Ben Thompson Writes Stratechery, a subscription newsletter analyzing the business strategy behind tech and media companies, and has built a reputation for framing how platfo...

“The only message that is coming out of Silicon Valley is AI is coming for your jobs. Implied in that is all of you are worthless. All of you are uninteresting to us.”

Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026

Context

Ben Thompson is explaining why he thinks AI has terrible marketing to ordinary people, after arguing the industry treats humans as interchangeable cogs. He ties the data center backlash at the ballot box to how the industry talks about AI.

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Transcript

Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson Around 12:35 into the episode

Ben Thompson

…AI has terrible marketing in the like it can actually make your life better in part because it feels like no one in this industry has any sympathy or understanding for normal people, which why not? They're all like crazy rich, following around the coast, no conception of how normal people live.

Andrew Sharp

Well, and I will also add that they're building a technology that is exceptionally expensive to build and doesn't have a clear application beyond saying, Well, this can actually just replace wide swaths of the workforce. No, exactly,

Ben Thompson

…industry, but huge chunks of the industry are just, they have such a narrow view of the world. Humans fit in this column, and the measurement marks on that column are like IQ points. And that's how they rank the whole world. And they're like, oh, well, AI is climbing up the column, gonna wipe you all out. Think how much money you're putting in. And so, implicit in this isn't just the fact that the only message that is coming out of Silicon Valley is AI is coming for your jobs. Implied in that is all of you are worthless. All of you are uninteresting to us. And this is why I go back to

Andrew Sharp

all of us. I didn't vote against data centers, but all of Americans are raising their hand to the sky and flipping the bird to all these tech companies.

Ben Thompson

Absolutely. And why wouldn't they?

Andrew Sharp

Yeah.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson

“Everyone thinking about AI jumps to the final state where intelligence is a commodity… The analysis in a market defined by scarcity versus a market defined by abundance is fundamentally different. Completely flips. And I think the time defined by scarcity has probably been elongated.” — Ben Thompson, Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson

“The presumed backstop for all data center opposition has always been, we'll just build it in Texas.” — Ben Thompson, Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson