This Machine Kills

We chat about a great investigation into the powerful networks of political influence and intimidation that tech companies are bankrolling to ensure that politicians at local, state, and federal levels advance the interests of Silicon Valley—or at least not stand in their way. For example, one recently created pro-crypto super PAC has $170 million in its war chest, which it has used to influence Senate and House seats this election cycle. We also talk about the political strategist, Chris Lehane, who has been the driving force behind the tech sector’s realpolitik strategy—from Airbnb to Coinbase to OpenAI.

••• Silicon Valley, the New Lobbying Monster https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/silicon-valley-the-new-lobbying-monster

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.x.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.x.com/braunestahl)

We are joined by a dear friend of the show, Paris Marx, to talk about his new series on Tech Won’t Save Us called “Data Vampires” – which provides an excellent deep dive into the politics, ideologies, and consequences of the global expansion of data centers by big tech giants. Data Vampires is full of original research and interviews, plus excellent production. We touch on some of the series’ major themes before going down our own rabbit holes discussing the geopolitics of data centers as a form of imperial infrastructure for techno-capitalism.

••• Listen to Data Vampires on Tech Won’t Save Us by Paris Marx: https://techwontsave.us/episodes

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.x.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.x.com/braunestahl)

Bringing together a few news items, we analyze the politics of scale in AI. First, OpenAI has one of the largest funding rounds ever at $6.6 billion raised for a valuation of $157 billion—with our boy Masayoshi finally getting his taste of OpenAI by investing $500 million. Second, CA Governor Gruesome Newsom vetoed an AI safety bill, which would have put stricter regulations on the largest class of AI models. Third, an excellent new paper offers a blistering critique of the bigger-is-better paradigm in AI.

••• SoftBank to invest $500mn in OpenAI https://www.ft.com/content/b1efdc2a-4dbc-40cc-920e-2cf389d261e8

••• In California, no AI bill is safe https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/in-california-no-ai-bill-is-safe

••• Hype, Sustainability, and the Price of the Bigger-is-Better Paradigm in AI https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.14160

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.x.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.x.com/braunestahl)

We chat with Marijam Did, author of the new book Everything to Play For, which bridges radical leftist politics and video games through a real material analysis of video games as an industry, art form, and social space. Marijam lays out the case for why these two communities of radical leftists and gamers—which have largely been distinct and even antagonistic to each other—need to be brought together for the betterment of both sides. Leftists and gamers have a lot to learn from each other. Indeed, as we argue, they need each other.

Marijam’s new book – Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3086-everything-to-play-for

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.x.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.x.com/braunestahl)

With the news of interest rates dropping again, we refocus our attention on Masayoshi Son, the man who perhaps most embodies the pathologies of technological capitalism. Thanks to a new biography, we learn fascinating color about Masa’s character which further support what we already to know to be true: he is an ambitious disrupter who is burdened with delusions of grandeur, a degenerate gambler who has turned his addiction to leverage into a personal mythos, and a gifted intermediary who knows how to engineer debt and extract fees.

••• The mystery of Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s great disrupter https://www.ft.com/content/424eb5f8-efb4-4fc8-b86a-0359f6fac9eb

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.x.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.x.com/braunestahl)

Jumping off a spate of recent reporting, we revisit the deep relations between the tech sector and fossil fuel industry and discuss how companies like Microsoft are turning to oil and gas companies as a solution for AI’s profit problem. How are tech companies going to offset their trillion dollars of capital investment into AI infrastructure? One revenue strategy: selling bespoke AI systems to companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron which make fossil fuel extraction even more efficient, thus optimizing the process of socio-ecological collapse. Gotta capture those profits while there’s still time!

••• Microsoft’s Hypocrisy on AI https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/09/microsoft-ai-oil-contracts/679804/

••• AI Boom Is Driving a Surprise Resurgence of US Gas-Fired Power https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-16/us-natural-gas-power-plants-just-keep-coming-to-meet-ai-ev-electricity-demand

••• The U.S. Has a Methane Problem. A.I. Is Making It Worse. https://newrepublic.com/article/186213/methane-emissions-ai-flaring-court

••• Data center emissions probably 662% higher than big tech claims. Can it keep up the ruse? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/15/data-center-gas-emissions-tech

••• Three Mile Island Plans to Reopen as Demand for Nuclear Power Grows https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/20/climate/three-mile-island-reopening.html

••• AI is revitalizing the fossil fuels industry, and big tech has nothing to say for itself https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/ai-is-revitalizing-the-fossil-fuels

••• AI is fueling a data center boom. It must be stopped. https://disconnect.blog/ai-is-fueling-a-data-center-boom/

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.x.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.x.com/braunestahl)

We dive into a weird but revealing article about the phalanx of private security that Elon Musk has amassed around him, spending a small fortune on ex-operators who plan escape routes for his events, clear rooms before he enters, and assess (perceived) threats to his personal safety. His “mushrooming security apparatus” has caused a feedback loop or paranoia and isolation as he becomes further removed from any social connections to other people. We relate this to a broader zeitgeist of fear in American society that has given rise to—and is fuelled by—the explosion of growth in private security firms.

••• Inside Elon Musk’s Mushrooming Security Apparatus https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/technology/elon-musk-security.html

••• The Thin Purple Line https://harpers.org/archive/2024/09/the-thin-purple-line-jasper-craven-private-security-guard/

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.x.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.x.com/braunestahl)

We are joined by Gaby Del Valle who has written a great—and distressingly relevant—essay for The Baffler, which reports on the “eugenic foundations of the war on woke.” We dig into the beliefs of innate biological hierarchy and genetic superiority that underpin so much of mainstream right-wing politics. Whether it’s the convergence of Christian nationalist and tech rationalists around issues like declining birth rates and embryo engineering, or its the resurgence of blood libel with JD Vance’s fascist fairy tale about Haitian migrants, or its the cultural war against woke universities and DEI committees—these various sects are all unified by their use of biological essentialism to justify social domination.

••• Live Free or DEI https://thebaffler.com/salvos/live-free-or-dei-del-valle

••• Follow Gaby: https://x.com/gabydvj

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.x.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.x.com/braunestahl)

Keeping with our recent theme of exploring the relations between the military and tech sector, we jump off a great essay in The Baffler to discuss a crucial part of this complex: university research. Universities – especially, academics in STEM faculties – must be understood as defense contractors who are partners with the military (and adjacent agencies); they advance the military’s goals and are dependent on the military’s cash. You can call them “research grants,” you can say their purpose is to “advancing knowledge,” you can extoll the benefits of “supporting academics and higher education,” but those are just euphemisms for the realities of the military-industrial-university complex.

••• War Machine Learning https://thebaffler.com/salvos/war-machine-learning-mccarthy

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.x.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.x.com/braunestahl)

To mark the occasion of his new best selling airport book, we take a deeper look at Yuval Noah Harari’s impoverished thought and intellectual style via a great review essay by Daniel Immerwahr. We see how Harari’s doomsday scenarios are based on an extreme form of technological determinism + a romanticized humanism-as-critique + a disinterest in material analysis of political economy + an ironically chatbot-esque style of intellectualism.

••• Yuval Noah Harari’s Apocalyptic Vision https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/10/yuval-noah-harari-nexus-book/679572/

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.x.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.x.com/braunestahl)