We dive into effective accelerationism—its cult of personality, capitalist metaphysics, techno-theology, and lukewarm manifestos. We connect it to previous movements like Singulatariansim, strip away the mercurial branding of these ideologies, and look more closely at the material politics at their core. ••• ‘It’s a Cult’: Inside Effective Accelerationism, the Pro-AI Movement Taking Over Silicon Valley https://www.theinformation.com/articles/its-a-cult-inside-effective-accelerationism-the-pro-ai...
Nov 08, 2023•6 min
Returning champion Cory Doctorow joins us to discuss his latest book, The Internet Con, which lays out how the basis of so much material power in the world exists at the intersection of information technology and intellectual property. We get into the mechanics of IT⇔IP, the necessity for interoperability in a world ruled by cartels, and the (intermediate) steps that must be taken now to fight back and create space for even more radical change. ••• Follow Cory: https://twitter.com/doctorow ••• C...
Nov 02, 2023•1 hr 36 min
We discuss Chapter 5 — Metabolic Domination — which brings us to the end of the first section outlining the material conditions (of human nature, society, life) that allow for the existence of something like economic power. Here we see how economic power operates by inserting itself into, mediating and controlling, the processes of human metabolism—that is, the material things and social relations that people depend upon to live. The very thing that makes humans so powerful—the flexibility, poro...
Oct 31, 2023•7 min
We are joined by Alex Press — labor reporter for Jacobin — for a broad survey of the very large, active landscape of labor union actions happening in the United States. After updates on strikes, we then discuss the deep intersections of solidarity between labor movements and support for Palestine. The struggle for a better world is not just a bunch of isolated events, disconnected in time and place. We must stand together in the many big fights against domination of all kinds. ••• Writers Agains...
Oct 26, 2023•1 hr 11 min
We are joined by David Z. Morris, a crypto journalist who has been covering the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried. We hear from David about what’s been revealed and made clear during the trial as major witnesses from FTX give testimony — and we learn that the cult of personality around SBF, and his interpersonal manipulation of others, really was much deeper and darker than people realized. ••• Follow David: https://twitter.com/davidzmorris ••• David’s substack: https://davidzmorris.substack.com/ ••• C...
Oct 23, 2023•8 min
Paris joins us to recap the Luddite Tribunal that happened last week with an all star lineup of generals in the Ludd Army passing judgment—and bringing down the hammer—on technologies. Then we talk about the new series Paris is doing on Tech Wont Save Us about Elon Musk — we discuss the infrastructural control that is at the core of his power and wealth. ••• Follow Paris: https://twitter.com/parismarx ••• Tech Wont Save Us: https://www.techwontsave.us/ ••• Disconnect newsletter: https://www.disc...
Oct 19, 2023•1 hr 24 min
We discuss Chapter 4 — The Human Corporeal Organisation — and look more deeply at how, as Mau writes, “The double mediation at the heart of the human metabolism—the mediation of tools and the mediation of social relations—explains why it can take infinite different forms.” We can never escape mediation of any kind, whether social (by living alone) or technological (by rejecting tools). We must understand how such mediation is crucial to human nature, and then critically engage with the power of ...
Oct 12, 2023•5 min
We take a deeper dive into the intellectual chicanery, moral corruption, and sociopathic tendencies at the heart of behavioral economics and its most famous “experts.” This is truly one of those cases where all your skepticism, cynicism, and antagonism for this entire field was not only justified, it was probably less intense than they deserved. This field needs more than a reckoning. We should raze the empire and salt the earth. Stuff we reference ••• They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work a L...
Oct 07, 2023•1 hr 19 min
We check in on a forgotten friend, Sam Bankman-Fried, on the eve of his big trial for one of the largest frauds in history. But this time with a nice addition of the freak beat as SBF’s parents enter the scene and come to his defense. On one hand, the legal defense for SBF is that he is just a dumb oaf who made some stupid mistakes. On the other, the moral defense for SBF, fronted by his parents, is that he is a big beautiful boy who is literally incapable of speaking “an untruth.” Stuff we refe...
Oct 05, 2023•9 min
We are joined by Brian Merchant—LA Times tech columnist, author of Blood in the Machine, dear friend of TMK, general in the Ludd Army—to talk about his extraordinary new book. Brian has produced a masterwork on the history and legacy of Luddism. A deeply researched, thrilling narrative, filled with sharp insights, this book is the definitive story of the Luddite Rebellion and the birth of industrial capitalism. ••• Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech | Brian Merch...
