Shameless self-promotion alert! It was such a pleasure to discuss with @Paris Marx how right-wing governments and international corporations in the European Union are pushing to gut tech regulations with the goal of boosting AI development in totally misguided hope of improving economic growth and geopolitical standing. A place for hope is Berlin, April 10-12, 2026:
Whoop whoop! Get ready for my already favourite event in 2026!! 🥳 ✊ Cables of Resistance ✊ Movement conference against Big Tech Berlin 10-12 April 2026 Save the Date NOW and check out the 🎇 Call for Participation 🎇 looking for proposals in 8 tracks (DE/EN): - climate & energy - water & resources - urban policy - labour - militarisation - fascism - feminism - futures Please share and join!
I do not have any positive take on the Franco-German sovereignty summit. Yes, they do not throw the DMA under the omnibus, but apart from that it is an agenda that puts frontier AI before infrastructure, profits before people, EU before global antifascist resistance. And: They still do not even address the core of Big Tech dependence. EU startups are subject to their control through investments and research agendas. Pouring more money into them cements dependence.
RE: "The single defining feature of modern capitalism is that it acts like the party is almost over. So why stop now?" I still remember when that dawned on me when reading Graeber's Debt 🤯 People have been saying they are in late-stage capitalism for decades, if not centuries. It is 100% intuitive that growth and expansion cannot go on forever. But debt as an engine of growth has locked people/organisations/states into extractive behaviour. Strongly recommend the book and the podcast series! View quoted note →
"Both Google and Apple recently removed Red Dot, an app people can use to report sightings of ICE officials, from their respective app stores [...] Google told 404 Media it removed apps because they shared the location of what it describes as a vulnerable group that recently faced a violent act connected to these sorts of ICE-spotting apps—a veiled reference to ICE officials." Who is vulnerable and who is at risk? Google joins Apple in executing fascism.
Apparently this requires restating: We should not want a European Palantir. We should not want an open-source Palantir. We should not want a non-commercial Palantir. If it is supposed to do what Palantir does, we should not want it. And I don't care to what extent Palantir's products are shaped by political or profit motives. We know enough to reject its logic altogether.
After reading his book, I am very much moved by the release of Mikola Dziadok from Belarusian prison. He has already spent over ten years in prison (while being slightly younger than me). And his book is testament to an incredibly fearless, courageous and compassionate mind: His case is not an isolated one, so I am even more glad that through his writing I got access to and started to care about political prisoners more generally. (1/3)
Digital sovereignty without techno-nationalism and an ambitious understanding of more democratic technology? It is always such a pleasure to listen to Cecilia Rikap! 🫶 She conveys that we should not just demand governments to “get off Big Tech” and “build local data centres”, but also to go beyond the capitalist paradigm. Uruguay seems an interesting example among various others. Finally managed to listen to her episode with Paris on @Paris Marx 👇
“From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur, details in remarkably clear words how companies across the world derive benefits from the suffering of people in Gaza. It’s vast - arms, finance, construction, tech, but also universities. “[E]nding it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives.” Read the report (incl calls to action for govts+companies): 📄.pdf
@npub16wcy...ehf0 is on #TWSU with @Paris Marx and has a clear view on AI use cases: "But the other thing is that it is quite good at being destructive. It is not very good at actually optimising, actually reliably predicting or generating something that can be trusted enough to be a functional part for society. It is quite good at intervening in ways which in which collateral damage does not matter, and you can think of that as anywhere from DOGE to Gaza." Great episode!👇