Communication Breakdown: Council Blows Up at Mayoral Aides in Seattle

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice, the only podcast that tells you what's really happening in Seattle politics with Erica C. Barnett of Publicola.com. Erica, how you doing? I'm good. I'm good. Good morning. And hello to you, Sandeep Kaushik. Hey, David. How are you? I'm pretty good. I'm excited because of Erica's amazingly gossipy story this week in Publicola.com about Mayor Katie Wilson's shelter expansion plans.

[00:00:37] I'm reading here, Erica, that the City Council's Land Use Committee has approved the final piece of this plan. We can get into that. Part of Wilson's ambitious signature effort to add a thousand shelter beds this year. But this is the juicy bit. Erica writes, the shelter vote was clouded by a growing tension between the council and the mayor's office that exploded into the open over the past week. Sort of like Game of Thrones meets Game of Sad Trombones, Erica, I was thinking earlier.

[00:01:06] Nice. Yeah, nice. Nice rhyme there. Yeah. So I reported on some of the stuff that was going on in the background. And, you know, I don't know if anybody remembers, but I used to write a column called In the Hall for The Stranger a million years ago. And it felt very much like an old In the Hall column because it's all about the stuff that's going on sort of underneath the public eye.

[00:01:29] So, yeah. So what happened this week is they the City Council's Land Use Committee adopted this legislation. It'll allow shelters that are up to 150 people. Right now they're capped at 100. These are tiny house village type shelters. But, you know, the entire process of approving all of the shelter legislation that Mayor Wilson needs for her big shelter surge that she's proposing for this year, she wants to build a thousand new shelter units.

[00:01:59] All of that is dependent on the City Council. And that in turn is dependent on good relationships between the mayor and City Council. And from the very beginning of this legislation, there have been issues and tension because Mayor Wilson sent down the legislation without identifying a sponsor. She just kind of dropped it in the laps of the general City Council. And that's not typically how it's done because the City Council is a separately elected body. They're a separate branch of government.

[00:02:26] And if you're the mayor, you need to sort of cultivate them and cultivate a sponsor and cultivate support to get your legislation passed. Now, in this case, it did get passed. But in the final week, as I reported this week, there was sort of a series of meetings and shouting that erupted over a last minute move to pull the legislation. Basically, what happened was the mayor's office called down.

[00:02:55] And from what I was told, told the sponsor and the Land Use Committee chair to pull the legislation because they don't like some of the amendments. And I'm going to stop talking in a minute so you guys can weigh in. But that is just kind of not how things are done. And it's not how things are done for a good reason because the mayor is not the boss of anyone on the City Council.

[00:03:20] So, Sandeep, when you hear the phrase imperious executive branch these days, you don't often think about the Seattle mayor's office. Well, look, I mean, do we not often think about the Seattle mayor's office? I mean, maybe we do. I think the imperial mayor has been a trope in Seattle for a while, I think.

[00:03:39] I mean, you know, I mean, in the early days of Bruce Harrell, remember when he had 70 percent approval ratings and the council was reeling and they were kind of, you know, he basically had the political capital and the political juice to get whatever he wanted. And I think, you know, you're just one of the more humorless commentators I've ever met. Not getting my Trump joke, but OK. All right. Take me seriously and literally did. Yes. Yes. Katie Wilson. Yes. You know, Trumpist demagogue of the seventh floor.

[00:04:08] But a couple of things. One, first of all, just as an aside, Erica's in the hall column, right, was named in the hall. Many of our listeners are not going to have been around for that era. It was named in the hall because you used to be able to kind of walk back there into the council offices and kind of walk down the hall, right? Yeah, it was a much more friendly era. Now it's all like, you know, you got to be escorted to the office and go through multiple doors and layers.

[00:04:36] Was it like was it like a kids in the hall reference? Kids in the hall? No, no, no, no. I'm not a fan. Not a fan. Oh, not a fan. OK. All right. There we go. I love kids in the hall. Yeah. Anyway, so so there's your in the hall kind of explanation. But look, this tension between the seventh floor and the second floor has been building for a while. Right.

[00:05:00] And what Erica was reporting this week around the shelter legislation surfaced, you know, kind of publicly surfaced during the fight over the city light director firing and appointment. And it's just been bubbling under there for a while. And it's less ideological because this really cuts across the entire council. Pretty much.

