We round up and run down many of the big themes that we think will be important in the coming year and demand our sustained critical attention. Our analysis spans from the new golden age of crypto to further consolidation in the (corporate) venture capital industry, from the ramping up of investment and partnerships in the market for military technology to the ways in which AI will keep growing as a story about the collisions between multiple massive interconnected infrastructures.

Standing Plugs:
••• Register for Jathan’s book launch in San Francisco on January 30th: citylights.com/events/jathan-sadowski-the-mechanic-and-the-luddite/  
••• Order Jathan’s new book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite 
••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble 
••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for more analysis in our premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

389. The Year of Polycrisis

We chat with Ciara Keegan and Ilana Marcucci-Morris from the National Union of Healthcare Workers about their ongoing contract dispute with Kaiser Permamente over the use and role of AI in healthcare, especially mental and behavioural health. We discuss the impacts of AI on labor conditions and patient care in giant hospital systems like Kaiser — plus the ways Kaiser wants to leave the door open for deeper integration of AI and replacement of healthcare providers.

••• Kaiser, Don't Deny | NUHW https://kaiserdontdeny.org/ 
••• Will AI Replace Your Therapist? Kaiser Won’t Say No https://www.kqed.org/science/1999553/will-ai-replace-your-therapist-kaiser-wont-say-no 
••• Therapists went on a hunger strike to protest 'assembly line' conditions and the automation of mental healthcare https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/therapists-went-on-a-hunger-strike 

Standing Plugs:
••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite 
••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble 
••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

441. The Fight Over AI Use in Mental Healthcare (ft. Ciara Keegan, Ilana Marcucci-Morris)

We chat about the Karp x Fink interview at Davos, the humiliation ritual of making Adam Tooze sit on a panel about how batteries are a Chinese threat to America, how an administrative rule change at the EPA about the (non-)value of life in regulatory cost-benefit analysis will be a major accelerant for the American Empire of Blood and Oil — plus a forbidden riff.

••• Trump’s E.P.A. Has Put a Value on Human Life: Zero Dollars https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/climate/epa-human-life-value.html 

Standing Plugs:
••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite 
••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble 
••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)


Patreon Preview – 442. The Empire of Blood and Oil

We’re joined by Brian Chen — policy director at Data & Society — to discuss his new report on the Trump administration’s industrial policy for building The Big AI State. We lay out how Trump’s is bringing together various forms of intervention to ensure America achieves “global technological dominance.” This includes de-risking the construction of data centers and energy infrastructure, ensuring the American AI tech stack takes over global markets, and even acquiring equity stakes in major private industries in the AI supply chain. We discuss the means and ends of Trump’s industrial policy — and how these policy tools should be wielded differently by future administrations.

••• Great Power Antinomies https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/great-power-antinomies/ 
••• The Big AI State https://datasociety.net/library/the-big-ai-state/ 

Standing Plugs:
••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite 
••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble 
••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)


443. Behold the Big Beautiful AI State (ft. Brian Chen)

We chat about our week as Guests of Honor at Capricon, a science fiction convention in Chicago, and all the great panels and chats we had about luddism, science fiction, politics of futures, and the importance of the stories we tell—and are able to tell and believe—about technology-in-society. Then we wrap up with a recent case study of storytelling: the performative puppetry of moltbook.

••• Moltbook was peak AI theater https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/06/1132448/moltbook-was-peak-ai-theater/ 
••• Exposed Moltbook Database Let Anyone Take Control of Any AI Agent on the Site https://www.404media.co/exposed-moltbook-database-let-anyone-take-control-of-any-ai-agent-on-the-site/ 

Standing Plugs:
••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite 
••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble 
••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

Patreon Preview – 444. The Stories We Tell

We chat with Bruce Schneier — renowned security technologist and, most recently, co-author of Rewiring Democracy — to discuss the relationship between technology and democracy. We get into how people with money/power use systems like AI to create a flywheel of more money/power. But importantly, as an advocate of public-interest technology, Bruce also lays out how AI is being used to empower citizens and strengthen democracy, and the techno-political conditions needed to build these democratic systems.

••• Check out all of Bruce’s work https://www.schneier.com/
••• Rewiring Democracy | Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049948/rewiring-democracy/ 
••• The Promptware Kill Chain: How Prompt Injections Gradually Evolved into a Multi-Step Malware https://www.schneier.com/academic/archives/2026/01/the-promptware-kill-chain-how-prompt-injections-gradually-evolved-into-a-multi-step-malware.html 

Standing Plugs:
••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite 
••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble 
••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)


445. What’s Democracy Got to Do With AI? (ft. Bruce Schneier)

And we’re back with TMK-as-usual! We are joined by Wendy Liu and Jimmy Wu from the Bay Area Current — a new leftist publication writing about the working class in San Francisco and beyond — as we chat about mapping out the rising milieu of right-wing culture in San Francisco, from the growing scene of tech intelligentsia publications that each have their different flavor of right-wingism to the psychic damage and hostile architecture of an urban landscape overflowing with B2B SAAS billboards. 

