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Quest Means Business

Trivago Ramps Up Spending on A.I. Tools for Employees; Debate Intensifies Over U.S. Data Centers Amid Backlash. Aired 4:00p-5p ET

Aired August 19, 2026 - 16:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

- [16:00:25]

RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST, "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS": Closing bell ringing on Wall Street.

CitroTech bringing the closing bell. Let's have the gavel that will bring trading to a close mid-week session. And one, and a two and a one, two,

three, four.

Lot of cheering going on. Not sure why, 119 on the Dow giving back the best gains of the day. Look at the triple stack and you'll see it is arrows

across the screen for all three major indices, but those are the markets and these are the main events that you and I are talking about over the

next hour.

The U.S. Treasury is launching an extraordinary intervention into the jittery bond market. It is called twisting the curve.

Mohamed El-Erian is with me.

Moderna's share price has more than doubled after it announced a breakthrough in mRNA vaccines to treat skin cancer.

A.I. data centers, the political football as the midterms approach, so Kara Swisher tonight will be joining us to talk about exactly how radioactive

they are and why.

We are live in New York. It is Wednesday. It is August the 19th. I am Richard Quest and yes, I mean business.

Good evening.

We begin tonight with the U.S. Treasury, which has stepped in to calm the bond markets and address a relentless rise in borrowing costs. Yields on

the ten and the 30-year treasury notes or bonds retreated after the U.S. government said it would double its buybacks in coming months.

This is known as twisting the curve. The reason is the 30-year yield has hit its highest level in nearly two decades on Tuesday, and the benchmark

ten-year bond, which influences mortgages, is near the highest it has been since Donald Trump returned to office.

The President says he is not concerned about the recent bond sell off, pushing yields higher.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: -- be concerned about this volatility in the bond market?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: No, I don t think so, because like I said, our country is doing so well despite

interest rates.

We have interest rates that are artificially -- they are actually artificially high.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

QUEST: Right. The Treasury's buybacks are dwarfed by the completely staggering amount of U.S. government debt at the moment. Think about this.

So have a look at this.

This is you and me as the investor. When you buy a government bond, you are essentially giving the government an IOU. And as the government borrows

more and more, those loans become more risky.

So the investor, that's you, defines more and more and more and higher, higher in terms of yields pushing them up. That means overall, the

government has to pay more to borrow.

Now, this is all very well-known and indeed, this has been going on for years. Money going that way, interest going that way, coupons going that

way, money going that way -- backwards and forwards.

The only problem is that: The U.S. national debt has just hit $40 trillion, and the interest payments alone come to roughly $2.3 million per minute.

We've been on air three minutes and 30 seconds, so you can make that of what you will.

Few people know the bond market better than Mohamed El-Erian, who joins me, the chief economic adviser for Allianz. This is interesting because this is

classically twist the curve by buying at one end of the yield curve versus the other. You're hoping to artificially lift the production. But it is a

very short-term strategy.

MOHAMED EL-ERIAN, ECONOMIST AND ADVISOR, ALLIANZ: You're absolutely right. It is known as operation twist. It has been done in the past.

The more formal name is yield curve control. And why is it happening? Because the administration is worried about what higher bond yields at the

ten-year point, at the 30-year point, as you pointed out. What does that do to the mortgage market? What does it do to corporate borrowing?

[16:05:02]

What it does? It makes mortgages more expensive. It makes it harder to fund a home and it adds to the affordability problem.

So what do you do if you can't address the fundamental problem, which is too much government debt and deficits and too much borrowing by tech

companies? You start financial engineering, you buy the long end, meaning you try to bring down longer term yields that impact most mortgages, and

you sacrifice the short end and with that, you take a risk to the functioning of the liquidity markets.

So it is a -- think of it as a circuit breaker. It works in the short term, but it is not a free lunch.

QUEST: Oh, but you just put your finger on the problem with it all, which is you are doing financial engineering. You're actually doing nothing to

change the fundamentals upon which these markets are trading.

