This Machine Kills

• 405. AI is the Demon God of Capital (ft. Hagen Blix)

  We chat with linguist and cognitive scientist Hagen Blix about his new book Why We Fear AI (co-authored with computer scientist Ingeborg Glimmer) about how the technical qualities of AI – especially LLM chatbots – take the alienation (and seemingly alien power) of capital to the next level. What happens when the social logic of capital — which appears to be a motive force with no motivator — is channeled through generative technologies that appear to be texts with no author? People see an entity that must be feared and worshipped. ••• Why We Fear AI | Hagen Blix & Ingeborg Glimmer https://www.commonnotions.org/why-we-fear-ai ••• https://www.If A.I. Systems Become Conscious, Should They Have Rights? nytimes.com/2025/04/24/technology/ai-welfare-anthropic-claude.html ••• Marx’s Comments on James Mill http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/ Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new 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)

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• Patreon Preview – 404. The Parasites that Control Pharmaceutical Prices

  We take a deep dive into the lesser-known industry of “pharmacy benefits managers” (PBMs) which are parasitical companies that sit in the middle of the incredibly consolidated and vertically integrated market of pharmaceuticals hospitals insurers pharmacy benefits managers pharmacies. Through the simple administrative business of making lists of drugs and networks of pharmacies, PBMs have managed to carve out a multi-billion dollar rent-seeking industry premised on controlling (and jacking up) how much drugs cost and where you can get them—and extracting as much money as possible from people who need those drugs. ••• Timeline of FTC lawsuit against PBMs and relevant documents: https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/cases-proceedings/221-0114-caremark-rx-zinc-health-services-et-al-matter-insulin ••• Concurring Statement of Commissioner Andrew N. Ferguson https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Ferguson-Statement-Pharmacy-Benefit-Managers-Report.pdf ••• Market Power and Inequality: The Antitrust Counterrevolution and Its Discontents | Lina Khan and Sandeep Vaheesan https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2790/ ••• Inside the Mafia of Pharma Pricing | Matt Stoller https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/inside-the-mafia-of-pharma-pricing ••• A brief look at current debates about pharmacy benefit managers https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-brief-look-at-current-debates-about-pharmacy-benefit-managers/ Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new 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)

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• 403. Perpetual Slop Machine

  It’s slop world, baby! We get into how the internet has become choked by artificial intelligence systems focused on the endless production, circulation, and consumption of slop and shit. This is driven by the continual capture and recapture of deep fried forms of value, instead of actually producing anything new or useful. This leads to an internet that is hostile to human existence—where people are unwelcomed and unnecessary. We trace the degradation of the internet from information superhighway to hostile architecture to abandoned infrastructure. ••• Welcome to slop world: how the hostile internet is driving us crazy https://www.ft.com/content/5d06bbb4-0034-493b-8b0d-5c0ab74bedef ••• AI hype is drowning in slopaganda https://www.ft.com/content/24218775-57b1-4e9f-ba64-266a3239cf27 Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new 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)

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• Patreon Preview – 402. Crypto Empire of the Sons

  We return to an old enemy of the show by discussing the latest developments in the crypto industry. We trace how crypto has evolved from a grift largely focused on defrauding retail investors into a grift now focused on creating financial infrastructure to facilitate very direct and obvious forms of political influence peddling. Of course, the Greater Idiot Theory still holds as many investors still think that bitcoin is a hedge against the stock market and a reservere of stable value in a volatile economy, but the crypto industry is now driven by the needs of the greatest idiots of them all: Donald J. Trump and Family. Also, here are links for the pictures we were joking about in the beginning: https://x.com/captgouda24/status/1913254322864894178 and https://x.com/luke_d_ismas/status/1913406583188369497 ••• Crypto Crime is Legal | Molly White https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-81/ ••• Trump’s Newest Grift: Building a Cryptocurrency Empire While Destroying its Regulators | Molly White https://www.citationneeded.news/trump-crypto-empire/ ••• TMK in the New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/21/how-to-survive-the-ai-revolution Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new 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)

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• 401. Ruled by Bastards (ft. Quinn Slobodian)

  We are joined by yet another TMK favorite, Quinn Slobodian, who is author of Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right. We discuss Quinn’s analysis of “new fusionism” or a mutant strain of neoliberalism that crystallized in the 1990s, which sought to ground and defend neoliberal policies through their own bastardization of biological sciences — cognitive, behavioral, evolutionary, genetic, and so on. They then used scientism to justify and propagate political ideas and economic models based on hardwired human nature and hierarchical differences between races, cultures, and intelligence. The fringes of the 1990s have now become the mainstream of the 2020s. ••• Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right | Quinn Slobodian https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9781890951917/hayeks-bastards Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new 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)

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