Your laptop is about to become a casualty of the AI grift



Welcome to the techno-feudal state, where citizens are forced to underwrite unnecessary and harmful technology at the expense of the technology they actually need.

The economic story of 2025 is the government-driven build-out of hyperscale AI data centers — sold as innovation, justified as national strategy, and pursued in service of cloud-based chatbot slop and expanded surveillance. This build-out is consuming land, food, water, and energy at enormous scale. As Energy Secretary Chris Wright bluntly put it, “It takes massive amounts of electricity to generate intelligence. The more energy invested, the more intelligence produced.”

Shortages will hit consumers hard in the coming year.

That framing ignores what is being sacrificed — and distorted — in the process.

Beyond the destruction of rural communities and the strain placed on national energy capacity, government favoritism toward AI infrastructure is warping markets. Capital that once sustained the hardware and software ecosystem of the digital economy is being siphoned into subsidized “AI factories,” chasing artificial general intelligence instead of cheaper, more efficient investments in narrow AI.

Thanks to fiscal, monetary, tax, and regulatory favoritism, the result is free chatbot slop and an increasingly scarce, expensive supply of laptops, phones, and consumer hardware.

Subsidies break the market

For decades, consumer electronics stood as one of the greatest deflationary success stories in modern economics. Unlike health care or education — both heavily monopolized by government — the computer industry operated with relatively little distortion. From December 1997 to August 2015, the CPI for “personal computers and peripheral equipment” fell 96%. Over that same period, medical care, housing, and food costs rose between 80% and 200%.

That era is ending.

AI data centers are now crowding out consumer electronics. Major manufacturers such as Dell and Samsung are scaling back or discontinuing entire product lines because they can no longer secure components diverted to AI chip production.

Prices for phones and laptops are rising sharply. Jobs tied to consumer electronics — especially the remaining U.S.-based assembly operations — are being squeezed out in favor of data center hardware that benefits a narrow set of firms.

This is policy-driven distortion, not organic market evolution.

Through initiatives like Stargate and hundreds of billions in capital pushed toward data center expansion, the government has created incentives for companies to abandon consumer hardware in favor of AI infrastructure. The result is shortages that will hit consumers hard in the coming year.

Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron are retooling factories to prioritize AI-grade silicon for data centers instead of personal devices. DRAM production is being routed almost entirely toward servers because it is far more profitable to leverage $40,000 AI chips than $500-$800 laptops. In the fourth quarter of 2025, contract prices for certain 16GB DDR5 chips rose nearly 300% as supply was diverted. Dell and Lenovo have already imposed 15%-30% price hikes on PCs, citing insatiable AI-sector demand.

The chip crunch

The situation is deteriorating quickly. DRAM inventory levels are down 80% year over year, with just three weeks of supply on hand — down from 9.5 weeks in July. SK Hynix expects shortages to persist through late 2027. Samsung has announced it is effectively out of inventory and has more than doubled DDR5 contract prices to roughly $19-$20 per unit. DDR5 is now standard across new consumer and commercial desktops and laptops, including Apple MacBooks.

Samsung has also signaled it may exit the SSD market altogether, deeming it insufficiently glamorous compared with subsidized data center investments. Nvidia has warned it may cut RTX 50 series production by up to 40%, a move that would drive up the cost of entry-level gaming systems.

Shrinkflation is next. Before the data center bubble, the market was approaching a baseline of 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSDs for entry-level laptops. As memory is diverted to enterprise customers, manufacturers will revert to 8GB systems with slower storage to keep prices under $999 — ironically rendering those machines incapable of running the very AI applications they’re working on.

Real innovation sidelined

The damage extends beyond prices. Research and development in conventional computing are already suffering. Investment in efficient CPUs, affordable networking equipment, edge computing, and quantum-adjacent technologies has slowed as capital and talent are pulled into AI accelerators.

This is precisely backward. Narrow AI — focused on real-world tasks like logistics, agriculture, port management, and manufacturing — is where genuine productivity gains lie. China understands this and is investing accordingly. The United States is not. Instead, firms like Roomba, which experimented with practical autonomy, are collapsing — only to be acquired by the Chinese!

This is not a free market. Between tax incentives, regulatory favoritism, land-use carve-outs, capital subsidies, and artificially suppressed interest rates, the government has created an arms race for a data center bubble China itself is not pursuing. Each round of monetary easing inflates the same firms’ valuations, enabling further speculative investment divorced from consumer need.

RELATED: China’s AI strategy could turn Americans into data mines

Grafissimo via iStock/Getty Images

Hype over utility

As Charles Hugh Smith recently noted, expanding credit boosts asset prices, which then serve as collateral for still more leverage — allowing capital-rich firms to outbid everyone else while hollowing out the broader economy.

