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Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

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Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#181

Post by thin_carapace »

Lerc wrote: post #143
thin_carapace wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I wrote that comment entirely by myself, on my phone while waiting for a souvlaki. Perhaps the things that you consider AI tells are simply a use of language from someone in country with a different education system. I can't really judge how I might personally benefit from the current direction because I am uncertain what that direction is, and indeed if it will be sustained. If you are trying to allege that I have s…

believing in the inherent good of humanity does somewhat justify your perspective, may life allow you to continue believing this way and may your pursuits be productive. I would recommend not to marginalize yourself, this action is tantamount to painting targets on your back for bad actors to aim at. corporations and governments are currently acting violently against the populace, a correspondingly heavy handed response is required if the populace does not wish to become soylent green. note that I have not explicitly advocated violent behaviour - rather I suggest that if our intelligence is not used against this tide, it may as well be part of the wave. thanks for your thoughtful response

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#182

Post by Gareth321 »

ItsBob wrote: post #166
Gareth321 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO I think the blast radius is implicitly contained. The major investments are in data centres, and the current investment cases impute near zero residual value after five years. Meaning that current valuations already assume "catastrophic" declines in equipment valuation. This is unusually clear-eyed and sober investment calculus in the tech space. Further, unlike during the dotcom crisis, most of this spending is…

> Further, unlike during the dotcom crisis, most of this spending is not driven by debt. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Between the big 5 (Microsoft, Meta, Amazon etc.) they're spending more than $600 Billion in 2026! They don't have that much cash lying around so they're selling bonds! That's debt! Not only that, they're increasing the bond sales in Europe! I assume that means they're tapped-out in the US! All…

Bond sales are pretty normal for companies, AI or not. Leverage is in very low ratios compared to the dotcom era.

Much of the dotcom era telecom expansion depended on debt and projected future demand, but the resulting networks were so overbuilt that only about 2% of North American long-distance capacity was being used. Falling prices left numerous operators unable to service their debts. Today’s AI expansion is led mainly by already-profitable companies with large existing revenues and cash flows. Microsoft alone generated $136B in operating cash flow during its 2025 financial year while spending $65B on capex. It held $95B in cash, compared with total debt of about $43B. That means a disappointing return on AI investment would reduce profits, cash reserves, and shareholder value, rather than making these companies insolvent.

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#183

Post by senordevnyc »

thin_carapace wrote: post #175
senordevnyc wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

are you looking for a fight? I love fighting but I never said any of that. so I can't really defend the position, it isn't mine.

[flagged]

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#184

Post by DrScientist »

mlrtime wrote: post #180
DrScientist wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money isn't lost per se, it's transferred. ie for every loser there is a winner. Obvious ones are those who can extract value from this companies now ( high salaries/bonus etc ), swapping worthless paper for real assets, Nvidia and their share holders etc. Investors who hold short positions etc.

You are trying to define zero sum without saying it. The market is not zero sum, a loan isn't zero sum. There isn't a winner and loser.

Why not? What am I missing.

If you loan me 10 pounds and I simply keep it or spend it but refuse to pay you back - aren't I the winner and you the loser?

Claiming that the market is a positive sum system, because I use that 10 pounds to invent something that changes world productivity is missing the fact that there is a constant stream of huge energy inputs from the sun - that's ultimately what allows the local entropy to decrease - not that you lent me 10 pounds.

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#185

Post by DrScientist »

actionfromafar wrote: post #178
DrScientist wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money isn't lost per se, it's transferred. ie for every loser there is a winner. Obvious ones are those who can extract value from this companies now ( high salaries/bonus etc ), swapping worthless paper for real assets, Nvidia and their share holders etc. Investors who hold short positions etc.

True but the opportunity cost is truly lost. Entropy comes for everyone. If we spend a lot of money digging holes in the ground then filling them again, maybe no money was lost.

Sure - but that's a meta question of whether the current economic/political systems are delivering good allocation of resources for whatever target function you favour.

