This Machine Kills

355. The Rise of Shadow Finance

We are a bit ahead with recording, but we had to talk about the Trump assassination attempt and JD Vance being tapped for vice president (for like the first 30 minutes). Then we get into a great essay on how private financial markets — or the shadow finance system that is unregulated, unaccountable, and undemocratic — have become the dominant form of finance in society, thanks in large part to trillions in capital allocated from public pen...

Premium – 354. Capital Questions Gen AI

We take a look at recent reports where venture capitalists like Sequoia and the investment banks like Goldman Sachs are starting to wonder out loud whether AI will ever be able to generate enough revenue and consumer demand to make the bubble feel solid. The returns on AI necessary for this massive infrastructure buildout to make sense are looking increasingly fantastical. It was only a matter of time until capital finally came around to our s...

353. Slaughterbots, Roll Out!

We refocus on the war in Ukraine and the country’s pivot toward being the “Silicon Valley for autonomous drones and other weaponry.” Thanks to a combination of foreign investment, entrepreneurial governance, DIY scrappiness, and a ‘by any means necessary’ attitude, the future of cheap, lethal, autonomous warfare is being forged and tested in Ukrainian war zones — before inevitably being deployed everywhere else in some form.

Premium – 352. Big Vape, Small Cigs

We chat about an interesting case study in technology governance: the rise of vapes and the return of cigarettes. How do you create new markets for a product that is highly addictive but also extremely regulated (even banned)? The answer is to flaunt regulation, disrupt competitors, and create an image of coolness using social media influencers. Platforms like Uber learned their strategies from industries like big tobacco, and now the new crop...

351. How AI is Boiling the Oceans

We get into how the massive global expansion of data centres — thanks largely to demand from training and operating AI — is putting major strain on energy systems and requiring the generation of more electricity. How’s all that new energy demand being met? Some renewables, a lot of fossil fuels, but also maybe futuristic magic technology? Big tech firms like Micorosoft and their nuclear tech partners—including startups backed by Sam Al...

Premium – 350. Most Data Work is Bullshit

We chat a bit about some upcoming international travel, then do a reading series by a data scientist who wrote a great blog post about how most of the work done by data scientists in large organizations feels totally worthless, pointless, unfulfilling, and unnecessary — in other words, the definition of bullshit. And yet data science is valorized and mythologized in ways that are disconnected from material reality.

• I W...

  2024-06-29 22:48:20 +0000 UTC View Post

349. Death By A Thousand Prices (ft. David Dayen, Lindsay Owens)

We are joined by David Dayen (editor, American Prospect) and Lindsay Owens (director, Groundwork Collaborative) to discuss the special issue of the American Prospect they put together on “how pricing really works.” We drill down into why pricing is the perfect window for seeing how power works in the economy. We explore the great many tactics and technologies that companies have devised to make pricing into a major source of profits by enf...

348. Lost Futures of AI (ft. Evgeny Morozov)

We are joined once again by Evgeny Morozov to discuss his new podcast series, A Sense of Rebellion, which tells the story of a wild bunch of eccentric hippies who had grand ideas for how to design interactive technologies and intelligent environments and cybernetic systems that are radically different from today’s smart tech and AI. Morozov takes us deep down the rabbit hole of Cold War counterculture and technoculture, and deep into the lif...

Premium – 347. The Insulin Empire, Part 2 (ft. Athena Sofides)

We keep rolling with our discussion about the Insulin Empire with Athena.

• The Insulin Empire https://thebaffler.com/after-the-fact/the-insulin-empire-ongweso-jr-sofides 

• Mutual Aid Diabetes https://mutualaiddiabetes.com/ ...

  2024-06-11 22:36:40 +0000 UTC View Post

346. The Insulin Empire, Part 1 (ft. Athena Sofides)

We are joined by Athena Sofides who co-wrote (with Ed) a brilliant essay in The Baffler, which provides an in-depth analysis of insulin, the social health factors of diabetes, and the global oligopoly of pharmaceutical corporations that exert total control over – and extract max profits from — this medicine that many millions of diabetics depend upon everyday and are unable to access. We go deep on how this insulin cartel is waging, as the...

