This Machine Kills

The podcast discusses Søren Mau's book 'Mute Compulsion' and its analysis of power, value, capital, and social reproduction. It explores concepts like mute compulsion, domination in capitalism, the significance of an epigraph, the persistence of capitalism, childhood interests, random conversations, violence and economic power, and an introduction to Marxist Thought and Analysis.

In another instalment of What the Fuck is Happening in America, we talk about how sports betting has totally saturated society since the Supreme Court overturned a ban in 2018, then we discuss the next wild frontier of online casinos driven by gambling platforms and megastar streamers, then finally we gaze into the dark abyss of The Machine Zone. Stuff we reference ••• The dark side of the US sports betting boom https://www.ft.com/content/2e1a235a-8a46-47f3-b040-5ca21a04ebf4 ••• Cigars, Booze, Money: How a Lobbying Blitz Made Sports Betting Ubiquitous https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/business/sports-betting-lobbying-kansas.html ••• Twitch’s Gambling Boom Is Luring Gamers Into Crypto Casinos https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-04/twitch-s-gambling-boom-is-luring-gamers-into-crypto-casinos ••• A Nation of the Walking Dead https://www.truthdig.com/articles/a-nation-of-the-walking-dead/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

The podcast discusses the implementation of facial recognition surveillance in New Orleans and its lack of effectiveness. They also delve into China's crackdown on tech companies and the impact on its economy. The chapter highlights China's closed financial system, interventions in the tech sector, and the need to understand China's mechanisms and legal authorities. The podcast wraps up with gratitude to listeners and promotion of their premium episodes on Patreon.

We kick off the TMK book club with the excellent new book – Mute Compulsion by Søren Mau – which offers a foundational analysis of power, value, capital, and social reproduction. Mau’s book is written with a real analytical clarity that advances our critical, theoretical understanding of the relations and operations of those things in society and our lives. We set the context for the book and our approach before discussing the Introduction chapter, which established the book’s motivating questions and overarching argument about the need to pay special attention to the economic power of capital. ••• Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2759-mute-compulsion ••• Communism is Freedom – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/communism-is-freedom Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We are joined by Katie Wells and Kafui Attoh to discuss their new book – Disrupting DC: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City – which offers a rich analysis of Uber and its operations in Washington DC as a case study in the political economy of urban crisis. We get into how Uber thrives by taking advantage of the low expectations that people have of their city governments, public services, and the economy. The common sense of neoliberalism means that decision-makers and consumers understand Uber as the most obvious solutions to social problems, and cannot imagine any other alternatives, despite the fact that relying on Uber means settling for a system that addresses existing problems by only causing different ones. ••• Disrupting DC: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City | Katie J. Wells, Kafui Attoh, and Declan Cullen https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691249759/disrupting-dc ••• Follow Katie: https://twitter.com/KatieJWells ••• Follow Kafui: https://twitter.com/AttohKafui Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We check in on some enemies of the show to see what’s new with them. Uber has finally posted an operating profit for the first time in history – and it only took more than $31 billion in losses, plus a lot more exploitation and immiseration, to get there. Dan Ariely, a famous behavioral economist, has ironically been caught using fraudulent data for a study about honesty that has been used as the basis for insurance initiatives to combat fraud. Finally, Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, has written an abhorrent essay arguing that we all have moral obligations to embrace the development of AI weapons—or else we will be “punished” for refusing the call of duty. Stuff we reference: ••• Uber makes first operating profit after racking up $31.5bn of losses https://www.ft.com/content/dae2b90e-1ba0-4e8f-aabc-34aae4ca05d7 ••• Fabricated data in research about honesty. You can't make this stuff up. Or, can you? https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190568472/dan-ariely-francesca-gino-harvard-dishonesty-fabricated-data ••• Our Oppenheimer Moment: The Creation of A.I. Weapons https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/opinion/karp-palantir-artificial-intelligence.html Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We dig into the a new investigation on the exponential growth of Starlink – Elon Musk’s satellite internet communication network – its geopolitical centrality to the war in Ukraine and international telecommunication policies, and the immense power this grants Musk as the man who has singular control over a private global infrastructure system that everyone from the Pentagon on down has grown dependent upon. ••• Elon Muskʼs Unmatched Power in the Stars https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/28/business/starlink.html Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We jump off the absurd twitter debate about degrowth and bananas in global communism to discuss much deeper issues about why any alternative to capitalism cannot simply be premised on being better managers of capitalist machines. Despite the arguments of ecomodernists—and the poverty of thought it engenders—there is not a linear development of progress and innovation which either moves forward (to the right) or backward (to the left). Break free of bourgeois ideology! Throw off the shackles of capitalist systems! Abolish the commodity form! Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We talk about the kayfabe of the green transition as the woke capitalists at Blackrock appoint Aramco to its board of directors, meanwhile the social justice warriors in the mining industry are doing land acknowledgements before ripping out rare earth minerals needed for renewable energy. These are the champions of a sustainable planet for human life. They are not the champions we deserve, nor are they ones we need, but they are the only ones we have. Stuff we reference: ••• Total life insurance: Logics of anticipatory control and actuarial governance in insurance technology https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03063127231186437 ••• BlackRock Appoints CEO of Oil Giant Aramco to Its Board https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-17/blackrock-names-aramco-ceo-amin-nasser-to-its-board-of-directors#xj4y7vzkg ••• A Good Prospect​ | Mining Climate Anxiety for Profit https://www.thedriftmag.com/a-good-prospect/ ••• Shell Is Looking Forward https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/shell-climate-change.html Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We are excited to be joined again by Evgeny Morozov, host of The Santiago Boys, a new narrative podcast series about the history of Cybersyn, the geopolitics of its creation in Cold War Latin America, and the legacy of Salvador Allende, Fernando Flores, and the man who looms largest of all: Stafford Beer. This podcast series is not like any story of Cybersyn you might have read before. Morozov has take a mountain of research — over 200 hundred original interviews, deep archival investigations, all compiled into an online resource accessible via the link below — and turned it into a thrilling narrative about a radical system that almost was, a world that could have been, and the people who fought to the end for those dreams. ••• The Santiago Boys: https://the-santiago-boys.com ••• Outro song: Fela Kuti - International Thief Thief (I.T.T.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jptR_YwCs3o Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)