Blood in the Machine: The Podcast
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Data centers, AI, and the 2026 elections. Ft. Paris Marx.
30 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 12 min
If you’ve heard anything at all about the midterm elections, you’ve heard at least two things: it’s going to be a ‘blue wave’ in which Democrats are poised for major electoral gains, and that everyone involved hates data centers. Lees meer
We’re all used to hearing about that data center hate now, it’s almost a given; “the single most bipartisan issue in politics,” and so on, but I want to pause to underline how remarkable this is. This time last year, data centers were a niche issue in a handful of local political fights. Now they’re one of America’s most visible, universal and undeniable political battlegrounds.
To investigate how we got here, I sit down with Paris Marx; tech reporter, critic, and author of the new book Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires. Plus, I dig into three things we should be watching during the midterm elections next week.
Hyperscale by Paris MarxParis’s Disconnect NewsletterParis on Bluesky
Brian’s Bluesky
Producer Ryan’s NewsletterRyan’s Bluesky
Stories Mentioned
Texas sues OpenAI, Sam Altman over product safety - POLITICO
Media — Angela Gonzales-Torres for Congress
James Talarico on X: “There is something deeply wrong with a political system that allows one trillionaire to buy his own personal U.S. Senator.” / X
Elon Musk’s America PAC Is Quietly Funding November’s Most Consequential Elections
SpaceX and Tesla have high election stakes as Elon Musk pours $366 million into campaigns
Ohio Senate special election | Tech Influence Watch
Leading the Future | Tech Influence Watch
Exclusive: GOP warns AI companies that data centers are politically radioactive
AI and data centers are incredibly unpopular in every poll | The Verge
The data center backlash reveals NIMBYism’s great contradiction
Texas gubernatorial election, 2026 - Ballotpedia
Data Centers | Gina Hinojosa for Texas Governor
Elon Musk Is Trying To Buy Texas. It Might Earn Him ‘Retribution.’
How Billionaires Are Fighting the Prop 40 California We…
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The big tech defectors you’re not hearing about
23 oktober 2026 · 48 min
Among the biggest stories in the tech world of late have been the string of high-profile resignations of workers at the major AI companies. Employees like Jacob Coxon at Anthropic have quit their jobs with splashy warnings that AI companies might build a machine god so powerful it exterminates humanity. Those workers get invited onto primetime news shows and weeks of high-profile media coverage. Lees meer
And yet, workers who’ve protested, resigned, or been fired for speaking up about the harms these companies are causing right now are given nowhere near the same treatment. This is maddening, because the AI companies are currently, as we speak, helping to automate, abet and facilitate mass death in Iran, Gaza, and Ukraine; we don’t have to speculate about some future tragedy; the tech companies are directly involved in those tragedies, right now, as I speak these words.
This week, on Blood in the Machine, we’ll talk with another employee who was fired from Apple after speaking out against the company’s policies with regards to Palestine, and its treatment of Palestinian employees. Tariq Ra’ouf helped found Apples Against Apartheid, and on October 23, the launch day for iPhone Duo, the group calls on communities everywhere to picket their local Apple Stores.
Tariq Ra’ouf on InstagramApples Against Apartheid
Blood in the Machine: The NewsletterBrian’s Bluesky
Producer Ryan’s NewsletterRyan’s Bluesky
Stories Mentioned
Apple facing new forced labor and child labor charges - FreedomUnited
US group sues Apple over Congo conflict minerals | CNBC Africa
Apple accused by DR Congo of using conflict minerals
Protesters worldwide claim that Apple is complicit in human rights violations in the DRC and Gaza; co. did not respond
Apple Accused of Using “Blood Minerals” in the Congo
Apple employees demand CEO Tim Cook speak up for Palestinian lives
Team Congo
Friends of the Congo
Rotten to the Core: How the Gaza genocide has revealed anti-Palestinian racism at Apple – Mondowei…
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California vs. the tech billionaires
16 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 8 min
It’s election season, and while most of the national conversation is focused on the midterms and the increasing likelihood that Democrats will take back the House and perhaps even the Senate, in California, the eyes of the tech elite are focused on another target: The ballot measure Proposition 40, aka the billionaire tax. Lees meer
Prop 40 would enact a one-time 5% wealth tax on the 250 or so billionaires that reside in California, and redirect the funding towards healthcare and education. Predictably, billionaires are furious about the idea; leading opponents include Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who, along with other ultra-wealthy Californians, has spent some $200 million dollars to oppose the measure.
