Are We Overbuilding AI? Tulsa, Rail Mania, Space Data Centers & the Billion-Dollar Reality Check

The Rip Current with Jacob Ward

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18d ago 10:18

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Today’s Deep Cut asks a simple question: Is the AI industry building way more capacity than the world actually needs?

To answer it, I look at three historical warnings:

• Tulsa, Oklahoma, a city built for millions who never came after early oil wealth exploded and then evaporated.

• Britain’s “Railway Mania” of the 1840s, when investors poured money into duplicate train lines that bankrupted entire companies.

• And today’s AI giants, spending trillions on data centers, energy infrastructure, and even floating ideas about putting compute facilities in space.

We’ll talk about why companies like OpenAI, Amazon, Meta, and others believe this infrastructure binge is justified, and where the logic breaks down. I also dig into the Kardashev Scale, the ecological cost of rocket launches, and the mismatch between AI’s lofty energy dreams and the reality of using all that power to generate wedding vows and knock-knock jokes.

History is full of moments when industries overbuilt themselves into crisis. Are we repeating the pattern with AI?

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