We dig into DOGE. After some background on what Musk and his harem of broccoli-headed bozos have been up to as they strip the copper out of federal agencies, we zoom out to ask where did DOGE come from? Not just literally, but also politically (as a right-wing project of weaponizing and hollowing out the administrative state), materially (as the next phase in the relationship between tech/finance capital and the state), and ideologically (as the convergence of multiple right-wing movements who find common ground in Trump and Musk). In other words, we ask the question on everybody’s mind: Who let the DOGE out?

••• Speed up the Breakdown | Quinn Slobodian https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/02/15/speed-up-the-breakdown/ 
••• The federal tech workers facing down DOGE | Brian Merchant https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-federal-tech-workers-facing-down
••• At Oval Office, Musk Makes Broad Claims of Federal Fraud Without Proof https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/us/politics/trump-musk-oval-office.html
••• Trump and Musk Hunt for Corruption, Very Selectively https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/us/politics/trump-musk-corruption.html 
••• Elon Musk’s Business Empire Scores Benefits Under Trump Shake-Up https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/us/politics/elon-musk-companies-conflicts.html

Standing Plugs:
••• 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 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)

394. Who Let the DOGE Out

We chat with Eric Blanc — author of the new book We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big — about how the model of labor organizing through grassroots, horizontal movements is taking off in a huge way. This growing model of worker-to-worker organizing is challenging the conventional model of large, hierarchical unions. By enrolling millions of new workers into the labor movement, worker-to-worker organizing is building a stronger base for greater victories with long-lasting impact. Effective labor organizing is crucial for advancing social equality and democratic power—and our models of organizing should embody those values.

••• We Are the Union | Eric Blanc https://www.ucpress.edu/books/we-are-the-union 
••• Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee https://workerorganizing.org/ 
••• Save Our Public Services https://actionnetwork.org/forms/thank-you-for-taking-action-stay-in-the-fight/ 

Standing Plugs:
••• 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 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 – 395. How Workers are Building Power (ft. Eric Blanc)

We run through a roundup of recent stories about how different types of AI are already having real, material, immediate impacts on people’s lives — including AI facial recognition used by police to shortcut actually investigating crimes, AI systems used by bosses to monitor, control, and threaten to replace human workers, AI tools for coding that are actively deskilling programmers. Across these examples, AI is treated as a convenient justification and scapegoat by those who use the systems to do awful things to other people. Then we end on up note about a new organization that’s training lawyers and advocates how to fight back against forms of algorithmic discrimination by government agencies.

••• Arrested by AI: Police ignore standards after facial recognition matches https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2025/police-artificial-intelligence-facial-recognition/
••• Your boss is watching https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/24/1111664/worker-monitoring-employee-surveillance/
••• AI is Creating a Generation of Illiterate Programmers https://nmn.gl/blog/ai-illiterate-programmers
••• New Junior Developers Can’t Actually Code https://nmn.gl/blog/ai-and-learning 
••• Rage Against The Algorithm https://www.levernews.com/rage-against-the-algorithm/ 

Standing Plugs:
••• 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 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)


396. Need to Justify? Need an Alibi? Blame the AI!

We dig into a grand theory that Ed is building through a series of essays on the AI industry and the Silicon Valley Consensus, or how “a bunch of independent profit-seeking actors have converged on sustaining a certain technology through a frenzy of overbuilding, overvaluing, and overinvesting in order to realize excessive gains that can be translated into political power aimed at restructuring society.”

••• The Silicon Valley Consensus & AI Capex (Part 1) https://thetechbubble.substack.com/p/the-silicon-valley-consensus-and 

Standing Plugs:
••• 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 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 – 397. The Silicon Valley Consensus

We try to figure out what the fuck is happening in the US as we chat about the low rent car commercial at the White House, the human shields of cops protecting Tesla dealerships, how Musk has become (by his own actions) a scapegoat for the public’s hatred, and the ongoing disintegration of social bonds and moral solidarity under a fascist regime. Plus a new data analysis system called ShadowDragon that is supercharging the surveillance capabilities of ICE, DEA, DoS, and more. We endeavor to analyze the abyss, organize against the abyss, but not get caught staring into the abyss.

