In today’s newsletter I discuss how it’s a blue collar AI revolution, BTS is creating their own Oreo, "The Mandalorian and Grogu" crushed it at the box office, SpaceX’s Starlink just landed a contract with American Airlines, Pope Leo XIV warns about AI, Anthropic to pay $1.25 billion dollars a month to rent AI data center from xAI, Ferrari launches their first EV and everyone gets upset, and Simone Biles teases will she or won’t she compete in the upcoming 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.

Let’s get into it!

The AI boom is shaking up the job market in ways very few people saw coming, including me. Construction companies building these new data centers are having a hard time keeping up with AI’s insatiable demand for more computing power. There’s a real shortage of the blue collar workers that are building these new AI factories, including skilled electricians, plumbers, and HVAC technicians. It turns out that in order for companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to deliver AI to enterprise companies around the world we need a massive workforce of blue collar tradespeople, except there aren’t enough to go around, and that’s going to be a real problem for the AI revolution. Let’s get into it.

We’re hearing so much these days about software and algorithms, but the physical reality of AI is that it requires an insane amount of real world hardware like buildings, electrical wiring, plumbing, and air conditioning for cooling. All these new AI data center projects require a workforce of between 1,000-5,000 blue collar tradespeople to build each new data center, but here in the U.S. we’re facing a severe shortage of qualified and experienced blue collar trade professionals in the roles of electricians, plumbers, and HVAC technicians. So how are we going to continue building new AI data centers when we just don’t have enough experienced blue collar professionals to get the job done?

The answer may be a workforce redevelopment on a scale we haven’t seen since the Industrial Revolution.

This massive building boom has left construction companies scrambling to find specialized talent. Telecom titans like AT&T and Verizon, alongside major internet infrastructure developers and even the private equity company Blackstone, are aggressively searching for a workforce that simply does not exist on the scale of what is needed right now. The U.S. is facing a deep skilled trades deficit, leaving hundreds of thousands of critical blue collar positions vacant. Industry data shows that electricians are experiencing an annual shortage of roughly 81,000 unfilled jobs, with overall projections requiring 300,000 new electricians over the next ten years. The pipeline for plumbers is in even worse shape, with estimates pointing to a shortfall of 500,000-550,000 skilled plumbers. When it comes to heating, ventilation, and cooling, or HVAC for short, there’s a desperate need for over 500,000 HVAC technicians just to balance the current supply and demand.

And all those new AI data centers require energy to power them. The physical strain on our power grid is making this blue collar worker shortage even more intense. A single large AI data center can consume between 100 megawatts to 1 gigawatt of electricity a year, which is enough to power over 800,000 individual homes. Because these AI workloads run continuously in order to train new AI Large Language Models (LLMs), tech companies are forced to completely overhaul the local utility networks where these new AI data centers are being built. Building the heavy industrial substations and running the miles of heavy copper wiring requires a level of advanced industrial expertise that cannot be automated. This grid connection bottleneck has pushed data center construction spending into the tens of billions of dollars, creating an urgent race to secure commercial electrical contractors before regional power grids max out their capacity, which can cause prices to skyrocket for consumers.

While corporations struggle to fill these high paying blue collar jobs, a record number of new college graduates are tossing their caps into the air this season. Unfortunately, a vast number of these young adults are about to realize that the expensive four year degree they spent years earning is not a golden ticket into the workforce anymore.

Let me say that again: A four year degree used to guarantee you a high paying job when you graduated, but those days are behind us now.

The current white collar job market is plagued by extreme tech sector anxieties, which has triggered a big shift toward trade schools and vocational two year programs for people pursuing careers in the trades. Enrollment in these career focused tracks is growing much faster than traditional four year universities, because students want practical hands-on training, and they don’t want to graduate with six figures of student loan debt. Public two year community colleges that focus on vocational training for the trades are seeing double digit year after year enrollment growth, expanding by nearly 20% to roughly 871,000 students nationwide. Total vocational trade program enrollment has jumped by nearly 5% across the board, giving rise to a new toolbelt generation of young people who are intentionally bypassing the four year college track for secure, lucrative careers in the trades.

