This Machine Kills

[This episode was recorded before Amazon announced its massive layoffs.] We chat with Eliza and Dawn from the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice about their organizing campaigns and how they are holding Amazon to account for its promises about sustainability and applying pressure on Amazon’s leadership to make them recognize important issues that they otherwise ignore. We get into the ways that the roll-out of AI and build-out of data centres has catalyzed critical discussions among Amazon workers related to environmental impacts, workers rights, and social justice—and how confronting AI has become a cornerstone for social movements and worker organizing. ••• Amazon Employees for Climate Justice | Open Letter https://www.amazonclimatejustice.org/open-letter?ms=tmk ••• AECJ Solidarity Letter https://www.amazonclimatejustice.org/solidarity?ms=tmk ••• The Amazon Unsustainability Report https://static1.squarespace.com/static/65681f099d7c3d48feb86a5f/t/6721c4047213ea343e50536f/1730266118471/unsustainability-report-2.pdf Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new 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)

The hosts take a witty jab at tech media follies before diving into the dire layoffs at Amazon and Meta. They discuss Amazon's drastic plan to cut 30,000 corporate jobs and the unsettling trend of using AI to justify these cuts. Employees voice concerns over increased workloads and high KPIs due to AI integration. There's a critical look at how Big Tech continues to prioritize AI investments despite slowing growth in other areas. The conversation raises questions about the balance between capital allocation and workforce reductions.

We’re joined by Alyssa Battistoni — author of Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature — to discuss her new book which is really just Marxist political theory at its finest. We get into capitalism’s relationship to nature, the ways in which capital absorbs and subsumes so much of our world into its systems, restructuring and controlling so many social/natural processes through its logics. But also even more importantly, the great many ways that capital engages in withdrawal and retreat from the natural world; strategically neglecting to value nature, taking advantage of its “free gifts,” while also abdicating any responsibility for the vast world outside of capital’s confines. We then ask (and answer) the question: why is existentialism necessary for thinking about climate change? ••• Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature | Alyssa Battistoni https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691263465/free-gifts ••• Luddite Tribunal | November 27th, 6:30pm | Brunswick Library, Melbourne https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/the-luddite-tribunal-tickets-1836438871099 Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new 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 start by asking some questions about political control over police forces before jumping into a discussion about Erebor, the new Silicon Valley bank founded by Palmer Luckey and Joe Lonsdale with backing from Peter Thiel, which leads us nicely into an exegesis of Thiel’s deeply scholastic interpretation of the biblical revelations contained within One Piece—plus some choice bits from Antichrist lecture series. ••• US approves new bank backed by billionaires with ties to Donald Trump https://www.ft.com/content/202d68bd-629e-42da-a938-c612bc839bdf ••• OpenAI, Nvidia Fuel $1 Trillion AI Market With Web of Circular Deals https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-10-07/openai-s-nvidia-amd-deals-boost-1-trillion-ai-boom-with-circular-deals ••• Voyages to the End of the World | Peter Thiel, Sam Wolfe https://firstthings.com/voyages-to-the-end-of-the-world/ ••• Inside billionaire Peter Thiel’s private lectures: Warnings of ‘the Antichrist’ and U.S. destruction https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/10/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-leaked/ ••• Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-lectures-antichrist ••• The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel's Antichrist Obsession https://www.wired.com/story/the-real-stakes-real-story-peter-thiels-antichrist-obsession/ Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new 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 Laleh Khalili — author of Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy — about the different systems, footsoldiers, and circuits of extraction that are essential to capitalism. We take a tour of the great many worlds of extraction: from sand mines and oil fields, to management consultants and chemical engineers, to surveillance systems and genocidal colonialism — all of which are connected together by the imperatives of extraction. Marx said that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, but we are in a race to see who capitalism will destroy first: itself or all of us. ••• Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy | Laleh Khalili https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3405-extractive-capitalism Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new 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 play another game of Where in the World is Edward Ongweso — and you’ll never guess. We pull together a few stories. First, further evidence of the AI productivity paradox and the fact that nearly every company is excited about AI, but none of them can figure out how exactly it is beneficial or profitable. Second, this includes the companies making AI, which is why they have fallen back on the one thing they know how to do: surveillance for targeted advertisement. Third, a nasty down-stream effect of the advert data ecosystem and platform economy is that it’s also powering an exterminationist techno-politics being carried out by fascist agencies and their corporate collaborators. Oops! ••• America’s top companies keep talking about AI — but can’t explain the upsides https://www.ft.com/content/e93e56df-dd9b-40c1-b77a-dba1ca01e473 ••• Meta to mine AI interactions to help target advertising https://www.ft.com/content/22f7afc3-8ac0-4ca1-9877-fd3f8ddcc986 ••• ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day https://www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-tool-that-tracks-locations-of-hundreds-of-millions-of-phones-every-day/ Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new 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 are joined by Thea Riofrancos — author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism — to chat about the many frontiers, tensions, and futures of green capitalism. How do we understand a system that is oxymoronic in its contradictory nature? How do we trace the political economies, material infrastructures, and extractive industries that are in the process of defining a planetary path dependency? Why do we need to spend a lot more time thinking about lithium? With the help of Thea’s sharp analysis, we answer these questions and more. ••• Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism | Thea Riofrancos https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324036760/about-the-book ••• Thea’s work at Climate + Community Institute https://climateandcommunity.org/bio/thea-riofrancos/ ••• Thea’s recent op-eds at the FT https://www.ft.com/stream/32daf017-8140-454c-8735-9c9947edc301 Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new 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 the growing genre of personal literary essays about AI where the literati at places like the New Yorker pen long essays laying out their thoughts, worries, and ultimate embrace of AI. But as with most personal essays, we end up learning more about the foibles and anxieties of the authors than anything material about the thing they are writing about. Big shout out to the excellent piece in N+1 we discuss in this episode, which turns the sights of literary criticism on this genre of “AI-and-I” essays. ••• What’s Up With Peter Thiel’s Obsession With the Antichrist? https://newrepublic.com/article/200471/peter-thiel-obsession-antichrist-religion ••• Large Language Muddle https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the-intellectual-situation/large-language-muddle/#rf3-55362 ••• Two Days Talking to People Looking for Jobs at ICE https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/politics/yanis-two-days-talking-to-people-looking-for-jobs-at-ice-2/ Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new 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 assassination of Charlie Kirk and its potential role as a catalyst of further violence and blowback by right-wing forces who want to avenge a martyr, by left-wing groups who want to kick off years of lead, or perhaps as simply another immense yet ephemeral moment in a strange world where “our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation of spectacles.” Then we segue expertly to talking about a new essay on “the weaponized world economy,” which adds great detail and depth to our analysis of the geoeconomic dynamics and conflicts that drive global politics, markets, finance and technology. ••• What We Know About the Hyundai-LG Plant Immigration Raid in Georgia https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/us/politics/hyundai-plant-immigration-raid-georgia.html ••• The Weaponized World Economy https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/weaponized-world-economy-farrell-newman ••• BRICS in 2025 https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/brics-in-2025/ Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new 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)

Dive into the intriguing world of a tech billionaire turned 'demon hunter' who criticizes Burning Man. Explore a humorous take on upcoming films like Avatar 3, blending pop culture with social commentary. The hosts reflect on the bizarre perceptions sparked during cultural festivals, mixing satire with insights on morality. They navigate through the psycho-political landscape of Silicon Valley, unraveling themes of deception and identity that resonate deeply in today's tech-driven society.