The Great Collision Between Politics and AI | #309

Episode of Moonshots with Peter Diamandis · November 7, 2026 · 1 h 47 min

Salim Ismail, Alexander Wissner-Gross and Dave Blundin discuss how Democratic midterm gains and data-center backlash affect AI, markets, recursive self-improvement and orbital compute.

Summary

With Peter Diamandis absent, Salim Ismail hosted co-hosts Alexander Wissner-Gross and Dave Blundin for a discussion of the 2026 midterm elections, in which Democrats made large gains and opposition to big tech and data centers became a campaign issue. Blundin said he had never seen a technical topic like AI dominate an election and predicted data-center construction would shift to welcoming states such as Tennessee and to Canada. Wissner-Gross argued the backlash would push compute into orbit, urged frontier labs to win public support by curing the top 5,000 diseases, and suggested municipalities negotiate a grand bargain with hyperscalers.

The hosts reviewed the market sell-off that followed, including a roughly 5.5% Nasdaq drop, and the possible impact on Anthropic's IPO. They then discussed a METR study finding Anthropic's AI development accelerating at about 1.9 times its historical rate. Wissner-Gross and Blundin argued that recursive self-improvement is already well underway and that software gains alone could carry progress even if data-center construction halted. Wissner-Gross predicted continuous frontier model releases by early 2027 and argued the eventual optimal architecture would be interpretable.

Later segments covered a joules-to-GDP benchmark for AI economic value per unit of energy, Ismail's comparison of Anthropic's revenue per gigawatt with New York City's GDP per gigawatt, and concerns about compute scarcity. Blundin called for a right to compute for startups. The hosts welcomed a White House policy on synthetic DNA screening as regulation of actions rather than thoughts, with Wissner-Gross predicting similar rules for robotics. The episode closed with a long-exposure photograph of satellite trails, which Wissner-Gross described as an early Dyson swarm.

Chapters

  1. 0:00

    Cold open: Anthropic's IPO

    The hosts debate whether Anthropic will delay its IPO after the election, with Blundin comparing it to the Facebook IPO.

  2. 3:26

    Introductions

    Salim Ismail introduces himself as temporary host and shares impressions from the Singularity Summit in Madrid.

  3. 6:05

    Midterm elections and AI

    The hosts assess how voter opposition to data centers shaped the midterms and what frontier labs should do to win public support.

  4. 19:09

    Industry response and orbital compute

    Discussion of tech companies' reactions, the shift of compute to Canada and space, and the leverage municipalities hold.

  5. 25:30

    Market sell-off

    The hosts analyze the post-election drop in Nasdaq and semiconductor stocks and the risk of idle compute.

  6. 31:51

    Killer apps and winning voters

    The hosts discuss how heartstrings, wallets or health apps could shift public opinion on compute.

  7. 38:29

    METR study and recursive self-improvement

    The hosts discuss evidence that AI is accelerating Anthropic's own research and argue RSI is already underway.

  8. 47:52

    Hard takeoff, interpretability and timelines

    Wissner-Gross predicts interpretable architectures and continuous model releases by early 2027, then raises the Fermi paradox.

  9. 1:04:39

    Joules to GDP and AI efficiency

    The hosts discuss a benchmark of AI economic value per joule and compare AI revenue per gigawatt with New York City's output.

  10. 1:18:23

    Compute scarcity and a right to compute

    Blundin warns that compute locked up by a few big buyers could starve startups, and the hosts compare it to uranium regulation.

  11. 1:27:07

    White House DNA synthesis screening policy

    The hosts endorse regulating DNA synthesis as a physical choke point and anticipate similar rules for robotics.

  12. 1:34:16

    A visible Dyson swarm

    A long-exposure photo of satellite trails prompts discussion of sun-synchronous orbit compute, Kessler syndrome and Lagrange points.

  13. 1:42:04

    Closing thoughts

    The hosts conclude that political swings are cyclical against a secular trend toward superintelligence.

Key points

What was said, by whom, with the exact words. Timestamps jump to the moment.

  • Dave Blundin

    Blundin doubts Anthropic will delay its IPO, noting that election odds were already clear when it launched its roadshow.

    “The polymarket odds were really, really clear, you know, three, four weeks ago. And that's when they pulled the trigger on the roadshow”

    Listen from 0:16 · Anthropic

  • Alexander Wissner-Gross

    Wissner-Gross recommends frontier labs win public support by using superintelligence to solve the top 5,000 diseases and publicizing it.

