Paris Marx is joined by JS Tan to discuss his experience seeing first hand how Microsoft deployed its cloud and machine learning services to help Chevron extract more oil and gas, and the state of tech worker organizing around climate change.

JS Tan is a PhD student at MIT, researching cloud computing in the US and China. He?s a a member of Collective Action in Tech and writes the Value Added newsletter.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Read JS Tan?s ?Oil Is the New Data? piece in Logic Magazine.

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Paris Marx is joined by Kate Green and Milo to discuss how Elon Musk?s DOGE is dismantling the US Digital Service and the consequences that has on really improving service delivery in government.

Kate Green and Milo are former US Digital Service engineers.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Find out more about We The Builders and read perspectives of federal workers.USDS workers have resigned en masse from DOGE, and Musk?s agency has fired many of those who haven?t left.The General Services Administration has also cut the 18F technology team, and has been doing mass layoffs at the Technology Transformation Service. 

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Don?t worry; your regularly scheduled Tech Won?t Save Us is coming soon! But if you?re looking to try something a little different and get a critical take on the ongoing Canadian election, check out Campaign Cops, a special five-week series hosted by Paris Marx and Rachel Gilmore.

The first episode is here for you to try out, but if you want to keep listening, find future episodes on Rachel?s YouTube channel or her podcast feed on places like Apple or Spotify.

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Paris Marx is joined by Jen St. Denis to discuss how Silicon Valley thinking is creeping into Canadian politics as Donald Trump continues to threaten the country with tariffs and annexation.

Jen St. Denis is a reporter with The Tyee.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Jen wrote about the Canadian tech leaders who want their own DOGE and a BC-based Twitter/X account pushing white supremacism.Paris wrote about the effort to expand DOGE beyond US borders and the conservative-tech alliance in Canada.A recent poll found 51% of Canadians now see the United States as an enemy or potential threat.

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Paris Marx is joined by Timnit Gebru to discuss where the AI industry stands in 2025 as AI increasingly becomes a geopolitical football even as the big promises made by AI companies fail to materialize.

Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Timnit wrote about the TESCREAL bundle of ideologies with Émile Torres.The Data Workers? Inquiry allowed data workers to share their experiences in their workplaces.

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Paris Marx is joined by James Meadway to discuss how the UK Labour Party is embracing AI regardless of the cost and the consequences of allowing US companies to dominate the digital economy in so many other countries.

James Meadway is an economist and the host of Macrodose.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

James wrote about the UK Labour Party?s obsession with growth.Last year, Google warned the UK government it would get left behind on AI if it didn?t weaken copyright rules and build more data centers.

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Paris Marx is joined by Ed Niedermeyer to discuss the trouble with Tesla?s business model and how that makes Elon Musk?s power vulnerable to protest and boycott.

Ed Niedermeyer is the author Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors and a co-host of the Autonocast.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Find a Tesla Takedown protest in your area.

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Paris Marx is joined by Makena Kelly to discuss how Elon Musk?s DOGE is reshaping the US government and the consequences that has for government employees and the wider public.

Makena Kelly is a senior writer at WIRED and writes the weekly Politics Lab newsletter.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Makena wrote about how DOGE is replacing government IT roles and also the COBOL Cowboys back in 2020.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn?t go to waste. We?re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here?s a preview of this week?s premium episode with Alex Hanna, the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Institute. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by Eoin Higgins to discuss how tech billionaires set out to change the media ecosystem and made it profitable for influential voices to shift to the political right.

Eoin Higgins is a journalist and the author of Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Read an excerpt of Eoin?s book on LitHub.Last year, Peter Thiel bragged to Ann Coulter about killing Gawker.Rick Perlstein wrote about the time he met Marc Andreessen.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn?t go to waste. We?re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here?s a preview of this week?s premium episode with Julia Black, a reporter on The Information?s Weekend Team. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by Liz Pelly to discuss how Spotify changes how we listen to music and the broader impacts it has on the wider music industry.

Liz Pelly is a music journalist and the author of Mood Machine.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

You can read an excerpt of Liz?s book in Harper?s.The CEO of Suno AI said people ?don?t enjoy? making music.

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Paris Marx is joined by Chris Gilliard to discuss David Golumbia's final book Cyberlibertarianism and how right-wing politics shaped how we think about the internet.

