# Alphabet's 100-Year Debt Bet and AI Scam Risks

**Podcast:** Marketplace
**Published:** 2026-02-11

## Transcript

We always recommend Shopify.
It took us from an idea to a real business.
We got set up, I think, in less than a day with very little effort.
We could just focus on the supply chain to the product development.
Shopify gives us the ability to customize without the complexity.
We can change something without introducing fragility or having to pay a developer.
We're Thirsty Turtle, and we leveled up our business with Shopify.
Start your free trial at Shopify.com/slash AU.
Today on the show, we'll talk about crypto, retail, AI scams, and we'll talk about a company placing a bet on the idea that it will outlive us all.
From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.
In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kyris Doll.
It's Tuesday, February 10th.
Good to be here with you.
Okay, humor me here.
Grab your crystal ball.
Can you tell me where the economy will be in one year?
Yes?
No?
Then how about in 100 years?
An impossible task, I know.
Because there's no way of understanding what economic policy will look like, how AI will shape our work, or even whether the companies we work for will still be here.
Well, Alphabet is promising it will be around in a century, making tech products and services, and also making interest payments on corporate debt.
The parent company of Google is issuing tens of billions of dollars worth of bonds this week, including some in the UK with a 100-year maturity date.
Marketplace's Daniel Ackerman looks into why Alphabet is going so long on its debt and who would actually buy these bonds.
Alphabet has plans to spend big, says Dan Ives, a tech analyst with Wedbush Securities, on big data centers.
They're essentially building out new cities.
It's a building Vegas from the desert in the 1950s.
And that is gonna take a lot of cash over the course of many years.
We're gonna be building out data centers for a long time to come.
Gilluria is an analyst with D.A.
Davidson.
And he says Alphabet's sale of century-long bonds is something of a flex on its competitors in the AI race.
This is a big old game of chicken.
We are gonna drive as fast as we can.
I'm gonna borrow for a hundred years because I'm that confident that I'm gonna win.
That's what Google is doing.
There are buyers interested in bonds that won't mature until 2126.
Gerald Cohen, an economist at the University of North Carolina, says some money managers think very far ahead.
Insurance companies, pension companies have very long dated liabilities.
Alphabet had no problem finding buyers for its century bonds today, according to Bloomberg.
But Cohen says it's hard to say how this will all work out for Alphabet or for bond investors.
The last tech company to issue a 100-year bond was the cell phone maker Motorola.
That was in 1997 before the iPhone.
The company still exists, although it doesn't exist in the same form as it did almost 30 years ago.
Those Motorola bonds are trading on the secondary market for around 80 cents on the dollar.
I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace.
Wall Street today, a little up, a little down.
We'll have the details when we do the numbers.
On again, off again, on again, repeat.
And throughout it all, we've been keeping in touch with Daniela Velasquez de Leon.
She is general manager at Organics Unlimited, a banana importer in San Diego.
Daniela, it's great to talk to you again.
Yeah, it's great to connect.
Catch me up on bananas.
Um, how is business?
Businesses is doing well ever since the full exemption on fresh produce that isn't produced domestically.
That's given us some some semblance of stability, though there's still, I mean, a lot of uncertainty in the world right now.
Mm-hmm.
You just mentioned some some worries you still have.
Uh tell me more.
Well, on the one hand, it feels like tariffs are stable for now, but at the same time, there's still a lot of uncertainty when it comes to the macroeconomic situation.
I mean, something like the strength of the dollar really affects all of the products that we're importing from abroad.
So even though we don't have the tariffs, our cost of goods has gone up over 10% year over year, just just with the strength of the dollar.
So that's pretty similar to what we were feeling with the tariffs, um, but we're not able to increase prices by that much, especially on an item like bananas that's been artificially underpriced for decades.
And then just the uncertainty around the upcoming renegotiation of the USMCA agreement is also something that has us a little nervous.
Again, I really trust and hope that we'll continue to work together, you know, between the Canada, US, and Mexico.
But there's just a lot of uncertainty right now.
Mm-hmm.
You know, even if you're in a stable time, a more stable time right now than before, I'm kind of wondering what it's like to look back on the high stress period of maybe this past summer or earlier in the year and what that cost you in sanity, but also what it actually cost your business.
I mean, I guess on one hand, it's better, you know, that you're dealing with less tariff stress now, but at the same time, was it all for nothing?
I guess I'm wondering.