Crushing student loans, and low prospects for landing a good paying white collar job straight out of college, is fueling an educational realignment of professions in the U.S.. The total outstanding student loan debt in the United States has reached a staggering $1.77 trillion dollars, with the average undergraduate borrower leaving school owing $35,530 dollars in student loans. College graduates are starting to realize that entering the workforce with a heavy monthly student loan payment, and an uncertain entry-level corporate job market, is too big of a financial risk to take. Trade schools are offering a starkly different reality, often costing less than one third of a traditional college education, while allowing students to enter the workforce years earlier.

By choosing an apprenticeship over a lecture hall some new blue collar workers are eliminating student loans altogether, while building a solid financial foundation thanks to the immediate job offers they’re receiving from an industry that can’t hire enough skilled tradespeople. Major construction firms, infrastructure developers, and industrial companies are now going straight to vocational centers to build their talent pipelines. They’re partnering directly with trade programs to sponsor students' certifications, and then guaranteeing them high paying jobs before they even graduate. That’s the length construction companies are going to in order to secure the next generation of blue collar technicians.

The blue collar AI revolution is being fueled by the construction of massive new data centers and renewable energy projects, a wave of baby boomers retiring, and the expansion of our power grids. Specialized solar and electric vehicle electricians are struggling to keep up with projects as the nation upgrades its power grids, pushing median income for a solar and electric vehicle electrician to between $85,000-$95,000 dollars a year, while master electricians are easily pulling in well over $125,000 dollars a year. Wind turbine service technicians are experiencing a 50% updraft in the salaries they bring home of between $62,000-$88,000 dollars a year. And in the up and down industry of elevator and escalator repair and installation, mechanics in the field are earning salaries of between $99,000-$130,000 dollars a year.

All those building supplies and equipment need to get to the job site somehow. The U.S. trucking industry currently faces an estimated shortfall of 60,000=80,000 drivers. Commercial truck drivers continue to be the backbone of the American supply chain, with many truck drivers pulling in over $100,000 dollars a year, and that’s before overtime. Heating and cooling technicians are also riding a wave of building automation upgrades, with salaries of between $80,000-$90,000 dollars a year straight out of trade school, while some industrial specialists helping to build new AI data centers are making over $150,000 dollars a year.

The U.S. is staring at a demographic cliff. The average age of a skilled tradesperson is currently over 40 years old, meaning there’s a massive wave of skilled blue collar technicians who will be retiring over the next decade, and there’s not enough young people entering the trades to make up for those retiring. Economists refer to this phenomenon as structural unemployment, where the skills of an available workforce aren’t aligned with the needs of an industry.

As experienced workers retire from the job market, they’re leaving behind an insane void of institutional knowledge that can’t be easily replaced by trade schools. It has to be learned on the job, with boots on the ground, and by getting your hands dirty. This baby boomer retirement wave is hitting the market at the exact same time that the demand for AI data centers, and the infrastructure to support them, is accelerating, creating a perfect storm where the salaries of tradespeople are climbing just to keep up with the increased demand for these skilled professions.

The AI revolution can’t continue to grow without a blue collar workforce of skilled electricians, plumbers, and HVAC technicians to build the data centers and infrastructure we need to power our energy grid.

In order to meet the industry’s demands, an increasing number of students are turning to two year community colleges and trade schools. There, they can learn the skills they’ll need to grow their careers and land them high paying jobs straight out of school, avoiding the student loan debt that is burdening many four year college graduates today.

BTS has partnered with Oreos to release a limited edition hotteok-flavored Oreo. The K-pop group supergroup worked with Oreo over the last two years to develop the new flavor, which features purple cookie wafers and a brown sugar pancake-flavored inner creme filling. That sounds delicious! The new BTS themed Oreo will begin rolling out to more than 80 countries worldwide in early June. The cookies will feature 13 unique embossments designed by the seven BTS band mates including RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook.

