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 ...
A media narrative has taken shape that there’s little resistance to Trump and Musk, but protests against the administration’s antidemocratic push for power are growing. In fact, they’re everywhere. This week Brian and Paris chat with actor, director, and activist Alex Winter about the Tesla Takedown protests he’s been helping to organize, how quickly they’ve grown, and all the people who want to push back on Elon Musk’s takeover of the US government. Plus, Alphabet AI workers being silenced, Javier Milei’s memecoin, and whether anyone cares about the new iPhone.Find out more about the Tesla Takedown protests.Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect.Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine.Support the show
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51:12
Patreon Preview: Decoding Peter Thiel’s Deeply Bizarre Manifesto
This is a preview of System Crash’s monthly bonus episode, looking into a recent op-ed by none other than Peter Thiel that gives us important insight into how he’s thinking and the political moment we find ourselves in. To get the full bonus episode, become a supporter on Patreon.Support the show
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5:53
Silicon Valley Enters Its Imperial Era
Silicon Valley hard at work turning DC into an AI-fueled dystopia. This week Paris and Brian dig into three big trends all converging at once: Elon Musk’s expanding power over the federal government, JD Vance’s speech in France declaring American AI will “dominate,” and Meta’s soaring share price on its pivot to AI strategy. Things seem to be going from bad to worse, but we’ll be here to chronicle the crash.Find out more about the Tesla Takedown protests.Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect.Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine.Support the show
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1:00:27
Elon Musk's Digital Coup and the Future of the Internet ft. Cory Doctorow
Paris is out this week, so we found another esteemed Canadian writer, activist, and tech critic to log in as System Crash's first-ever guest host: Cory Doctorow. Brian and Cory examine Elon Musk’s campaign of governmental destruction in Washington DC, how enshittification will continue to unfold in 2025, and what, if any, hope there is for us, the humans and the users.Cory Doctorow is the author of many bestselling science fiction novels and works of nonfiction. His latest is Picks and Shovels, out February 18th from MacMillan. Support the show
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47:20
Did a Chinese Startup just Burst the AI Bubble? ft. Ed Zitron
Is the AI hype going to evaporate after Chinese startup DeepSeek shows it can do generative AI way cheaper than OpenAI, Anthropic, and big tech? AI watcher and tech PR guru Ed Zitron joins Brian and Paris to break down what the company has achieved and why it completely upends the assumptions the US AI boom was built on.Ed Zitron is the host of Better Offline, CEO of EZPR, and writer of the Where’s Your Ed At newsletter.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.
Ireland