Today, on Blood in the Machine, we’re going to dive into these fights, with the woman who’s at the center of many of them. Lorena Gonzalez is a former state legislator and current president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, and she’s a driving force supporting both Prop 40 and the slate of new laws designed to protect workers from AI.
California Labor Federation
Blood in the Machine NewsletterBrian’s Bluesky
Producer Ryan’s NewsletterRyan’s Bluesky
Articles Mentioned
California just passed the strongest AI labor laws in the US
California Proposition 40, One-Time Wealth Tax for State-Funded Healthcare, Education, and Food Assistance Programs Initiative (2026) - Ballotpedia
Paramount completes $111B Warner merger, creating “Skydance” behemoth - Ars Technica
Newsom signs landmark bill aimed at giving lifeline to struggling California newsrooms - Los Angeles Times
The NO FAKES Act
AI in hiring and firing: California’s No Robo Bosses Act
Get the Facts: NO on PROP 40
An AI School, With No Teachers, To Open in Chicago This Fall
The billionaires fight back: Propositions 41 and 42 could kill California’s billionaire tax even if it passes
Billionaire Google Co-Founder Pumps $102 Million Into Fighting California Wealth Tax | Common Dreams
California Billi…
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The two words the AI industry hates more than anything
2 oktober 2026 · 50 min
“Stochastic parrots,” a term coined in an influential 2021 paper written by two AI researchers and two computational linguists, essentially holds that large language models are not “intelligent” but are rather systems that output material based on what’s in their training data. Now, while LLMs and technologies described as AI today have become more sophisticated and complex over the last 5 years, the term remains a fundamentally accurate way of describing LLMs. Lees meer
Yet the industry hates it like the plague. AI industry folks absolutely lose their minds over the term, and often bring it up, unprompted, just to try to debunk it again and again.
Why does this particular term have a unique capacity to enrage AI industry folks? I had a theory that, even more so than other critiques about shaky financing or dubious functionality, stochastic parrots undercuts the very foundation that the AI boom is built on: That tech companies are building a machine god of infinite power and potential. These firms have relied on narrative to build up and to sell to the world a very expensive, resource-consumptive technology. If it turns out it’s an unthinking system that’s often fallible in predictable ways, well, that might not be worth quite as many trillions of dollars.
To discuss this theory in greater depth, I thought I’d go right to the source—to one of the paper’s co-authors, professor Emily M. Bender, of the University of Washington.
Quick PSA: I can only do this work thanks to readers, listeners, and viewers who chip in a few bucks each month to help me keep the lights on. If you’re one of them, you have my sincere thanks; you’re the reason I can cover subjects and do the sort of reporting so few others will. If you’re a fan of the “Great 2026 Blood in the Machine Podcast Experiment” or appreciate what we’re doing here, consider upgrading to a paid subscription; it takes no small amount of work to book great guests, research, write, and produce the thing, and we’re early days ye…
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What’s really behind AI ‘super intelligence’
25 september 2026 · 52 min
While billionaires and world leaders expound the dangers of all-powerful, “super intelligent” AI, the reality on the ground is that it's a tech product that’s only made possible by countless human beings, laboring for sometimes dollars a day, doing work like “cleaning” data sets so they’re usable, scanning books and literature into databases, creating usable content, and moderating the output of AI systems to weed out offensive, gruesome, and racist content. These workers are underpaid, overtaxed, and fighting for better conditions—even as AI executives are declaring that the systems they prop up are so powerful they’re about to extinguish life on the planet. Lees meer
In the meantime, workers like Joan Kinyua and Michael Geoffery Asia of the Data Labelers Association just want fair pay and basic protections. I recently spoke to both of them about what it’s like to perform crucial work day in and day out and yet be completely invisible to the company that relies on your labor—and to the world at large. To help feed Silicon Valley’s illusion that these systems are actually machine gods. And to fight for better conditions, rights and recognition in spite of it all.