Sep 28, 2023•1 hr 23 min
We discuss chapter 3 of Mute Compulsion – The Social Ontology of Economic Power – and get into questions about the structure of social reality, why it is necessary to crack into these philosophical questions, how theories of social ontology form the whole basis of political ideologies and programs like neoliberalism and communism, why critiques of capitalism / technology based on ideas of human nature are common, easy, and weak, and why we need to build our critical theories on an ontology of so...
Sep 26, 2023•8 min
[Due to illness, we are unlocking this classic episode — which has only become more relevant as the news coverage and regulatory response to PFAS forever chemicals has only increased since our recording.] We take a deeper look at the political ecology of the “forever chemicals” that are integral to the existing microchip manufacturing process, the very serious damage they are wreaking on human health and the environment, the industrial interests that are aggressively pushing back against any att...
Sep 21, 2023•1 hr 5 min
We discuss an interview with the latest tech billionaire, Alexandr Wang of Scale AI, to push the jingoistic position that Silicon Valley has a duty to ensure American supremacy in every domain—military, geopolitics, technology, economy—and land lucrative contracts in the process. ••• Alexandr Wang: US technologists should help preserve US military and economic leadership https://www.ft.com/content/98b0a060-0e2e-4001-a4b6-8c388c106988 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium ...
Sep 19, 2023•5 min
We are joined by Quinn Slobodian — author of Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy — to discuss the libertarian extremism that forms the intellectual foundation for right-wing movements. We can see how the fringe beliefs of anarcho-capitalists — like Murray Rothbard (neo-confederate secessionist) and David Friedman (medieval LARPer) — are gaining broader influence, even becoming mainstream. On one hand, they are raving lunatics, ideological zealots, and ...
Sep 14, 2023•1 hr 23 min
We discuss chapter two – Power and Marxism – which offers a survey of how Marxist theories of power have largely been caught between the two poles of violence and ideology. With power-as-violence, the focus has been on the changing roles of the state, its relationship with capital, and the ways it physically controls people. With power-as-ideology, the focus has been on the role of institutions and culture in shaping how people think, thus exercising forms of mental control over people. While bo...
Sep 12, 2023•11 min
We are joined by one of our favorite friends — Meredith Whittaker — for a giant discussion that bridges her two latest articles. First a historical analysis of Charles Babbage and the smoking gun that directly links plantation logics of control with the industrial design of computation. Then a political economy of “open” AI and the material power that dominates the entire stack for these systems. ••• Follow Meredith: https://twitter.com/mer__edith ••• Origin Stories: Plantations, Computers, and ...
Sep 07, 2023•1 hr 40 min
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...
Sep 04, 2023•7 min
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 r...
Aug 31, 2023•1 hr 40 min
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 Marxi...
Aug 29, 2023•7 min
[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 f...
Aug 24, 2023•1 hr 16 min
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, M...
Aug 22, 2023•9 min
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 a...
Aug 18, 2023•1 hr 18 min
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 questio...
Aug 15, 2023•7 min
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 ...
Aug 12, 2023•1 hr 32 min
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...
Aug 07, 2023•7 min
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...
Aug 04, 2023•1 hr 5 min
We jump off the absurd twitter debate about degrowth and bananas in global communism to discuss much deeper issues about why any alternative to capitalism cannot simply be premised on being better managers of capitalist machines. Despite the arguments of ecomodernists—and the poverty of thought it engenders—there is not a linear development of progress and innovation which either moves forward (to the right) or backward (to the left). Break free of bourgeois ideology! Throw off the shackles of c...
Aug 02, 2023•7 min
We talk about the kayfabe of the green transition as the woke capitalists at Blackrock appoint Aramco to its board of directors, meanwhile the social justice warriors in the mining industry are doing land acknowledgements before ripping out rare earth minerals needed for renewable energy. These are the champions of a sustainable planet for human life. They are not the champions we deserve, nor are they ones we need, but they are the only ones we have. Stuff we reference: ••• Total life insurance...
Jul 26, 2023•8 min
We are excited to be joined again by Evgeny Morozov, host of The Santiago Boys, a new narrative podcast series about the history of Cybersyn, the geopolitics of its creation in Cold War Latin America, and the legacy of Salvador Allende, Fernando Flores, and the man who looms largest of all: Stafford Beer. This podcast series is not like any story of Cybersyn you might have read before. Morozov has take a mountain of research — over 200 hundred original interviews, deep archival investigations, a...
Jul 22, 2023•2 hr 11 min
We start chatting about Jathan going on television to talk about AI – friend or foe? hype or hysteria? – then discuss SAG-AFTRA going on strike and the potential future divisions between artificial content vs organic products in the entertainment industry. 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). Pr...
Jul 21, 2023•1 hr 32 min
