Tesla is Tanking. What That Means for Elon Musk and DOGE ft. Geoff Dembicki
Elon Musk is trying to clean up the mess his DOGE escapades have made for Tesla — and it’s not going very well. Brian and Paris dig into the terrible news he had to share in the company’s earnings call and whether we should really believe his claims about scaling back his DOGE involvement next month. Either way, the right still loves the idea: Paris speaks with DeSmog Global Managing Editor Geoff Dembicki about a recent conference where Canadian conservatives — including an Amazon senior principal in public policy — laid out their vision for how to create a DOGE that can wreak havoc of its own on the Canadian government.Geoff Dembicki wrote about how Canada’s conservatives are planning for their own DOGE.Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect.Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine.Support the show
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58:39
Science Fiction in the Days of American Authoritarianism ft. Annalee Newitz & Charlie Jane Anders
In the latest episode of our Elon In Power series, we’re joined by sci-fi authors and Our Opinions Are Correct co-hosts Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders to dig into how science fiction shaped Elon Musk, and how Musk uses it to shape his own mythology. We explore the problems with how Musk interprets (and fails to interpret) sci-fi stories, and the ways sci-fi memes are deployed to justify the visions of the future tech billionaires are trying to realize. Annalee and Charlie Jane also share their thoughts on where they find hope in this moment, and how science fiction can help us through it.Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect.Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine.Support the show
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40:12
What the Trade War Means for Tech, Musk, and American Workers
Liberation Day has come and gone, leaving Brian and Paris to pick up the pieces. So the Trump administration may or may not have used ChatGPT to whip up its half-assed plans to instigate a global trade war, which tanked the market for days on end before Trump hit the pause button. There’s still much wreckage to sort through: Elon Musk is furious at Trump’s top trade adviser, China isn’t giving in, and electronics are about to get a lot more expensive. We dig into what all this means for big tech, Elon’s status at the White House, and your iPhone—and what it all says about the way team Trump wields power and thinks about American workers.Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect.Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine.Support the show
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48:36
OpenAI’s Massive Funding Round and Equally Massive Insult to Artists
After a few weeks of digging into Elon Musk’s past, Brian and Paris are taking a little break to dig into recent tech developments. They discuss the troubles facing Tesla, OpenAI’s new funding round, and the despicable display of AI-generated Studio Ghibli images circulating on social media. Plus, they discuss some important labor stories and how Google’s AI Overviews are hurting website traffic.Brian mentioned an article called “AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism.”Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect.Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine.Support the show
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53:44
How Elon Musk Used Tesla to Build His Power ft. Ed Niedermeyer
In our new series Elon In Power, we’re digging into the billionaire’s history to find out how he got to this point and what his past tells us about who he is today. For our second episode, Ludicrous author and Autonocast cohost Ed Niedermeyer joins the show to dig into the history of how Elon Musk took over and reshaped Tesla, how he built the company through deception, and why it’s not a vulnerable part of his corporate empire.Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect.Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine.Support the show
Tech giants like Google and Facebook have conquered — some would say killed — the internet. Elon Musk used his platform to help elect Trump, and Silicon Valley elites want to gut the public sector. OpenAI and Microsoft aim to wipe away millions of jobs. Uber is driving down wages. Apple is impenetrable. Amazon is inescapable. All this high tech, and our quality of life is getting lower. The system has crashed. So, System Crash: a weekly tech news show willing to tell the hard truths about how tech — and the titans who own and operate it — is really transforming the world. Co-hosts Paris Marx and Brian Merchant dissect the stories that matter, break news of their own, offer expert commentary, and interview journalists, whistleblowers, authors, and tech workers and ordinary people fighting back.
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