And that's complex - even in your simple example you can argue that people have likely improved their capability to dig and fill holes - and the latter skill is particularly valuable in the UK right now.

ie Entropy includes information component :-)

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#186

Post by pfannkuchen »

hparadiz wrote: post #145
laughing_man wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iceland's banks were full of money from people in the UK. It's a lot easier to default when there only a small political and economic price.

Is everyone just glossing over the fact that the feds make a profit on bailing the banks out? Seems like a win win to take over ownership in the event of a bank failure.

Was this definitely not accounting trickery? Like even the way money is created is intentionally convoluted and approximately 1% of the population even attempts to understand it. Can we really trust the accounting of bank bailouts which stood to be unpopular when the accounting produced a convenient outcome? Has anyone plausible analyzed this to a convincing level of detail?

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#187

Post by adjejmxbdjdn »

londons_explore wrote: post #100
laughing_man wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is if large banks fail they take everyone else with them. We should have dealt with this in 2009, but for some reason it didn't happen. But money talks, I guess.

Iceland let it's banks default, and is now doing rather well. In fact, bank failure and then having the government only guarantee ~$50k of funds per person is a good way to hand wealth to the people and take it from corporations and the super wealthy.

The U.S. also let a bank collapse and shit hit the fan across the world.

The global economy isn’t pivoting off Icelandic banks the way it is off US ones.

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#188

Post by baxtr »

alwaysanoobie wrote: post #155

Oh man,this makes my stomach churn with anxiety. It's a tough job market out there and it took 4 months to land job offers after being laid off. I have a competitive offer from Oracle OCI with a team adjacent to this initiative and I am seriously considering it. How long do you guys think it will take to blow up (if it does) To the experienced devs out there; would you take a 15% less offer from a medium sized compan…

I am not sure why, but many people (news / media outlets?) love end of world scenarios.

too often pessimists are treated as serious, critical thinkers, while optimists are dismissed as naive or foolish.

remember this guy Michael Burry who saw the 2008 housing crash coming, bet everything against it, and made a fortune?

but then he spent the next 15 years trying to pull off the exact same trick, lost a ton of money fighting a massive bull market, and finally had to shut down his hedge fund because lightning just wouldn't strike twice.

how I deal with this: focus on what you can control. reading news in general seems to be difficult. what can I personally do about all that? very little tbh.

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#189

Post by watwut »

no-name-here wrote: post #72
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public has been apathetic about every single thing and will just continue scrolling their TikToks Public anger is a very pre-smartphone thing. You don’t worry about those sort of things when you’ve hyperoptimized the circus and made the bread cheap enough

> Public anger is a very pre-smartphone thing. Public anger has gotten to the point that right-wing groups are pushing US legislation to outlaw it as “terrorism” [1], with the president of the right-wing American Heritage think tank pointing to examples such as “college students who took over campus quads” [2] and town halls with congress members getting shut down [3] - they say new laws are needed because public ang…

I dont think anything you wrote in that paragraph has anything to do with actual public anger as it exists. It is just Heritage think tank advancing their authoritarian dictatorship agenda yet again, this time more openly. As far as they are concerned, anyone left to them speaking is a grave danger to the republic, attack on their right to be supported all the time and must be punished. They dont ask for similar laws in relation to far right, despite the fact it is more violent.

There is a lot of public anger tho. Facebook and Twitter are working overtime to stroke it. Heritage loves it as long as it ends up being in MAGA colors.

Re: Five US tech giants' hidden debts soar to $1.65T on opaque AI funding

#190

Post by microtonal »

thin_carapace wrote: post #179
weregiraffe wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, now every pattern of speech is AI? How about we jusr stop talking then?

I have noted the employment of a language technique that as per the wikipedia article "signs of AI writing" is commonly used by AI, you can attack facts all you like and that will indeed stop me from talking!

It is the overuse of such tells. Please, let's not ban uses of not X, but Y completely. It's a rhetoric technique that is completely fine, with moderation. But real human will use them with moderation.

Also, there is the issue of human language taking some 'tells' because they are exposed to LLM output a lot.

I'm still grumpy that LLMs made it nearly impossible to use the words 'delve' or em-dashes without getting called out as an LLM.

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