Premium – 345. Thuggish Ruggish Live Nation

We do a reading series on a major anti-trust lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice against Live Nation / Ticketmaster and the absolutely wild tactics the company used to intimidate competitors, enforce market domination, and totally lockdown the live entertainment industry. Then we wrap up with the new licensing deals between OpenAI and The Atlantic, Vox Media, News Corp – and what they portend for the hollowed out future of news medi...

344. How Uber Weaponizes Complexity to Abuse Workers and Bully States

We check in with an old enemy of the show, Uber, to discuss it’s recent battles with states over wage floors and worker rights, and get a masterclass on how Uber weaponizes complexity through it’s platform to abuse workers and avoid regulation, while also wielding the threat of capital flight to great effect against politicians and governments. 

• Minneapolis just called Uber’s bluff — other cities must follow their le...

  2024-05-31 01:59:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Premium – 343. Broken Windows Redux

Discussing a new surveillance program by NYC Mayor Eric Adams and the public-private partnerships with Fusus by Axon, we dig into how the moral panic around “organized retail theft” has become a smoke screen / cynical moral alibi for an arms race of policing. It’s new software for the old hardware of an oppressive corporate state.

• Mayor Adams Announces new Pilot Program to Combat Retail Theft, Create Efficiencies, Improve P...

  2024-05-29 01:31:51 +0000 UTC View Post

342. Superalignment with Sam Altman’s Values

We talk about how everybody on the superalignment team at OpenAI—focused on safety, risk, adversarial testing, societal impacts, and existential concerns—is resigning, including high-profile people like Illya Sutskever. And nobody can talk about it because of draconian rules (even for Silicon Valley) about non-disclosure and non-disparagement people must sign (or risk their vested equity) upon exiting the company. For us, the turmoil of Op...

Premium – 341. Cyber Freak Beat

After revisiting our discussion of stimulants from last episode, we dive deep into a new hive of freaks on the internet and examine the psychology of forum posters on the Cybertruck Owners Club.

• Cybertruck Owners Club https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/ 

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (2024-05-21 05:54:47 +0000 UTC View Post

340. With AI Friends Like These, Who Needs Society?

First we dive into some exciting news of actual innovation: ultrasonic extraction for cold brew coffee. Then offer a live react to OpenAI’s new product GPT-4o, which is its new flagship model in the form of a voice assistant, and jump from there to talk more deeply about the problems with AI companions via a tech column in the NYTimes.

• Scientists Use Ultrasound to Make Cold Brew Coffee in 3 Minutes Instead of 24 Hours 2024-05-16 03:21:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Premium – 339. Reality is Downstream from the Unreal Engine

In what feels like a curse of eternal return, we discuss the news that Softbank is leading a $1 billion funding round into what is now the premier UK AI startup, Wavye, which has a generative simulation model for driving data. We then transition to talking about a long piece of reporting on video game engines like Unreal and Unity, the dream of creating perfect simulations of reality, and how everything is now downstream from video games.

338. Certified Rap Beef // Campus Actions, Deranged Reactions

Because we are all rap heads at TMK, we have been feeling juiced up by the beef between Kendrick and Drake, so we spend the first half breaking that down. Then we catch up on the campus protests and collective actions, the vibes on the ground in the encampments, and the range of deranged reactions by people who are disconnected from reality.

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (2024-05-08 04:50:30 +0000 UTC View Post

Jathan got married (new shows next week)!

Hello comrades – just a quick note to say there won't be any new shows this week because Jathan got married a couple days ago! So we are gonna revel in the post-wedding happiness (and exhaustion) by taking a short break from recording. We will be back with new stuff next week. For those interested, next week Jathan will also post some photos / videos in the TMK Discord and on Twitter, once we get the final shots of the ceremony and reception...

Premium – 337. A History of Fossil Empire in Palestine, Part 2

We continue our discussion of Andreas Malm’s new, giant, magisterial essay, which lays out a longue durée analysis of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, situating it in a history of fossil empire, colonial annihilation, and ecological catastrophe that stretches directly back to 1840. The project of settler-genocide today is one that kicked off nearly two hundred years ago.

• The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Eart...

