Everything tied to the data center is suddenly suspect. Can Big Tech fix it?

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Everything tied to the data center is suddenly suspect. Can Big Tech fix it?Published Sun, Jun 28 20266:09 PM EDTJim Cramer@jimcramer I sure didn't want what happened to occur, at least not during my vacation, of all things. But it did, and we have to deal with the fallout head-on because it came as such a surprise to many. Imagine for a moment there were five geese — Amazon , Alphabet , Microsoft , Meta Platforms , and Apple — and they were laying golden eggs like mad. No other stocks have consistently produced eggs like these five. It was like a fairy tale. Now that the fairy tale ended a long time ago, their incredible businesses, tremendous leadership, and franchises — moats — keep them a big part of the S & P 500 and the biggest part of tech, which is the biggest part of everything. As long as nothing encroaches on their territories, these mega-caps can continue to invent and profit with their core businesses generating consistent gains. All you had to do was feed them your money, and they turned it into gold. Suddenly, it seems like the geese are being slaughtered. But that's just exchange-traded funds talking. The pain the geese feel — and they are still very much alive — seems existential. The fact is, however, that it's not. Not at all. What's happened is that they are producing okay eggs, good for scrambling. But you didn't buy them to own egg producer Cal-Maine , did you? Last week, I wrote a piece about what I would do if I were a hedge fund manager — basically, go short ahead of Micron's earnings (last Wednesday) and then figure out how to get back in at a lower price. I, too, didn't want to take the gains. I, too, recognize that these companies aren't any less great, even though they do a lot of poaching. Someone should step back and realize that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, while quite brilliant, has not been able to put together a dream team. In fact, anyone who knows pro sports knows that a dream team is the kiss of death. It's now all hate and kisses. What really did happen here? Let's review. First, this whole space-race build-out for data centers has caught the eye of every politician and populist group, and these companies, save Meta and Apple, which have put together institutions designed to build things here on Earth — a commendable gesture, but not one that is getting enough praise. I know it: I study Apple's Advanced Manufacturing Fund and its efforts to onshore silicon, and I am suitably impressed. Billions of dollars make a difference. As well as the billions of dollars Meta is investing in its America's Workforce Academy, which will help train the people we need to build data centers. Decades of four-year liberal arts grads can't turn a screwdriver to hook up the transformers to the electrical system. I digress. The problem is that nobody, at this point, cares at all what they do. They can give away free candy at the corner of Wall and Broad, and no one would take it. They certainly wouldn't take it on Mission Street in San Francisco or anywhere in Seattle. And, yes, it looks like they aren't taking the candy in that warren of streets around Congress. These companies didn't realize the consequences. They are just beginning to figure out the consequences, and now everyone — I mean everyone, including the people who should like them — is against them. So, they are now viewed as a national plague. Of course, it doesn't have to be like this, but for many investors, it's too late. And that's because when you combine it with my second point — the coming white-collar job loss tsunami that almost no one has seen because there are still jobs galore — you get a genuine Stephen King boogeyman, a Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Pennywise is a fantasy. So it is the job loss situation. We happen to have two things going that are being conflated: a severe shortage of blue-collar workers, because of generations of looking down on those jobs or exporting them to other countries, and a white-collar workforce that is scared to death every time they read that a hyperscaler has come out with a program that will take their job away. Which brings me to my third point: These hyperscalers are phenomenal, and they can do things faster and make us smarter, but if we are not at the tiller, they will make mistakes that will end our careers. Sure, they are good at call centers and document creation. The agents do a magnificent job as force multipliers. But with the exception of a small handful of companies that were overstaffed or have pivoted to new businesses — who the heck knows what Oracle is really doing — it just hasn't happened yet. What we learned from the SpaceX IPO Let's put these three points together in a way that can be investable, or uninvestable, for that matter: the geese produce eggs that aren't that sp