[00:05:28] They're all kind of pissed off about how they're getting treated. And it's much more, as Erica says, about kind of protocol and an understanding of the relationships, you know, that exists between two separate and, you know, at least supposedly co-equal branches of government.

[00:05:44] And people at the council from the beginning have been feeling like the mayor's office, some of them newbies coming in, right, have been pretty dictatorial in sort of telling them what they want the council to do in a way that's just not considered appropriate and respectful of the powers of the legislative branch. Yeah. And in fact, you said dictatorial Sunday.

[00:06:12] Quite a few people reached out to me last week about an incident in which a staffer was overheard, a staffer for the mayor's office was overheard calling herself a dictator, I think jokingly, but doing so in the company of a lot of people who don't take that kind of stuff as a joke. And, you know, because, I mean, it's not just like protocol. I mean, it is protocol. It's like it's the way things are done or whatever.

[00:06:38] But it's also, you know, the fact that the mayor's office, you know, often throughout history, I think, has sort of considered itself quite superior to the city council. And I think the city council has chafed at that. But I think this mayor's office, and I'm not talking about Katie Wilson herself, it's more staff, have sort of, you know, treated the council as if they work for them and they do not. And I think that anybody would chafe back against that.

[00:07:05] But when you're in like a literal, you know, bicameral, I mean, you know, the legislative and executive branches have to work together to make legislation. I mean, you can't afford to just piss off the legislative branch over and over. I mean, the mayor, as I said, sent this legislation down without identifying a sponsor, without figuring out what committees these three bills that she proposed were going to go through. Council had to do all that work. And, you know, and I would question. And on an expedited basis, right?

[00:07:34] They were saying pass this stuff really quick. Yeah. And I would say that I think that there might be some hesitation in the future about, you know, raising your hand to sponsor legislation from the mayor's office. You know, if she sends it down again without a sponsor, because this whole thing turned into such a shit show.

[00:07:52] And, I mean, when I alluded before to, you know, yelling, I mean, there was a meeting earlier this week, you know, very, very late in the day on Tuesday before this legislation was supposed to come up the next morning where, you know, mayoral staffers and council members were, you know, quite heated with each other over whether it was like the duty of the council to do what the mayor said and pull this legislation, which would be incredibly, I mean, like, so unusual.

[00:08:21] That I can't remember an example of completely yanking legislation from a committee hearing this quickly, literally within 24 hours of it, you know, being considered to change amendments that the mayor didn't like. I mean, amendments are literally part of every legislative process. I mean, unless it's just, you know, completely anodyne, you know, resolution legislation or something like that.

[00:08:44] And the fact that the mayor's office seemed taken off guard by some of these amendments that were, you know, ultimately approved is kind of shocking. And also, I mean, looking at the amendments themselves, they're pretty, I mean, they're not meaningless. They are substantive, but they're not that big a deal. They're not make or break type amendments. There's stuff like, you know, there needs to be a good neighbor agreement, which, of course, the mayor's office knew was coming. There needs to be a public safety plan for new shelters.

[00:09:14] The mayor's office knew that was coming. The stuff that was like really noxious to the mayor, like the big buffer zones that we talked about last week around shelters, that didn't move forward and it's not going to happen. So, I mean, it was kind of also a lot of outrage about stuff that really is not that big a deal. And that in previous administrations, the mayor kind of goes, yeah, there's some give and take between the council and the mayor's office on this stuff. And so they kind of have to accept it. Is Erica, just to follow up with you, I mean, you named some names here.

[00:09:43] You're saying it's not Mayor Wilson, but can we identify some of the people that have been rubbing the council the wrong way? Or are you reluctant to do that? Yeah, I mean, I identify them. So I'll just read from my piece. Wilson Senior Advisor on Housing and Homelessness, John Grant, along with at least two other mayoral staffers, Kate Burnett-Kruiser and Nicole Valistero-Soper, met with council members one-on-one and continued demanding last-minute changes to the amendments.

[00:10:10] So it's those three that I am hearing about the most. So John Grant, former city council candidate and former chief strategy officer for the Low-Income Housing Institute. Which builds tiny house villages. So, I mean, there's another layer here that I hope we'll get into perhaps at a future date, that the mayor's main homelessness shelter advisor is the person that used to do strategy

[00:10:38] and was frequently in front of the city council arguing in favor of tiny house villages, which is now central to the mayor's strategy for building 500 shelter units by the World Cup and 1,000 this year. But knowledgeable and well-qualified in that sense because he understands the issue potentially on the other side of it. Hey, Seattle nice listeners.