That's absolutely correct. You're buying time.

Now, why did I want to buy time? That's a political argument. The midterms are coming up and affordability is on voter's mind as a really important

issue. But there is also an economic argument, which is that the bond market is funding about $800 billion of borrowing by these tech companies

this year. And what are these tech companies going to produce? We hope innovations that increase productivity and growth.

So they're trying to bridge to a new world, and they are trying to minimize the journey, the bumpiness of the journey to that new destination.

QUEST: Have you known incidents where this has worked and worked successfully versus those occasions where it has been a Band-Aid, but has

eventually all gone horribly wrong?

EL-ERIAN: It is a Band-Aid. It doesn t necessarily go -- need to go all horribly wrong. It makes me uncomfortable, to be perfectly honest, because

you're intervening in the most important financial market in the world, and you ve got to be careful of what you do.

We have the experience of Japan that tried a more extreme form of yield curve control and paid the price for that.

QUEST: At the end of the day, The One Big, Beautiful Bill, the various other government policies that have been put forward, they are all just

heaping more debt and more debt onto the U.S. balance sheet.

I mean, we can slice it any way, which way we like. There does not seem to be -- and I am not making a political point here, Mohamed, any more than

you are, but there does not seem to be any credible move towards deficit reduction.

EL-ERIAN: And that is a big problem. I mean, the numbers are stunning. You said it $40 trillion. The total debt, the highest relative to GDP, relative

to what the U.S. produces since World War Two.

Interest payments eat up 20 percent of tax revenue. So you give up a fifth of your tax revenue immediately each year simply to pay contractual

interest and we are still running a deficit of six percent, which is unheard of when we have such low unemployment. And if that's not enough, we

have debt that we incurred at lower interest rates that needs to be refinanced.

So yes, this whole cocktail is where we seem until now, the markets were relatively calm, but what has tipped them over and required this incredible

intervention from the Treasury Department is that somebody else is also asking for investors' dollars, and that is the big hyperscaler.

QUEST: That's fascinating, isn't it. That is a big new wrinkle into all of this.

Mohamed El-Erian, I am very grateful putting the argument forward from the bond vigilantes. Thank you, sir.

Shares in Moderna more than doubled today on promising trial results for its skin cancer vaccine.

EL-ERIAN: Thank you.

QUEST: The shares, as you can see, they were up -- my goodness, if only wed known all that earlier in the day of 178 percent, 111 whilst Merck finished

up 12 percent. When combined with Merck's Keytruda, Moderna found that its mRNA vaccine reduced the risk of melanoma both returning and spreading.

A Barclays analyst says the therapy could generate about $3 billion for treating the cancer by 2035. Now, we should, of course, notice that Moderna

is and the study is ongoing.

Dr. Jonathan Reiner is our medical analyst and joins me now.

Jonathan, you know, I always take these stories with a strong pair of rubber gloves and a pinch of salt. Why? Because we always have to couch

them in terms of, well, there is this and then there's that. To you, is this a biggie?

[16:05:09]

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Oh, I think we stand on the precipice of just a breakthrough in cancer therapy.

You know, today the CEO of Moderna, Stephane Bancel, said that we are now an oncology company. And I think the gigantic promise of mRNA vaccines is

not just in, improving our infectious disease prophylaxis, but more so in treating previously untreatable cancers.

So this study, looking at patients with melanoma, high risk melanoma, melanoma at high risk of recurrence, basically shows at least in earlier

data that they showed, it showed that there was a 50 percent reduction in patients who got this drug in combination with Keytruda, a standard

blockbuster drug, in terms of reducing the risk of recurrence or death from melanoma.

But this is just one of the many cancers that this is being evaluated in bladder cancer. Last year, we saw this spectacular, very, very early data

looking at previously untreatable pancreatic cancer. So this, I think is really the promise and there are so many studies with promising early

results that I agree, I usually take this with a giant grain of salt. But now I see what's coming. I see all of this on the horizon.

QUEST: Are we talking here about prophylactically vaccine administration or as a treatment once you ve got.

