Tech Won't Save Us

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 [https://www.patreon.com/techwontsaveus]. 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 [https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-far-right-guru-who-has-befriended-silicon-valleys-extreme-factions] and his ideas for The Information. She also wrote about the Musk-aligned tech CEOs [https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-elon-musk-investors-with-dreams-of-a-new-social-order] trying to shape how we think about the future. * Paris wrote about Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto [https://disconnect.blog/the-religion-of-techno-optimism/]. * The Dark Enlightenment [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment] is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian political project. * Gil Duran wrote about the Reboot Conference [https://www.thenerdreich.com/reboot-project-2025-peter-thiel-and-right-wing-san-francisco-2/] 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 [https://www.propublica.org/article/have-government-employees-mentioned-climate-change-voting-or-gender-identity-the-heritage-foundation-wants-to-know] 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 [https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/1/31/14364090/peter-thiel-fda-trump-silicon-valley-oneill-gulfo-srinivasan-gottlieb] under the Trump presidency. * According to Nick Land, hyperstition [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Land] refers to ideas that bring themselves into being. Support the show [https://patreon.com/techwontsaveus]

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 [https://www.patreon.com/techwontsaveus]. 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 Leuede were interviewed for this episode. * Some pieces by Dara Kerr [https://www.npr.org/2024/09/11/nx-s1-5088134/elon-musk-ai-xai-supercomputer-memphis-pollution] in NPR, Sarah Emerson and Emily Baker-White [https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahemerson/2024/07/17/inside-elon-musks-mad-dash-to-build-a-giant-xai-supercomputer-in-memphis/] in Forbes, and Hannah Daly [https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/climate-crisis/2024/04/04/data-centres-are-a-serious-threat-to-irelands-carbon-budgets/] in The Irish Times were cited. * A full transcript can be found on the show’s official website. Support the show [https://patreon.com/techwontsaveus]

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 [https://bookshop.org/a/18331/9781984879790]. He’s a contributor at Zeteo and publishes the Forever Wars newsletter. He’s also writing a new series of Iron Man comics [https://www.marvel.com/articles/comics/iron-man-spencer-ackerman-julius-ohta-new-series-trailer] 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 [https://www.patreon.com/techwontsaveus]. 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 [https://zeteo.com/p/october-7-war-on-terror-september-11-gaza-israel] for Zeteo. He’s also written about the Lebanon pager attack [https://zeteo.com/p/israel-pager-detonation-lebanon-terrorism] and Israel’s innovation with quadcopters [https://www.forever-wars.com/israels-armed-quadcopters-in-gaza-mark-a-dangerous-new-era-in-drone-warfare-directors-cut/]. * Yuval Abraham has written about the use of AI [https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/] in Gaza [https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/] and how Israel is relying on US cloud companies [https://www.972mag.com/cloud-israeli-army-gaza-amazon-google-microsoft/] for military purposes. * Roberto González wrote a paper [https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2024/SiliconValley] about the links between Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex. Support the show [https://patreon.com/techwontsaveus]

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 [https://www.patreon.com/techwontsaveus]. 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 [https://blog.b3k.us/2009/01/25/ec2-origins.html] and The Oregonian journalist Mike Rogoway [https://btlj.org/2024/02/big-tech-bigger-droughts-the-battle-for-water-rights/] were cited. Support the show [https://patreon.com/techwontsaveus]

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 [https://www.patreon.com/techwontsaveus]. 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” [https://disconnect.blog/roundup-dont-buy-the-zuckessance/] for Disconnect. * The New York Times published an article about the political evolution [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/24/technology/mark-zuckerberg-trump-politics.html] of Mark Zuckerberg. * Facebook’s Free Basics was widely called out for being a form of digital colonialism [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/facebook-free-basics-developing-markets]. * Joel Kaplan was a key figure within Facebook defending right-wing content [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/mark-zuckerberg-joel-kaplan-facebook-alex-jones] from effective moderation. * Neil Postman wrote the book Amusing Ourselves to Death [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death] in 1985. Support the show [https://patreon.com/techwontsaveus]