Oreo is the world's best-selling cookie. It is owned by Mondelēz International, which bought Oreo in October 2012. Today Oreo is Mondelēz's largest brand, with the branding bringing in more than $4 billion dollars in sales worldwide in 2025.

Other artists and celebrities have partnered with Oreo over the years to create their own Oreo flavors, including popstar Lady Gaga who created a vibrant pink and green cookie inspired by her Chromatica album. In 2025 singer and actress Selena Gomez introduced a chocolate and cinnamon flavored Oreo inspired by the traditional drink horchata of her childhood.

I’ve got a craving for BTS’s new Oreo just writing this.

Star Wars is back on the big screen, where it belongs, with the launch of "The Mandalorian and Grogu", and the box office numbers are looking huge for our favorite bounty hunter. "The Mandalorian and Grogu" brought in $104 million dollars at the domestic box office with an additional $69 million dollars from international markets. When you combine those figures together the worldwide haul for "The Mandalorian and Grogu" soars to $173 million dollars over the four day Memorial Day holiday weekend. Fans of the Mandalorian and Grogu showed up in big numbers to see Din Djarin and Baby Yoda make the move Disney’ streaming service to the big screen. Premium large formats, like IMAX, drove over half of the box office ticket sales as fans demanded the biggest screens possible to watch "The Mandalorian and Grogu".

Star Wars needed a big win, after their last individual movie “Solo: A Star Wars Story” that came out in 2018 had a very similar $103 million dollars Memorial Day holiday weekend opening, but ended its worldwide theatrical run making just $392 million dollars. It’s estimated that in the end Disney lost around $103.3 million dollars on “Solo: A Star Wars Story”.

I know my family absolutely loves "The Mandalorian and Grogu” and we can’t wait to watch it when it comes to Disney+.

SpaceX just landed a major commercial contract by signing a deal with American Airlines to bring Starlink internet satellites to commercial flights. Under the new agreement American Airlines will install Starlink high speed Wi-Fi on more than 500 of their narrowbody Airbus aircraft. This upgrade will enable their passengers to stream video, play online games, and access high speed internet at 30,000 feet. American Airlines plans to begin the rollout during Q1 of 2027 to upgrade its short haul domestic and international routes.

Landing this Starlink deal with American Airlines gives SpaceX a boost as they prepare for their IPO this Summer. Wall Street is closely watching the company as it targets a massive public valuation between $1.75-$2 trillion dollars for its upcoming stock market debut.

Newly disclosed financial documents show that SpaceX brought in $18.7 billion dollars in revenue in 2025 with Starlink serving as the primary financial engine of the business generating $11.4 billion dollars of that total, or 61% of the company’s total revenue. Despite that out of this world revenue SpaceX still reported a net loss of $4.94 billion dollars to their heavy spending on infrastructure and other costs related to their new Starship and Super Heavy booster.

SpaceX has already signed other contracts with major operators including United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Alaska Airlines. The lone holdout among the major domestic carriers is Delta Air Lines, which some say chose poorly and decided to go with Starlink’s rival Amazon Leo. The jury is still out on if that will prove to be a good choice, or a costly mistake.

Pope Leo XIV isn’t pulling any punches when it comes to how he feels about AI. He just issued a direct warning about the growing use of autonomous weapons systems and the broader societal impacts of AI. And can you really blame him? I mean this is some scary stuff. Scary enough that Anthropic wouldn't back down when the Pentagon threatened to end their contract if Anthropic didn’t agree to allowing the Pentagon to have unfettered access to Anthropic's models to conduct mass domestic surveillance of American citizens and enable to ful autonomous use of lethal weapons.

Speaking at the presentation of Pope Leo XIV first major AI focused papal manifesto, entitled “Magnifica Humanitas”, the Pope said that some AI driven military technologies are becoming practically beyond any human reach to govern effectively. The 43,000 word encyclical represents the most significant statement from the Catholic Church regarding the ethical boundaries of advanced software. An encyclical is a high level official letter written by the Pope that is sent to all bishops of the Roman Catholic Church worldwide in order to guide Catholic teaching. Pope Leo XIV called for the complete disarmament of AI in warfare, emphasizing that humans must retain meaningful control over decisions that carry lethal consequences.