  2024-04-23 11:03:19 +0000 UTC View Post

336. A History of Fossil Empire in Palestine, Part 1

We start with the announcement of Jathan’s new book, plus direct attention to a new special issue on ideologies and power in AI. Then we send our solidarity and support to Jodi Dean and others who are being punished for speaking out for Palestinian emancipation, before digging into the main subject of this episode and the next one: a giant, magisterial essay by Andreas Malm which lays out a longue durée analysis of the ongoing genocide in G...

Premium – 335. Seto Kaiba is My Role Model

First we eulogize the dream deferred of Neom, then we add more lore to Palmer Luckey who, as we find out, has modeled his whole life on a literal-minded interpretation of a character from Yu-Gi-Oh!, then we talk more about the conspiratorial and immaterial thinking of the China-TikTok Hawks, finally we heap praise on a very astute essay about the material reality of SHEIN.

• Saudis Scale Back Ambition for $1.5 Trillion Desert Proje...

  2024-04-19 01:45:46 +0000 UTC View Post

334. Israel’s AI Kill List: “That’s the Holy Grail. Once you go automatic, target generation goes crazy.”

In the first part of the show, we talk about a ridiculous new paper funded by OpenAI that aims to reconcile all human values by combining them into a “moral graph” to train Socratic LLM through reinforcement learning by people “voting on wisdom upgrades.” Then we dig into the latest reporting on yet more AI systems that Israel is using to intensify and justify its genocide in Gaza. This time through generating kill lists and tracking w...

Premium – 333. JSOC for the Environment

We dig into reporting on a special forces unit in the Brazilian ministry of environment which is composed of tier one operators who are also all scientists that are driven by a singular righteous mission of protecting the Amazon rainforest, wildlife and Indigenous communities from illegal miners and loggers. It’s almost like if the EPA had a wet works team—or, at least, it’s a good start.

• The Brazilian Special-Forces Unit F...

  2024-04-10 21:35:55 +0000 UTC View Post

332. Opening the Vicious Circle of Risk Rating (ft. Ariel Bogle)

We are joined by Ariel Bogle — an investigative reporter with The Guardian Australia — to discuss her new, big piece uncovering the Security Risk Rating Tool created by the private contractor Serco and used to control the lives of people in Australia’s immigration detention centres. We get into the broader context of these tools and then dig into the specifics of how they work, how they impact detainees, the way the transform subjective ...

Premium – 331. TMK BC5: Mute Compulsion, Ch. 13

We discuss Chapter 13 – Surplus Populations and Crisis – and get deeper into the role of surplus populations in capitalism, how your relative position to the circuits of capital plays a big part in dictating what kind of life you have, and why capital needs a steady pool of people to sacrifice to help prevent, mitigate, and weather inevitable crises. But first we talk for a while about recent analyses of techno-feudalism and why we still t...

330. The Silicon Empire in Eastern Europe (ft. Erin McElroy)

We are joined by Erin McElroy — author of Silicon Valley Imperialism — to first discuss their work as a co-founder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and the important work they are doing on landlord tech, both as an academic and activist. Then we get deeper into their new book that offers a rich, in-depth analysis of how the racial technocapitalism of Silicon Valley has set up imperial outposts in the postsocialist countries of Eastern ...

Premium – 329. Surging Forward

In the first part we chat about fast food and the spread of surge pricing to everything, then use some recent announcements in the tech sector to get into the magical thinking and fictitious capital that totally sustains the AI industry all for the grand dream and supreme purpose of squeezing out another 3% annual growth in the economy.

• Uber-style pricing is coming for everything 2024-03-27 20:11:43 +0000 UTC View Post

328. The Universal Science of Advertisement (ft. Lee McGuigan)

We are joined by Lee McGuigan — author of Selling the American People — to discuss the origins of advertising / adtech and how the ad industry has been deeply entangled with operations research and information technology since the 1940s, way longer than the usual stories of when advertising and technology joined together. As Lee’s work shows, the ad industry is a perfect case study for better understanding how the science / ideo...

Premium – 327. TMK BC5: Mute Compulsion, Ch. 12

We discuss Chapter 12 – The Power of Logistics – and get deeper into how, as Mau writes, “mobility is power, and means of transportation and communication are weapons,” which capital wields against labor, against government, against nature, against itself. We also illustrate the techno-politics of logistics with yet another reveal that a rapidly rising startup in the space of automating labor – Presto Automation – is actually Potem...