Show Notes
Data Labelers Association
Blood in the Machine NewsletterBrian’s Bluesky
Producer Ryan’s NewsletterRyan’s Bluesky
Articles mentioned
My latest newsletter:
Dario Amodei — We Must Pace the Frontier
The hidden workforce behind every AI tool you use: Announcing the data work landscape 2.0 - TechEquity Collaborative
Altman and Amodei address UN: ‘There are many things that AI cannot and should not automate’
Tech Influence Watch
How to use AI doom marketing to dupe the media and rake in billions in 10 easy steps
Frontier AI safety regulations: A reference for lab staff - METR
AI giants tap into the social media playbook: self-regulation
AI leaders call for tougher protections against AI-aided bioweapons | The Verge
AI Labs Want Someone to Stop Them - Bloomberg
The AI extinction narrative is win…
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How to kick Flock out of your town
20 september 2026 · 54 min
In a year rife with backlash to big tech, data centers, and AI, one company still manages to stand out: Flock Safety. Over the past decade, Flock has been building out a massive network of surveillance cameras across the nation. The images those cameras record are uploaded to a central database, and can be accessed by law enforcement and federal authorities. Lees meer
Abuse of the system has been rampant. Police have used Flock’s Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) to stalk exes and to track women seeking abortions across state lines. ICE has accessed Flock data to assist in crackdown on immigrants. Innocent people have been wrongfully imprisoned after being flagged by the system.
With the anti-Flock movement growing, and more people looking into how to get Flock out of their communities, I sat down with Ed, an organizer with DeFlock, to explain, step by step, how you can start a movement to get the surveillance tech out of your town, too.
Check out DeFlock here.
Blood in the Machine Newsletter: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/
Brian’s Bluesky.
Ryan’s Bluesky.
Articles Mentioned in this Episode
https://atlpresscollective.com/2026/07/28/flock-cameras-atlanta-clearance-rates/
https://ij.org/police-have-reportedly-used-license-plate-readers-to-stalk-romantic-interests-at-least-14-times-in-recent-years/
https://www.commondreams.org/news/police-abusing-flock-cameras
https://immpolicytracking.org/policies/reported-ice-accessing-flock-automated-license-plate-reader-cameras-via-local-law-enforcement/
https://cybernews.com/privacy/de-flock-america-halloween-flock-surveillance-cameras/
https://www.cnet.com/home/security/flocks-ai-cameras-may-have-misread-over-70-of-license-plates-creating-new-headaches-for-cities/
https://www.404media.co/flock-taught-cops-how-to-surveil-no-kings-protesters/
https://www.gadgetreview.com/flock-safety-employees-watched-kids-gymnastics-room-to-pitch-surveillance-tech
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-texas-cop…
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The ‘End Times Fascists’ of AI, ft. Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
13 september 2026 · 1 uur 4 min
End Times Fascism by Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor. Naomi Klein’s Newsletter, Patterns.Astra Taylor on BlueskyBlood in the Machine Newsletter: Brian’s Bluesky.Producer Ryan’s Newsletter: Ryan’s Bluesky.Articles mentioned in this episode: Lees meer
The Automation Charade by Astra Taylor.
The politics and possibilities of ‘AI could kill us all’ by Brian.
More:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-and-nationalism-are-a-deadly-combinationhttps://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-ai-jobs-apocalypse-is-for-thehttps://www.arabnews.com/saudi-arabia/saudi-arabia-and-us-sign-strategic-artificial-intelligence-partnership-2623228https://theconversation.com/iran-war-shows-how-ai-speeds-up-military-kill-chains-278492https://influence.citationneeded.news/https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdfhttps://www.axios.com/2025/09/17/anthropic-dario-amodei-p-doom-25-percenthttps://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5926181-xai-naacp-memphis-grok/
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The real AI jobs apocalypse
4 september 2026 · 58 min
AI executives like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have been forecasting an incipient AI jobs apocalypse for three years now. So where is it? Well it’s here, kind of. But instead of replacing tens of millions of workers, it’s mostly making them miserable. Lees meer
Across the US, workers are souring on AI, and they’re increasingly outspoken about it. A new report from Glassdoor documents how workers are becoming more and more negative towards —at the moment that AI CEOs have promised that the products would be making everyone’s working life easier and more streamlined. Yet the data paints a pretty clear picture: Just as people are getting fed up with data centers, Meta AI glasses, and AI in general, they’re getting angrier about bosses pushing AI on them in the workplace, too. To discuss all this and more, I’m joined by Alex Hanna. Hanna is a sociologist, a director at the Distributed AI Research Institute, and the co-author of the AI Con; she’s also behind the Luddite Lab, a project that provides resources to workers who are navigating AI in the workplace. Blood in the Machine Newsletter: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/ Brian’s Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bcmerchant.bsky.social Producer Ryan’s Newsletter: https://www.thestorieswetell.co/ Ryan’s Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/thestorieswetell.coAlex Hanna’s Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/alexhanna.bsky.social The Luddite Lab: https://labor.dair-institute.org/primers Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 Podcast: https://dair-institute.org/maiht3k/ Articles mentioned in this episode:https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/why-office-workers-are-turning-againsthttps://www.glassdoor.com/blog/how-workers-feel-about-ai-2026/https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/02/we-have-had-enough-thousands-of-staff-at-the-university-of-sydney-walk-off-the-job-over-ai-job-securityhttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/nyregion/ai-ban-schools-nyc.htmlhttps://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-02-04/unions-urge-ne…
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The revolt against Meta’s ‘pervert glasses’ is part of a growing storm
28 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 6 min
New fronts are opening up in the opposition to big tech. The anti-data center movement is rolling, AI is unpopular as ever, and now, a widespread backlash to Meta’s new AI glasses—termed Pervert Glasses by the masses—is unfolding at breakneck pace. Silicon Valley, of course, is in denial about all of it. Lees meer
This week on the podcast, to help make sense of this latest revolt against a Silicon Valley project, I spoke with Chris Gilliard, an author, thinker, and surveillance scholar who’s spent many years investigating big tech’s efforts to seduce us with sleek, aspirational products, track us, and harvest our data. Gilliard is the author of Luxury Surveillance, a forthcoming book about this very subject from MIT Press; you may better know him as Hypervisible, the handle he uses online and on Bluesky.
It was a great chat, and Gilliard’s work is absolutely vital. Hope you enjoy.
In case you missed it, I wrote about some of the topics we discuss above in this week’s column:
Other stories mentioned in the segment and the interview:
“Luxury Surveillance,” Real Life Mag, by Chris Gilliard and David Golumbia.
Heatmap’s latest data center sentiment poll.
“Data Centers’ 'Oh sh-t moment’, Politico.
“Flock CEO Begs for ‘Compromise’ as Backlash Spills Over,” Futurism.
‘Darth Vader’ Wants Flock in San Diego, 404 Media, by Sam Cole.
“Man Charged With 3 Felonies For Breaking 3D-Printed ‘Decoy’ Flock Camera, 404 Media,” by Jason Koebler.
“Grand Jury Declines to Indict Man Caught on Camera Destroying Flock Pole”, Futurism.
“Songs created by AI banned from Australia’s music charts,” BBC.
“Apple Music to Add Labels for AI-Generated Music Later This Year,” Billboard.
