How the Iran War Could Slow the Path to AGI
TBPN hosts explore how rising oil prices from conflict with Iran could slow AGI development by raising borrowing costs and reducing Middle Eastern investment in data centers.
The gist
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Oil has almost no direct effect on US data centers since only 0.6% of US electricity comes from petroleum.
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A 50 basis point rise in borrowing costs could add $4.35 billion in annual interest expenses across $870 billion in planned data center financing.
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The bigger threat is Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds pulling back from large AI projects and moving capital toward defense or energy.
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George Hotz's Tiny Corp raised $20 million to serve AI tokens profitably using consumer GPUs and cheap Oregon power, showing demand remains strong.
Also mentioned
4:52
Tiny Box
· "the makers of Tiny and the Tiny Box. Build 500 $20,000 tiny boxes with six of the cards in each box."
5:08
AMD RDNA 5
· "wait for AMD to launch the RDNA 5 96 gigabyte cards mid 2027. Pre-order 3,000 cards."
5:31
OpenRouter
· "Make $600,000 per month revenue selling tokens on Open Router. Market depth is there. This is 1% of Open..."
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