This Machine Kills

podcast on tech and political economy /// agitprop against innovation and capital /// hosted by @jathansadowski and @bigblackjacobin, produced by @braunestahl

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

🚨281. The Smoking Gun of Techno-Capitalism (ft. Meredith Whittaker)🚨

Our friend @mer__edith joins us for a giant discussion that bridges her historical analysis of plantation logics and industrial computation with the political economy of "open" AI. https://t.co/hbmSXfwB0I

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

full episode: https://t.co/u8iV29A5gC

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

🚨459. One Border After Another (ft. Gaby Del Valle)🚨

@gabydvj tells us about her excursion to the Border Security Expo, the endless market for border tech, and how the border is now everywhere. Plus, Gaby's work on the eugenicist ideology that motivates immigration politics.

[Jathan Sadowski @jathansadowski]

Never accept that these forces of production are inevitable, undeniable, and actually already existing. You should first make them prove it! Prove their claims, prove their benefits, prove they should exist!

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

Teaser: https://t.co/99Ke2lQyTQ
Full episode: https://t.co/XZhoU5bItQ

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

🚨Premium – 458. Seduced by the Slop Tsunami🚨

We argue why, rather than just be eroded into acquiescence by an overwhelming tsunami of AI, rather than being bowled over and washed out to sea, you should never give these systems and their booster the benefit of the doubt.

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

Full episode: https://t.co/2AV6EyQ6jV

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

🚨457. DC3: The Terraforming🚨

Time for more data centers! We discuss how the industry is explicitly using “counterinsurgency tactics” to undermine community opposition, plus how Mr. Wonderful is turning Utah into Mars with a hyperscale data center + massive gas power plant.

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

teaser: https://t.co/dUuH1tLzDa
full episode: https://t.co/ULauBm7VCH

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

🚨Premium – 456. Do Not Question Project Cannoli🚨

We go in for more critical analysis of the opposition to data centers. Reporting on these projects shows how they are being pushed through in black-boxed, stonewalled, fast tracked ways that ignore any real community concerns.

[Jathan Sadowski @jathansadowski]

I've got a radical position: our leftists arguments should be based in real materialist analysis of political economy and not end up ceding more ground to corporate power than they gain for anti-capitalist goals. Weird stuff, I know!

[Edward Ongweso Jr @bigblackjacobin]

I do not understand the argument that moratoriums are anathema, so we did an episode trying to engage in good faith with the recent Jacobin article advancing it

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

full episode: https://t.co/UBLPQZukVh

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

🚨455. The Anti-Anti-Anti-Data-Centers Social Club🚨

We deconstruct some confused arguments – from the left – against moratoriums for data centres. We push back on the false dichotomy, faulty assumptions, rhetorical leaps, and pretzel logic that underpin these arguments.

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

teaser: https://t.co/czan3WMbSS
full episode: https://t.co/BhOUmv016S

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

🚨Premium – 454. The Shocks Keep Coming🚨

It's a big time political economy of the polycrisis episode. We dig into two global shocks to supply chains for advanced manufacturing and synthetic fertilizers that are each on their way to being complex, interrelated crises.

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

full episode: https://t.co/Hb6yoUazPa

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

🚨453. Super “Intelligent” Industrial Policy🚨

We dive into OpenAI’s report: “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age." Some of it is insidiously clever, much of it is repackaged ideas, all of it is setting an agenda for quelling progressive demands against corporate AI power

[Jathan Sadowski @jathansadowski]

The art, science, and illusion of modelling human beliefs and behaviors has always been riddled with problems, but now it's being done on a much grander scale using intrinsically impenetrable techniques. Awesome!

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

teaser: https://t.co/4Qefn6pMlI
full episode: https://t.co/Ng6yKiLUVH

[This Machine Kills @machinekillspod]

🚨Premium – 452. Lady Luck is the World Spirit🚨

We talk about a new innovation in focus groups and public polling called “silicon sampling”—or a new way models which claim to represent the world are actually engines that shape reality. Plus, our grand theory of the World Casino