Chris Gilliard is co-director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute and author of the forthcoming book Luxury Surveillance, coming in 2026.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

David Golumbia wrote an essay called ?ChatGPT Should Not Exist? in December 2022.Matt Bors drew a comic called ?You made become a Nazi!?Cyberlibertarianism is out now from the University of Minnesota Press.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn?t go to waste. We?re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here?s a preview of this week?s premium episode with Émile P. Torres, a postdoctoral researcher at Case Western University. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by Gaby Del Valle to discuss the inauguration of Donald Trump and what the tech oligarchy hopes to get from their relationship with him.

Gaby Del Valle is a policy reporter at The Verge and is working on a book on ecofascism that will be released by Bloomsbury in 2026.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Gaby wrote about Elon Musk?s plans for DOGE and the eugenic ideas in Silicon Valley.The Guardian published an opinion piece titled, ?I knew one day I?d have to watch powerful men burn the world down ? I just didn?t expect them to be such losers.?Tesla applied for more H-1B visas as it was laying off thousands of workers.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn?t go to waste. We?re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here?s a preview of this week?s premium episode with Dan McQuillan, author of Resisting AI and a lecturer at Goldsmiths University of London. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by Jathan Sadowski to discuss the relationship between technology and capitalism, and what lessons can be taken from the Luddites to properly assess and understand these systems.

Jathan Sadowski is is the author of The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism. He?s also the co-host of This Machine Kills and a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Jathan wrote about AI and the Tinkerbell Effect in Futurism.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn?t go to waste. We?re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here?s a preview of this week?s premium episode with Dwayne Monroe, a senior cloud architect and longtime consultant these kinds of projects. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by Will Tavlin to discuss how the Netflix model transformed film into the Typical Netflix Movie and how the company uses claims about data to deceive the public.

Will Tavlin is a New York-based writer who has written for n+1, Bookforum, and the Columbia Journalism Review.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Will wrote about Netflix and the Typical Netflix Movie for n+1.

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Paris Marx is joined by Cecilia Rikap to discuss the ways Amazon, Microsoft, and Google gain power from companies becoming dependent on their cloud services and how generative AI exacerbates that problem.

Cecilia Rikap is an Associate Professor in Economics at University College London.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Paris and Cecilia were co-authors on the ?Reclaiming digital sovereignty? white paper.Cecilia wrote a report called ?Dynamics of Corporate Governance Beyond Ownership in AI.?

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Paris Marx is joined by Ali Alkhatib to discuss the difficulty of holding the AI industry accountable and why sometimes it makes sense for people to destroy AI systems that are harming them.

Ali Alkhatib works with Logic(s) magazine and was previously the director of the Center for Applied Data Ethics.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Ali wrote a blog post called ?Destroy AI.?

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Paris Marx is joined by Molly White, Brian Merchant, and Eric Wickham to discuss the highs and lows (mostly lows) of this year in tech news.

Molly White is the creator of Web3 is Going Just Great and Follow the Crypto. Brian Merchant is my co-host on System Crash, a new podcast we?re hosting. He?s also a longtime tech journalist and author of Blood in the Machine. Eric Wickham is the producer for Tech Won?t Save Us, along with a bunch of other podcast, and an independent journalist.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Molly joined Brian and Paris on System Crash.Peter Thiel made some dumb remarks about Luigi Mangione on the Piers Morgan show while looking very shiny.Apple sold fewer than half a million Vision Pro headsets this year.

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Paris Marx is joined by Amanda Mull to discuss the data-informed decisions that are changing the way we all experience air travel, mostly for the worse.

Amanda Mull is a senior reporter and Buying Power columnist at Bloomberg Businessweek.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Amanda wrote about the changing flying experience for Bloomberg and the big investments being made in airport lounges for The Atlantic.Legacy airlines are taking budget customers with the ultracheap fares.In the US, budget airlines are beginning to offer premium seats and other amenities to attract more premium customers.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn?t go to waste. We?re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here?s a preview of this week?s premium episode with Aurora Gomez Delgado of Tu Nube Seca Mi Río. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by Cam Wilson to discuss Australia?s plan to ban under-16s from social media, the interests driving it, and whether it?s the right approach to tackle the harms of those platforms.

