Musk's midterm spending of nearly $500m mostly lost, and voters rejected data centers in 40 of 41 ballot measures

No AI model or product launched as part of this story. The AI assets at stake are compute and Musk's AI holdings:

• Compute: OpenAI has secured 8 GW at Ohio's PORTS-Pike campus, which is developed by SoftBank/SB Energy with Nvidia backing (CNBC). Ohio's new governor wants a conditional moratorium on data centers.
• xAI: Montgomery says xAI is a SpaceX subsidiary with a military contract. He calls that contract a likelier political target than SpaceX's NASA work (10:05). The reviewed sources do not independently confirm this.

The reviewed sources do not document any architecture or benchmarks. The technical issue is supply:

• Montgomery argues compute is the binding constraint. Without new data centers, labs cannot train their next models and investors stop funding them. He says smaller labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic are more exposed than Microsoft (14:14).
• Texas holds about a quarter of planned US data center capacity (Scientific American). A Texas pause would therefore hit siting, power procurement and capacity timelines for training and inference.

• Musk's total: The figures differ. The Guardian says $446m to Republican-aligned groups; CNBC says at least $474m. The podcast says "nearly half a billion" (01:03).
• America PAC's record: 93% of its roughly $87m went to races Republicans lost (CNBC).
• Prop 40 spending: The podcast says opponents spent "more than $400m" (05:38). CalMatters reports $316.7m, including $102m from Sergey Brin.
• Voter priority: 56% of voters called data centers a crucial or major factor in their vote (CNBC).

• The episode opens with the January 2025 inauguration photo of tech CEOs. Montgomery says it now reads like a target list for congressional investigations (02:04).
• Musk's spending came as House Democrats called for investigations into his SpaceX contracts and his DOGE role (Star-Advertiser).
• Tesla investor Ron Baron warned in March 2025 that Musk's political activism risked alienating half the population (CNBC).

• Microsoft's delays: The podcast links Microsoft's disclosed delays to the backlash against data centers (13:00). On its earnings call, Microsoft cited third-party capacity delays. Local opposition as a cause was only speculation in press coverage (Let's Data Science).
• Did money fail? Not everywhere. Prop 40 trailed at about 44–45% support, and the countermeasure Prop 42 was leading. Results were still preliminary (CalMatters).
• Grok and the economy: Montgomery's characterizations of Grok and his claim that Democrats could slow US growth are commentary. The reviewed sources do not corroborate them.

• Siting risk is now political. Expect moratoria and cost-recovery conditions. Ohio's proposal requires data centers to pay 100% of their utility costs and use union labor (CNBC).
• Oversight is likelier than legislation. Montgomery expects congressional hearings before any federal AI law, with the real regulation happening at state and local level (16:05; 18:19).
• AI as a 2028 issue. OpenAI's Chris Lehane predicts AI will be the defining issue of the 2028 presidential race (Scientific American).