I've said it before, I'll say it again...
The country which will win the AI race is the one who wastes the least amount of money on AI infrastructure.
The US will be the biggest loser in this "competition".
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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The AI bubble will pop within the next couple of months. It's pretty interesting, I wonder if we've ever seen an economic bubble so clearly before it comes to an end.
Why months, not quarters or years?
More like it's already popping. The Korean AI bubble already popped, dragging Intel, AMD, ARM, Nokia and others down by a significant amount. They won't bounce back. SpaceX is going down down down. QE won't save this one because nobody wants USD anymore.
Five companies owe more money than their balance sheets admit. A Nikkei analysis of financial footnotes at Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle found $1.65 trillion in off-balance-sheet obligations tied to AI infrastructure — binding, must-pay commitments parked in the fine print
Good thing I don't invest in these big names, not only because of overvaluation but also because of corruption. My mom told me to be careful with investing because companies go bankrupt but i kinda dismissed her concerns because I am thinking that the days of Enron accounting magic is over. But it looks like it's still alive and well. Although I doubt executives will be held accountable.
We could have avoided it if politicians didn't fell for big tech's tricks...
I don't know why, but I read this as "Five Guys" and thought holy shit I didn't realize a burger company could be so broke. No wonder their prices are so high!
I am actually thinking ask of these companies imploding would be good for the human race.
Imagine a solid hard reset on the internet? Yes please.
Will this fuck me over yes, but that will be temporary
We gotta start building alternatives already. Us being here on Lemmy is already a start.
Everything is temporary when you think about it
Life is just a temporary break from death.
This shit led to the Great Depression… I guess it’ll be a Greater Depression, just on figures alone.
C'mon! With Trump in charge, it has to be The Greatest Depression!
"Yes, this is The Greatest Depression. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. Even the best economists, very smart people, they say to me 'Donald, Mr President, who could know?' Nobody could have known this would happen, but they tell me it was caused by Biden. Or Obama. I've also asked the FBI to check Hillary's emails and Hunter's laptop."
"They said it could never happen. It could never be done. But I did it. First one in history to trigger such a great depression. The greatest depression."
great depression led to a ww2, is there please some chance to please not start ww3 please
Two of the three most powerful nations are involved in wars of aggression and the third is backing them up. I would say we are pretty much there already.
The US is at war and China is not. The third most powerful country would be India and afaik they are not at war right now.
Unlike ww2, ww3 would not be a boon to production or the economy
Supply chains would be the first target, like how pulling the plug on rare earth metals is the goto now, and how much can be fully and entirely made at home?
We'd be sitting around scratching our asses wishing we had any form of modern appliance before long. Planes, ships, cars, generators, terbines, computers, microchips would cease manufacture without a comprehensive functioning global supply chain
Fuel, oil, fertiliser would be cut off for most countries
Without an incredible stockpile, most countries probably couldn't sustain any world war
WW2 was not a boon to production. Well it was for weapons, but most of Europe and good parts of Asia were destroyed with millions dead. The only country coming out of it in better shape was the US, which did not see bombing and had relatively low human losses(still horrible to be clear, but not even close to what others had).
Modern wars suck and any smart country will try to avoid them. Hence you see Russia being fucked over by the EU via Ukraine and China fucking the US via Iran. Obviously you need dumb leaders to walk into those traps into the first place.
Australia had a huge sustained boom from the late 1940s through to 1970s, which was also aided by the Korean war. The boom tapered off with the oil shocks and stagflation of the early-to-mid 1970s
The UK also had a boom, recovering from rationing into the 1950s they joined the global long boom until the 1970s but yes it was not as strong as other countries booms due to the damage and cost of the war
Harold Macmillan's famous 1957 line "you've never had it so good" sums it up pretty well
Europe had a massive boom known as the golden age of capitalism, nfi what you are talking about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_II_economic_expansion
The United States, the Soviet Union, Australia and Western European and East Asian countries in particular experienced unusually high and sustained growth, together with full employment.
That was the time after WW2. Of cause the economy does a lot better, when you do not bomb out cities and kill millions. That could have happened earlier, without the war and everybody would have been better of.