I mean, if if we're getting philosophical, it helped me mentally to realize at some point you have to let go of the things you can't control.
But it did cost us our business.
I mean, I think I shared with you previously that we spent a lot of money with lawyers to try and understand what compliance would actually mean if the tariffs went into place.
Uh we also did end up paying tariffs for some time.
And that was also a lot of money.
And then also just the cost of missed investments.
We had planned on a number of investments in 2025 that didn't end up materializing because we didn't know what was going to happen.
Do you think you'll be moving ahead with some of those this year?
Very slowly.
I think we were very excited when 2025 started to get all of these projects underway.
And what 2025 has taught us is that in this climate, we need to be slow and measured.
So we do plan on making those investments, but it it will be at a much slower pace as we understand what's going to be coming down the pipeline.
How closely are you watching this Supreme Court ruling on the legality of these tariffs?
I mean, I feel like it's been any day now, every day now.
Yeah, I was following closely when the first deadline was approaching, and I have no doubt that when that decision comes out, I will hear about it all across our industry news that I do keep up with every day.
But I I've tried to stop following the news every single day like I used to, just for my own mental sanity.
Fair enough.
Daniela Velasquez de Leon is general manager at Organics Unlimited.
Thanks for talking.
Thank you.
Marketplaces Carla Javier looked into it.
Maybe expectations for December based on past behavior and spending among high-income consumers were just a little too high this time, says Katie Thomas at the Kearney Consumer Institute.
What you see here is just a little bit of acknowledgement across the board, regardless of income that people are making thoughtful purchases.
So they were still spending, but they weren't overspending.
Perhaps foregoing that extra dessert or gift.
Uncertainty about jobs, tariffs, healthcare costs, and government shutdowns could have all taken a toll on spending too, says Olivia Johnson at the University of Houston.
We cannot negate the social and cultural and political turmoil that we've been seeing that ultimately impacts consumers.
Or maybe with retailers offering deals earlier and earlier, consumers looking to save some money might have already finished their holiday shopping before December even started.
Run Sundrum is with CFRA research.
November was a stronger than expected month.
Retail sales were up, you know, 0.6% from October to November.
And so that sort of explains why, you know, maybe maybe we saw some flat growth in December.
Retail sales data, Sundrum says, can be volatile.
So he's not worried about any one month, though he will be watching as more retailers report their earnings over the next few days and weeks.
In particular, looking at same-store sales, which give the clearest picture on how a retailer performed.
I'm Carla Javier for Marketplace.
The frequency of extreme weather events have plenty of businesses looking for ways to prevent emergencies.
Out west, shutting down power is becoming a more common strategy to combat wildfire risk.
In late December, Colorado's largest utility provider, XL Energy, turned off the lights on thousands of people near Boulder.
The company says a downed power line could have ignited a fire, but the shutoff has sparked backlash instead.
Ishaan Takor reports from Boulder.
Losing power during the shortest days of the year was trying for Bob Carmichael.
He's no stranger to difficult conditions.
He's climbed mountains, explored the ends of the earth, and even made a film about extreme skiing.
I've spent a lot of time in big climbs and all kinds of stuff, but I know what I'm getting into.
I don't just get thrust into it and say, good luck.
Carmichael is almost 80 now, with hearing aids that need to be charged.
For him, the whole experience was isolating.
I felt scared.
Um cut the lights because of hurricane force winds and unseasonably warm, bone-dry conditions.
It happened nearly four years after similar weather spread the Marshall Fire.
That fire, it's Colorado's costliest.
It incinerated more than a thousand homes.
Robert Kenny is the president of Excel Colorado.
The utility started notifying customers days before it cut power, and then sent dozens of emails, texts, and social media updates.
Kenny defended the company's decision at a hearing in late January.
These were the exact same kinds of winds that were seen and that existed just prior to the Eaton and Palisades fires in Southern California.
Utilities across the West shut off power to prevent fires.
After all, no one wants another Lahaina or Altadina.
But shutoffs can be a blunt tool.
They hit the elderly, sick, and poor people hard.
Betty Devine and her roommate Beatrice Bell lost power for days.
They've lived together for years in low-income housing in Boulder.
Here's Divine.
She's my best friend.
You know, I consider her more than a sister.
We say we're sisters from another mother.
Belle has stage four breast cancer, and Divine's her caretaker.
Money is tight.
After paying for rent and utilities, they have just $300 a month to pay for medicine, groceries, and hospital bills.
The shutoff threw a wrench in their careful planning.
