This Machine Kills

We start with news about the latest attempt to build a smart city from scratch as a collection of venture capitalists have been secretly buying huge amounts of land near San Francisco to finally realize a dream that will never die. We connect this logic of the capitalist zone to an expansive analysis of Saudi Arabia’s global investments, geopolitical partnerships, and giant ambitions for a future where the world is a zone.

Stuff we reference:

••• The Silicon Valley Elite Who Want to Build a City From Scratch https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/land-purchases-solano-county.html

••• How Saudi Arabia is buying the world https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2023/07/saudi-arabia-capitalsim-buying-world

••• How Saudi money returned to Silicon Valley https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/5/1/23702451/silicon-valley-saudi-money-khashoggi

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

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

We are joined by Tamara Nopper and Eve Zelickson —— from the Data & Society Research Institute —— to discuss their excellent primer on Wellness Capitalism. This is the pure ideal of TMK crossovers as we lay out how an intricate tangle of things —— the organization of social reproduction by capital, the power dynamics of labor-boss relations, the cultures of personal responsibility and behavioral choices, the technocratic authority of baroque administrative systems, the actuarial governance regime of risk management —— all come together to control access to, and degrade the quality of, essential services for human life and society.

••• Wellness Capitalism: Employee Health, the Benefits Maze, and Worker Control | Tamara Nopper, Eve Zelickson https://datasociety.net/library/wellness-capitalism-employee-health-the-benefits-maze-and-worker-control/

••• Follow Tamara: https://twitter.com/tamaranopper

••• Follow Eve: https://twitter.com/zel_eve

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

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

We discuss chapter one – Conceptualising Power and Capital – which lays the groundwork for analyzing these two fundamental concepts and their relation. Mau goes through mainstream social and political theories of power, showing how they are all deficient in various ways and what features a theory of power must possess. Then he lays out what it means to understand capital as a social logic and how this logic can exercise power in ways that are meaningful and material.

••• Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2759-mute-compulsion

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

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

[We are unlocking the intro episode for the new book club. The first taste is free, find the rest on the premium feed.]

We kick off the TMK book club with the excellent new book – Mute Compulsion by Søren Mau – which offers a foundational analysis of power, value, capital, and social reproduction. Mau’s book is written with a real analytical clarity that advances our critical, theoretical understanding of the relations and operations of those things in society and our lives. We set the context for the book and our approach before discussing the Introduction chapter, which established the book’s motivating questions and overarching argument about the need to pay special attention to the economic power of capital.

••• Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2759-mute-compulsion

••• Communism is Freedom – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/communism-is-freedom

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

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

In another instalment of What the Fuck is Happening in America, we talk about how sports betting has totally saturated society since the Supreme Court overturned a ban in 2018, then we discuss the next wild frontier of online casinos driven by gambling platforms and megastar streamers, then finally we gaze into the dark abyss of The Machine Zone.

Stuff we reference

••• The dark side of the US sports betting boom https://www.ft.com/content/2e1a235a-8a46-47f3-b040-5ca21a04ebf4

••• Cigars, Booze, Money: How a Lobbying Blitz Made Sports Betting Ubiquitous https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/business/sports-betting-lobbying-kansas.html

••• Twitch’s Gambling Boom Is Luring Gamers Into Crypto Casinos https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-04/twitch-s-gambling-boom-is-luring-gamers-into-crypto-casinos

••• A Nation of the Walking Dead https://www.truthdig.com/articles/a-nation-of-the-walking-dead/

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

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

We start with a visit to that smart city we all love, New Orleans, and see how the police department’s facial recognition surveillance is going. Then we revisit China, this time to lay out the broader conditions of its zombie economy and attempts by the state to reassert its power over capital by enforcing discipline on the tech and real estate sector, and giving them strong guidance about how they can work to better serve the state’s interest. We discuss this further in the context of China’s antitrust crackdown on tech companies—we might be envious of the means, but we should be wary of the goals.

Stuff we reference

••• NOPD use of facial recognition leads to zero arrests in nine months https://veritenews.org/2023/07/26/nopd-use-of-facial-recognition-leads-to-zero-arrests-in-nine-months/

••• Zombie Economy https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/zombie-economy

••• Why Is China’s Economy Stumbling? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/opinion/china-economy-decline.html

••• What Comes Next as China’s Tech Crackdown Winds Down https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-24/what-s-next-as-china-s-tech-crackdown-winds-down#xj4y7vzkg

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

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

We kick off the TMK book club with the excellent new book – Mute Compulsion by Søren Mau – which offers a foundational analysis of power, value, capital, and social reproduction. Mau’s book is written with a real analytical clarity that advances our critical, theoretical understanding of the relations and operations of those things in society and our lives. We set the context for the book and our approach before discussing the Introduction chapter, which established the book’s motivating questions and overarching argument about the need to pay special attention to the economic power of capital.

••• Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2759-mute-compulsion

••• Communism is Freedom – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/communism-is-freedom

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

We are joined by Katie Wells and Kafui Attoh to discuss their new book – Disrupting DC: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City – which offers a rich analysis of Uber and its operations in Washington DC as a case study in the political economy of urban crisis. We get into how Uber thrives by taking advantage of the low expectations that people have of their city governments, public services, and the economy. The common sense of neoliberalism means that decision-makers and consumers understand Uber as the most obvious solutions to social problems, and cannot imagine any other alternatives, despite the fact that relying on Uber means settling for a system that addresses existing problems by only causing different ones.

••• Disrupting DC: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City | Katie J. Wells, Kafui Attoh, and Declan Cullen https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691249759/disrupting-dc

••• Follow Katie: https://twitter.com/KatieJWells

••• Follow Kafui: https://twitter.com/AttohKafui

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

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

We check in on some enemies of the show to see what’s new with them. Uber has finally posted an operating profit for the first time in history – and it only took more than $31 billion in losses, plus a lot more exploitation and immiseration, to get there. Dan Ariely, a famous behavioral economist, has ironically been caught using fraudulent data for a study about honesty that has been used as the basis for insurance initiatives to combat fraud. Finally, Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, has written an abhorrent essay arguing that we all have moral obligations to embrace the development of AI weapons—or else we will be “punished” for refusing the call of duty.

Stuff we reference:

••• Uber makes first operating profit after racking up $31.5bn of losses https://www.ft.com/content/dae2b90e-1ba0-4e8f-aabc-34aae4ca05d7

••• Fabricated data in research about honesty. You can't make this stuff up. Or, can you? https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190568472/dan-ariely-francesca-gino-harvard-dishonesty-fabricated-data

••• Our Oppenheimer Moment: The Creation of A.I. Weapons https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/opinion/karp-palantir-artificial-intelligence.html

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

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

We dig into the a new investigation on the exponential growth of Starlink – Elon Musk’s satellite internet communication network – its geopolitical centrality to the war in Ukraine and international telecommunication policies, and the immense power this grants Musk as the man who has singular control over a private global infrastructure system that everyone from the Pentagon on down has grown dependent upon.

••• Elon Muskʼs Unmatched Power in the Stars https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/28/business/starlink.html

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

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