This Machine Kills

We do a deep dive into OpenAI’s new report “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First” and pick apart their extensive set of proposals for building an “Open Economy” and "Resilient Society” all against the backdrop of surviving the “transition toward superintelligence”. There are some moments of insidiously clever thinking, which stand out against a laundry list of boring ideas that repackage existing things as exciting innovations.

••• OpenAI | Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/561e7512-253e-424b-9734-ef4098440601/Industrial%20Policy%20for%20the%20Intelligence%20Age.pdf

Standing Plugs:

••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite

••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble

••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

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

••• This Is What Will Ruin Public Opinion Polling for Good https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/opinion/ai-polling.html

••• The Bookmaker https://thepointmag.com/politics/the-bookmaker/#

••• The Casino That’s Eating the World https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/opinion/prediction-markets-gambling.html

Standing Plugs:

••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite

••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble

••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

We chat with Tim Sahay and Kate Mackenzie — authors of the indispensable newsletter The Polycrisis and hosts of the new podcast Electric World Order — to get into the energy transition, financial markets, fossil fuel disruptions, and the war in Iran. Much of the coverage about the current oil crisis and chokepoint in the Strait of Hormuz is focused on the impacts of supply shocks, but equally important are the long-term effects of demand destruction. We lay out what an energy transition under conditions of polycrisis actually entails: things don’t just smoothly change while staying the same, instead it’s more like a material shift in the centre of political, economic, energetic power: from the petrostate (e.g. USA) to the electrostate (e.g. China).

••• The Polycrisis | Phenomenal World https://www.phenomenalworld.org/series/the-polycrisis/

••• Trailer for Electric World Order | | The Polycrisis Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/introducing-electric-world-order-the-geopolitics/id1884213852?i=1000754959853

Standing Plugs:

••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite

••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble

••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

We chat about new strides in Australian innovation. What if you had a computer quiz that decided if your grandma deserved the care needed to have a good life? What if you had a computer quiz designed to eliminate empathy in the name of streamlining budgets? What if you had an unbending, unchallengeable, system of rules that turned human experts into vestigial organs? And what if that system cost more than a $1 billion in privatisation contracts?

••• New aged care algorithm under fire as 800 apply for review https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-24/aged-care-algorithm-for-home-care-under-fire/106475138

Standing Plugs:

••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite

••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble

••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

TMK thought validated yet again! We talk about two big studies into the effects of AI on workloads, which show with in-depth empirical detail how AI intensifies and expands labor, rather than lightens and shrinks workloads. Weird! Did anybody know this would happen???

••• TMK live show in San Francisco, 7pm on Thursday, March 19th, with our friends at Bay Area Current and DSA SF. Join us! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decoding-the-tech-vibe-shift-a-night-of-left-wing-tech-criticism-tickets-1984745130112

••• AI Isn’t Lightening Workloads. It’s Making Them More Intense. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-isnt-lightening-workloads-its-making-them-more-intense-e417dd2c

••• AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies-it

Standing Plugs:

••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite

••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble

••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

We discuss the breathless article in Jeff Bezo’s Washington Post about how Claude’s integration into the Palantir Maven Smart System has been used for rapid target generation and prioritization for missile strikes in Iran. Then we go deeper into the fraying relationship between the Gulf states and the tech industry and the highly concentrated forms of financial investment and physical infrastructure in the UAE and Saudi Arabia that are load-bearing pillars of the global economy. Pillars that are now, very surprisingly for folks living in the Dubai Geopolitics Slow Zone, suddenly at risk from the consequences of geopolitics.

••• TMK live show in San Francisco, 7pm on Thursday, March 19th, with our friends at Bay Area Current and DSA SF. Join us! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decoding-the-tech-vibe-shift-a-night-of-left-wing-tech-criticism-tickets-1984745130112

••• Anthropic’s AI tool Claude central to U.S. campaign in Iran, amid a bitter feud https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthropic-ai-iran-campaign/

••• The Trillions of Dollars of U.S. Investment at Stake in the Gulf https://www.wsj.com/business/the-trillions-of-dollars-of-u-s-investment-at-stake-in-the-gulf-f66f7883

••• The Iran war is a jolt to Dubai’s business model https://www.economist.com/business/2026/03/03/the-iran-war-is-a-jolt-to-dubais-business-model

••• Big Tech’s Uncertain Future in the Persian Gulf https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/business/dealbook/iran-gulf-tech-investments.html

Standing Plugs:

••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite

••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble

••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

Folks, we are doing a TMK live show in San Francisco! Come join Jathan and Ed, along with our friends, Wendy Liu and Jimmy Wu, for a fun night of left-wing tech criticism as we decode the tech vibe shift. Thanks to Bay Area Current and DSA SF for sponsoring the event.