A brief note about how BITM is working these days: Subscribers get (at least) one written newsletter edition sent to their inboxes each week, typically, ideally, Tuesday or Wednesday, as well as one episode of Blood in the Machine: The Show, which runs every Friday. But I can only do all of this with the support o…
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Charting the rise of tech fascism
21 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 2 min
Going back decades, there’s been a faction in Silicon Valley whose chief interest was not coding, consumer technology or even business, but power. In some ways, the story of the last ten years of the tech industry has been the story of that faction, perhaps best embodied by Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, but also represented by figures like Marc Andreessen and figures like Alex Karp, Palmer Luckey, and David Sacks, winning the power they sought. The consequences of that victory have been disastrous. Lees meer
Gil Duran, a veteran journalist and California political operative, is the author of the Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, a book about how, exactly, this disaster has unfolded, and where it’s left us. That is, with a tech industry that’s overwhelmingly eager to abet, enable, and profit from authoritarian governments, by wielding power within them, and by building its tools of surveillance, automation, and extraction.
Duran calls the key bloc driving this push ‘tech fascists’, and many have openly called for an end to democracy, or for rule by monarch—or CEO. And it is hard to overstate the import of the ascendency of the tech right.
These figures now have a direct line to the White House, have one of their own in the White House in former VC JD Vance, and are often in the White House themselves. They hold massive government contracts and their unprecedented hoards of lobbying cash influence shapes public policy, in addition to controlling much of the digital architecture that guides our daily lives.
The results of all this are everywhere you look. This is, yes, how you get DOGE running wild in the federal government, laying off hundreds of thousands of civil servants and pulling USAID funding for the most vulnerable, leaving people dead as a result. It’s how you get the widespread cronyism and corruption in Washington, with government figures embracing crypto and the AI industry and enriching themselves in the process. It’s also how you get t…
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The State of the AI Bubble with Ed Zitron
14 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 3 min
There are fresh signs that the AI bubble is wobbling. Again. Lees meer
In recent weeks, a much-vaunted AI-focused hedge fund, Situational Awareness, run by Valley wunderkind Leopold Aschenbrenner lost $35 billion; nearly its entire fund. South Korea saw its largest-ever stock market collapse as investors pulled bets on AI chips and tech stocks. The circularity of the AI economy, with hyperscalers investing in AI labs and AI labs purchasing cloud compute from the hyperscalers and hyperscalers reporting big profits, is reaching new heights of precarity. Due to a fresh series of moratoria and political opposition, the future of the massive data center buildout has never looked more uncertain. The US markets have dipped then boomed, dipped then boomed.
Where does all of this leave us? Just about everybody—Sam Altman, the Financial Times, AI critics, your local barista—seems to agree that we’re still, somehow, improbably, in some kind of a bubble. But how big? How volatile? When will it burst? How? This week, I dive into all these questions with the infamous AI skeptic, analyst, and industry scapegoat Ed Zitron, author of the Where’s Your Ed At newsletter and CEO of EZPR.
Blood in the Machine Newsletter
Brian’s Bluesky
Ed Zitron’s articles discussed:
Let AI Burn
The AI Demand Bubble
The Subprime Data Center Crisis
@edzitron.com on Bluesky
Articles mentioned in this episode:
Data Center by Hovey Benjamin
Governor Abbott Directs Comprehensive Data Center Audit
The AI Slop Backlash Is Actually Having an Impact | WIRED
Snapchat joins other popular platforms in fight against 'AI slop'
DuckDuckGo Is Selling Anti Pervert Glasses That Contain Zero AI, Cameras, or Even Electronics Whatsoever
The Future is for Everyone
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What is an 'Elon Musk'?
