This Machine Kills

We learn all about how leftists are against any new regulations for AI. It’s the unbelievable return of horseshoe theory as we discuss the curious new discourse cycle being promoted by prominent pundits. ••• The Curious Left-Wing Argument Against New AI Regulations https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/ai-regulation-anti-monopoly-challenge/688707/ ••• Obsolete: The AI Industry’s Trillion-Dolla...

We jump off from the OpenAI - Hugging Face hacking incident as a way to talk about the misleading, cynical, and hysterical ways we talk about AI and the stranglehold that existential risk has on our framings and discourses. The OAI-HF event shows that rather than treating machine learning as certain kind of technology that does things in ways that can be explained and contextualized, even when our...

We bring together two different stories about the tech sector and speculative real estate booms. First, how Netflix promises to turn the Jersey Shore into “Hollywood East”. Second, how the data centre bonanza is stretching Wall Street beyond its limits. ••• Can Netflix remake Jersey Shore — and its property market? https://www.ft.com/content/abbc3601-9ebc-4f3a-a317-0b1eee96e5a8 ••• The multiplying...

[We had technical difficulties and had to use a backup recording, sorry!] We chat with JS Tan and Clarissa Redwin — both veteran tech workers and labor organizers — about their new book which chronicles the tech worker movement over the last ten years. JS and Clarissa have been deeply involved in this movement, which gives them the perfect vantage point to trace the catalyzing events and organizin...

We turn our sights down under by taking a closer look at the new all-of-government strategy for AI in Australia’s Interests. Australia has plotted out a bold, progressive vision where AI enthusiasm is mandatory, no is not an option (and. in fact, the lack of choice is actually empowering), and the country, with all its open space and valuable resources, is the next great investment opportunity for...

We take a deep dive into New York’s police-surveillance infrastructure, a sprawling leviathan that Mayor Zohran Mamdani was outspoken against during his campaign, but has now inherited and is even warming up to as his administration settles into power. ••• Mamdani’s Surveillance State https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/mamdani-surveillance-state.html ••• Walking the Thin Blue Line https://www...

We chat about Ed’s engagement with communities pushing back against data center development in Tulsa, plus some major reporting showing the sheer scale of fossil-fuelled data center development in the United States. We’re talking more than 120 GIGAWATTS of new gas-burning power plants in development just to electrify data centers. There’s simply no way to equivocate about this amount of new pollut...

We’re joined by Nik Suresh, director of Hermit Tech and excellent blogger on the software industry. You might know Nik for an incredible essay he wrote a couple years ago about piledriving anybody who mentions AI. Well he’s back at it with another great piece analysing the AI mania that has seemingly possessed every manager in every institution in every sector. We chat about where this mania comes...

First we get into a very circular (the strongest shape in nature) deal between Nvidia, OpenAI, and Softbank to finance a $250 billion 10-gigawatt data center complex, powered by a natural gas plant built by the US and Japanese governments, on a decommissioned uranium-enrichment site in Ohio, which will be filled by a further $350 billion of chips sold and financed by Nvidia. All very normal stuff....

We chat with Matt Haugen and Jesse Goldstein from the Climate + Community Institute about a new report they co-authored laying out how the US is engaging in industrial policy for AI development in ways that are often indirect, inconsistent, and interpersonal, but ultimately are configured around supporting a specific configuration of (venture) capitalist strategy for intensive, rapid development,...

We first open a door by talking about the great new ‘right to repair’ ruling from the FTC, which is the result of a long fight against rentier monopolies and digital enclosure, and should be precedent for expanding these battles and rights much further. We then tune back into hell by discussing how the AI-driven promises of convenience, personalization, and agentic servants are bribes meant to mak...

We chat all about the growing market for humanoid robots. What are the financial incentives and social ideologies driving the creation of technologies designed to directly mimic (and replace) humans—even though such designs make little sense as engineering choices? What kind of society makes these technologies attractive for investors and consumers, but also ultimately doomed to fail as solutions...

Miracle cures! Get your miracle cures! What the hell are peptides? Why is this class of black/gray market drugs on everyone’s lips and being injected into everybody’s veins? Where did this multi-billion market suddenly come from? We take a look at the political economy of peptides, the pernicious consumerization of healthcare, and the potential consequences of this surging peptidal wave for societ...

(Sorry we’re a little late; blame producer pneumonia) We open the nightmare world folder and go through a series of stories about technology, surveillance, and policing. Cops using AI to generate “evidential material” in criminal cases, cops using Flock automated license plate readers to stalk people, cops using Flock to wrongfully arrest folks, and then a wildcard: billions of images from the Pok...

If every billionaire is a policy failure, then the world’s first trillionaire is a far more serious omen of collapse. We spend this episode talking about Muskism, reflecting on an economy that is racing in two very opposite directions, and considering the broader public (non-)response and social ramifications of the Age of the Trillionaire. ••• Elon Musk Becomes the World’s First Trillionaire http...

“Welcome to the Church of Ludd, it’s nice to see you join our congregation. Please pick up a pamphlet as you walk in, which explains how to set up your religious exemption from using AI at your workplace.” — After a fun story about religious refusal of AI, we then chat about the various policy proposals being put forth by folks like Sam Altman and Bernies Sanders which outline how public wealth fu...

It’s a news roundup! First, in a duo of stories designed to make Ed jealous, Australia has seized 20 million illegal vapes at the border since January 2024, while the Australian attorney general has announced a $1.4 billion lawsuit against 3M over the harmful effects of PFAS or “forever chemicals”. Second, Anthropic files a massive IPO, with OpenAI and SpaceX looking to do the same soon. We chat a...

We chat with Gaby Del Valle—policy reporter at the Verge—about her excursion to the Border Security Expo, the new hardware and software being sold to fight the endless battle at the border, and how the border has now expanded to encompass everywhere and everybody. Plus we discuss Gaby’s research into the white supremacist ideologies of eugenicist environmentalism that have motivated immigration po...

We chat about how so many people keep getting seduced into thinking chatbots are conscious, or just keep hedging their bets in some kind of Cyber-Pascal’s Wage, or just keep lying to prop up an industry and culture they are invested in perpetuating. Then we argue why, rather than just be eroded into acquiescence by an overwhelming tsunami of AI, rather than being bowled over and washed out to sea,...

We’re going in for a threepeat – it’s Data Centers 3, as we continue with our analysis of the data center industry, the opposition to these hyperscale projects, and the real impacts on social communities and natural ecosystems. We get into the industry playbook of using “counterinsurgency tactics” to undermine opposition to these data centers and the ideological playbook of effective altruists tre...

We go in for a second helping on analysing the opposition to data centers. After further deconstructing the arguments against opposition, we do what none of them actually do: pay attention to the actual material conditions on the ground. We discuss reporting on why real communities are opposed to these infrastructure projects and how these projects are being pushed through in black-boxed, stonewal...

We deconstruct the confused arguments – from the left – against moratoriums for data centres. These positions set up a false dichotomy between either pausing or governing technology, they start from the assumption that a politics of refusal or opposition is an illegitimate position to hold, and they depend on rhetorical leaps and pretzel logic to make arguments that end up ceding more ground to co...

We dig into two shocks in international political economy that are each on their way to being complex, interrelated crises. First, the unsustainable system of export-led “bottomless competition" in China that is dominating — and disrupting — global markets for advanced manufacturing and high-tech goods thanks to hyper-competitive pressure, diminishing returns, vertical integration, hefty subsidies...

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 bor...

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. F...