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[00:11:33] Download the Ikes app today or head on over to Ikes.com. That's Ikes.com. Sure. And also potentially is pushing for the shelter solution that he worked on for so many years when there are, you know, other providers that provide different kinds of shelters that are not these little micromodular units that Lehigh provides. Yeah.

[00:12:03] I mean, Erica mentioned Kate Kreutcher. Kate Kreutcher is the chief of staff in the mayor's office. And I would say she is what I would call the Katie whisperer, right? She and the mayor are, as I understand it, longtime friends and, you know, and close allies. Unlike, say, Brian Surratt, the deputy mayor, right? And the liaison to the business community.

[00:12:26] Brian has said, you know, I think August of last year after the primary was the first time he had met the mayor when they met and started talking about him potentially joining the administration. Whereas Kate has a longtime relationship. And Nicole is somebody who's been, you know, was that, I think, Puget Sound Sage back in the day, if I'm remembering right. And yeah, and running policy.

[00:12:48] But also, yeah, I've heard the same things that there's a sense that, but these both Kate and Nicole are newbies to City Hall, right? They are not. She's also the former People for John Grant campaign manager from back in 2017. Are you telling me that the Seattle left is incestuous? No, it's just interesting connection there. Yes, yes.

[00:13:13] They're all, yes, they're all interconnected in various ways. David, I actually didn't know that. I knew her from her nonprofit work, but that's an interesting connection, too. Yeah, yeah. You know, they come out, they all come out. These folks all came out of the kind of Seattle activist lefty sort of contingent, right? They're not themselves experienced City Hall hands.

[00:13:38] And they're coming in a little bit like, as I've been told by council members and others on the second floor, these folks in particular, compared to the other side of the office, the more kind of, you know, city experience, City Hall side of the office, came in kind of loaded for bear a little bit, right? And, you know, we're the new sheriff in town and we're going to lay down the law.

[00:14:03] And the council members have not liked the tone in which these folks in the mayor's office have interacted with them with. And that's been almost from the beginning. I've been hearing those complaints, right, about some of these same folks. Now, look, I also, to Erica's point, none of the people I've talked to have said this is directly about the mayor herself and the way she has interacted with them.

[00:14:33] But I've also heard she's not interacting with them all that much. You know, like, she's delegating staff. Yeah, I reported that too. Yeah, yeah, you had that in your piece too. Yeah, I've heard the same thing that, where's Katie? Like, you know, like, previous mayors had more of a direct personal relationship with council members, it seems. And Katie's less like, oh, I don't know. It doesn't seem like they're doing like a regular one-on-one meeting the way other mayors have done with council members. The other really quick thing I would say about process,

[00:15:03] Erica brought up the point that they didn't even have a sponsor for this, like, expedited key central shelter legislation they have. But there's also, like, the way this works is not only does the mayor's office typically secure a champion on the second floor or a sponsor, but as they're cooking this legislation, they typically work with the committee chair or, you know, lead sponsor so that the council has some sense of what's going to be sent down to them.

[00:15:31] You know, there's actual interplay as the actual legislation is getting cooked so that there are no surprises and no blowups. And that's not been happening with this mayor and this administration. So this shelter stuff all got cooked. They got briefed on it like 24 hours at the most before it got introduced. So there was no time for any kind of interaction before the legislation came down. And then, of course, people are going to propose amendments about stuff they don't think are in there or don't like or stuff.

[00:16:00] And some of this could have been avoided if there had been the more usual interplay that happens before legislation actually gets formally introduced. Going beyond the process on this one piece of legislation or these three pieces of legislation, I mean, I've also heard and, I mean, you know, Sandeep and I are both kind of talking about council members in vague terms. But I would say I think we both agree that this is like council members on what you would perceive to be the more progressive side or my side

[00:16:28] and council members that are more on the centrist or moderate side or Sandeep's side. But I was just going to say that going beyond that, I mean, there's been other examples just in recent weeks where the mayor didn't brief council members. And I mean, I think one thing that kind of pissed some council members off was when the KCRHA came out with, you know, its big forensic audit and that got dropped, which we've talked about a bunch of times and will again.