••• Stalled Audits and a Skeleton Staff: Inside Trump’s War on the I.R.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/us/politics/irs-taxes-trump-musk-federal-workers.html 
••• The Abduction of Mahmoud Khalil https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-abduction-of-mahmoud-khalil
••• Yale Suspends Scholar After A.I.-Powered News Site Accuses Her of Terrorist Link https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/us/yale-suspends-scholar-terrorism.html
••• The 200+ Sites an ICE Surveillance Contractor is Monitoring https://www.404media.co/the-200-sites-an-ice-surveillance-contractor-is-monitoring/ 

Standing Plugs:
••• 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 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)


398. The Treacherous Eunuch

We are joined by Katie Wells — Director of Research at Groundwork Collaborative — to discuss her new report with the Fairwork Project which examines the current labor conditions in the gig platform market in the US. We chat about how core features of the broader economy are becoming extremely abnormal — prices are no longer fixed and standard, income is piecemeal and unstable, people can use short-term credit to buy their fast food dinner, platform services are integrating with and replacing government services. The abnormalities keep piling up until they become the new normal. Plus we draw connections between the managerial techniques of platform companies and private equity firms.

••• Fairwork US Ratings 2025: When AI Eats the Manager https://fair.work/en/fw/publications/fairwork-us-ratings-2025/

Standing Plugs:
••• 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 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 – 399. The Business of Management (ft. Katie Wells)

We have a big chat with Malcolm Harris about his new book — What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis — which takes seriously the fact that “the whole total world is in crisis” and then seriously advances three different ways to understand, confront, and overcome these disastrous conditions. We walk through the pathways that Malcolm stakes out — marketcraft, public power, and communism — and use the bland discourse around Abundance as a foil for the far more incisive analysis he lays out in What’s Left.

••• What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis | Malcolm Harris https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/malcolm-harris/whats-left/9780316577434/
••• Malcolm’s book tour https://linktr.ee/WhatsLeftTour 
••• Malcolm’s review of Abundance https://thebaffler.com/latest/whats-the-matter-with-abundance-harris 

Standing Plugs:
••• 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 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)


400. Well, Somebody Has to Do Something! (ft. Malcolm Harris)


We are joined by yet another TMK favorite, Quinn Slobodian, who is author of Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right. We discuss Quinn’s analysis of “new fusionism” or a mutant strain of neoliberalism that crystallized in the 1990s, which sought to ground and defend neoliberal policies through their own bastardization of biological sciences — cognitive, behavioral, evolutionary, genetic, and so on. They then used scientism to justify and propagate political ideas and economic models based on hardwired human nature and hierarchical differences between races, cultures, and intelligence. The fringes of the 1990s have now become the mainstream of the 2020s.

••• Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right | Quinn Slobodian https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9781890951917/hayeks-bastards 

Standing Plugs:
••• 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 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)


401. Ruled by Bastards (ft. Quinn Slobodian)

We return to an old enemy of the show by discussing the latest developments in the crypto industry. We trace how crypto has evolved from a grift largely focused on defrauding retail investors into a grift now focused on creating financial infrastructure to facilitate very direct and obvious forms of political influence peddling. Of course, the Greater Idiot Theory still holds as many investors still think that bitcoin is a hedge against the stock market and a reservere of stable value in a volatile economy, but the crypto industry is now driven by the needs of the greatest idiots of them all: Donald J. Trump and Family.

Also, here are links for the pictures we were joking about in the beginning: https://x.com/captgouda24/status/1913254322864894178 and https://x.com/luke_d_ismas/status/1913406583188369497  

••• Crypto Crime is Legal | Molly White https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-81/ 
••• Trump’s Newest Grift: Building a Cryptocurrency Empire While Destroying its Regulators | Molly White https://www.citationneeded.news/trump-crypto-empire/ 

••• TMK in the New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/21/how-to-survive-the-ai-revolution 

Standing Plugs:
••• 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 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 – 402. Crypto Empire of the Sons

It’s slop world, baby! We get into how the internet has become choked by artificial intelligence systems focused on the endless production, circulation, and consumption of slop and shit. This is driven by the continual capture and recapture of deep fried forms of value, instead of actually producing anything new or useful. This leads to an internet that is hostile to human existence—where people are unwelcomed and unnecessary. We trace the degradation of the internet from information superhighway to hostile architecture to abandoned infrastructure.

••• Welcome to slop world: how the hostile internet is driving us crazy https://www.ft.com/content/5d06bbb4-0034-493b-8b0d-5c0ab74bedef
••• AI hype is drowning in slopaganda https://www.ft.com/content/24218775-57b1-4e9f-ba64-266a3239cf27

Standing Plugs:
••• 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 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)

403. Perpetual Slop Machine

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.

401. Ruled by Bastards (ft. Quinn Slobodian)

This Machine Kills

Related tracks