This Machine Kills

A deep dive into how hyperscale data centers are rolled out using secrecy, fast-tracking, and counterinsurgency tactics. A critique of spreadsheet thinking and ideological cost‑benefit logic that discounts local communities. An investigation of a proposed nine‑gigawatt site near the Great Salt Lake and its potential to terraform local ecosystems with heat, water, and power impacts.

We go in for a second helping on analysing the opposition to data centers. After further deconstructing the arguments against opposition, we do what none of them actually do: pay attention to the actual material conditions on the ground. We discuss reporting on why real communities are opposed to these infrastructure projects and how these projects are being pushed through in black-boxed, stonewalled, fast tracked ways that are designed to ignore, dismiss, and override anybody who isn’t immediately and blindly onboard. ••• ‘The Most Bipartisan Issue Since Beer’: Opposition to Data Centers https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/us/politics/liberals-conservatives-data-centers.html ••• In Indiana, an anatomy of data center opposition https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/in-indiana-an-anatomy-of-data-center-opposition/ 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)

A sharp breakdown of leftist arguments against data centre moratoriums and why refusing tech can be a legitimate politics. They challenge eco-modernist claims that more build-out equals progress and interrogate offshoring, pricing, and corporate control over AI access. The conversation connects data-centre fights to climate, water, labor and schooling, and defends pauses as strategic leverage for democratic governance.

They unpack a looming China shock: hyper-competitive, vertically integrated manufacturing and a flood of low-cost high-tech goods reshaping global supply chains. They also trace a hidden fallout from the war on Iran: disrupted fertilizer supply lines from Gulf producers threatening food security across Africa and Southeast Asia. Short snapshots of industrial automation, robotics booms, and collapsing price cycles.

They dissect OpenAI’s industrial policy report and its push to govern a transition to superintelligence. They critique proposals like public wealth funds, tax shifts toward capital, and modernizing the grid for massive compute. They debate worker voice, four-day workweek ideas, and whether these plans strengthen corporate power or enable democratic control.

They unpack “silicon sampling,” a new way models both claim to mirror and actively shape public opinion. They sketch a grand theory of the World Casino and how prediction markets and modeling alter reality. Between riffs on Animorphs, body horror, and 90s radicalizing media, they tease a deep dive into the franchise and playful morph-selection banter.

Kate Mackenzie, co-author of The Polycrisis and host of Electric World Order, outlines China's clean-tech rise. Tim Sahay, researcher on energy geopolitics and Polycrisis co-author, explains the electrostate idea and demand destruction. They discuss China’s EV and solar surge, Hormuz shocks and short versus long-term impacts, and how electrification shifts geopolitical power.

They unpack a controversial aged-care algorithm that assigns levels of support with no human override. They compare it to past punitive automation and worry about policy creep. They sketch how new tech can strip empathy from social services and turn experts into rubber-stamp roles.

Two new studies show AI often intensifies and expands work instead of reducing it. The hosts explore how firms repurpose efficiency into more tasks and longer hours. They discuss email and admin surges, engineers spending time fixing AI outputs, and work bleeding into breaks. The conversation frames these shifts through political economy and offers skeptical takes on corporate adoption.

They unpack a breathless report about an AI tool being woven into rapid target-generation systems for strikes. They trace tensions between Gulf states and big tech and map how concentrated finance and infrastructure in the UAE and Saudi Arabia could be vulnerable. They flag how fast-moving geopolitics is rattling Dubai’s high-stakes economic model.