REINER: No. Well, actually, we have a vaccine that prevents cancer. That's the HPV vaccine, but that's a different story. This technology basically

involves taking a patients a piece of a patient's tumor, sending that to the manufacturer. And then it takes about six weeks, and they look for

unique components of the tumor of the mutations in the tumor that they can build a vaccine around.

So what they do basically is they take the mRNA that codes for those mutations in the patients actual tumor, and they give that back to the

patient and the patient makes antibodies to their own tumors. This is a customized, personalized vaccine to treat your own tumor.

QUEST: This, and I guess -- I always hate having to talk about the money aspect of it, but this is obviously extremely expensive treatment at this

particular point. Is it realistic treatment for a mass population?

REINER: Well, using mRNA technology, they can scale this. The other way, you know, of growing, you know, vaccines or creating vaccines in tissue

culture could never really be scaled on a personalized way, you know, to the many, many millions -- tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people

perhaps around the world who would need these vaccines every year.

But mRNA technology has the promise of being able to do just that, to rapidly create a personalized vaccine to a specific, you know, set of tumor

components and this is real and it is coming quickly.

QUEST: I am grateful to you, sir. Thank you very much for putting it in great perspective for us.

REINER: My pleasure.

QUEST: It is QUEST MEANS BUSINESS midweek edition.

When we come back in a moment, more tankers are joining the shadow fleet. What is that? To get through the Strait of Hormuz? If there is a shadow

fleet, others are choosing a route that offers protection that's being offered by the U.S. Navy. So how is that affecting oil prices?

There is a lot going on in the Straits of Hormuz, but actually, how much oil is getting out into the market? That's the core question we need to

know. QUEST MEANS BUSINESS.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:16:37]

QUEST: The United Arab Emirates, the UAE says it is suspending all trade and financial transactions with Iran until further notice. The reason, of

course, is scenes like this, which is the aftermath of the Iranian drone attack on the Dubai Airport back in March.

The UAE says Iran is undermining peace and security with renewed attacks. The Emirates are one of Iran's largest commercial trading partners, second

only to China.

Now, Iran may have lost significant control over the Strait of Hormuz. Analysts are now suggesting more than 80 percent of shipping traffic is

using the Omani route through the Strait. That you can see there very clearly, it sticks close to the Omani coast, which is the south part on the

southern side of the Strait and that's where American ships are offering protection, with some ships also becoming part of a shadow fleet, turning

off their transponders, making it hard for Iran to track.

Here is how that affects oil prices. Brent and WTI are around 90, give or take, but they are holding their own at those prices.

David Goldman is with us.

David, what's interesting here -- now look at that. You're suggesting 80 percent is getting through the Omani route, disgust as they used to say

yes. So 80 percent is part of the story. The other thing is that what you said is that a lot of these are dark, right? So, we think that they're

going around the Omani route. They are not necessarily putting their transponders on.

So, what are we talking about here? Well, as you mentioned, there are two routes. This is the one that I want to talk about right now, right around

the coast of Oman, because that's the route that was sanctioned by the U.N. and this is the route that's supposed to be safe. It is free of Iranian

tolls. It is free of -- you know, you don t have register with Iran. You can just go in and out. It was supposed to be an escape route.

But what ended up happening is that Iran said, no, no, no, you need to take this route if you want to safely transit the Strait and if you don t, we

will bombard you and which is still happening. They are still firing with drone fire, missile fire on ships that are using the Omani route.

So what happened? Well, a lot of ships decided we are going to use that route, but we are going to turn our transponders off. So you get a sort of

ping there, and then you get a ping here and then it turns out that there are ships that are lined up in the Gulf of Oman that are willing to meet up

with the ships that are coming out after turning their transponders back on.

They will unload the oil onto those ships. They can make their way through to Asia, and then they will ferry back in, turn their transponders off,

come back in and load up with oil, come back out. And this is the business that we've been seeing, Richard, for the past couple of weeks. Turn your

transponder off, get out, turn your transponder on, unload and back and forth and back and forth.