[00:16:55] And the council didn't get copies of it until very late in the day. And they were literally just physical print copies. They couldn't share them with anybody. And so, you know, it sounds like what happened is the mayor's office came down and like gave them printouts. And I just I can't think of any precedent for that, you know, in the, you know, sort of post printout era, you know, when you can just email PDFs easily.

[00:17:21] So that I think that was just very annoying to a lot of council members. Like, why were we not in the loop on this? And and the other thing it was just yesterday. There was an announcement about another shelter that's opening as part of this, you know, shelter push that the mayor is doing. And usually when you get a press announcement, I mean, even if it's there's not like an event or whatever,

[00:17:45] it'll have some quotes from the city council, you know, supporting it or just just some indication that the legislative branch is involved. But this was just sort of vague information about a new shelter in South Park. I was later told that they couldn't tell me the location yet. And and and the council, a council source confirmed that they did not get alerted to this announcement. They just got it in a press release like everybody else.

[00:18:14] Now, I'm not sure if that's true of every single council office, but but that's another example from the day before recording on Friday. Yeah, the communication between second and seventh floor has not been going well, you know, and and there's clearly a reservoir. Like I said, I think it's the whole blow up over the replacement of the city light director. And then they rejected Katie's pick to be the interim.

[00:18:42] So all of that, I think, is like was a proxy for this larger thing that we're talking about and the tensions that have emerged. Right. Like that could have been handled in a much more, you know, in a much smoother way, potentially working out, you know, that that. But it didn't because because of this perception that that people on the council members are being dictated to by the mayor.

[00:19:07] I remember hearing similar kinds of complaints about Mayor McGinn back in the day, but also Mayor Durkin. And I'm hopeful that it's it's not a bad thing longer term, but it doesn't really bode well. McGinn's relationship with the council that back then there was a more ideological dimension to that fight, too. Right. That council and McGinn were just deeply, deeply at odds.

[00:19:33] And and and then you add on that McGinn was, you know, not a touchy feely dude in any way. And I guess I mean, in that case, he was kind of green to running government and didn't understand how the city worked. And so in part, sure, it was ideological, but he couldn't get his own ideological ideological things accomplished because he wasn't a very effective mayor is the rap that I heard from people that worked for the city at the time.

[00:19:59] Yeah, he had no ally. He had he alienated everybody on the second floor. He didn't make he didn't he didn't make any effort to build bridges. Let's put it that way with council members he disagreed with. And their relationships got off on the wrong foot from day one. And it just got worse and worse and worse over the course of his term, first over the huge tunnel fight.

[00:20:20] But then over, you know, the the consent decree and police, you know, police reform that McGinn weirdly fought when the Justice Department stepped in. So anyway, yes, that would be like a very bad if it went there. This would be a very bad debate. We're not there yet with Katie Wilson in the council. That's what I would say.

[00:20:41] Well, a precedent from McGinn was I'm looking back at a story I wrote in 2010 about the proposal that McGinn made for a 240 some odd million dollar seawall bond and is a ballot measure. And he basically told the council about it by phone or they found out about it from each other while they were in a council retreat and like didn't talk to them at all.

[00:21:06] And that was I mean, I think that was a real, you know, one of many breaking points between him and the council. And, you know, and I and I think this is in some ways comparable because, you know, dropping legislation on the council without talking to them is just not it's not a good look. And it's also not a good move because, you know, Katie Wilson has lots of ideological allies on this current council. And you don't want to alienate the people.

[00:21:32] I mean, it's not the situation where she has a council that's, you know, ideologically opposed to her. She's got several allies. And, you know, I think that they are among the ones that are kind of like, you know, I'm hesitant to partner. Yeah, I'm hesitant to partner with this mayor's office in the future. The most. Yes, I hear the same things. So, you know, I mean, look, this this new mayor's office, again, they came in. They didn't really appoint a council liaison.

[00:21:59] Typically, again, if you want to talk about structure of these offices, they don't seem to have these regular recurring meetings, one on ones with the mayor and council members. They really didn't come out of the gate with anybody as a. With the role of being kind of the, you know, the mayor's office voice with the council, they do have somebody playing that role now. But but they didn't kind of start out that way. And it was Nicole.

[00:22:24] Doing that at the beginning, and then they switched, you know, anyway, it just goes to show that they didn't really center their relationship with the council as a kind of important consideration from day one. And now we're seeing some of the fallout from that. Do you think, Erica, that I mean, are you talking to folks in the mayor's office? Do you think that they understand that they may have a problem here and it's something that they are interested in addressing?