24 juli 2026 · 1 uur
Elon Musk is not the richest man in the world merely because he’s good at selling cars or rockets at a profitable margin. That might have sufficed for richest men in the world of decades past. But Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, however briefly, for a lot of reasons, and being good at moving a particular product is not chief among them. Musk sells a vision. Musk harnesses the state to implement his corporate goals, to secure his companies’ foundations beyond the vicissitudes of common capitalism. Musk mediates his message on social platforms, which he owns and controls, and uses to bend politics to his will. The list goes on. Lees meer
This formula has been emulated by the most recent crop of tech titans; your Sam Altmans and Dario Amodeis, whose path to power lies in selling a vision over simple goods, who work the state to buffet their businesses, and who paint a bleak picture of the future through which their products will help you survive. To understand what’s going on here, not just with Tesla or SpaceX or OpenAI or Anthropic, but the modern American economy itself, I sat down with the historian and author Quinn Slobodian, who has put a name to this tendency: Muskism.
Slobodian is the co-author, with Ben Tarnoff, of the book by the same name, which I fully and heartily recommend. We dig into all of the above, and a lot more; including the under-examined role that growing up in apartheid South Africa played in influencing Musk’s present-day ideology and tastes.
I very much enjoyed this discussion, and think you will too. Understanding Muskism, after all, could not be a more urgent project.
Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed.
Subscribe to Blood in the Machine.
In case you missed last week’s show, you can check that out here.
GenAI performing arts survey is here.
Post about AI in Paris.
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Xbox workers speak out about layoffs, AI, and how big tech brought a crisis to gaming
17 juli 2026 · 54 min
On July 6th, Microsoft announced that it was laying off 4,800 workers, largely from its Xbox gaming division. It’s now sadly routine in the tech industry; thousands of jobs gone in an instant, with little more than a corporate memo and some platitudes about AI. Lees meer
To better understand what actually happens behind the scenes in a big tech layoff event, and to understand the particular crisis faced by the gaming industry, this week I sat down with three Microsoft workers for a special edition of Blood in the Machine. Two of these workers have been impacted by the layoffs, one saw longtime friends lose their jobs. All three are fighting back. This is how.
Brian’s info
Blood in the Machine: The Newsletter
Brian’s Bluesky
Articles discussed
Microsoft to cut 4,800 jobs, overhaul Xbox unit
- Reuters
Union Video Game Workers Fight for Rights Amidst Xbox Layoffs
- CWA
Hundreds rally at Bethesda HQ to protest Xbox layoffs, and Ars was there - Ars Technica
End studio closures and stop the cycle of layoffs. - XBOX Player Voice (Archived)
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The Luddites take New York
10 juli 2026 · 44 min
The year has been marked by the rise of open, widespread, and increasingly spirited backlash to AI, data centers, and big tech. As such, the stage was well set for the Summer of Ludd, a series of protests, performances, talks, and meetups in New York City organized around the idea that we need to get people into the streets and break Silicon Valley’s grip over our lives. Lees meer
There were mock trials of big tech, plays staged detailing the Luddites’ true origin story, marches, and teach-ins. By just about any count, it was a smashing success; the event drew favorable coverage everywhere from the Washington Post to WIRED to the Economist. It was even, amusingly, transmuted into a clickbait MSN listicle produced to maximize on-screen engagement.
I sadly couldn’t be there on the ground for the proceedings, so I did the next best thing: I invited the Luddite documentarian, organizer, and activist Amanda Hanna-McLeer, who was there for the festivities, and who directed the Luddite Recreations play that ran throughout the week in Tompkins Square Park, to give us the rundown.
Hanna-McLeer has been documenting the youth-led Luddite movement for years now; as she explains, it started with the Luddite Clubs students formed to reject social media and organize offline activities in high schools and colleges across the nation. In many ways, the Summer of Ludd is a culmination of that movement thus far.
It also, however, Hanna-McLeer notes, feels like the beginning of something else, something even bigger.
We get into all of that: the size of the crowds, the enthusiasm among so many people have for logging off and plugging in, and how the people who encounter the new Luddites are increasingly open to movements that challenge big tech.