Now --

QUEST: Do we have any idea just how much -- I think I've anticipated -- how much oil is getting out this way?

[16:20:02]

GOLDMAN: Yes, so before the war, we had 20 million barrels coming out of the Strait of Hormuz, 20 percent of all oil across the world. Now, it

depends on who you ask.

If you're looking just at transponder data, you get four million barrels. If you look at what the U.S. government that has eyes on the water, what

they are saying, it is closer to nine.

Now, you do need to do a little bit of math here because there is also oil getting piped out the other way across Saudi Arabia, through the Red Sea,

so that you need to account for to get back to the amount pre-war. So you're looking at 16, still less.

QUEST: Okay, but is that sufficient oil to hold the line on the price essentially? Yes, it would be nice to have more, but with demand being

lower out of China anyway in some cases and we know that there are other factors at play, is this sufficient to hold the line?

GOLDMAN: Well, the market is giving you the answer, Richard, because what we've seen over the past couple weeks is that we've had this return to

market fundamentals, right? Where before the President would say we are very close to a deal and oil would start to fall close to $70.00 a barrel.

At one point, below the number that we had before the war. Now, the President is saying something very different. It is that we are going to

strangle Iran, and we are going to make sure that they economically need to give in to us, because this fighting isn't working anymore.

And so the market is pricing oil based on supply and demand and what it is telling us at $90.00 a barrel is that there is sufficient supply. Now, the

big concern is that we have a refining problem. What are we going to do with all of this oil? That's what the market is telling us right now.

QUEST: We will talk about refining on another occasion, I fear.

Thank you, David Goldman.

GOLDMAN: Thank you.

QUEST: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is facing calls for a wartime election from his former Defense Minister.

Zelenskyy dismissed Mykhailo Fedorov last month over disagreements with the country's Armed Forces commander. That decision sparked rare protests in

Kyiv. Fedorov has now taken to YouTube to criticize how the country is being run.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MYKHAILO FEDOROV, FORMER MINISTER OF DEFENSE OF UKRAINE (through translator): -- facing a systemic governance crisis. The old system lives

by its own rules. Too often it protects itself, fears change, makes decisions slowly and may punish the initiative while rewarding loyalty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

QUEST: CNN's Nick Paton Walsh, who only recently spoke to President Zelenskyy in Kyiv last week, now reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, it is a remarkable call from the Defense Minister, dismissed from his post

just a matter of weeks ago, asking ultimately for what may be practically impossible.

When the idea of elections was first floated by President Trump last year, we asked many experts about what it would take to have a vote that would

meet kind of European standards, that Ukraine could hold its head high about and the answer we got was three to six months in peace time and

Ukraine is still at war with no end to the conflict indeed in sight.

And so the great risk here is potentially for Ukraine to push itself into an election that yields a result that is challenged, seems illegitimate

that essentially feeds a Russian narrative already there. They are suggesting that President Zelenskyy is illegitimate because Martial Law in

wartime has meant his term has extended past that which it would normally be.

Now, Fedorov has suggested there might be some marvel. He is a genius innovator that could enable them to hold a fair vote in wartime, that they

need to try and achieve that. But there are massive challenges. What do you do if you have a sort of smartphone solution to this? With the pensioners

who live mostly offline, what do you do with the millions of Ukrainians who are abroad as refugees? What do you do with the millions of Ukrainians

fighting on the front line? Do you tell them to take a break from defending the homeland, to step back and cast their votes?

Anyone potentially left out of this could have cause to say that the result is illegitimate, and that's far worse. Frankly, I think many Ukrainians

would argue, than sticking with what they currently indeed have.

At the same time, President Zelenskyy is suffering in the opinion polls. It is fair to say wartime leaders often do. They have to make very unpopular

choices over what is nearly five years now for Zelenskyy and Fedorov has the ability to stand there, having essentially left his post after clashing

with the Old Guard of the military top brass wanting reforms that they seem to resist, and then demanding his old job back.