The pattern is familiar. Consider the Ford plant in Glendale, Kentucky, where 1,600 workers were laid off after the collapse of government-favored electric vehicle investments. That facility is now being retooled to produce batteries for data centers. When one subsidy collapses, another replaces it.

We are trading convention for speculation. Conventional technology — reliable hardware, the internet, mobile computing — delivers proven, measurable utility. The current investment surge into artificial general intelligence is based on hypothetical future returns propped up by state power.

The good old laptop is becoming collateral damage in what may prove to be the largest government-induced tech bubble yet.

Utah set to ban fluoride from drinking water as nation begins protecting kids from IQ drops



The Utah Senate approved legislation Friday that would prohibit the addition of fluoride to public water systems. The bill, criticized by the American Dental Association and a handful of supposed health experts, is now headed to the desk of Governor Spencer Cox, who has indicated he will sign it into law.

While the Beehive State is now set to become the first in the union to pass such a ban, it is unlikely to be the last.

The fluoridation of public waters has long been a subject of heated debate. Advocates for fluoridation argue that the chemical compound helps prevent cavities and tooth decay and strengthens enamel. Critics, on the other hand, suggest that adding fluoride to the water supply poses an unnecessary risk, referring to the scientific evidence linking exposure at elevated levels to various adverse health effects in humans, such as osteosclerosis, calcification of tendons, endocrine dysfunction, bone deformities, premature menarche in adolescent girls, and problems sleeping.

Chemical defenders were delivered a crushing narrative blow in August when the National Toxicology Program, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, released a report admitting that fluoridated water can cause mental retardation in children.

'There is moderate confidence in the scientific evidence that showed an association between higher levels of fluoride and lower IQ in children.'

"Higher estimated fluoride exposures (e.g., as in approximations of exposure such as drinking water fluoride concentrations that exceed the World Health Organization Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality of 1.5 mg/L of fluoride) are consistently associated with lower IQ in children," said the NTP report.

The NTP uses four confidence levels to characterize the strength of scientific evidence that links a particular health outcome with an exposure: high, moderate, low, or very low.

Blaze News previously reported that after evaluating epidemiological studies from multiple countries where some pregnant women, babies, and children were exposed to fluoride at levels exceeding 1.5 milligrams per liter of drinking water, the NTP "concluded there is moderate confidence in the scientific evidence that showed an association between higher levels of fluoride and lower IQ in children."

The report further indicated that as of 2020, roughly 3.5 million Americans were served by water systems containing over 1.1 mg/L of naturally occurring fluoride; around 1.9 million Americans were supplied by systems with over 1.5 mg/L; and 1 million were being supplied with over 2 mg/L of naturally occurring fluoride.

Shortly after the release of the NTP report, a U.S. district judge ruled in a case brought against the Biden Environmental Protection Agency that "fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligrams per liter — the level presently considered 'optimal' in the United States — poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children."

Hundreds of American cities and counties subsequently halted the addition of fluoride to their water supplies, while some health authorities noted that the risk-reward ratio was unacceptable.

'So it's got to be a really high bar for me if we're going to require people to be medicated by their government.'

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, for instance, released guidance on Nov. 22, recommending against community water fluoridation "due to the neuropsychiatric risk associated with fluoride exposure."

In his guidance, Ladapo referenced the NTP study as well as a 2017 Mexican study that found prenatal fluoride exposure was associated with lower IQ in boys and girls ages 6 to 12; a 2019 Canadian cross-sectional study that found an association between exposure to fluoridated water and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and adolescents; and a 2023 study that found that maternal exposure to fluoridated drinking water at the recommended 0.7 milligrams per liter during pregnancy was linked to decreased child inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility.

Citing the court ruling, U.S. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted ahead of Election Day that "fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease."

Lawmakers evidently decided to go the distance in Utah, where the Centers for Disease Control indicated that 43.6% of residents were served by fluoridated community water systems as of December 2022.

State Rep. Stephanie Gricius, the Republican who sponsored the fluoride ban, recently indicated that when a friend and constituent proposed the ban to her two years ago, she told her that "this will never pass." However, Gricius, a self-identified "crunchy mom" — a term often used to describe a parent averse to processed foods, unnecessary medication, and pharmaceutical or governmental overreach — suggested that the constituent persisted in her advocacy for scrapping fluoride, ultimately convincing her to take action.

After working on the legislation and exploring what other states were doing, Gricius noted that Utah Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore (R) reached out to her in late 2024 expressing an interest in collaborating on the issue. Together, they saw the legislation through the state legislature.

The American Dental Association urged the governor in a Feb. 25 letter to veto the legislation, claiming that an end to fluoridated water could mean increased dental disease and related costs.

