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Episode Description

A new paper just dropped in AI & Society with a provocative title: "Technofascism: AI, Big Tech, and the New Authoritarianism." Philosopher Mark Coeckelbergh argues that AI isn't politically neutral. The way it's being deployed mirrors features of historical fascism, just through quieter mechanisms: data extraction, algorithmic governance, behavioral nudging, platform monopolization. This episode breaks down the argument, from Hannah Arendt's "thoughtless bureaucrat" to why tech oligarchs sat front row at Trump's inauguration. Yesterday was the immediate threat. Today is the structural analysis.

Episode Tags

technofascism, AI, Big Tech, authoritarianism, fascism, Mark Coeckelbergh, Hannah Arendt, algorithmic governance, surveillance, democracy, Trump, Silicon Valley, corporate power

Content Rating

Clean

Episode Type

Full

Runtime

~6 minutes

Timecodes

0:00 – The Paper 1:00 – The Quiet Mechanisms 2:00 – The Thoughtless Bureaucrat 3:00 – The Corporatism Parallel 4:00 – The Loud Version 5:15 – Resistance

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 Canadian security officials testified this week that AI deepfakes will "very likely" target the next federal election. Their solution? "Hopefully AI will help us detect AI. Hopefully." That's a lot of hope doing a lot of heavy lifting. This episode looks at the global evidence—Slovakia, India, Taiwan, Germany—and a concept called the "liar's dividend" that may be more dangerous than the fakes themselves. Then we project forward to 2028 and ask what happens when leaders who've already tried to overturn elections get access to tools that can fabricate any reality. 

Episode Tags

deepfakes, elections, democracy, AI, misinformation, disinformation, Canada, CSE, liar's dividend, Trump, 2028, Slovakia, India, authoritarianism

0:00 – The Warning 1:30 – The Global Evidence 3:30 – The Liar's Dividend 5:15 – The 2028 Problem 6:45 – Canada's Thin Defenses

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Canada is sending an AI delegation to the World Governments Summit in Dubai this week—over 200 companies applied to pitch Canadian AI solutions to 35 heads of state and 6,000 participants. The mission follows an October MOU between Minister Evan Solomon and the UAE, with delegates presenting "responsible, human-centred AI" for government decision-making, health services, and public safety.

But new data from IBM suggests the home front isn't as confident. While 86% of Canadian executives already use agentic AI and 68% expect AI agents to act independently by year's end, only 36% of Canadian workers are willing to be managed by AI—below the global average of 48%. And 82% of consumers say they'd trust a brand less if it concealed AI use.

This episode examines the gap between Canada's international AI brand and domestic reality: executives racing to deploy while workers pump the brakes on trust, governance frameworks that remain aspirational, and a talent shortage that shows no signs of easing. Canada is marketing AI sovereignty abroad while struggling to build the foundation at home.

Sources: IBM Institute for Business Value "Five Trends for 2026" report; SCALE AI World Governments Summit announcement; Episode 15 research on Ontario AI principles and implementation challenges.

Tags/Keywords

• Canada AI policy
• AI governance
• IBM AI report
• World Governments Summit Dubai
• SCALE AI
• AI trust
• Agentic AI
• AI sovereignty
• Evan Solomon
• UAE Canada AI
• Canadian tech policy
• AI workforce
• AI deployment

Chapter Markers / Timecodes

TimeChapter00:00 | Introduction — Canada's AI delegation to Dubai
00:45 | IBM report: Two stories in one
01:30 | Executives all in: 86% using agentic AI
02:15 | Workers pump the brakes: Only 36% willing to be managed by AI
03:00 | The trust number: 82% would trust brands less
03:30 | What Canada is selling in Dubai
04:30 | The gap: International brand vs domestic reality
05:30 | 92% want AI sovereignty — but what does that require?
06:15 | Global context: Everyone is struggling
07:00 | The pressure to deploy vs pressure to govern
07:30 | Closing — You can't export your way out of a trust problem

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Will a company ever voluntarily kill a machine that’s making them money?

Ontario recently released joint principles for responsible AI use, including a bold requirement: organizations must be ready to "decommission" any AI system producing unsafe or discriminatory outputs. It sounds good on paper, but in the high-stakes world of corporate efficiency, it ignores a fundamental truth that profitable systems are rarely shut down for harms that are invisible to the naked eye.

In this episode, we strip away the "AI ethics" buzzwords to look at the massive infrastructure gap standing between high-minded principles and real-world enforcement. We explore why the current roadmap for AI governance is currently built on a foundation of "wishes" rather than workable systems.

In this episode, we break down:

• The Decommissioning Delusion: Why the assumption that companies will prioritize fairness over profit is a fundamental misunderstanding of corporate incentives.
• The Implementation Gap: How a lack of standardized testing and "objective evidence" makes compliance nearly impossible for most Canadian businesses.
• Invisible Victims: The reality of statistical discrimination, why individual applicants often never know they’ve been harmed by an algorithm.
• The Talent Crisis: The staggering shortage of AI governance professionals and why the few who exist are priced out of reach for most organizations.
• Principles vs. Infrastructure: Why articulating what "responsible AI" looks like is the easy part, and why no country has actually built the enforcement mechanisms to back it up.