Cam Wilson is associate editor at Crikey.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Cam wrote about the under-16 social media ban for Crikey.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn?t go to waste. We?re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here?s a preview of this week?s premium episode with Brid Smith, a former TD or Member of Parliament in the Irish Parliament in Dublin. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

Support the show

Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn?t go to waste. We?re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here?s a preview of this week?s premium episode with Sebastian Lehuede, a lecturer at King?s College London. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by MV Ramana to discuss the tech industry?s push to have nuclear energy power its data centers and why the reality of nuclear power isn?t as great as its promoters often make it seem.

MV Ramana is a Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Nuclear Is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Langdon Winner wrote The Whale and the Reactor and Do Artifacts Have Politics?. Timothy Mitchell wrote Carbon Democracy.Microsoft made an agreement to try to restart Three Mile Island, but it?s not a done deal yet.Data centers are fueling fossil fuel use, despite claims about nuclear and renewables. Leaked documents in October confirmed Israel has nuclear weapons.

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Paris Marx is joined by Becca Lewis to discuss the right-wing project to shape the internet in the 1990s and how we?re still living with the legacies of those actions today.

Becca Lewis is a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Paris wrote about Marc Andreessen mentioning the Italian Futurists in his Techno-Optimist Manifesto.Ruth Eveleth wrote about the Italian Futurists in the context of Silicon Valley.In 1995, Wired published a story on how ?America?s futurist politicians? Al Gore and Newt Gingrich were in an epic struggle to shape the internet.Becca mentioned the work of Nicole Hemmer and Patricia Aufderheide.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn?t go to waste. We?re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here?s a preview of this week?s premium episode with Cecilia Rikap, an Associate Professor in Economics at University College London. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by Brian Merchant to discuss the fallout from the US election, what it means for the tech industry, and more importantly, what it might mean for all of us. They also celebrate the show hitting 250 episodes!

Brian Merchant is a longtime tech writer and author of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Brian wrote about the results of the election on his newsletter.Paris wrote about why we need to remember who enabled Elon Musk to obtain his power.There are already reports of advertisers returning to Twitter/X to gain favor with Musk and Trump.OpenAI is moving away from its original non-profit status.Uber chief legal officer Tony West told Kamala Harris to stop attacking big business.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn?t go to waste. Starting this week, we?re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here?s a preview of this week?s premium episode with Ali Alkhatib, Logic(s) data editor and former interim director of the Center for Applied Data Ethics. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by tante to discuss troubling developments in the open source world as Wordpress goes to war with WP Engine and a new definition of open source AI doesn?t require being open about training data.

tante is a sociotechnologist, writer, speaker, and Luddite working on tech and its social impact.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

tante wrote about the problem with the Open Source Initiative?s definition of open source AI.Check out this link for the full breakdown on the Wordpress drama.Wordpress changed its trademark guidelines on September 19 regarding the use of the WP abbreviation.Tumblr and Wordpress started selling user data for AI training earlier this year.A lot of the controversy around Richard Stallman started blowing up in 2019.

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Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss all the money Elon Musk is pouring into the US election and what Silicon Valley?s political influence will mean regardless of who becomes president.

Jacob Silverman is the author of Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley, coming in September 2025 from Bloomsbury. His book Easy Money is now available in paperback.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

The New York Times reported on Elon Musk?s efforts to get Trump elected in the final two weeks of the campaign.The Pennsylvania district attorney sued Elon Musk?s PAC to stop his $1 million giveaways.Marc Andreessen wrote the Techno-Optimist Manifesto and the Little Tech Agenda.FTX was up to way more shady things that didn?t make it into the first trial of Sam Bankman-Fried. The second didn?t go ahead after he was found guilty in the first.The canvassing operation for Trump by Elon Musk's PAC has been flagged as potentially fraudulent.The US Supreme Court?s Chevron decision will have significant consequences for federal regulators.