Perhaps Fedorov may himself be aware that holding a vote is tough, but essentially this crisis now has taken President Zelenskyy from a month ago,

having Fedorov as an innovating, reforming, youthful Defense Minister, pushing an onslaught against Crimea, changes in how Ukraine pulls its

Defense contracts together to now seeing Fedorov as kind of a new column in Ukrainian politics.

[16:25:23]

There to remind Ukrainians about the longevity of Zelenskyy, that he hasn t had an election. Demand change and reform, potentially. Yes, that's good,

because it suggests Ukrainian democracy is still certainly alive. But remember, this is wartime. Russia will exploit that internal weakness. It

will push any electoral bids or anything in that process with misinformation to try and disrupt it. The country is still under nightly

assault, it is worth reminding people as well.

And President Zelensky has now survived a couple of crises, one involving a corruption scandal in his inner circle, another one involving the departure

of Fedorov himself, and now this will continue to raise questions about his longevity.

So perhaps what Ukraine needs ideologically, a reminder that its democracy is robust and its able to have this internal debate. But in wartime,

something Russia will likely lean into, and ultimately, this sort of disunity isn't going to help Ukraine win or even bring the war to an end.

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

QUEST: As you and I continue tonight, A.I. data centers have become a political question, all ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

In just a moment, Kara Swisher and I will discuss the growing discourse over these centers. And also, what does it all mean? QUEST MEANS BUSINESS.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

QUEST: Trivago says it has ramped up spending on A.I. tools for its employees this year. Through July, it has shelled out more than five times

on more than total A.I. systems than it did in all of last year, and it seems to be paying off.

Trivago says its staff is saving 55 minutes on tasks each day. That's up from 53 percent from last year.

Trivago has also rolled out new A.I. features for users. Its MCP Server lets them compare Trivago's hotel prices directly within other A.I.

platforms like Claude and ChatGPT.

[16:30:27]

Johannes Thomas is the chief executive and managing director of Trivago, joins me now.

Johannes, the difficulty here is how much and where to spend and when too much is too much, isn't it? Because it's the old argument of identifying

the most important part of the spend.

JOHANNES THOMAS, CEO AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, TRIVAGO: Yes, that's absolutely true, and a big challenge for everybody who leads under these conditions

right now. It's basically a race where you learn as you go, and we have put some values in place, guardrails, that gives people a sense of where they

should invest and where they shouldn't. And practically, it's go learn. Everybody should invest 10 percent, 20 percent of their time into that.

Find value where you find value, then you really put attention and being efficient on how you scale.

And there are guardrails that are very helpful. Apart from creating transparency, where is the money invested? And whenever it becomes

relevant, are there people that ask the right questions, whether that's meaningful?

QUEST: So what is the priority in a sense? Because A.I. is everywhere. And if you take a company like Trivago, where you're comparing, you're looking

for the best value, you are competing directly now with people going directly to the LLMs. How do you decide? Explain to me the rationale for

where you put your firepower.

THOMAS: Yes, I think very big question as well because there's not one priority. One is where you think about how do I rebuild my product? So I

create value for the users or even marketing, you know, we have -- we used to have 30 actors across the world for our brand marketing because we had

local productions. Now we have one actor and this actor talks 30 languages. So it's pretty much a way how you can suddenly do way more than what we

couldn't do before or in our product your features you couldn't have before.

That's one side where we really think about how can we create value for our users tangibly, can also be customer service or our ranking, how we sort

hotels on Trivago? And then the other part is how does every person, him or herself, thinks about redesigning its processes? And that comes down to

defining playbooks, what do teams, what's the mission of teams, and then we have a staged process.

How do you rethink the way that's being done today? Because it's not any more humans doing the work.

QUEST: Right. But --

THOMAS: It's building A.I. systems that basically do the work and you are overseeing the A.I., whether it does the right thing and goes into the

right direction.