They lost around $200 worth of food, wiping out their reserves.
Still, they felt lucky.
Last month, Belle's doctors put her on oxygen, which means she now needs power 24-7.
We're glad that it happened before she went on oxygen.
At the same time, it it was really bad for a lot of people, and we're just one of many that that were affected.
California was the first state to cut power to prevent fires.
Michael Wara directs the climate and energy policy program at Stanford.
He says shutoffs work.
Is it a drag?
Yeah.
No one loves a power shutoff, but they really do prevent fires under the most dangerous of circumstances, where the firefighters are not going to be as effective.
Wara says that utilities like PGE have gotten much better at targeting.
So only the highest risk areas go dark.
And Wara thinks Excel will get better at shutting off power and turning it back on in the future.
It's something we have come to accept in California.
I think many other Western states are going to have to accept it as well.
Because you can't run the grid when it might kill someone by running it.
Power shutoffs are just one tool, utilities across the West use to prevent wildfires.
But they may become more common because of how hot and dry it is.
Getting used to the dark could be a new normal as more Americans learn to live with fire risk year-round.
In Boulder, I'm Ishan Takor for Marketplace.
Coming up, truly, I empathize so much with people like yourself who find these threats in the wild.
The wild is full of lions and tigers and also scammy websites.
But first, let's do the numbers.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average found 52 points, a tenth of a percent to close at 50,188.
The Nasdaq gave up 136 points, 610% to finish at 23,001.
And the SP 500 fell 23 points, a third of a percent to end at 69.41.
Wall Street analysts had been expecting Coca-Cola to report solid fourth quarter or earnings this morning.
But instead, Koch's revenues fell short of expectations.
Shares flattened 1.5%.
Bonds rose, the yield on the 10-year T-note fell to 4.13%.
You're listening to Marketplace.
We always recommend Shopify.
It took us from an idea to a real business.
We got set up, I think in less than a day, with very little effort.
We could just focus on the supply chain to the product development.
Shopify gives us the ability to customize without the complexity.
We can change something without introducing fragility or having to pay a developer.
We're Thirsty Turtle, and we leveled up our business with Shopify.
Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash AU.
This is Marketplace.
I'm Kristen Schwab.
There's been a stunning sell-off happening in the Bitcoin market.
The price of the cryptocurrency as of this airing is hovering around $70,000.
It's recovered just a hair after tanking last week.
In total, Bitcoin has lost 40% of its value since this past fall.
And we're seeing similar stories play out in other corners of the crypto market.
That's left investors asking, why did this happen?
And why now?
Marketplace's Sabrie Benoch explains.
Susan Kaminar lives in Denver, Colorado, and she got into cryptocurrency around 2018 for one main reason.
Honestly, FOMO.
FOMO led me to it.
Now she does not have her whole life savings in there or anything, just an amount she was willing to gamble with.
But even so, when the price dropped last week.
Ultimately, I was still in the green, so I decided to hold.
Definitely feels like final winter in New York and a lot of places right now.
Krugman says Bitcoin has had 17 years to prove itself, and maybe time is up.
How often can you convince people that something is the currency of the future?
Where is the actual use?
It was supposed to be a safe haven, something that people would buy when deeply concerned, but we're not seeing that.
It's behaving like a speculative tech stock.
Some crypto optimists will give Krugman that.
Igor Peyic is a tech analyst and author of tech money.
We saw the narrative basically fall apart, the narrative that Bitcoin is a protection against inflation and uh government spending really much.
But actually, with every business cycle, we saw that this was not true.
When times are good, people pile in to crypto.
When times are panicky, people stampede out.
And there is a lot of anxiety about AI disruption and AI bubbles and just the world.
But that means there will be non-panicky times again one day.
I think this is just a temporary impact.
Surveys by Deutsche Bank research show Bitcoin adoption fell from 17% in the US, UK, and Europe in July to just 12% in December.
But it does still hold a lot of value.
Marion Le Boré is a senior strategist at Deutsche Bank Research.
If I looked at uh the price of Bitcoin since uh 2023, it has increased by 370%.
That is even after tanking.
Some of Bitcoin's hypergrowth was what she calls the tinkerbell effect, basically wishful thinking.
But with that fading, Le Boré says the original cryptocurrency is still kind of entrenched.
Ten years ago it was a speculative asset.
Now it's becoming much more an institutional reality.
Institutional investors may be part of the reason Bitcoin tanked so hard.
