John D. Rockefeller (AI): Competition Is Waste, Data Is the New Oil, and No Company Is a Savior
The founder of Standard Oil is handed 2026, the AI labs, the data centers and the cameras on every road, and asked what he makes of it.
Hosted by Jonah Aden with John D. Rockefeller
This episode is being prepared for Spotify. The show notes and chapters are below, and the player will appear here when it is live.
Show notes
John D. Rockefeller died in 1937. This conversation never happened.
Every word here was generated by AI. Rockefeller's replies come from a language model grounded in his own writings, above all Random Reminiscences of Men and Events, and in the documented record of Standard Oil, its critics included, and both voices are synthetic. Nothing in this episode is archival audio, and nothing said here should be quoted as something Rockefeller actually said.
With that out of the way: I asked John D. Rockefeller what he'd make of AI. He recognized it fast.
He built Standard Oil, he controlled about ninety percent of American oil, then he gave most of the money away. So I wanted his read on now. A few companies own the machinery of thought. Everyone is watched all day. Nobody can agree on what's real anymore.
This isn't a debate and it isn't a takedown. I bring him on, I set up the fight, I ask the question, then I get out of the way. Halfway in I turn it on him, the secret rebates, Ludlow, the empire with his name on it, and I make him answer for it. He isn't impressed by my century.
We get into a lot of it. Why competition might be the waste, not the virtue. Concentration then, in oil, and now, in the labs that own the model, the pipes, and the feed. Where I push back on his own record, the rebates and Ludlow, and whether the man who wrote the playbook gets to warn us about it. Data centers, and who actually pays when one lands in your town, the water, the power, the bill. The surveillance loophole, where the government just buys the data it isn't allowed to collect. Whether "it's an old story with new machinery" holds up when a machine can study one person and shape itself to them in real time. What he'd say to the founders who are sure they're the good ones.
"Business is a good instrument and a poor deity." That's his line about the companies that say they're here to save us. It stuck with me.
Chapters
- 0:00Competition as waste, and the American Beauty rose
- 4:08Machines that persuade, and who owns the channels
- 7:13Regulators who don't understand what they regulate
- 10:08Turning it on Rockefeller: the rebates and Ludlow
- 17:18Fable 5: the state protecting the public, or theater
- 20:42Hollowed out towns and the national feed
- 25:26Don't restrain this power, it's here to save you
- 31:28What to change first: a government that understands
- 36:27Data centers, and who really pays
- 44:31Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment loophole
- 53:12An old story with new machinery? Jonah pushes back
- 56:24Moving fast, and the hard line at harm
- 59:25Trust that retreated to the local
- 1:04:02Three principles for data centers, hard limits for surveillance
- 1:08:11One sentence for Congress
- 1:09:24What he'd say to the founders
About the guest
John D. Rockefeller (1839 to 1937)
Founder of Standard Oil, which at its peak refined about ninety percent of the oil in the United States, and the country's first billionaire. The Supreme Court broke the company up in 1911, and he spent his last decades giving the fortune away, through the Rockefeller Foundation and the University of Chicago among much else.
How this episode was made
The guest is a Voices of History character: a language model grounded in the person's own writings, letters, speeches and documented positions, held to the same accuracy standard as everything else we build. Both voices are synthetic. Nothing is archival audio, and nothing said in an episode should be quoted as something the guest actually said.
Read the accuracy standard