QUEST: Has this completely turned upside down the model that you had? And, you know, not only with the search issue and also with the new players that

are involved, but also the walled garden theory. It's all changed dramatically. And I just wonder how difficult that is to manage.

THOMAS: I think it is -- there is a lot of truth in there. I think the pace and how quickly things unfold, the timeline is not very clear yet.

QUEST: Right.

THOMAS: But I can -- we return to the company in mid-2023 with new leadership team members. And I can say we would by far not be where we are

today if we wouldn't have A.I.. We used to have before the pandemic, 150 people managing the content on Trivago. Today, it's a handful of people

that can do that. So it's really striking change and the ability to do way more, which I think is amazing for mid-sized companies that can (INAUDIBLE)

their employees. And suddenly go out of a niche scope and create way more value for users.

QUEST: OK. I hear what you're saying, but nothing will infuriate --

THOMAS: Yes.

QUEST: Nothing will infuriate me more than a bot or an A.I. that is simply not going to be able to answer a more complicated question that I've got.

And that seems to me -- it seems for someone like myself, it seems to me that the fighting ground is when it comes to these A.I. issues, is who's

going to give the better service as much as price.

THOMAS: I totally think so. And you asked before, people go to the LLMs to book or plan their trips. Reality is currently that they go to LLMs, they

use it for research, get a high level perspective, along with other dozens of sites.

[16:35:09]

It's basically complementary to the early part of the trip. As soon as it gets to planning and booking, it's 10 and even if it goes to booking, it's

a small single-digit percentage of people that would really do that. Maybe if you are a business traveler, highly optimized and you know your three

hotels, same city, then you ask A.I. to book something. But travel is the highest discretionary spend in -- for consumers, and you really don't want

to fuck that up when you arrive at the hotel and you brought your family or you brought your family to the wrong hotel.

And that's something where people still want a high sense of control. And I think it will take a long time until a relevant segment of travelers would

consider that.

QUEST: I'm grateful. Thank you very much for joining us. We will continue with that in just a moment.

A debate is growing in the U.S. over building new data centers. Data from Clean View shows there are nearly 1300 active centers, and there are plans

for nearly 2,000 more. A.I. data centers have become a hot issue in this year's midterm elections, and some politicians are changing their tune amid

the recent backlash.

Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro signed an executive order this week restricting data center projects. At the same time, others like

the Democrat Gina Hinojosa, who's running for governor in Texas, is opposing them as part of her platform, and several U.S. Senate candidates

are doing the same.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES TALARICO, U.S. DEMOCRATIC SENATE CANDIDATE IN TEXAS: We have to stop data centers from jacking up our utility bills. We have to stop data

centers from using up all our water. We got to stop data centers from getting sweetheart tax deals. And we got to stop data centers from being

built if they can't meet the demands of our communities.

ABDUL EL-SAYED, U.S. DEMOCRATIC SENATE CANDIDATE IN MICHIGAN: People really effing hate data centers.

SHERROD BROWN, U.S. DEMOCRATIC SENATE CANDIDATE IN OHIO: They're coming in gobbling up farmland. They're sucking up water. They're driving utility

rates up.

DAN OSBORN, U.S. INDEPENDENT SENATE CANDIDATE IN NEBRASKA: They're tired of higher healthcare costs, of data centers that drive up their energy costs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

QUEST: Kara Swisher is with me, host of "On and Pivot" podcasts.

Kara, is this the most obvious example of nimbyism? Everybody is using A.I. up the wazoo, but nobody wants the data center in their backyard.

KARA SWISHER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: It's not how I would characterize it. I think the tech companies have come in and done a lot of NDAs and quick

building without consulting the areas they're in. And these things, they use up a lot of water and they -- some of them are gas powered. They're

noisy. And so I think people just are sick of being pushed around by tech. And so this is a proxy for anger over a number of things, whether it's

social media, whether it's billionaires not paying taxes, whether it's the tech guys getting all the gimmes from the Trump administration.