No word yet from the Pentagon, or whether they will seek to label the Pope as a "supply chain risk" like they threatened to do to Anthropic when they stood up for AI safeguards.

Anthropic just signed an agreement to buy computing power from xAI, which is now owned by SpaceX, which are both owned by Elon Musk. Under the terms of this deal Anthropic will pay xAI $1.25 billion dollars every single month for the next 3 years to lease server capacity in SpaceX’s Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee. The deal is expected to generate over $40 billion dollars in total revenue for xAI, which sure does come at a great time as SpaceX gets ready to blast off with their long awaited IPO.

This odd bedfellows partnership between Anthropic and xAI runs through May 2029, but can broken by either side with a 90-day notice, you know, like if xAI wakes up one day and realizes they are actually competing against Anthropic and doesn’t feel like helping the competition anymore.

xAI reported $6.4 billion dollars in operating losses against $3.2 billion dollars in revenue for 2025. Data usage for Grok, which is xAI’s flagship chatbot, has declined in recent months leaving the company with idle server capacity that they’re not trying to monetize but renting it out to competitors. Wait, did I read that right? That’s certainly an interesting business model. Good luck with that xAI.

Ferrari is shaking up the ultra luxury sports car market with the launch of their Ferrari Luce, which is the company's first fully electric vehicle, but it’s not cheap to make an electric sports car of the caliber of Ferrari’s level of perfection. The Ferrari Luce starts at a staggering $640,000 dollars, and that’s just for the base model. This electric sports car shatters the traditional sports car expectations by featuring four doors and five seats, with an eye toward super wealthy families, you know, who take a Ferrari to their son’s soccer game.

To create the new Luce the company partnered with the famous design studio LoveFrom, which was founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, to design the car. The car’s clean styling features a top section made almost entirely of glass supplied by the American glass company Corning. And drivers lucky enough to rev the four eclectic motors will get to experience an impressive 1,035 horses that rocket the car from 0-60 in under 2.5 seconds flat. Designer Jony Ive kept the interior from becoming a giant clunky touchscreen by keeping physical dials and a glass gear selector. For true car enthusiasts the classic sound of a Ferrari revving its engine an external amplification system pumps the real vibration sounds of the electric motors into the cabin at speeds of up to 193 miles per hour.

Ferrari’s not turning away from the roaring gas engines they’re known for, but they are dipping their toes into the EV market, but not without some trepidation. Ferrari’s stock price plunged by as much as 8% on the NYSE when they debuted the new vehicle, with investors openly questioning Ferrari’s strategy as rivals like Porsche and Lamborghini are scaling back their EV plans due to weak global demand. While Ferrari’s stock price might be in the dumps, at least their new EV is purring like a kitten.

Simone Biles is teasing the sports world with will she or won’t she compete in the upcoming 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. She’s already the most decorated Olympic gymnast in history with 11 Olympic medals, including 7 gold, 2 silver, and 2 bronze medals.

Now she’s faced with the decision of her lifetime. It takes years of grueling preparation and training to compete in the Olympics. If Simone Biles’ last appearance at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where she won 3 gold medals and 1 silver medal, is any indication she’s more than ready to compete in the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympics.

It’s not a question of whether Simone Biles can be in Olympic shape to compete, it’s more a question of her mental health. At the 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympics she experienced "the twisties," which is a mental block causing a gymnast to lose spatial awareness in mid-air. So yea, that sounds like a serious issue when you consider Simone Biles flies as high as 13 feet off the ground when she does one of her vaults.

When not competing in the Olympics Simone Biles has been busy growing her business empire.
She’s grown her net worth to around $25 million dollars, and works with global brands like Visa, Athleta, United Airlines, and Beats by Dre who pay her more than $10 million dollars a year for brand endorsements. In 2024 Simone Biles signed a two-year partnership deal with K18 to help promote the company’s molecular repair hair oils and masks.

A competitor on the mat and in the boardroom. I’d say that’s a perfect score.

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.