> I’m still not seeing any equally compelling arguments as to why this is not the case.

Zitron relies too heavily on how big the numbers are and not how workable the numbers are. Further, he seems to think that it will all just implode, which is pretty unlikely.

AI companies are making money. 1T in purchase negotiations is something that can be renegotiated if the numbers don't improve. And there's actually a pretty good chance that these AI companies sell the US federal government on AI being a strategic advantage which can ultimately gets a nice federal funding source.

Even in the worst case of what ed predicts, the more likely outcome is that the AI companies slow rollouts and purchases. The general market takes a hit, but it's ultimately not the end of the world.

But further, even with AI reducing their consumption, that doesn't mean chip manufacturers are hosed, we've already built up huge demand for things like RAM which are supremely supply constrained. That' has slowed the sale of consumer and enterprise electronics. Easing back on the AI market means those markets will likely pick up the slack again. Especially because I suspect businesses will be seriously thinking about things like "Why don't we deploy deepseek locally to save on compute cost?".

I suspect that prices for AI will ultimately increase before any of this happens and with those price increases that's where I can see there being more a demand to break ties with the bigger AI companies.

What Ed misses is that big business has much MUCH more flexibility when it comes to financing than even a midsize corperation. They have direct lines to bank presidents.