The Democratic Party won a landslide victory in the US midterm elections, and newly elected governors in multiple states immediately imposed tough conditions on data centers, announcing a full suspension of new construction permits until new regulations are introduced. This policy shift directly detonated the market, with tech stocks such as NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA), Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD), and Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU) suffering their largest single-day market cap losses in history after the election, involving an amount close to 4 trillion US dollars.

Chamath Palihapitiya, co-host of the well-known blog All-In Podcast and Silicon Valley investor, disclosed on the November 8 episode that the real "nuclear-level" variable is hidden in the compute supply contract between SpaceX and Anthropic 鈥?both parties hold a "90-day mutual exit clause." Once market compute supply suddenly tightens due to state permit freezes, SpaceX could theoretically terminate the contract and reprice at 2 to 3 times the spot price, at which point the entire AI industry's power structure would be completely rewritten.

Hyperscale cloud providers, sitting on existing compute capacity, remain firmly in the position of "landlords," while Neoclouds and frontier model companies that rely heavily on external leasing face a life-or-death situation.

At the same time, All-In Podcast co-hosts Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg also warned on the program that if states continue to set up approval barriers, gigawatt-scale data center projects worth more than 50 billion US dollars will be forced to relocate to Canada, Mexico, Malaysia, and even the Middle East. The United States will then degenerate from a "global compute exporter" into an expensive "Token importer," and the strategic impact on technological competitiveness and employment cannot be ignored.

Permit Freeze: A Powerful Grassroots Backlash Against the "AI Oligarchy"

After the election results were announced, newly elected Texas Governor Gina Ino Hosa immediately publicly stated that all new data center permits would be suspended before special legislation is introduced. According to discussion by the All-In Podcast co-hosts on the program, candidates in multiple newly elected states hold similar positions.

This grassroots sentiment did not emerge out of thin air. On the program, Chamath cited a video widely circulating on X platform 鈥?the SpaceX team went to Cochise County, Arizona, to hold an information session for its 6GW data center project. Two SpaceX employees, Riley and Katie, promised on the spot that the project would lower local electricity bills, not consume water resources, reduce property taxes by 20%, and provide repayment funds for county bonds. However, the reaction from residents in the audience was continuous noise and confrontation.

Chamath pointed out that this emotion does not stem from rational judgment of facts, but is a totemic projection of the "economic divide." What community residents deeply resent is that tech giants enjoy generous high tax breaks provided by local governments while driving up local electricity prices and water consumption. David Sacks also said bluntly that the core logic of residents is: "The AI oligarchs are making a fortune with tax breaks, while we are paying higher electricity bills for them."

David Sacks further pointed out that the political momentum behind the permit freeze is almost rigid: "In the last election, both Democrats and Republicans treated politicians who approved data centers as targets of attack. Anyone with political ambition has no reason to stamp approval on any project in the next four years." His baseline judgment is that projects already under construction with all permits are likely to be completed by 2027, but new projects that have not yet been approved will face great uncertainty, and by 2028 the entire project pipeline may have largely shut down or significantly shrunk.

"Landlords" and "Tenants": The Life-or-Death Divergence in the Compute Landscape

Chamath clearly divided participants in the current compute market into two completely different camps and said bluntly that their fates under the new situation are vastly different.

Hyperscalers 鈥?including Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and SpaceX 鈥?build their own power plants and hold large amounts of existing compute capacity, making them true "landlords." The tightening of permits for new data centers has limited impact on them and instead brings important strategic opportunities: by shifting incremental compute to their own products, they can effectively suppress the growth speed of external competitors. As Chamath said, Google's recent acquisition of Crusoe Data Center is a direct manifestation of this logic 鈥?"They drove the tenants away and took the entire asset for themselves."

By contrast, emerging cloud service providers (Neoclouds) and frontier model companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI rely heavily on externally leased compute and are truly the "tenant class." Once new supply is locked down by state regulations, spot GPU hourly prices will soar sharply, and these companies will either be forced to accept much higher quotes or gradually fall behind in fierce model iteration competition due to insufficient compute.

It is worth noting that Anthropic and OpenAI are currently in a high-speed model iteration cycle of 60 to 90 days. Once compute supply tightens, this pace will be forcibly slowed, giving models owned by hyperscalers such as Google Gemini a window to catch up.

SpaceX's "90-Day Nuclear Button": One Contract Determines the AI World

Among all variables, Chamath believes the most decisive one is a contract clause little known to the outside world.

According to Chamath's disclosure, the compute supply agreement between SpaceX and Anthropic contains a "two-way 90-day exit clause" 鈥?either party may terminate the contract with 90 days' notice to the other. This clause may appear to be a standard commercial arrangement during stable market times, but against the backdrop of suddenly tightening compute supply, it has evolved into a "nuclear bomb" that can be detonated at any time.

Chamath's reasoning is as follows:

If state permit freezes lead to a sharp reduction in available market compute, spot compute prices will climb rapidly. SpaceX would then have sufficient economic incentive to terminate the existing contract and reprice at spot market prices 鈥?most likely 2 to 3 times the original contract price. Anthropic would have no choice but to swallow this price or face a life-or-death crisis from compute supply cutoff.

The chain reaction of this move goes far beyond that. Chamath pointed out that it will force all hyperscalers to re-examine their own compute allocation strategies 鈥?should they continue renting to external customers at current prices, or keep it all for their own models? At the same time, it will force Neoclouds to use all their financing reserves to snap up all available compute at high prices to avoid being completely squeezed out of the market.

"I think all game theory is condensed into this one transaction. If Elon decides to tear up this contract, the consequence will be a complete reshuffling of the entire AI industry landscape," Chamath summarized.

Compute Going Overseas: The US Faces the Strategic Risk of Turning from an "Exporter" into an "Importer"

On the program, both Jason Calacanis and David Sacks warned about the prospect of data center relocation.

The core logic is: data centers do not have to be located within the United States. Ultra-large data centers worth 50 billion US dollars and at gigawatt scale can absolutely be built in Canada, Mexico, Malaysia, and Singapore, and after the war ends, even in the Middle East. Google has already deployed a large data center in Malaysia. With existing submarine cables, CDN technology, and the Starlink network, latency and efficiency in cross-border compute delivery are no longer major obstacles.

David Sacks clearly pointed out that if the United States does not build these data centers, it will pay a high price to import "Tokens." Jason Calacanis added a more direct domestic cost: hundreds of thousands of data center construction jobs with annual salaries of 300,000 to 400,000 US dollars will be lost, and tax revenue originally belonging to US local governments will flow to places such as Malaysia.

"These governors will receive a very heavy lesson in globalization," said Jason Calacanis.

David Friedberg raised an even more radical policy risk 鈥?some far-left political figures are already discussing not only restricting data center construction, but also restricting the development, deployment, and even use of AI models themselves. He believes the deeper logic behind this is a fundamental struggle between state power and control over AI technology: whoever masters the strongest AI capability masters absolute superiority over citizens and the market.