    “Use superintelligence, solve the top 5,000 diseases, market the heck out of it to the general public”

    Listen from 8:20 · Anthropic

  • Dave Blundin

    Blundin predicts data-center construction will shift to states that welcome it, such as Tennessee.

    “Fundamentally, it's going to shift to the states that have have a desire to have it happen in their state”

    Listen from 10:21 · Opposition to AI data centers

  • Dave Blundin

    Blundin says AI's prominence as an election issue is unprecedented in his lifetime.

    “But I never in my life have seen a technical topic like A.I. be a dominant topic in the elections”

    Listen from 10:35 · 2026 United States midterm elections

  • Alexander Wissner-Gross

    Wissner-Gross argues municipalities should use their leverage to extract benefits from hyperscalers rather than ban data centers.

    “Do you want the hyperscalers to pay for free school lunches, ask for it”

    Listen from 16:40 · Opposition to AI data centers

  • Dave Blundin

    Blundin argues Canada is the natural place for new data centers because of its power supply.

    “the power supply is overwhelmingly better per capita in Canada than it is anywhere else in North America”

    Listen from 21:29 · Compute scarcity

  • Alexander Wissner-Gross

    Wissner-Gross argues that political hostility to terrestrial data centers is a major accelerant for orbital compute.

    “I do think this is the greatest shot in the arm for building out the Dyson Swarm that we could have seen on the timescale of a year or two”

    Listen from 23:01 · Space-based data centers

  • Dave Blundin

    Blundin says markets priced in slower AI construction and a chance for China to gain ground.

    “But I do think that the market just priced in, yeah, this is going to slow things down and give China a leg up”

    Listen from 27:31 · 2026 AI stock market sell-off

  • Salim Ismail

    Ismail argues that the main constraint on the singularity is slow-moving institutions rather than technology.

    “even though the intelligence is advancing exponentially But our political, our financial, our social institutions are sublinear”

    Listen from 31:08 · Regulation of artificial intelligence

  • Alexander Wissner-Gross

    Wissner-Gross argues that recursive self-improvement is advanced enough that software gains alone could carry AI progress without new data centers.

    “just through pure software improvements, get to where we're going, probably without any new data centers, any new hardware advances at all”

    Listen from 32:43 · Recursive self-improvement

  • Dave Blundin

    Blundin cites a sharp rise in Anthropic's internal token use as evidence of recursive self-improvement.

    “the use of tokens for internal development at Anthropic is up 235x in the last six months?”

    Listen from 42:10 · Recursive self-improvement

  • Alexander Wissner-Gross

    Wissner-Gross predicts that the optimal AI architecture produced by self-improvement will be interpretable and elegant rather than alien.

    “I expect, I predict it will be impossibly beautiful, so beautiful that even meat body humans can understand how and why it works”

    Listen from 51:58 · Recursive self-improvement

  • Alexander Wissner-GrossPrediction · due Jun 2027

    Wissner-Gross predicts frontier AI models will move to continuous release around early 2027.

    “But at some point, it's just going to be continuous release. And I would expect that to happen early 2027 or so”

    Listen from 1:00:13 · Recursive self-improvement

  • Linked moment · 1:01:30Skip to 1:01:30 using a listen link in the info box.

    Alexander Wissner-Gross

    Wissner-Gross argues humanity is within a few years of being able to launch self-replicating interstellar probes, which will sharpen the Fermi paradox.

    “we're within a few years of having the capability of sending relativistic von neumann probes in every direction”

    Listen from 1:01:30 · Fermi paradox

  • Dave Blundin

    Blundin believes human entertainers and podcasts will survive the AI transition because people need to be inspired by people.

    “One of the few things that I think will survive all of this is entertainers, athletes, spokespeople, motivators”

    Listen from 1:02:48

  • Alexander Wissner-Gross

    Wissner-Gross notes that Chinese open-weight models outperform American ones on economic productivity per watt, which he attributes to compute constraints.

    “it's very instructive that the Chinese open weight models are beating the American open weight models in terms of economic productivity per watt”

    Listen from 1:06:12 · AI energy efficiency

  • Salim Ismail

    Ismail offers a provocative estimate that New York City creates far more economic value per gigawatt than Anthropic's AI, while acknowledging the comparison may be unfair.

    “So there's a human metropolis is therefore like something like 30 times more energy efficient at creating value than the world's most advanced AI currently”

    Listen from 1:11:27 · AI energy efficiency

  • Dave Blundin

    Blundin argues startups need a guaranteed right to compute because large buyers have reserved nearly all capacity.