One simple reflection of all this is the positive news coverage I mentioned above. I can comfortably say from my experience as a tech journalist, that even five to ten years ago, these kids and activists would have been mocked and scorned. Instead, …
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How and why to de-Google your life
3 juli 2026 · 54 min
While Google seems dead set on making their users hate their product, the courts in Europe are taking issue with their anti-competitive business practices. Meanwhile, the Summer of Ludd kicks off in New York and a new dating survey finds: It’s sexy to be a luddite. Plus, my good friend and fellow tech journalist Paris Marx joins us to discuss the final boss of Google's enshittification: Search going full AI mode. Paris has long advocated for getting off US tech, and he’ll share some of his best tips for de-googling your life. Lees meer
Paris's forthcoming book is Hyperscale, his podcast is Tech Won't Save Us, and his guide for getting off US tech is here.
Articles mentioned in this episode: Swedish court orders Google to pay $1.5 billion to Klarna in antitrust damages - Reuters. Vancouver protesters call on federal government to halt plans for AI data centres - Global NewsCanada unveils AI strategy - Global News. The latest green flag? Not using AI - Mashable. Probe into 'subversive' anti-AI Singham network is 'enormous,' former Treasury advisor says - Fox News. Law enforcement tracking anti tech extremism - WIRED & The Intercept.
Blood in the Machine is produced by Ryan Hodes, chief consultant is Kate Osborn, art is by Koren Shadmi, and the music is by Brian Merchant and Ryan Hall, engineered by Josh Q. Hammers up.
Get full access to Blood in the Machine at www.bloodinthemachine.com/subscribe
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The AI industry is pouring hundreds of millions into US elections
26 juni 2026 · 47 min
The tech lobby spent $27 million on a single Congressional election in New York. OpenAI-backed Leading the Future spent $8 million on ads attacking Alex Bores, who vowed to rein in AI, in an effort to fire a warning shot—did it work? What does this mean for democracy? Meanwhile, a Michigan town takes on a nuclear AI data center, and a bipartisan effort to legislate against AI theft of artist’s work hits the Senate. Lees meer
Plus, I speak with technologist and journalist Molly White about her new project: Tech Influence Watch, which keeps tabs on the enormous sums the AI and crypto industries are spending to influence elections.
Articles mentioned in this episode:
Tech Influence Watch, Citation Needed
“We Will Fight to Our Very Last Breath” 404 Media
Google is investing $75 million in A24 as part of an AI filmmaking partnership Quartz
Children’s book illustrators start “We Are Better Than This” campaign to “stop the theft by big tech”
Bipartisan members introduce new bill to protect creators from AI style theft Axios
Big Tech won the race. But the AI fight is just beginning Politico
Producer: Ryan Hodes.
Executive producer: Kate Osborne
Art by Koren Shadmi.
Music by Brian Merchant and Ryan Hall, engineered by Josh Q.
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How to dis-enshittify the world, with Cory Doctorow
10 november 2025 · 1 uur 8 min
Does Cory Doctorow even need an introduction at this point? If you spend any amount of time at all online, then you’ve encountered his work, his ideas, his words. But the ultra-prolific science fiction writer, digital rights activist, and coiner of the “Enshittification” verbiage that’s become universal shorthand for the degradation of the internet (and, to an extent, everything else), has been especially ubiquitous lately. His book-length treatment of the Enshittification thesis was just published by FSG last month, and he’s been on the press tour war path. Lees meer
And good! “Enshittification” is vintage Doctorow—it’s sharp, frisky, freewheeling, and erudite; call it elevated, book-length blogging, perhaps. It’s also going to be the book I recommend to folks interested in getting into Cory’s nonfiction work; it so ably ties together the many strands of his thought and his various crusades into a manifesto of sorts. And, naturally, it persuasively makes the case for how big tech and its monopolistic platforms have conquered the internet, systematically siphoned it of vitality and utility to placate shareholders, and left an enshittified husk of what the web, and the world, ought to be, in its wake.