Cox suggested to KTVX-TV over the weekend that in terms of dental health, there have apparently not been "drastically different outcomes" when comparing Utah counties that have fluoridated waters with those that don't.

"So it's got to be a really high bar for me if we're going to require people to be medicated by their government," said the governor.

"It's not a bill I felt strongly about. It's not a bill I care that much about, but it's a bill I will sign," added Cox.

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Water scarce, Democrat mayor out of country as Los Angeles wildfires rage



The city of Los Angeles is in a panic as wildfires rage on, with fire hydrants running dry and the mayor thousands of miles away.

The fires themselves came as no surprise, as the forecast predicted strong winds of up to 100 mph that could turn even minor flames into a towering inferno. On Monday night, Mayor Karen Bass (D) warned that the winds would likely be "destructive and potentially life-threatening."

She was right. A fire broke out in the beautiful Pacific Palisades section of the city near the coast on Tuesday around 10:30 a.m., prompting tens of thousands of residents to evacuate the area.

While many attempt to flee, the fires continue to wipe out nearly everything in their path.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) soon afterward flew in to L.A. and noted that "not a few — many structures" had already been "destroyed." Those destroyed structures reportedly included the homes of some celebrities, such as former reality TV stars Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag.

A terrifying video of two men and a dog trapped inside a home, surrounded by fire and smoke, quickly went viral on social media. Another video shows the evacuation of an assisted living facility as the young and ambulatory quickly push the elderly and infirm in wheelchairs across the street.

Firefighters have been battling the fires for hours, and at least one firefighter, a 25-year-old female, has already sustained "a serious head injury."

Thankfully, no deaths have yet been reported. As of Wednesday morning, approximately 4,000 acres of land have already burned.

'My understanding is the reservoir was not refilled in time and in a timely manner to keep the hydrants going.'

By nightfall on Tuesday, though, another major problem had materialized: Firefighters were running out of water.

"The hydrants are down," one firefighter reported over the internal radio system, according to the Los Angeles Times.

"Water supply just dropped," said another.

The Department of Water and Power admitted that water scarcity was an issue but said that crews were working in the affected areas "to ensure the availability of water supplies," a spokesperson said.

"This area is served by water tanks and close coordination is underway to continue supplying the area."

The extent of the water shortage is unclear.

Meanwhile, Mayor Bass, who warned L.A. residents about impending disasters associated with the winds, was on the other side of the world in Ghana to attend the inauguration of President John Dramani Mahama as part of an official U.S. delegation.

People on social media were outraged that Bass was in Africa while her city burns.

  • "RESIGN! WHY ARE YOU IN GHANA?!" one user commented on one of Bass' X posts.
  • "Hey Karen! How’s Ghana? LA you ask? Yeah it’s burning to the f***ing ground but it’s better you’re not here anyways because you’re useless," said another.
  • "There’s no water, Karen," quipped another.

Bass, 71, is reportedly on her way back to L.A. on account of the fires.

Billionaire resident Rick Caruso, who competed against Bass in the Democratic mayoral primary in 2022, blamed Bass and other officials for the devastation caused perhaps by a lack of preparation and the policies that limit the water supply.

"We've had decades to remove the brush in these hills that spreads so quickly," Caruso told KTTV on Tuesday.

"You have to have water," he continued, "and my understanding is the reservoir was not refilled in time and in a timely manner to keep the hydrants going. So that's a failure, whether on DWP's part or another city agency, but this is basic stuff."

"It's all about leadership and management that we're seeing a failure of," he added, "and all of these residents are paying the ultimate price for that."

Perhaps to stave off further criticism regarding the mayor's absence, Bass' official X account posted messages in the wee hours of the night, warning about continued windstorms, providing updates about emergency shelters, and thanking firefighters for working so tirelessly.

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US government admits elevated fluoride levels 'consistently associated with lower IQ in children'



The powers that be have long claimed that the fluoridation of drinking water — which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deemed one of the greatest health achievements of the last century — is safe and effective, even though exposure at elevated levels has been linked to various adverse health effects in humans, such as osteoclerosis, calcification of tendons, endocrine dysfunction, and bone deformities.

Those who dared suggest that the governmental effort to prevent tooth decay might have side effects such as mental retardation and cancer were in many cases vilified. It appears that, once again, those written off as quacks and conspiracy theorists were onto something.

The National Toxicology Program, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, released a report Wednesday revealing that fluoridated water can lower IQ in kids.

The National Institutes of Health's Office of Dietary Supplements indicated that fluoridated municipal drinking water accounts for approximately 60% of fluoride intakes in the U.S., and that as of 2020, 62.9% of the population had access to a fluoridated water system.