It's kind of -- it's all encapsulated in these data centers that are real things that they can protest. And so they're going to do that. And I think

these companies have to work more closely with local communities and address these very, I think, legitimate concerns.

QUEST: Does anything come out of these protests, did you think?

SWISHER: Yes.

QUEST: Or does the real change takes place?

SWISHER: Yes. I think like in Lansing, Michigan, I interviewed a mayor there who had a pretty good data center with a closed loop water system,

tax breaks for the citizens, all manner of things. And the people in the area still didn't want it. They just don't want it because they are worried

about all manner of things.

Now, there's lots of data centers that have been around before, and there's lots of warehouses like Amazon warehouses. But for some reason, people have

a very negative vision of A.I. right now. And I think that's what's really driving this, is they're worried about it with their jobs. And I think tech

has not adequately done anything except be villainous in many ways or appear villainous at least.

And so people just don't want to give any more things to the people that are already obscenely wealthy. And I think there are -- eventually we have

to figure out ways to do this in a way that helps citizens. But they're tired of paying up and having all the costs socialized and all the profits

privatized, and not for them.

QUEST: One of the things I've been -- the more I read about your views on these issues and about your positions, it begs the question, what role you

want to play in '28? The recent AP article --

SWISHER: Me?

QUEST: Yes, you. And by that I mean -- by that, I don't suggest you're standing.

SWISHER: Right.

QUEST: What I mean is what sort of voice do you want to put forward in '28 as somebody who has such influence?

[16:40:05]

SWISHER: Yes. You know, it's interesting because about a year ago, one of these big tech companies had me in and I -- and we were talking about data

centers and one thing. And they said, well, how do you think it is? I said, I think people hate you. Like, I think they're going to hate you even more.

And they were like, what? And I go, not personally, but kind of personally. And I think you're going to see a, you know, a buzz saw of opposition

because people have just about had it about this grifty culture that is tech fueled and especially around social media and their kids and safety

and privacy.

And it's all come to pass, which is interesting. And you see now suddenly Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio or many others are suddenly like, I was for data

centers until I was against data centers, right? They're suddenly because voters. I rely on voters and I'm going to help voters understand the good

and the bad things. That's why I had that mayor in to talk about things that work. But I also -- I'm always with the voters and not with these big

companies because they'll take whatever they can.

And I think people are now sort of reasserting their power and they should through the ballot box. And you can see it in these results, and you can

see it in the shifts of these politicians. And so they have to answer to the voters going forward.

QUEST: Can you see a scenario where you would go further than just take a position on the issue, but actually might take a position on the candidate?

SWISHER: Oh, yes. No, I asked them about every candidate. I think every candidate is going to be asked about tech, their influence, and these data

centers. And again, data centers are just a proxy for a number of other issues. Who's going to regulate A.I.? What is it going to do? Where is the

privacy? What about the dangerous parts of A.I. of which there are many? What about my kids?

You know, I'm going to be asking them all those questions, as I always do, but I think it's going to become a much bigger issue in -- it's already an

issue in 2026, but it's going to be a big issue in the presidential race. Where do you stand on these incredibly rapacious companies? We're kind of

in the Gilded Age again. And what should we get from them rather than they take from us, which is what they've been doing for two decades now?

QUEST: I love that idea of the Gilded Age again and what we can get back.

SWISHER: It's (INAUDIBLE).

QUEST: Kara, good to see you -- yes. Absolutely nothing. Nothing wrong with a bit of gilding.

SWISHER: We're going to get a bit of the gold in the Oval Office. That guild is going at some point. But everything else.

QUEST: Kara, good to see you. Thank you as always. I'm grateful. Thank you.

SWISHER: Thank you, Richard.

QUEST: I need to apologize to you. Our previous guest before Kara did swear and use the word that you have a right not to hear in your own home on a

network like CNN. He didn't mean to, said without thought, it doesn't matter. You have a right not to be offended in your own home from a network

of your choice. I apologize.

And that's QUEST MEANS BUSINESS tonight. I'm Richard Quest. Whatever you're up to, I hope it's profitable.

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