Is AI governance currently just a collection of noble intentions? We’re diving into the social alignment problem and what it actually takes to make AI serve everyone.

AI Ethics, AI Governance, Ontario Tech Policy, Algorithmic Bias, Responsible AI, AI Regulation Canada, Tech Accountability, Machine Learning Bias, Corporate Ethics, AI Implementation.

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Episode Description

Microsoft beat on every metric and the stock dropped six percent. What the earnings call revealed about AI infrastructure spending, OpenAI concentration risk, and why Canada's sovereign compute push faces a $72 billion scale gap.

Chapter Markers / Timecodes

00:00 – Intro 00:25 – The Earnings 01:45 – The Spending Problem 03:30 – The OpenAI Problem 05:00 – What This Means for Canada 06:15 – The Scale Gap 07:00 – Outro

Episode Tags

Microsoft, Azure, OpenAI, AI infrastructure, sovereign compute, Canada AI, data centres, Bell Canada, capex, cloud computing, earnings

Content Rating

Clean

Episode Type

Full

Runtime

~7 minutes

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Y Combinator has quietly removed Canada from its list of countries where it invests. Canadian startups now need to incorporate in the U.S., Cayman Islands, or Singapore to join the world's most prestigious accelerator. YC president Garry Tan confirmed the change, saying Canadian founders should "just convert to Delaware C Corp" if they want to raise money. But on the same day, Toronto-based Waabi announced what it claims is the largest funding round in Canadian tech history: $750 million USD, with Uber committing up to another $250 million. Two stories, two different answers to the question of whether you need to leave Canada to build something big.

Chapter Markers / Timecodes

00:00 – Intro
 00:30 – Y Combinator Drops Canada
 03:15 – Waabi Raises $750 Million USD
 05:45 – Outro

References

Y Combinator:

• BetaKit, "Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in," January 26, 2026
• The Logic, "Y Combinator is no longer investing in Canadian startups," January 26, 2026
• Garry Tan X posts, January 27, 2026

Waabi:

• BetaKit, "Waabi claims largest-ever Canadian tech fundraise as it hauls in $750-million USD Series C," January 28, 2026
• The Globe and Mail, December 2025

Tags

Y Combinator, YC, Garry Tan, Canadian startups, Delaware, incorporation, brain drain, Waabi, Raquel Urtasun, autonomous vehicles, robotaxi, Uber, Series C, physical AI, venture capital

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Episode Description

Shopify cuts jobs in its partnerships division as it restructures around "agentic commerce"—AI agents that shop on your behalf. The company launched Agentic Storefronts and co-developed Google's Universal Commerce Protocol with Walmart, Target, and others. Meanwhile, New York-based Forum Ventures is doubling down on Toronto, raising $21.5 million U.S. to build AI startups here despite the broader Canadian VC slump. And Canada and Germany announced a Digital Alliance in December with a joint quantum call for proposals supposedly launching this month—though no details have been published yet.

Chapter Markers / Timecodes

00:00 – Intro
 00:30 – Shopify Restructures for Agentic Commerce
 03:15 – Forum Ventures Bets on Toronto
 05:30 – Canada-Germany Digital Alliance
 07:00 – Outro

References

Shopify:

• BetaKit, "Shopify makes more job cuts, this time targeting partnerships team," January 22, 2026. https://betakit.com/shopify-makes-more-job-cuts-this-time-targeting-partnerships-division/
• Shopify News, "Introducing Shopify Agentic Storefronts," January 2026. https://www.shopify.com/news/winter-26-edition-agentic-storefronts
• TechCrunch, "Google announces a new protocol to facilitate commerce using AI agents," January 11, 2026. https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/11/google-announces-a-new-protocol-to-facilitate-commerce-using-ai-agents/

Forum Ventures:

• BNN Bloomberg, "US firm investing in Canada's tech talent to build next generation of AI companies," January 23, 2026. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/2026/01/23/us-firm-investing-in-canadas-tech-talent-to-build-next-generation-of-ai-companies/
• BetaKit, "US firm Forum Ventures bets on Toronto to build next wave of AI software startups," December 1, 2025. https://betakit.com/us-firm-forum-ventures-bets-on-toronto-to-build-next-wave-of-ai-software-startups/
• CVCA, "H1 2025 Market Report," August 2025. https://www.cvca.ca/insights/market-reports/h1-2025/

Canada-Germany Alliance:

• Government of Canada, "Canada and Germany deepen their collaboration on advanced technologies," December 8, 2025. https://www.canada.ca/en/innovation-science-economic-development/news/2025/12/canada-and-germany-deepen-their-collaboration-on-advanced-technologies.html
• The Quantum Insider, "New Canada-Germany Digital Alliance Prioritizes Quantum Collaboration," December 9, 2025. https://thequantuminsider.com/2025/12/09/canada-germany-quantum-alliance/

Tags

Shopify, agentic commerce, AI agents, e-commerce, layoffs, Forum Ventures, Toronto, venture capital, brain drain, Canada-Germany, Evan Solomon, quantum computing, digital sovereignty, Google, Universal Commerce Protocol

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At CES 2026, NVIDIA declared "the ChatGPT moment for robotics is here." China installed 295,000 industrial robots last year, 54% of the global total. Its operational stock now exceeds 2 million units, more than the rest of the world combined.