"Higher estimated fluoride exposures (e.g., as in approximations of exposure such as drinking water fluoride concentrations that exceed the World Health Organization Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality of 1.5 mg/L of fluoride) are consistently associated with lower IQ in children," said the NTP report.

When assessing scientific evidence association of a specific health outcome with an exposure, the NTP uses four confidence levels: high, moderate, or very low.

After evaluating numerous epidemiological studies from countries including Canada, China, India, and Mexico, where some pregnant women, babies, and children were exposed to fluoride at levels exceeding 1.5 milligrams per liter of drinking water, the NTP "concluded there is moderate confidence in the scientific evidence that showed an association between higher levels of fluoride and lower IQ in children."

Although scores of studies caught the investigators' attention, they appear to have focused primarily on 19 high-quality studies that had low risks of bias. Eighteen of these studies that evaluated IQ in children provided "consistent evidence of an inverse association between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ scores."

Whereas World Health Organization guidelines recommend 1.5 mg/L as a safe limit for fluoride, the HHS alternatively recommends 0.7 milligrams per liter of fluoride, noting, "This is the level that prevents tooth decay and promotes good oral health." However, some American municipalities across the country may have slightly more or less in their respective water supplies.

New York City, for instance, adds a fluoride compound that provides the water supply with a concentration of roughly 0.8 mg/L.

Prior to 2015, the recommended upper range in the U.S. was 1.2. The recommended concentration was changed in 2015 to minimize the risk of dental fluorosis.

According to the NTP report, as of 2020, roughly 3.5 million Americans were served by water systems containing over 1.1 mg/L of naturally occurring fluoride; around 1.9 million Americans were supplied by systems with over 1.5 mg/L; and 1 million were being supplied with over 2 mg/L of naturally occurring fluoride.

'The inverse association between estimated fluoride exposure and IQ in children was consistent across different study populations.'

Citing the findings of a recent study, the report further indicated that "regions of the United States where [community water systems] and private wells contain natural fluoride concentrations of more than 1.5 mg/L serve over 2.9 million U.S. residents."

Although the NTP report would not confirm whether the currently recommended level of 0.7. mg/L is dumbing down the population, it called for "targeted research that prospectively examines the association between fluoride exposure and children's IQ in optimally fluoridated areas of the United States ... to add clarity to the existing data."

According to the NTP, there is "also some evidence that fluoride exposure is associated with other neurodevelopmental effects in children." However, its confidence in that evidence is presently not as strong.

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Hacker tried to poison Florida city's water supply with lye, sheriff says



Authorities say an unknown hacker was able to gain remote access to the controls of a Florida city's water treatment plant, and made multiple attempts to increase the amount of lye in the water supply to "dangerous" levels.

What are the details?

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri announced the threat during a news conference Monday, explaining that the unidentified suspect targeted the water supply for the city of Oldsmar.

"The hacker changed the sodium hydroxide (lye) from about one hundred parts per million, to 11,100 parts per million," Gualtieri said, calling that level a "dangerous" amount.

Motherboard reported:

When asked if this should be considered an attempt at bioterrorism, Gualtieri said, "What it is is someone hacked into the system not just once but twice ... opened the program and changed the levels from 100 to 11,100 parts per million with a caustic substance. So, you label it however you want, those are the facts."

According to ABC News, sodium hydroxide "is used to treat water acidity but the compound is also found in cleaning supplies such as soaps and drain cleaners." The outlet noted that "it can cause irritation, burns and other complications in larger quantities."

The hacking was discovered by a plant worker who noticed the tampering of the control panel at around 8 a.m. Friday, and discovered a second attempt at changing the lye levels was made at around 1:30 p.m. the same day.

The employee was able to quickly reverse the hacker's tampering in both instances, and officials say multiple safeguards in place at the plant that provides water to roughly 15,000 homes and businesses mean the public was not put at risk.

Gualtieri told Reuters, "The guy was sitting there monitoring the computer as he's supposed to and all of a sudden he sees a window pop up that the computer has been accessed. The next thing you know someone is dragging the mouse and clicking around and opening programs and manipulating the system."

Law enforcement is now seeking to identify the culprit, and the FBI and Secret Service have also been looped in on the criminal investigation.

Anything else?

Nicole Perlroth, a reporter for The New York Times, pointed out that similar attacks on water supplies have been attempted in other countries, tweeting, "This was also an attack scenario that played out in Israel last April, when Israelis accused Iran of getting into their water treatment plant. Israel responded with a hack of Iran port."

Trudeau fails to keep word on drinking water for Indigenous peoples

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to be unable to keep his word on the pressing issue of fixing the dysfunctional water supply in many indigenous communities across the country.