These investors sometimes invest on borrowed money and have to repay it quick.
And those investors will be back, says Beto Aparicio, senior strategic finance manager at Off Chain Labs, which is developing a type of crypto infrastructure, in part because regulators are becoming more crypto friendly.
Governments around the world are actively defining crypto regulations, right?
Everybody's trying to make sure that we have some support.
So maybe we're in crypto fimble winter, or maybe it's just a cold snap.
In New York, I'm Sabri Beneshore for Marketplace.
Nothing is really certain in this life, except death, taxes, and maybe scams.
Yes, scams have been around forever, and they evolve to be more complex and convincing as technology evolves.
Enter, of course, artificial intelligence.
AI coding agents have been getting so good that even people with little technical knowledge can program their software or build a website, including scammers.
Here's Marketplace's Megan McCarty Carino.
The other night I'm sort of half watching a spy thriller on Hulu and shopping on my phone for a hair care product.
If you must know, it was the curl moisturizing mousse from the Italian luxury brand Daviness.
Being the savvy consumer I am, I know you can sometimes end up with counterfeit beauty products, so I head over to Google to find something trustworthy.
First sponsored result, the Daviness North America official online shop.
Spoiler, it was not.
Truly, I empathize so much with people like yourself who find these threats in the wild and assume that they are legitimate.
That's Ginny Spicer, a threat intelligence analyst at cybersecurity firm Netcraft, which says last year it identified a hundred thousand AI generated websites, impersonating almost 200 different brands.
We can see the basic hallmarks of AI generation that you might see repeated in the code.
We're even watching to see how many emojis are left into the site code, because that's not something people typically do.
But on the front end, my fake Daviness website looked nearly identical to the real thing, at least on a mobile phone.
No misspellings or janky graphics.
It's not that I didn't know that sophisticated scam websites exist.
They've been around a while.
I guess I just wasn't expecting to encounter one in a Google search for a niche Italian hair product.
Charles Henderson with cybersecurity firm Coalfire says AI has changed the economics of scamming.
It's the same scam.
It's just it's cheaper to do it on a broader scale.
In the old days, my Daviness scammer would either have had to learn specialized skills or hire someone with them, spend a bunch of time building a site, and then hope enough shoppers of a relatively obscure brand handed over their credit card numbers in the short window of time before the scam inevitably got reported.
But AI makes it possible to generate dozens of official-looking sites a day with just a few prompts.
And that means the return on investments higher.
That means it's gonna be more prolific.
Smaller brands and e-commerce operations are now being targeted by imposters, says Zach Edwards, senior threat analyst at Silent Push.
You're you know, a luxury hair brand, you've never had any cyber threats targeting you, and then suddenly you get dozens of customers who are like, I lost a thousand dollars.
And so a lot of these brands are facing this challenge of how do I find these?
How do I how do I warn my customers that this could exist?
He says because fake sites are cheaper to produce, scammers don't have to be so aggressive in finding victims with unsolicited emails or text, which many consumers have grown skeptical of.
Imagine you're on a social network and you've liked a luxury brand.
A scammer can buy ads targeting people who have liked that luxury brand.
You Googled it, it was on the first page of results.
How could it be bad?
He says the usual red flags apply, like discounts that are too good to be true, but we now have to be vigilant in contexts we might not have expected.
And we've got all kinds of AI agents out there doing who knows what, says Lana Swartz, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia.
The more and more that AI becomes like infrastructural and become part of our everyday lives, the more likely we are to encounter scams and frauds.
Whether it's deep fake videos, job scams, or imposter websites, AI is scrambling the signals we use to make sense of the world.com.
I'm Megan McCarty Carino for Marketplace.
Do you consider Cardi B's presence during the Super Bowl halftime show a performance or an appearance?
And does an appearance count as a performance?
I ask because there's money on the line, and the major prediction markets don't agree.
People placed bets on whether Cardi B would perform during Bad Bunny's set.
The rapper was seen dancing along on stage, but not singing.
Poly Market has decided that yes, this counts as a performance.
Meanwhile, Calci is not picking sides.
It chose to instead settle the market at the last traded price because of ambiguity.
Kalchi saw more than $1 billion in trading volume on Sunday, a daily record high.
Jordan Manji, Sonil Maharaj, Janet Wynne, Olga Oxman, and Virginia K.
Smith are the digital team.
And I'm Kristen Schwab.
We will see you back here tomorrow.
This is APM.
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Mm.