[00:22:51] Or are they kind of closing ranks and saying, boy, we're getting this bad press coverage and people are against us and sort of what was me and not not owning some of this problem? Yeah, I think it's a little both. I mean, I think it depends on who in the mayor's office you talk to. And I don't want to go any further than that, like into specifics. But I think some people are aware that there is an issue and have identified, you know, what they think the issue is. And I'm sure have talked to the mayor about it.

[00:23:16] But I think other people kind of, yeah, they think it's like the press not understanding that this is a new day. And the council perhaps not understanding this is a new day and a new mayor and things are going to operate differently. So, you know, I would say right now, just if I was betting, it's more in the, you know, the majority opinion is probably more in the realm of, you know, people don't understand and we're not doing anything wrong.

[00:23:43] The comment I got from the mayor's office when I sent a bunch of questions over was basically, yeah, we could have communicated better. But, you know, we had issues and we tried to bring them up in a very polite way. And, you know, and it didn't go well. But that's not our fault. This does seem like something that that, yeah, just my final comment on this is this does seem like something it would behoove the mayor's office to try to get sorted out.

[00:24:09] As Erica points out, it hasn't really come up and really bit them in the ass yet. This legislation did go through. Right. And the really, you know, what they would have considered the really problematic amendments or whatever didn't didn't happen. I mean, I think they generally got an outcome from this legislation that they can, you know, be pretty, I would hope, be pretty pleased with or live with.

[00:24:36] But, you know, this is a activist mayor with a, you know, plans to do a lot of stuff to disrupt the status quo and make a bunch of changes and, you know, insert municipal governments in lots of different areas in, you know, along the lines of her ambitious plans.

[00:25:00] And as Erica says, she better get her, you know, they better have their act together, you know, in terms of their council relationships or that agenda is all going to kind of fall by the wayside no matter how many plans they cook up on the seventh floor. Respect my authority, like Cartman says in South Park. Okay. So this is the mailbag segment, the mailbag portion of the show. We haven't had a mailbag in a while. And it's a very small mailbag. It's one letter. I'm late to the party listening to Seattle Nice. Yeah, it's not.

[00:25:30] Yeah, right. It's the only email we've gotten in like a year. No, no. I'm late to the party. They're all commenting on Reddit. Yeah. Oh, don't go there. All right. I'm late to the party listening to Seattle Nice. This person writes, I really enjoy it. So thank you for that. That's a good way to start a letter, by the way. I'm hoping you will cover Mayor Wilson's decision to put more data centers on hold in Seattle.

[00:25:53] Well, maybe I've missed it, but I think we need to know a lot more about these sprawls and the rationale behind converting so much land, energy, and water used to our supposed appetite for AI in the cloud. I don't know about supposed. It seems like there is an appetite. But anyway, who benefits exactly? These are all good questions. I'm not sure we have the answers to all of them. But Mayor Wilson did decide, right, to put a moratorium on these data centers. Well, I believe that the city council, again, has to adopt a moratorium, and they have proposed one.

[00:26:23] So yes, they are proposing a moratorium on data centers within city limits. I think there's some real question about how many data centers were really ever going to happen within the city limits itself just because of the nature of, you know, the size of these centers and the fact that they take a lot of land. And land is, you know, much less expensive outside Seattle.

[00:26:44] But, you know, I mean, I am, you know, certainly interested in seeing how this legislation moves forward and what happens sort of in the 365 days that there's going to be this moratorium. Because, you know, is this just a moratorium to sort of look at more information about data centers?

[00:27:06] Like, I feel like we actually already know that data centers, you know, are, cause climate change, you know, are incredibly resource intensive, can, will very likely drive up electric rates. And so, I mean, I'm not sure what else the council and the mayor feel like they need to learn about data centers in order to say yes or no to them at the end of that 365 days.

[00:27:31] But, I mean, it seems like a good enough move, although I don't think that it is necessarily super substantive in terms of, you know, preventing data centers in general. Could you clarify that last thing? You said super substantive in terms of preventing data centers in general. You mean beyond the Seattle area? Yeah, I mean, data centers in the region. They're coming to the region probably, maybe. Sandeep, what do you think? Well, right.

