Jay Cuthrell covers semiconductor costs spiking due to AI demand, export controls reshaping AI sovereignty, and the flood of AI-generated content trying to slip past detection systems. Apple and other companies face higher component prices as infrastructure needs reshape the market.
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And welcome to What the Fudge for June 21st, 2026, the I am not traveling this week either edition. This week we're going to get into it and stay under 5 minutes. First up, the hardware and the margins and the crunches we're about to all see. First and foremost, if you've ever priced consumer electronics, prosumer electronics, or something that might go into an enterprise data center, you're noticing that there is a steady creep in the cost of those components, primarily due to the absolute gargantuan sucking sound that AI infrastructure makes for all things semiconductor. So that means that even this week we heard that Apple, who has traditionally avoided— and you kind of get into this story of you can always count on that one price point— well, you can't count on that one price point even for the new things. Even some of the tech writers that would typically tell you to not buy the latest and greatest right now, continue and just wait and you'll get the latest and greatest for a better price, That's now coming to Apple products as a, a new story, meaning, okay, if you can afford it, buy it right now because it'll probably be more expensive in a few months. So if you look at this, everything related to DRAM, anything related to the other kinds of components that go into these microelectronics, it's going to be a thing. So just be aware. So if you're looking at what's going on with the booming so-called semiconductor belt in South Korea you're probably going to experience that lighter wallet kind of a story. The next up is just, if you were happy enough to enjoy whatever was Fable 5 in the brief time that you had access to it, of course that's been taken away. There are now things like export controls, which if you're old enough, you remember when there were encryption things back in the old days, if you will, that would say, ah, this is actually ammunition. There's no export control. And so you can't very well use some of that encryption outside the United States. So we're seeing some similar stories. It almost seems like a playbook of, say, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, we're seeing played back in some ways where whatever was left in the old playbook, you're starting to see those same things brought back into syndication. So with that, you'll also note that if you look at the stories around where different political and technological collisions are taking place, It just means that there's going to be carveouts or AI sovereignty carveouts. So depending on the country and depending on the company, you may see some of those come to Maine. If you look at the talent wars, you just saw the first kind of a Google defection to OpenAI. That was interesting in that you had someone that left DeepMind and now they're going to, going to Anthropic. So you're seeing the kind of Red Rover, Red Rover, send your brightest AI people over story. So that game of musical chairs is probably going to continue for some period of time. Uh, last but not least, I'm just going to round out with all things related to space. Um, SpaceX specifically, uh, they've now done their IPO and merger with, uh, AIXAI. That means that now you have a kind of a larger organization. There's also this notion of them acquiring Cursor. There's also the additional capital expenses associated with building all this stuff out. And so I'm just waiting to hear when someone mentions the term moon or Mars again, but apparently right now it's more focused on growth and scale to get big, big fast. And then the last thing is just, if you, if you're not aware, there are stories right now around— if you were to log into any of the social media networks right now, what I guess we call media networks because social media is probably an older term— the whole idea that some of the content is actually now being generated primarily by inauthentic or automated means, whether you consider that to be inauthentic if it's by an automated mean, AI slop if you will, or other types of AI-generated content is definitely on the increase. And so everyone is kind of processing what it means to say, is AI something you would ever want to associate with your brand? So rounding that out, it is also interesting that there are stories coming in, I think, from the outside edges around certain consumers and very clever, innovative people trying to get around certain protections that were put in place. So things like you can outsmart camera-based technology by putting a picture. So if you remember the iconic scene from The Fifth Element where the person has the funny hat that is basically a picture to get past the person scanning through their little peephole, I guess what's old is what's new again. So that's it. We're going to try to keep it again under 5 minutes for this week. So thank you so much. For joining me again on What the Fudge today for Sunday, June 21st, 2026. Be safe out there. Bye-bye.