Entry is free, and they'll be drinks available with suggested cash donation.

••• Thursday, March 19th at 7:00pm

••• First Unitarian Universalist, Starr King Room

••• 1187 Franklin St, San Francisco

Registration is recommended but not required: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decoding-the-tech-vibe-shift-a-night-of-left-wing-tech-criticism-tickets-1984745130112

We get into the love/hate triangle between Anthropic, OpenAI, and the Pentagon and discuss the details of these contracts for AI weapon and surveillance systems, what’s actually at stake here with debates over the terms of “guardrails”, “red lines” and “lawful uses,” and how the competing (a)moral visions for AI and war that are represented in this debate really come down to a difference of opinion about technical capabilities at this current moment, not about the fundamental ethics and politics at play in weaponized AI. Plus, why this lovers spat between Anthropic and Pentagon must not trick you into labelling Dario Amodei as a righteous purveyor of resistance tech. Get real!

••• How Talks Between Anthropic and the Defense Dept. Fell Apart https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/technology/anthropic-defense-dept-openai-talks.html

••• Inside Anthropic’s Killer-Robot Dispute With the Pentagon https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/03/inside-anthropics-killer-robot-dispute-with-the-pentagon/686200/

••• The Adolescence of Technology https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technology

••• A Few Observations on AI Companies and Their Military Usage Policies https://sarahshoker.substack.com/p/a-few-observations-on-ai-companies

••• "All Lawful Use": Much More Than You Wanted To Know https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/all-lawful-use-much-more-than-you

••• Who loses from the Anthropic fight? Maybe Elon Musk and Alex Karp. https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/who-loses-from-the-anthropic-fight

••• AI vs. the pentagon https://jasmi.news/p/ai-pentagon

••• What Rights Do AI Companies Have in Government Contracts? https://jessicatillipman.com/what-rights-do-ai-companies-have-in-government-contracts/

Standing Plugs:

••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite

••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble

••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

And we’re back with TMK-as-usual! We are joined by Wendy Liu and Jimmy Wu from the Bay Area Current — a new leftist publication writing about the working class in San Francisco and beyond — as we chat about mapping out the rising milieu of right-wing culture in San Francisco, from the growing scene of tech intelligentsia publications that each have their different flavor of right-wingism to the psychic damage and hostile architecture of an urban landscape overflowing with B2B SAAS billboards.

••• Meet the New Right-Wing Tech Intelligentsia https://bayareacurrent.com/meet-the-new-right-wing-tech-intelligentsia/

••• Tech Billboard Decoder: The Great Tech Vibe Shift https://bayareacurrent.com/tech-billboard-decoder-the-great-tech-vibe-shift/

••• AI Company’s Billboards Say Workers Are Disposable. But Are We? https://bayareacurrent.com/ai-tech-company-to-workers-youre-disposable-but-is-it-true/

••• San Francisco's Billboards Aren't For You https://bayareacurrent.com/the-billboards-arent-for-you/

Standing Plugs:

••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite

••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble

••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

We chat with Bruce Schneier — renowned security technologist and, most recently, co-author of Rewiring Democracy — to discuss the relationship between technology and democracy. We get into how people with money/power use systems like AI to create a flywheel of more money/power. But importantly, as an advocate of public-interest technology, Bruce also lays out how AI is being used to empower citizens and strengthen democracy, and the techno-political conditions needed to build these democratic systems.

••• Check out all of Bruce’s work https://www.schneier.com/

••• Rewiring Democracy | Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049948/rewiring-democracy/

••• The Promptware Kill Chain: How Prompt Injections Gradually Evolved into a Multi-Step Malware https://www.schneier.com/academic/archives/2026/01/the-promptware-kill-chain-how-prompt-injections-gradually-evolved-into-a-multi-step-malware.html

Standing Plugs:

••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite

••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble

••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)