[00:27:57] I mean, there's already, in fact, I think the city of Seattle has a data center themselves, right? And I think it's based in Tukwila, right? I think they run out of like Sebi's shop in Tukwila. In fact, one of the companies that came forward saying they wanted to do a bigger data center that ended up getting, you know, leading to this legislation is Sebi.

[00:28:20] And they're based in Tukwila, though I think they draw their power from City Light, which is why the city sort of came into play here. I mean, look, I'm with Erica on this, like a one-year moratorium to kind of figure out how to do this right is one thing, right?

[00:28:39] Like, let's figure out how to make sure the huge power demands that these, you know, mega data centers are going to create are, you know, actually paid for by the companies themselves and are not being sort of the cost of infrastructure and power. It's not being sloughed off to other rate payers and the public, right, as a kind of hidden subsidy. Those sorts of things are perfectly legitimate questions for the city to consider as they go forward.

[00:29:06] It is a huge increase in power demand that these data centers consume because of, you know, they're really rising up because of AI being the big new thing in tech. But I will tell you, you know, but if this is like, oh, we're doing a one-year moratorium because we have a kind of bumper sticker, we hate data centers, and we're going to shut them down and never do them again, that's a whole different matter.

[00:29:33] And I will just point to some quick facts. I was talking to a friend in the tech world who was pointing to me that obviously the Seattle area has the two of the seven largest global tech companies, right, Amazon and Microsoft. And they're huge leaders in cloud computing, which has been until recently the big new expansion over the last decade in tech.

[00:29:59] And just the GDP growth, 25% of the state's GDP growth over the last 25 years is attributed to this cloud computing explosion just by these two tech companies, Microsoft and Amazon. And to the extent that AI is the new wave of where tech is going, right now Seattle is number two in AI behind San Francisco. But we are way, way behind San Francisco.

[00:30:28] All the innovation right now in AI is happening down there. And so if that's going to be the new wave of where tech is going, it would behoove us to figure out how to be part of that. Yeah, I mean, AI is a bubble. I think we should ban these things. I think that we don't need to do sort of bumper sticker moratoriums. I think that we should get ahead of the curve. I mean, half the U.S. economy is basically one company right now, NVIDIA.

[00:30:54] And I believe, and maybe I'm listening to Ed Zitron too much, but I mean, Cory Doctorow and others who have seen bubbles come and go. But this is clearly a bubble. And I don't think that our overinvestment and overindexing on AI in this city, which we've already done, is a wise strategy for long-term economic sustainability. And, you know, I mean, wow, we haven't kept pace with San Francisco.

[00:31:19] I mean, that's one reason Seattle is more affordable than San Francisco, is we haven't chased every single tech bubble to the same extent. But, I mean, I think that the idea that we need to chase, quote-unquote, innovation, you know, in AI by allowing or by encouraging the, you know, the massively resource-consuming, climate-changing, land-use-devastating and destroying data centers that AI companies are saying are necessary.

[00:31:49] I mean, there is just no way that the data center expansion that's happening right now and that tech companies say will need to happen, which is like exponentially more than we have now. There's no way that's sustainable. And somebody has to say no. And I think we should say no. That's a really interesting perspective on it.

[00:32:07] I just will point out there are many more companies, one of which is Anthropic, that just today I was reading a report saying they earned something like $45 billion this year and are valued at more than a trillion dollars. So, yeah, it's a crazy bubble, but these things are super profitable. And I wonder— Couldn't possibly ever pop. We've never seen it before. Well— Yeah, but we had a tech bubble before, and yet our abundance in Seattle kind of rides on tech.

[00:32:35] So I don't know how you kind of—how you avoid these bubbles as a city, but Sandeep, what do you think? Look, it may be that there's a certain amount of AI bubble going on. The amount of money that is getting poured into AI by tech companies is astro-fucking-nomical, right? Like, it's enormous amounts of money that are being poured in. Like I said, a lot of it in San Francisco right now, much less so in Seattle. So we're still ahead of everybody else for what it's worth.

[00:33:05] But—so, yeah, look, could it be that that's, like, overly exuberant and that bubble will burst? Maybe. When we had a tech bubble and this bubble, as I understand it—correct me if I'm wrong— there's a shitload of money being made right now. That's my point about Anthropic. They're already making a ton of money. But what's happening, there's so much investment going into this, and nobody really knows which companies are going to be super successful. Will it be Anthropic? Will it be NVIDIA? No one really knows.

