The two tech writers I trust most in the AI age
I just learned Anthropic is paying Google for compute. Here's where I heard it — and why I trust the source.
Here’s something you probably haven’t seen in any headline: Anthropic — the company that makes Claude — is paying Google substantial money for compute. That payment is a meaningful chunk of Google Cloud’s recent growth. Part of why Google’s stock is doing well is being driven by selling AI compute to one of its main AI competitors.
I learned this from Ben Thompson and John Gruber on a recent episode of Dithering, where they were unpacking what they’d taken from Google I/O. I haven’t heard anyone else report it. And some engineers inside Google reportedly aren’t happy about the arrangement either.
This is the kind of detail that complicates the standard narrative — that AI is a zero-sum cage match where everyone is fighting everyone.
I don’t fully know what to make of it. But I’d rather be informed and confused than uninformed.
That’s the whole point of this post.
Why their business model matters
In a world where AI is changing faster than anyone can absorb, you can’t afford weak news. You need writers whose incentives don’t push them to shade the truth.
Ben Thompson runs Stratechery. John Gruber runs Daring Fireball. They’ve been writing about technology, independently, for over twenty years. They host a twice-weekly podcast together called Dithering — fifteen minutes per episode, no padding.
Here’s why their structure matters:
Thompson is funded by reader subscriptions ($15/month).
Gruber is funded by sponsors — and he has a waiting list of them, so any single sponsor walking doesn’t dent him.
Neither has ever worked for a tech company.
Neither needs access to executives at Google or Apple to keep doing what they do.
They can tell the truth as they see it. They’ve been doing that for two decades.
Note the contrast with mainstream tech journalism
Compare them to most tech reporters. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg is the obvious example. He’s a fine reporter — good at his job. But his job depends on getting the next scoop, which depends on staying in good graces with sources. That creates a quiet pressure built into the work. Not to lie. But to soften, to delay, to omit.
He’d never put it that way. But it’s there. It’s in the structure.
Thompson & Gruber don’t have that pressure.
Why two voices beat one
When two writers like this talk on a podcast, something happens that doesn’t happen when either writes solo. They self-correct. They challenge each other. They build on each other’s points. They admit when they borrowed an idea.
Gruber literally said on the recent episode, “I figured it was fine with stealing, as long as we’re honest about it.”
Thompson, in the same conversation, openly described his “personal evolution relative to Google” — meaning he changed his mind about something he’d publicly written. You almost never see that in mainstream tech coverage. Most tech writers protect their old takes the way lawyers protect a position in a brief.
Two informed people, neither incentivized to spin, comparing notes in real time. That triangulates the truth in a way a single article can’t.
What I’d recommend
Stratechery — $15/month or $150/year. Worth it. Includes Dithering.
Dithering alone — $7/month standalone. Two episodes a week, fifteen minutes each. Easy to keep up with.
Daring Fireball — free. Read when you have time.
You won’t always agree with them. You won’t always understand them. That’s fine. The goal isn’t to find people who give you simple takeaways. It’s to find people whose business model makes honest analysis possible — and who are good enough at it to be worth your attention.
In a desert of hard-to-trust news, this is an oasis. And that oasis matters more than ever in an age of fast-breaking AI news.
;-) Ernie
P.S. In the Inner Circle, we cut through the AI noise together — sharing what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s worth paying attention to. → https://ernietheattorney.net/