This Machine Kills

Cory Doctorow — returning champion, friend of the show, and author of the new novel Red Team Blues — joins us to chat about fiction (science), finance (crypto), forensics (accounting), and much more. You never knew forensic accounting could be so radical and thrilling, but Red Team Blues is an immanent critique of techno-financial capitalism in the guise of a page ripping novel. We cover a lot of ground, all of it fascinating, as we always do when Cory comes on TMK. ••• Buy Red Team Blues: https://craphound.com/shop/ ••• Follow Cory: https://twitter.com/doctorow ••• Cory’s blog: https://pluralistic.net/ 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). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We dig into the technological theology that has been taking hold in Silicon Valley and its orbital communities – in various ways, different degrees, and over time. The components of this theology are nicely compiled into an acronym coined by Timnit Gebru and Émile Torres: Tescreal – transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism, longtermism. Stuff we reference: ••• We need to examine the beliefs of today’s tech luminaries https://www.ft.com/content/edc30352-05fb-4fd8-a503-20b50ce014ab ••• Technology and Its Discontents: On the Verge of the Posthuman https://www.jstor.org/stable/40068384 ••• Why We are Called Hammer and Hope https://hammerandhope.org/article/issue-1-article-4 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). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We are joined by Jonathan Guyer – senior foreign policy writer at Vox – to discuss his reporting on how the intimate relationship between Silicon Valley and Saudi Arabia is getting even deeper and weirder. We get into the geopolitics, the soft power, and the reputation laundering of Saudi Arabia – and its intersections with the cynical values and capital flows in Silicon Valley. Jonathan’s twitter: https://twitter.com/mideastXmidwest Jonathan’s articles: ••• How Saudi money returned to Silicon Valley https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/5/1/23702451/silicon-valley-saudi-money-khashoggi ••• How the Saudi crown prince erased the stigma of a murder https://www.vox.com/world/2022/10/3/23380680/global-elite-have-forgotten-jamal-khashoggis-murder-mbs-new-york-investment-conference 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). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We spike our blood pressure with a discussion about recent reporting on the systems used by health insurers to automate rejecting claims. It’s one of those classic situations we all know and love: human doctors rubber stamping algorithmic decisions in a system created by a private equity ghoul to save major insurers a few dollars by making the lives of real people significantly worse. Stuff we reference ••• How Cigna Saves Millions by Having Its Doctors Reject Claims Without Reading Them https://www.propublica.org/article/cigna-pxdx-medical-health-insurance-rejection-claims ••• Lina Khan: We Must Regulate A.I. Here’s How. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/opinion/ai-lina-khan-ftc-technology.html 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). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We get into Evgeny Morozov’s latest essay on the geopolitical interests and military neoliberalism that’s really driving the AI arms race. Morozov traces today’s developments back to the Cold War – not just as a metaphor, but by showing how many of the same people and institutions are still in positions of power. To understand the America vs China framing of technological competition, which is now so dominant and two-dimensional in the discourse about AI, we must see how it is stoked by people like Eric Schmidt and Gilman Louie and their networks of influence, capital, and ideology. Article we discuss: ••• AI: the key battleground for Cold War 2.0? | Evgeny Morozov https://mondediplo.com/2023/05/02china 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). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We cruise into the drive-thru of Taco Bell’s Innovation Lab and discuss the strange sublime of food that has been industrially engineered to hit every pleasure center in your brain, while also profaning all this is holy and natural in this world. We are awe-struck by the productive capacity and scientific innovation of capital, while also in total horror of what it has produced and innovated. And yes, I will add a Doritos Loco Taco to my meal. Thanks. Article we discuss ••• Taco Bell’s Innovation Kitchen, the Front Line in the Stunt-Food Wars https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/24/taco-bells-innovation-kitchen-the-front-line-in-the-stunt-food-wars 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). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We are very pleased to be joined by Sarah Myers West— managing director of AI Now Institute and former Senior Advisor on AI to the FTC—to discuss their excellent new report, 2023 Landscape: Confronting Tech Power. We lay out how the dominance of Big Tech is built on a triforce of advantages: data, compute, geopolitical. These advantages serve as both core pillars and core chokepoints for corporate control over AI. And if we hope to overturn their power, then we must undermine these advantages. The report lays out a number of key interventions for policy, regulation, and organizing. ••• 2023 Landscape report: https://ainowinstitute.org/general/2023-landscape-executive-summary ••• Sarah’s twitter: https://twitter.com/sarahbmyers 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). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

Returning champion David A. Banks joins us for a supersized discussion about his new book, The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America. How do cities have to act like social media influencers to attract new flows of capital? How are fundamental dynamics of capitalist urban development — growth machines, rent gaps, spatial fixes, destructive renovation, entrepreneurial competition — updated and upgraded to fit into the techno-financial conditions of today? Why does every downtown have the same damn wine bar now? Join us for answers to all these questions and much more. ••• David’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520383456/the-city-authentic ••• David’s twitter: https://twitter.com/DA_Banks ••• David’s substack: https://otherday.substack.com/ 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). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We talk about the federal intelligence agencies being big fans of great books and movies, and writing about them in their little newsletters. Then move on to a big discussion about how the tech industry has been buoyed by a whole lot of nothing: zero interest rates, zero marginal costs, zero regulation, zero oversight. Those zeroes are key to the political economic foundation of Silicon Valley. And now – due to social, financial, and technological factors – the zeroes are increasing slightly. Will AI be the perpetual value machine that finally helps capital resolve all its contradictions and ascend to the next level? Of course not. But that won’t stop them from trying to force the impossible anyway. Articles we discuss ••• “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” Move Poses Terror Threat, Kansas City Intel Agency Claims https://theintercept.com/2023/04/11/how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline-movie/ ••• Is Environmental Radicalism Inevitable? https://newrepublic.com/article/171560/how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline-young-activists ••• TechScape: The end of the ‘free money’ era https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/11/techscape-zirp-tech-boom ••• Putting the Silicon in Silicon Valley https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n06/john-lanchester/putting-the-silicon-in-silicon-valley 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). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We go in-depth on an article that has not received the attention it is due: an investigation into an automated welfare fraud system in the Netherlands, which is based on unprecedented access to the machine learning model, its training data, and operational handbooks. Through a deep analysis of the systems mechanics, this investigation goes beyond validating what we already know to be true about how such algorithms discriminate. It shows how these systems are complex and targeted in their discrimination, while also being simplistic and arbitrary in their decisions. Articles we discuss ••• Inside the Suspicion Machine https://www.wired.com/story/welfare-state-algorithms/ ••• Welfare surveillance system violates human rights, Dutch court rules https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/welfare-surveillance-system-violates-human-rights-dutch-court-rules 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). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)