[00:33:33] So there's more money going in that's going to end up coming out. Our wellness will be the metaverse. That's what the bubble is. But it's not like there won't be a shitload of money to be made. That's why the money's flowing into it. Well, right. To finish my point, yeah. None of this—whether there's a bubble and some of these companies, like, overextend themselves or whatever, like, could be. But AI is not going anywhere, right? AI is getting integrated into almost everything we do. I can't do a frickin' search on Google anymore.

[00:34:02] But people don't like it, Sundeep. This is the thing. Like, if customers reject it, like, if customers reject that aspect of it, let's just say, just like the fact that you can't do anything in any technology that you're used to without, would you like to use AI? Like, I think people don't like that aspect of it. And I think that, you know, much like—I just mentioned briefly the metaverse under my breath. I mean, much like the metaverse. I mean, I think consumers actually have the power to reject things that they don't like.

[00:34:30] And like, yeah, maybe they'll just shove it down our throats forever. Yum yum AI. Let's eat it up for, you know, the rest of time. But I do think that when we're—if that's the way—if your way is the way it goes, Sundeep, I do think it's okay to not be the number one city in saying yes, yes, yes to more of that. I actually think there is a benefit to not being Austin, you know, which has, in my opinion, been ruined by tech and made much more expensive.

[00:34:57] There's a benefit to not being San Francisco, which is astronomically unaffordable and also has an unbalanced economy. We don't have to unbalance our economy to that extent. Like, growth, growth, growth is not the only value, and it's not the only thing that makes a city thrive. I agree with that. It's not the only thing that makes a city thrive. But I also—I moved here from Cleveland, which 100 years ago was the Seattle of the United States. It was like the, you know, one of the biggest, most powerful, richest city.

[00:35:26] It was built on, you know, industry right back then, right? Steel and auto parts and manufacturing. But it was a rich, rich, powerful city. And when I lived there— Based on a bubble. Well, not—I mean, it was a decade's long. I mean, not a bubble exactly, but based on one industry, it was a company town. And you're saying Seattle should continue to be a company town. And I'm saying exactly why it shouldn't be a company town. I'm saying Seattle—I'm saying Cleveland lost the thread of where the economy was going.

[00:35:55] And when I lived there in the year 2001, I think Seattle passed—I mean, I'm sorry, Cleveland passed Detroit as the poorest big city in America, right? And, like, I lived in a beautiful old apartment that was built when, you know, in the heyday of the city. And I paid—I had an apartment twice the size of my first apartment in Seattle, and I paid for half the rent. So it was cool. Yeah, we all have lived in cheaper cities, I think. But, I mean, it's a cheaper city that you're describing. It was cool, but there was no opportunity, right? I mean, why did I end up in Seattle?

[00:36:25] Why did I leave? I mean, Cleveland had a great underground rock scene. I wrote for the All Weekly. Like, you know, it was pretty good. Let me just say something about that, which is that there's the dark side of AI, the bad side of AI, the AI that's, like, eating our brains, you know, along with all the social media and our iPhones and everything else. But there's also the AI that leads to greater efficiencies that could actually help do things like solve the affordable housing crisis or help solve the affordable housing crisis.

[00:36:53] I'm not going to make a fucking raspberry noise right now because I know people will hate that. No, no, you can do it. But the point is that, like, you know, we haven't seen any increase in productivity in the housing market practically at all in the last, like, 30 years relative to the overall economy. Housing productivity has—we're still building it like it's the dark ages. And so, you know, it's like, yeah, these things— And how do you think AI is going to do that?

[00:37:21] It's not entirely clear, but there are economists who are making that argument right now. So, I mean, we'll see what happens. But the point is— But what are—I don't understand what argument it is that AI will make housing more—housing productivity higher. Like, what is the argument? I'm not an economist. Cheaper and more efficient to build. And it's not—but the point I'm making is it's not just housing. It's like greater efficiencies can actually lead to better things, more equity, you know, better things for people. Well, I don't believe—I don't believe that AI is going to do that.

[00:37:51] Well, okay. Well, all right. But what I'm saying is why not view technologies rather than through dystopian lenses or utopian lenses, just more realistic lenses about what's actually happened with telepathy. There's lots of technologies I view that way. Yeah. So I feel like AI is the same thing. Like EV cars is an example, although I think that they have, you know, ecological nightmarish, you know, side effects as well. And AI can help solve some of those nightmarish effects.