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Tech billionaires are embracing extreme right-wing politics. It?s not just to enhance their power, but to try to realize a harmful vision for humanity?s future that could see humans merging with machines and possibly even living in computer simulations. Will we allow them to put our collective resources behind their science fiction dreams, or fight for a better future and a different kind of technology to go along with it? This is episode 4 of Data Vampires, a special four-part series from Tech Won?t Save Us.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The show is hosted by Paris Marx. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Postdoctoral candidate at Case Western Reserve University Émile P. Torres, features reporter at The Information Julia Black, Goldsmiths University lecturer Dan McQuillan, and former head of the Center for Applied Data Ethics Ali Alkhatib were interviewed for this episode.Pieces by Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen, and an interview with Elon Musk were cited.

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Paris Marx is joined by Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry to discuss how Silicon Valley's extractive data collection regime and the power it grants them resembles a much older form of exploitation: colonialism.

Ulises A. Mejias is a professor of Communication Studies at SUNY Oswego and Nick Couldry is a professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory at the London School of Economics. They are the co-authors of Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back and among the co-founders of the network Tierra Común.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Read an excerpt of Ulises and Nick?s book.Ulises has helped advance the Non-Aligned Technologies Movement.The World Economic Forum and Accenture published a report on governance of AI.Geoffrey Hinton was one of the winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics. Paris wrote about why we shouldn?t trust his assessment of AI.Google told the UK Labour government it will be left behind in the AI race if it doesn?t do what the company demands.Data centers use 21% of electricity in Ireland, and number that could jump to 31% within the next three years.Home building in West London could be restricted until 2035 because data centers have used up the available energy.Kenya is being drafted into the US?s anti-China tech alliance, which includes building data centers while ignoring the poor working conditions of data labelers and content moderators.

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Sam Altman is clear: he?s ready to sacrifice anything for his AI fantasies. But are we? We dig into why generative AI has such extreme energy demands and how major tech companies are trying to rewrite climate accounting rules to cover how much their emissions are rising. AI isn?t just churning out visual slop; it?s also being used to transform how our society works and further reduce people?s power over their lives. It?s a disaster any way you look at it. This is episode 3 of Data Vampires, a special four-part series from Tech Won?t Save Us.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The show is hosted by Paris Marx. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Hugging Face Climate Lead Sasha Luccioni, Associate Professor in Economics Cecilia Rikap, former head of the Center for Applied Data Ethics Ali Alkhatib, Goldsmiths University lecturer Dan McQuillan, and Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute Alex Hanna were interviewed for this episode.Interviews with Sam Altman and Brad Smith were cited.

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Paris Marx is joined by Julia Black to discuss who Curtis Yarvin is and how his anti-democratic, far-right writings have influenced the politics of Silicon Valley and the wider American extreme right.

Julia Black is a features reporter on The Information?s Weekend Team.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Julia wrote about Curtis Yarvin and his ideas for The Information. She also wrote about the Musk-aligned tech CEOs trying to shape how we think about the future.Paris wrote about Marc Andreessen?s Techno-Optimist Manifesto.The Dark Enlightenment is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian political project.Gil Duran wrote about the Reboot Conference and how it put the connections between the tech industry and the Heritage Foundation on display.The Heritage Foundation is flooding federal agencies with thousands of information requests to identify government employees to be purged under a second Trump administration.Peter Thiel wanted Balaji Srinivasan to become head of the Federal Drug Administration under the Trump presidency.According to Nick Land, hyperstition refers to ideas that bring themselves into being.

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As hyperscale data centers move into communities, they come with significant water and energy demands that some are not willing to put up with. We go to Ireland, Spain, and Chile to learn about the effects of data centers on the ground and why some communities are fighting back. They?re asking whether the tradeoffs they?re being expected to make are really necessary. This is episode 2 of Data Vampires, a special four-part series from Tech Won?t Save Us.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The show is hosted by Paris Marx. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

People Before Profit TD Brid Smith, Tu Nube Seca Mi Río organizer Aurora Gomez Delgado, and King?s College London lecturer Sebastian Lehuede were interviewed for this episode.Some pieces by Dara Kerr in NPR, Sarah Emerson and Emily Baker-White in Forbes, and Hannah Daly in The Irish Times were cited.A full transcript can be found on the show?s official website.

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Paris Marx is joined by Spencer Ackerman to discuss the past year of Israel's actions in Palestine and the innovations in war technology being used to carry out what the ICJ has deemed a "plausible" genocide in Gaza.