    “if you want a thriving entrepreneurial America, you have to have some kind of a right to compute”

    Listen from 1:18:49 · Compute scarcity

  • Alexander Wissner-Gross

    Wissner-Gross warns against a long stall in AI progress driven by public fear, comparing it to nuclear energy.

    “I really, really don't want to see a 50-year gap in technological progress due to a moral panic”

    Listen from 1:19:31 · Regulation of artificial intelligence

  • Dave Blundin

    Blundin argues that businesses denied AI access, even small ones like bakeries, will be uncompetitive.

    “the neighboring bakery that does have access to AI will operate with at least a 30, 40, 50% operating margin advantage”

    Listen from 1:23:12 · Compute scarcity

  • Alexander Wissner-Gross

    Wissner-Gross prefers regulating physical DNA synthesis through a limited set of vendors over government control of who may access compute.

    “I'd much rather that Big Brother be controlling the printing out of DNA and RNA sequences through tighter controls on a limited set of vendors”

    Listen from 1:28:36 · Synthetic DNA screening policy

  • Alexander Wissner-Gross

    Wissner-Gross predicts licensing and record-keeping rules similar to those for DNA synthesis will be applied to general-purpose robots.

    “If we're seeing it with biological sequence synthesis, probably see it with robotics as well”

    Listen from 1:30:50 · Synthetic DNA screening policy

  • Alexander Wissner-Gross

    Wissner-Gross argues that satellite constellations visible in the night sky are the beginning of a Dyson swarm.

    “it's an opportunity to look up at the sky and recognize the baby Dyson swarm is already here”

    Listen from 1:35:35 · Dyson swarm

People

In the conversation

  • Salim IsmailFounder of OpenExO and author on exponential organizations, co-host of Moonshots
  • Alexander Wissner-GrossComputer scientist and founder of Reified, co-host of Moonshots
  • Dave BlundinFounder and general partner of Link Ventures, co-host of Moonshots

Discussed

  • Dario AmodeiAnthropic CEO cited for a publicly stated 25% probability of catastrophic AI outcomes
  • Elon MuskEntrepreneur behind X, xAI and SpaceX, discussed in AI competition
  • Jony IveFormer Apple designer involved in Ferrari's electric car
  • Noam BrownOpenAI researcher behind reasoning models who argued AI capability costs collapse rapidly
  • Eric SchmidtFormer Google CEO who funded the oil cleanup XPRIZE and co-authored Genesis
  • Michael SaylorAmerican executive and prominent Bitcoin holder
  • Ray KurzweilAmerican inventor and futurist known for predictions about AI
  • Claude ShannonFounder of information theory
  • Philip JohnstonEntrepreneur working on space-based compute
  • Ramez NaamAuthor who estimated Kimi is five weeks behind the U.S. frontier

Topics

More from Moonshots with Peter Diamandis

From the publisher

The mates sit down to discuss the latest developments shaking up the AI industry, from questions surrounding Anthropic’s IPO and the Nasdaq’s 5% drop to the growing impact of midterm elections on AI policy. They also explore the broader AI market correction, the accelerating pace of recursive self-improvement (RSI), and the increasingly complex intersection of politics, technology, and financial markets. Get access to metatrends 10+ years before anyone else - https://qr.diamandis.com/metatrends Salim Ismail is the founder of Open ExO, a GP at Exponential Venture Capital/The Organizational Singularity Fund and a sought after global speaker and thought leader. Dave Blundin is the founder & GP of Link Ventures Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross is a computer scientist and founder of Reified – This episode is brought to you by: Get the blueprint for generative media https://goo.gle/startupgenmedia Go to Blitzy to book a free demo and start building today: https://qr.diamandis.com/blitzy Your body is incredibly good at hiding disease. Schedule a call with Fountain Life to add healthy decades to your life, and to learn more about their Memberships: https://www.fountainlife.com/peter _ Connect with Dave: Web X LinkedIn Instagram TikTok Connect with Salim: LinkedIn X Join Salim’s 10X Shift Subscribe to Salim’s YouTube channel Exponential Venture Capital Connect with Alex Website LinkedIn X Email Substack Spotify Threads Listen to MOONSHOTS: Apple YouTube Follow MOONSHOTS: Instagram TikTok X Threads – *Recorded on November 6th, 2026 *The views expressed by me and all guests are personal opinions and do not constitute Financial, Medical, or Legal advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Summary, chapters and key points were generated from the episode transcript on November 15, 2026. Quotes are checked word for word against the transcript.

Categories: Technology·Politics·Investing