••• Meet the New Right-Wing Tech Intelligentsia https://bayareacurrent.com/meet-the-new-right-wing-tech-intelligentsia/ 
••• Tech Billboard Decoder: The Great Tech Vibe Shift https://bayareacurrent.com/tech-billboard-decoder-the-great-tech-vibe-shift/ 
••• AI Company’s Billboards Say Workers Are Disposable. But Are We? https://bayareacurrent.com/ai-tech-company-to-workers-youre-disposable-but-is-it-true/
••• San Francisco's Billboards Aren't For You https://bayareacurrent.com/the-billboards-arent-for-you/

Standing Plugs:
••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite 
••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble 
••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)


Patreon Preview – 446. Vibe Decoder (ft. Wendy Liu, Jimmy Wu)

We get into the love/hate triangle between Anthropic, OpenAI, and the Pentagon and discuss the details of these contracts for AI weapon and surveillance systems, what’s actually at stake here with debates over the terms of “guardrails”, “red lines” and “lawful uses,” and how the competing (a)moral visions for AI and war that are represented in this debate really come down to a difference of opinion about technical capabilities at this current moment, not about the fundamental ethics and politics at play in weaponized AI. Plus, why this lovers spat between Anthropic and Pentagon must not trick you into labelling Dario Amodei as a righteous purveyor of resistance tech. Get real!

••• How Talks Between Anthropic and the Defense Dept. Fell Apart https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/technology/anthropic-defense-dept-openai-talks.html 
••• Inside Anthropic’s Killer-Robot Dispute With the Pentagon https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/03/inside-anthropics-killer-robot-dispute-with-the-pentagon/686200/ 
••• The Adolescence of Technology https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technology 
••• A Few Observations on AI Companies and Their Military Usage Policies https://sarahshoker.substack.com/p/a-few-observations-on-ai-companies
••• "All Lawful Use": Much More Than You Wanted To Know https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/all-lawful-use-much-more-than-you
••• Who loses from the Anthropic fight? Maybe Elon Musk and Alex Karp. https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/who-loses-from-the-anthropic-fight 
••• AI vs. the pentagon https://jasmi.news/p/ai-pentagon 
••• What Rights Do AI Companies Have in Government Contracts? https://jessicatillipman.com/what-rights-do-ai-companies-have-in-government-contracts/ 

Standing Plugs:
••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite 
••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble 
••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)


447. The Shinji Problem

Folks, we are doing a TMK live show in San Francisco! Come join Jathan and Ed, along with our friends, Wendy Liu and Jimmy Wu,  for a fun night of left-wing tech criticism as we decode the tech vibe shift. Thanks to Bay Area Current and DSA SF for sponsoring the event.

Entry is free, and they'll be drinks available with suggested cash donation. 

••• Thursday, March 19th at 7:00pm
••• First Unitarian Universalist, Starr King Room
••• 1187 Franklin St, San Francisco

Registration is recommended but not required: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decoding-the-tech-vibe-shift-a-night-of-left-wing-tech-criticism-tickets-1984745130112 


TMK Live Show in San Francisco - March 19th

We discuss the breathless article in Jeff Bezo’s Washington Post about how Claude’s integration into the Palantir Maven Smart System has been used for rapid target generation and prioritization for missile strikes in Iran. Then we go deeper into the fraying relationship between the Gulf states and the tech industry and the highly concentrated forms of financial investment and physical infrastructure in the UAE and Saudi Arabia that are load-bearing pillars of the global economy. Pillars that are now, very surprisingly for folks living in the Dubai Geopolitics Slow Zone, suddenly at risk from the consequences of geopolitics.

••• TMK live show in San Francisco, 7pm on Thursday, March 19th, with our friends at Bay Area Current and DSA SF. Join us! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decoding-the-tech-vibe-shift-a-night-of-left-wing-tech-criticism-tickets-1984745130112 

••• Anthropic’s AI tool Claude central to U.S. campaign in Iran, amid a bitter feud https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/04/anthropic-ai-iran-campaign/ 
••• The Trillions of Dollars of U.S. Investment at Stake in the Gulf https://www.wsj.com/business/the-trillions-of-dollars-of-u-s-investment-at-stake-in-the-gulf-f66f7883 
••• The Iran war is a jolt to Dubai’s business model https://www.economist.com/business/2026/03/03/the-iran-war-is-a-jolt-to-dubais-business-model 
••• Big Tech’s Uncertain Future in the Persian Gulf https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/business/dealbook/iran-gulf-tech-investments.html 

Standing Plugs:
••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite 
••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble 
••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

Patreon Preview – 448. Dubai’s Golden Dome Crumbles

TMK thought validated yet again! We talk about two big studies into the effects of AI on workloads, which show with in-depth empirical detail how AI intensifies and expands labor, rather than lightens and shrinks workloads. Weird! Did anybody know this would happen???

••• TMK live show in San Francisco, 7pm on Thursday, March 19th, with our friends at Bay Area Current and DSA SF. Join us! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decoding-the-tech-vibe-shift-a-night-of-left-wing-tech-criticism-tickets-1984745130112 

••• AI Isn’t Lightening Workloads. It’s Making Them More Intense. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-isnt-lightening-workloads-its-making-them-more-intense-e417dd2c 
••• AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It https://hbr.org/2026/02/ai-doesnt-reduce-work-it-intensifies-it 

Standing Plugs:
••• Order Jathan’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite 
••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble 
••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)


449. Efficiently Drowning in Work

A podcast about technology and political economy /// Agitprop against innovation and capital /// Hosted by Jathan Sadowski and Edward Ongweso Jr., Produced by Jereme Brown /// Hello friends and enemies

Listen anywhere that fine podcasts are distributed. Subscribe at patreon.com/thismachinekills to get premium episodes every week.

389. The Year of Polycrisis

This Machine Kills

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