Spencer Ackerman is a Pulitzer-prize winning author of Reign of Terror. He?s a contributor at Zeteo and publishes the Forever Wars newsletter. He?s also writing a new series of Iron Man comics that come out very soon.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Spencer wrote a piece marking a year since October 7 for Zeteo. He?s also written about the Lebanon pager attack and Israel?s innovation with quadcopters.Yuval Abraham has written about the use of AI in Gaza and how Israel is relying on US cloud companies for military purposes.Roberto González wrote a paper about the links between Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex.

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Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are the dominant players in the cloud market. Around the world, they?re building massive hyperscale data centers that they claim are necessary to power the future of our digital existence. But they also increase their power over other companies and come with massive resource demands communities are getting fed up with. Is their future really the one we want? This is episode 1 of Data Vampires, a special four-part series from Tech Won?t Save Us.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The show is hosted by Paris Marx. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Senior cloud consultant Dwayne Monroe and Associate Professor in Economics Cecilia Rikap were interviewed for this episode.Interviews with Jeff Bezos and The Oregonian journalist Mike Rogoway were cited.

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Paris Marx is joined by Karl Bode to discuss how Mark Zuckerberg's makeover and the PR campaign that?s accompanied it shouldn?t distract from the ongoing harms of his company.

Karl Bode is a freelance tech journalist and consumer rights reporter.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Paris wrote about the problem with the ?Zuckessance? for Disconnect.The New York Times published an article about the political evolution of Mark Zuckerberg.Facebook?s Free Basics was widely called out for being a form of digital colonialism.Joel Kaplan was a key figure within Facebook defending right-wing content from effective moderation.Neil Postman wrote the book Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985.

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Paris Marx is joined by Tamara Kneese to discuss the difficult question of what happens to our digital presence after we die and why some tech billionaires are so desperate to make themselves into chatbots.

Tamara Kneese is a researcher, organizer, and author of Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

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Tamara wrote some pieces on AI and death for Wired and The Baffler.

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Paris Marx is joined by Rob Larson to discuss the recent ruling that Google is a monopolist, what consequences it might face, and what lessons we can learn from the Microsoft antitrust case in the early 2000s.

Rob Larson is the author of Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do with Their Money, and Why You Should Hate Them Even More and Professor of Economics at Tacoma Community College.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Rob has written about the Google antitrust case and its likely outcomes.Paris also wrote about why it won?t solve the problems with the internet.Watch a highlight reel of Bill Gates' deposition on YouTube.Google has been deemed to have an illegal monopoly in online search.A second trial over Google?s monopolistic position in the online ads market is ongoing.The Obama administration let Google off the hook a decade ago.Some tech billionaire donors are pushing Kamala Harris to remove Lina Khan as head of the Federal Trade Commission if she becomes president.

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Paris Marx is joined by Matt Pearce to discuss how Google sidestepped two California bills aimed at funding journalism and how major tech companies are transforming the web to make hyperlinks less relevant.

Matt Pearce is the President of Media Guild of the West and a former reporter at the Los Angeles Times.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Matt wrote about the disingenuous arguments against the California Journalism Preservation Act and the changing nature of hyperlinks online.Google sidestepped the two California bills to carve out a separate deal that includes funding for an AI initiative.When you compare per capita public broadcast funding across wealthy nations, Canada is near the bottom, but the United States is barely on the chart.Google will distribute $100 million to news publishers in Canada after a bargaining process there.Digital media companies have been doing layoffs and shutting down in droves.The New York Times used AI to assist in identifying the deadly weapons Israel is using against the people of Gaza.The Media Ecosystem Observatory looked at the effects of Meta's news ban on its platforms in Canada.

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Paris Marx is joined by Taylor Welling and Kathryn Friesen to discuss how they formed wall-to-wall unions in the video game industry and their thoughts on broader challenges like layoffs and corporate consolidation.