Canada? We rank 13th globally. Behind Spain. Behind India. Behind France.

This matters because Canada has a productivity crisis. Bank of Canada officials have called it an "emergency" and the country's "Achilles heel." Robotics is one of the clearest paths to closing that gap, but Ottawa says it's "not pursuing a standalone national robotics strategy."

In this episode, we examine why Canada excels at AI research but lags on physical AI adoption, what's happening at the global frontier, and what it would take to change course. Featuring insights from the Canadian Robotics Council, Bank of Canada, and industry leaders building the future of automation.

EPISODE TIMECODES

00:00 - Introduction: CES 2026 and the physical AI moment

01:45 - The Productivity Emergency: Bank of Canada's warnings

04:00 - The Global Robotics Boom: China's dominance by the numbers

06:30 - Where Canada Stands: 13th place and falling behind

09:15 - The Physical AI Moment: What's changed in robotics

11:30 - The Policy Gap: Why Canada has no national robotics strategy

13:45 - The Cost of Inaction: What's at stake

15:30 - What Would It Take: Policy recommendations

17:15 - The Bigger Picture: Research vs. application

18:30 - Closing

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The US just closed a $14 billion forced divestiture of TikTok, requiring American ownership, algorithm retraining, and domestic data storage. Meanwhile, Canada scrapped its TikTok shutdown order and agreed to start the national security review from scratch. Same app, same Chinese parent company, completely opposite outcomes. We break down what Michael Geist calls a government that "caved," why the original Canadian order was security theater, and how the Carney administration's simultaneous China partnership makes any credible review nearly impossible. Plus: the missing legislative framework that leaves Canada regulating 21st century tech with 20th century tools.

Tags: TikTok, Canada, United States, ByteDance, Oracle, national security, data sovereignty, Michael Geist, Mélanie Joly, Mark Carney, China, tech regulation, Investment Canada Act, CUSMA

Timecodes:

• 0:00 — The US-Canada contrast
• 1:45 — The US deal explained
• 3:15 — The Canadian ruling
• 4:30 — Why the original order was security theater
• 5:15 — $14B divestiture vs. starting over
• 6:00 — The Carney paradox
• 6:45 — Canada's missing framework
• 7:30 — What to watch
• 8:00 — The takeaway

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Prime Minister Mark Carney just returned from Beijing with a landmark trade deal—49,000 Chinese EVs at 6.1% tariffs in exchange for China dropping duties on Canadian canola. One year after calling China the "biggest threat" to Canada, Carney now speaks of a "new strategic partnership" and a "new world order."

But this isn't just about cars and canola. As the U.S.-China AI race intensifies, Canada's pivot toward Beijing raises urgent questions about data sovereignty, connected vehicle security, and where Canadian AI policy fits in a fragmenting global order.

In this episode: the deal's details, the political reactions (Trump called it "a good thing"), the controversial "new world order" moment, China's updated Cybersecurity Law, EVs as "rolling data centers," and why the Canadian AI community should be paying attention to this story—even if they aren't yet.

TIMECODES

[0:00] Intro - Carney's Beijing trip and deal overview

[2:30] The Deal - 49,000 EVs, canola tariffs, visa-free travel

[5:00] The Reaction - Ford, Moe, Trump's surprising endorsement

[6:30] The "New World Order" Moment - Carney's controversial phrase

[8:00] What This Means for AI - U.S.-China competition, Canada's position

[10:30] The Data Sovereignty Question - Cloud Act vs China's Cybersecurity Law

[12:30] The Electric Vehicle Angle - EVs as data collectors, Bill C-27's death

[14:00] The Talent and Investment Question - Chinese investment, IP concerns

[15:30] What to Watch - USMCA review, data governance, AI community response

[17:00] The Takeaway - Canada's bet and unanswered questions

SOURCES

• CBC News (January 15-17, 2026)
• Al Jazeera (January 16, 2026)
• CNBC (January 17, 2026)
• NPR (January 16, 2026)
• Government of Canada Backgrounder (January 16, 2026)
• Global News (January 17, 2026)
• Bloomberg (January 16-17, 2026)
• Japan Times (January 16, 18, 2026)
• Globe and Mail (January 16, 2026)
• Council on Foreign Relations (January 2026)
• Atlantic Council (January 15, 2026)
• IAPP (January 2026)
• US Commerce Department (February 2024)
• X posts: George Magnus, Danielle Smith, Doug Ford