Yeah. Revolution now. We need to fucking build a parallel internationalist power structure and just freeze out the billionaires from the economy. Fuck the UN, we make our own with black flags and snooker. It's up to us to define what it means to be an adult.
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Oh boy I can't wait to see the future of every person under 65 and with a net worth below $100 million get basically vaporized from space. I can't wait to be the bailout source for this... Although I don't think there's enough money in existence to bail this one out.
Don't even talk about bailouts, it's totally unacceptable this time. These companies ARE NOT essential, and are not too big to fail.
Their debts are by Venture Capitalist investors, and by billionaires from the dot com bom. They have the money to fail.
This time we let them fail.
I WANT TO SEE REPO MEN AND BANK OFFICIALS MARCHING INTO MANSIONS TO RECLAIM THE MONEY.
Let some of these assholes live in trailer parks.
The current administration is claiming AI is absolutely essential to our national security, scientific research, energy, and everything else. This is all being done by political appointees who know next to nothing in general, and even less about the history and current state of "AI". Being ordered by people who do not care about wasting taxypayer money or running up absurd deficits. Bailout incoming.
The issue is that they became part of everyone's 401k so the bootlickers and greedy fucks in Congress will tell us they're 100% essential because if they fail you lose your retirement.
I hate this system... Redistribution of wealth for the rich, rugged individualism for the pleb.
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I totally agree with you and I think this time there really isn't a way to bail out AI companies or every other company that's too big to fail during the poly crisis. No matter what irresponsible shit the elites get up to fundamentally we're the ones that get fucked though even if they can't extract enough blood from us to nationalize the losses.
Wait.....too big to fail meant that they're supposed to be important to the CITIZENS??? Fuck that! All these banks and mortgage lenders and automotive industry leaders have all been bailed out as too big to fail.
I never took that to mean that they provide value. I just took it to mean "fuck you peasants, we're big business, and therefore fuck you! Money please! Money me now!"
If I'd have known they meant it was for OUR benefit, I'd have called bullshit 20 years ago.
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They're such money pits that they can't be bailed out - give them a hundred billion dollars and they'll be back next month for more.
They aren't a functioning business that just needs help getting back to profitability or help with some sort term crisis, they take hundreds of billions and set it on fire.
And deciding whether to bail them out is going to be like the onions video on America's money hole where the debate is how much money to throw into the hole to be burned instead of whether they should do it at all.
MY FATHER WORKED TWO JOBS SO HE WOULD HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO THROW IN THE MONEY HOLE
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This is why they want to get into your 401(k)s & pension funds. Don't let them.
Oh, I won't.
Mostly because I'm 42, and have no 401k, or pension.
I'm clutching my 10k tightly. They won't be getting my future 2 weeks of groceries!
Would be interesting to include anthropic, openai etc in this list
They're not public and aren't forced to report these numbers. But yeah the amount of hidden debt in AI is much higher.
Also nvidia
I genuinely am having a hard time believing this because the image looks like it was generated... The kind of reality the .01% has shoved us into.
The image is ai generated, but the numbers from Nikkei aren't
It was definitely generated by AI.
There's some serious irony here. The exact type of irony that is distinct to the people forcing the corruption tool's existence.
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A Nikkei analysis of financial footnotes at Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle found $1.65 trillion in off-balance-sheet obligations tied to AI infrastructure — binding, must-pay commitments parked in the fine print.
...a company creates or partners with a separate legal entity — a special-purpose vehicle (SPV) — that borrows the money and owns the assets. The tech company signs long-term leases or capacity contracts but doesn't record the SPV's debt on its own books.
That is one way of saying upcoming lease contracts and purchase commitments reported according to IFRS and IAS and disclosed on financial statements.
140 + 100 + 180 + 100 + 30 does not equal 1350. Not even close. Impossible to put any kind of trust in AI slop
I'm not a finance wiz but would that mean these 5 companies are carrying around 3 trillion total debt? My bank won't even let me owe them 20 bucks without penalties.
If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.
I mean, that quote maybe needs to be updated for inflation, but you get the idea.
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