Taylor Welling is a producer and union member at OneBGS and Kathryn Friesen is quest designer and member of the World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

OneBGS and the World of Warcraft GameMakers Guild each won their union votes in July 2024.More video game workers have already been laid off in 2024 than did in all of 2023.Microsoft and the Communication Workers of America signed a labor neutrality agreement in 2022, to take effect 60 days after its acquisition of Activision Blizzard closed. In May, that agreement was extended to ZeniMax Studios.Microsoft laid off 1,900 gaming workers in January and closed four internal studios in May.Blizzard provides swords, shields, and helmets to employees celebrating 5, 10, and 20 years at the company.The ZeniMax Workers Union struck an agreement with their employer on the use of AI.Nicole Carpenter at Polygon put together a list of video game unions and an explainer on the rise of video game unions.Communication Workers of America has more information on unionizing as part of their CODE-CWA campaign.

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Paris Marx is joined by Mohammad Khatami and Gabi Schubiner to discuss the complicity of Google, Amazon, and Microsoft in Israel?s ongoing genocide in Gaza and how tech workers are organizing to stop it.

Mohammad Khatami and Gabi Schubiner are former Google software engineers and organizers with No Tech for Apartheid.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Find out more about No Tech for Apartheid from their website. Microsoft workers have also launched No Azure for Apartheid.Yuval Abraham reported on the Israeli military?s use of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft?s cloud services and AI in Gaza.Mohammad wrote about being fired by Google in The New Arab.Gabi refers to JWCC, with is a reference to the Department of Defense Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle.Google fired 50 workers earlier this year for organizing over its ties to Israel.The Information reported on how many Arab Americans in tech are scared to speak out in support of Palestinians for fear of retaliation.In 1970, Polaroid workers under the banner of the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement began the first anti-apartheid boycott of a US company by organizing against their employer?s complicity in South African apartheid.The IBM Black Workers Alliance was central to the anti-apartheid campaign at that company.

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Paris Marx is joined by Molly White to discuss why the crypto industry is spending millions on this election cycle and Coinbase?s potential breach of election finance law.

Molly White writes the Citation Needed newsletter. She is the creator of Web3 Is Going Just Great and Follow the Crypto.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Molly wrote about the Coinbase campaign finance violation and Donald Trump?s Bitcoin conference speech in her newsletter.Paris wrote about some of the concerns about Kamala Harris? stance on tech.Fairshake spent $10 million on attacks ads against Katie Porter in California. It spent millions more targeting Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush.The crypto industry hates SEC head Gary Gensler, who is leading the regulatory effort against cryptocurrency.

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Paris Marx is joined by Hussein Kesvani to discuss the far-right attacks that happened after the Southport stabbing in the UK and how larger structural issues in media, politics, and tech laid the groundwork for violence against visible minorities.

Hussein Kesvani is a co-host of Trashfuture and Ten Thousand Posts.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

The stabbing in Southport resulted in the deaths of three children and injuries to eight children and two adults.After days of far-right attacks, there were large anti-fascist and anti-racist demonstrations across the UK.Some fascists attacked hotels housing asylum seekers, but in places like Bristol, locals started defending the hotels.In 1968, Conservative MP Enoch Powell delivered the ?rivers of blood? speech.Elon Musk has been sharing a series of incendiary posts and false information that have helped fuel these attacks.The billionaire?s changes to Twitter have helped fuel right-wing misinformation.

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Paris Marx is joined by Luke LeBrun and Rachel Gilmore to discuss Shopify's connection to right-wing politics, through its interpersonal connection to a far-right news outlet and its reluctance to enforce its content policy on users selling hateful merchandise through their platform.

Luke LeBrun is the editor of PressProgress and Rachel Gilmore is an independent journalist.

Tech Won?t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Luke reported on Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian?s involvement in and funding of a right-wing Canadian ?news? website called True North.Rachel reported on Shopify?s decisions not to disable support for stores that sell fraudulent goods and promote hate that?s in violation of their Acceptable Use Policy. She recently pointed out a series of stores Shopify still supports that sell Nazi memorabilia.Last year, an anonymous former Shopify worker spoke out about the right-wing culture at the company. Rachel confirmed the person had worked for Shopify.In 2022, Tobi Lutke was granted a ?founder?s share,? guaranteeing him 40% voting power. 46% of shareholders voted against the proposal.Shopify found itself in the spotlight in 2021 when employees found a noose emoji had been added to the company?s Slack system.Shopify President Harley Finkelstein has been publicly opposing plans to raise taxes on capital gains. Only 0.13% of Canadians will be paying more tax under the plan.Some right-wing figures in Canada deny the truth of the residential schools.

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