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:47,200
Speaker 3: to do? Or should the telcos the wireless guys buy

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Speaker 3: more fiber? All those kinds of debates. What I would

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00:24:50,040 --> 00:24:53,880
Speaker 3: say about that is number one, infrastructure always has value.

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00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:57,640
Speaker 3: But it's also true that, as every real estate developer knows,

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00:24:57,640 --> 00:25:00,840
Speaker 3: it's often the third owner who actually makes right right. So,

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00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:04,439
Speaker 3: but the data centers are going to have value forever.

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Speaker 3: There will be a couple of applications that capture the

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Speaker 3: market share and that the you know, twenty years from now,

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00:25:11,080 --> 00:25:14,919
Speaker 3: the FTC will be saying why didn't we stop these people,

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00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:17,960
Speaker 3: you know, back in twenty twenty five when we could have.

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Speaker 3: And whether it's Open AI or it's Perplexity or it's

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00:25:21,280 --> 00:25:24,160
Speaker 3: any of the others, who knows. But if you capture

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00:25:24,200 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 3: that the market, you know, the return on scale is tremendous.

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Speaker 3: The difference now is you do have these really well

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00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:37,680
Speaker 3: established companies Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Who are who are

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Speaker 3: in the space?

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Speaker 5: You know?

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Speaker 3: One answer to would be the cloud guys. I think

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Speaker 3: Cloud is just going to be incredibly important in all

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00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:47,119
Speaker 3: of this and they win no matter what.

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Speaker 2: Blair Levin a real treat. So great to chat with you.

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Speaker 2: I love reminiscing. Thanks for all coming down last live.

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Speaker 1: That was our episode looking back at the Telecoms Bubble

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00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:14,280
Speaker 1: with Blair Levin. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me

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00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:15,680
Speaker 1: at Tracy Alloway.

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00:26:16,000 --> 00:26:18,800
Speaker 2: I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.

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00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:21,320
Speaker 2: You can follow Blair at Blair Levin. Though I don't

471
00:26:21,320 --> 00:26:23,320
Speaker 2: think he's posted in eight years, maybe if a bunch

472
00:26:23,359 --> 00:26:26,239
Speaker 2: of people follow him, he'll start posting again. Follow Our

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00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:29,480
Speaker 2: producers Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman armand dash O Bennett at

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00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 2: Dashbot and kil Brooks at Kelbrooks from our oddlotscontent, go

475
00:26:33,160 --> 00:26:35,280
Speaker 2: to Bloomberg dot com slash odd lots, where we have

476
00:26:35,359 --> 00:26:37,760
Speaker 2: all of our episodes in a daily newsletter, and you

477
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:40,800
Speaker 2: can chat about all of these topics, especially including AI

478
00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:44,400
Speaker 2: and bubbles and stuff like that in our discord discord

479
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:46,040
Speaker 2: dot gg slash odlines.

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00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:48,960
Speaker 1: And if you enjoy odlots, if you like it when

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00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:52,280
Speaker 1: we reminisce about bubbles, then please leave us a positive

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Speaker 1: review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you

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Speaker 1: are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of

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Speaker 1: our episodes appletely add free. All you need to do

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Speaker 1: is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow

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Speaker 1: the instructions there. Thanks for listening.