When John D. Rockefeller built his empire on oil, he mastered extraction, refinement, and ruthless monopoly tactics. Today’s AI barons are playing the exact same game with data—except the barrels are clicks and the pipelines are algorithms. In this episode, we:

- Trace a 150-year playbook—from Gilded Age robber barons to modern digital titans

- Unpack the data-scraping and lobbying battles fueling the AI gold rush

- Debate whether understanding history can actually change human nature (hint: probably not)

📖 For a deeper exploration of these echoes across eras and a side-by-side playbook comparison, check out the full article here.

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