Premium: AI's Circular Psychosis

Ed Zitron argues that the entire AI economy is a circular, unsustainable illusion propped up by a handful of hyperscalers. His core claim: 90%+ of all AI compute demand and revenues flow through just two companies — Anthropic and OpenAI — both of which are deeply unprofitable and dependent on constant capital infusions from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. The hyperscalers have committed hundreds of billions in capex building infrastructure almost exclusively for these two companies, then reinvest in them to keep them afloat, creating a self-referential loop with no real external demand. Evidence cited includes xAI handing off its entire 300MW Colossus-1 data center to Anthropic (suggesting even xAI had no use for it), Anthropic raising ~$58 billion in eight months, and the inability to identify any GPU compute customer outside the named parties spending more than $100 million per year. Zitron concludes that without hyperscaler subsidies, the AI industry's data center buildout — 15.2GW under construction by 2027 — has no credible customer base to justify it.