[00:38:19] I've only heard that said by people who are like economists and AI boosters who say that just any day now we're going to find a way of doing that if you just build more data centers, if you just, you know, shovel more AI into everybody's phones. And if, you know, if you just give in to the fact that people don't know how to write anymore because everything is being done by, you know, fucking Claude or Grok or whatever. I mean, I just do not buy the promises of the people who are writing on this bubble and getting very rich on it. I hear you. I hear you.

[00:38:49] I mean, it's sad, but that writing is no longer a valuable skill because AI is going to be better at it. But that's what's going to happen. Well, I would argue that AI is terrible at it. Yeah, I'm going to actually agree with you too. Like, I actually do think AI is sort of the end of the world, not because AI is going to become sentient and kill us. Maybe it will. I don't know. But that's not something I'm going to predict. But I do think it's like the end of writing and thinking.

[00:39:16] And I mean, it's bad. It's like- Yeah, that stuff is bad. Yeah, yeah. And Matt- I guess I'm saying that everything that AI is promising in getting governments to deregulate things like data centers right now is all speculation. It's 100% speculation. Oh, we're going to finally find the thing that makes everybody only have to work four hours a week. We've been promised that for hundreds of years. I mean, every new technology promises that.

[00:39:42] We're going to find the thing that solves the affordability crisis in America. Well, no. I mean, the affordability crisis is caused by a lot of factors that governments could impact right now and don't. So, you know, I mean, just giving people money, that is a low-tech solution that actually would do something as opposed to this sort of theoretical one day in the future we're going to find a way to build housing for $500 and everybody's going to live in it. I mean, we've just been hearing these bullshit lies for centuries and we keep falling for them.

[00:40:12] You know, the other larger point I want to make here, though, is that, like, Karl Marx himself was not a reactionary. Why the American left has become so reactionary? Marx welcomed, like, the early stages of corporate capitalism because he felt like the corporate forum was liberating. So the way in which the American left has become so reactionary about all this stuff, it's like, yes, it is possible these things are going to be dark and horrible and everything else, but we don't have to be reactionaries. We do not have to be reactionaries. David, it's specifically AI.

[00:40:41] And you're saying all these things. It is specifically AI. And there are specific reasons that people think it's bullshit. Well, it used to be housing. Now we're not reactionary about housing. We've given up on that. But now we're reactionary about AI. It's fine. You know, I don't think that actually, you know, saying companies who are asking for, you know, massive tax benefits and land and to be able to pollute the environment and make people sicker when they're asking for that, they should be able to say, here's why. And they can't. I agree with that.

[00:41:10] They can't because they haven't done anything with it. And so as government actors, if you were in power, you know, you have the ability to say no to these people. You don't always have to say yes. And I think saying yes is just like, it's dumb government. And I actually think saying no to these AI data centers in Seattle probably seems like a good idea, although I'd be curious to know what they come up with over the next 365 days. So I will say this, no one, because Erica, you were saying, you know, like this push to kind of deregulate AI.

[00:41:39] And I'm not saying deregulate AI. I'm saying regulate it. Regulate these data centers. Make sure if they get built, they operate in the right way. And that this isn't some kind of like, you know, hidden subsidy for massive corporations and stuff like that. But what I'm but I'm also saying don't ban it and don't do a bumper sticker ban because the downstream consequences of that could turn out to be bad for the city.

[00:42:04] Yeah, when you say in the right way, I don't know what the right way to build, you know, an electricity hogging data center is. I mean, maybe there is a way for Seattle as a city, as an individual atomized city to protect itself somewhat from, you know, ratepayer consequences. But all the other externalities, they have not produced a data center yet that doesn't have those externalities. And so I would say there is no good massive data center. There's no such thing. There's no way to do it right. What about like the people's data center?

[00:42:32] I mean, the people's data is like is people going out and talking to each other in person again and, you know, learning to write again and learning to communicate in a way that isn't completely mediated by corporate overlords. But I'm assuming that's not what you I'm assuming that's not what you mean. Talk on your phones. How about that? I support that. Yeah. Dumb phones as opposed to smartphones. I'm all with you on all that stuff. Anyway, Sandeep Kaushik, Erica C. Barnett. I'm David Hyde.

[00:43:01] That's it for another edition of Seattle Nice. Our editor is Quinn Waller. And thanks, everybody, so much for listening.