So naturally, I wanted to have Cory on Blood in the Machine: The Podcast to discuss it all. Cory has given approximately 4,000 interviews for this book and topic at this point (I recommend the New York Times mag profile for a look at his life and career, as well as his backyard, where he throws some great parties). So I thought I’d pick his brain specifically on how he thinks workers—tech workers and otherwise—can help turn the tides of enshittification. My instinct was to call this “deshittifying” the web, but Cory prefers “dis-enshittification”, which, fair enough. Regardless, we cover a lot of fertile ground, and field some good questions and comments from the chat (thanks to everyone who popped in when we were live).
Cory and I don’t agree on everything—copyright law in p…
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Understanding the tech oligarchy and its gilded rage with Jacob Silverman
31 oktober 2025 · 1 uur 6 min
Happy Halloween all. I got into the spirit by catching up with the horror flicks I’d been sleeping on (28 Years Later was surprisingly good) and, more importantly, chatting with the great tech journalist Jacob Silverman, author of GILDED RAGE: ELON MUSK AND THE RADICALIZATION OF SILICON VALLEY, a book about some very scary people who hold immense sway over our politics and our lives. Lees meer
Before we get into that, for anyone interested, I wanted to bump my list of best-ever ‘luddite horror’ films I wrote up last year. It was a fun one, I think:
OK! Onwards.
2025 has in many ways been the year of the tech oligarch. It marks the moment that many of Silicon Valley’s wealthiest and most powerful figures openly embraced an antidemocratic regime and publicly pledged support to authoritarianism. It feels like a lifetime ago, but I for one will not forget the image of tech CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos standing in the front row and applauding at Donald Trump’s inauguration, or their multiple trips and photo ops at Mar-a-Lago, or Elon Musk’s central role in the early months of the administration.
They’re still there, too, even if they aren’t making as many headlines. David Sacks, Elon Musk’s compatriot, is the White House’s AI and crypto czar. Executives from the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, are in advisory roles. JD Vance, whose mentor was Peter Thiel, owes his career to Valley operators. And not only are they in power, but they’re angry. They practice a politics of pitched persecution and extreme resentment that can be baffling to those of us who’d kill to simply not have to worry about paying the rent for a year. As Silverman puts it in his book, these tech titans “had the world at their fingertips and they couldn’t stand the touch.”
So *why* are they so mad? What are these world-beating centibillionaires so furious about? Why is it that they “swung right” so hard in the 2020s, if that’s in fact what happened? How did we get here, in other words? And w…
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Dismantling the Empire of AI with Karen Hao
20 mei 2025 · 57 min
Years before OpenAI became a household name, Karen Hao was one of the very first journalists to gain access to the company. What she saw when she did unsettled her. Despite a name that signaled transparency, executives were elusive, the culture secretive. Despite publicly heralding a mission to build AGI, or artificial general intelligence, company leadership couldn’t really say what that meant, or how they defined AGI at all. The seeds of a startup soon to be riven by infighting, rushing to be first to market with a commercial technology and a powerful narrative, and led by an apparently unscrupulous leader, were all right there. Lees meer
OpenAI deemed Hao’s resulting story so negative it refused to speak with her for three years. More people should have read it, probably. Since then, OpenAI has launched Dall-E and ChatGPT, amassed a world-historic war chest of venture capital, and set the standard for generative AI, the definitive technological product of the 2020s. And Hao has been in the trenches, following along, investigating the company every step of the way. The product of all that reportage, her new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI, is now officially out. It’s excellent.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you were looking to understand modern Silicon Valley, the AI boom, and the impact of both on the wider world by reading just one book, that book should be Empire of AI.
So, given that it could not be more in the Blood in the Machine wheelhouse, I invited Hao to join me for the first-ever BITM livestream, which we held yesterday afternoon, to discuss its themes and revelations. It went great, imo. I wasn’t sure how many folks would even drop by, as I’d never tried a livestream here before, but by the end there were hundreds of you in the room, leaving thoughtful comments and questions, stoking a great discussion.
This is also the first BITM podcast, too—though perhaps I got a little overzealous; the audio quality isn’t …