Thanks Tate Brothers, thanks Silicon Valley, thanks for your 'War on Woke' and turning our boys into soulless rapists, thanks..../s
https://news.sky.com/story/boys-aged-13-14-and-15-charged-with-rape-of-girl-13333263
A sign of strange times when Steve Bannon, of all people, (sort of) nails the description of the Silicon Valley oligarchy and techno feudalism:
Will the wonders of our AI Future never cease?
Now, in court, the Tech Bros will have to prove their miracle thinking machine isn't actually that, but a mindless autocorrect system that is incapable of 'knowing' anything.
This late February article in The New Yorker briefly covers some of the same ground as the video above in terms of the Silicon Valley fascist influence in US politics, the close ties between the Trump regime and billionaire Yarvinites, and why rich tech nazis may see Trump's election as a vehicle to further their long-term efforts to establish private dictatorships by breaking the US administrative state and replacing it themselves. As such we can use it as supporting evidence for the Dark Gothic MAGA video, and to expand our starting point for discussions about the prominent role of billionaire fascists (of various types) in America and the larger Pig Empire's turn towards overt fascism and autocratic political forms. Furthermore, the author examines similar historical examples when technocrats with authoritarian political and organizational views merged with, and the case of Imperial Japan, subsumed fascist political orders.
Techno-Fascism Comes to America
"For a time, digital platforms seemed to support democratic government as a kind of communal megaphone; but now, a decade later, technology seems to be supplanting the established authority of the government. “There is a crisis of the state,” McElroy said, and Silicon Valley may be “trying to corrode state power” in order to more quickly replace it.
Silicon Valley is premised on the idea that its founders and engineers know better than anyone else: they can do better at disseminating information, at designing an office, at developing satellites and advancing space travel. By the same logic, they must be able to govern better than politicians and federal employees. Voguish concepts in Silicon Valley such as seasteading and “network states” feature independent, self-contained societies running on tech principles. Efforts to create such entities have either failed or remained confined to the realm of brand-building, as in the startup Praxis, a hypothetical plan for a new tech-driven city on the Mediterranean. Under the new Trump White House, though, the U.S. government is being offered up as a guinea pig, McElroy said. “Now that we’ve got Musk running the state, I don’t know if they need their little offshore bubbles as much as they thought they did before.”
Given Elon Musk's position at the head of DOGE and thus his role as the de facto exchequer of what Trump considers his personal empire, but most still call the American government, I have no qualms with the way this article focuses on Elon as a representation of the creepy tech elites behind Downmarket Mussolini. In fact, the author's note that Musk's use of so-called AI to carry out the purges all of these nazis desire (for various reasons) might represent an opportunity to refine automated systems of repression and control for billionaire tech fascists looking to run their own neo-monarchal states in the future, probably goes a long way towards explaining why Musk in particular is so keen to run point on this whole project for Trump. After all, it's not a secret in tech circles that Musk has been looking for a way to become the leading figure in the "AI" industry, and what better way to do that than pioneering the use case for the "fascism machine" I've been telling you these rich nazis always meant "AI" to be?
I would however, caution against reading as much into the split between the tech-fascists (as represented by Musk) and the faux-populist MAGA movement (as represented by Steve Bannon) as Chayka does here. On a long enough timeline, it's possible that the billionaire tech-fascists, the Christian Nationalist right, the Bannonite "populists," and other patchwork constituencies that form the larger Trump movement may be torn apart by divergent priorities and ideas about who really runs Bartertown; but given that they all agree on methods of operation, and they're all pushing towards some type of fascist order, I think we're a long way away from irresolvable differences tearing Trumpism apart. Besides, the fact that it's Elon Musk standing next to Trump and waving around a chainsaw, not Steve Bannon, tells you all you need to know about who won that particular power struggle in the short term.
Frankly, I think the easiest way to understand the network of relationships, methods, and objectives of the various fascist power blocs in the movement behind Trump, is to imagine a minivan full of cartoonishly-evil nazis who're used to getting their way, all trying to control the activities of the driver, who may or may not be paying attention at any given moment. In this scenario the various groups of fascists vying for control of the vehicle Trump is driving are all on the same road, they all broadly agree on how to progress on their journey, but each of them intend to end up in different places by the time the drive is finished and they don't need the car anymore.
My “not a book review” of Careless People – the book Facebook doesn’t want you to read.
With highlights on Ireland’s complicity and the lengths people farmers (as I call them) will go to to appease authoritarian regimes like China.
https://ar.al/2025/03/21/careless-people/
It’s clear from this that Ireland should be stripped of the authority to enforce GDPR and, really, people farmers – and the business model of people farming in general – should be banned in the EU.
(Don’t hold your breaths.)
Deutsche Welle: India: Musk’s X sues Modi’s government in censorship battle. “Elon Musk’s social network X filed a lawsuit against the Indian government, arguing that the country’s IT Ministry has unlawfully expanded its censorship powers to allow the easier removal of online content. In the court filing dated March 5 but only reported by media on Thursday, the social network alleged that the […]
Cupertino Computer colossus $APPL is losing $1 Billion a year on its TV #Streaming App
Despite having the hippest phones & laptops that #SiliconValley ever churned out, #APPLETV+ has long lagged behind rivals such as Hulu, Netflix HBO Max .
#Tubi (a free app founded in San Francisco now owned by Fox) has approx 4x the viewers as #TimCook TV , and leads the pack over paid services such as Paramount+ and Peacock.
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/apple-tv-streaming-reportedly-racks-155123771.html
Retrouvez l'excellent @antoniocasilli (#AntonioCasilli) sur la manière dont l' #intelligenceartificielle est faite essentiellement d' #exploitation humaine et nourrit le #neocolonialisme du Nord envers le Sud. Il fait aussi un très bon lien avec les déportations massives décidées par #Trump d'immigrants issus de ces pays, afin de bénéficier d'une #maindoeuvre corvéable à merci pour assurer l' #efficience financière de la #tech américaine, notamment de la #siliconvalley.
https://id.420129.xyz/watch?v=qlTLP54MO_s
BBC: Google agrees to pay $28m in racial bias lawsuit. “Google has agreed to pay $28m (£21.5m) to settle a lawsuit that claimed white and Asian employees were given better pay and career opportunities than workers from other ethnic backgrounds, a law firm representing claimants says. The technology giant confirmed it had ‘reached a resolution’ but rejected the allegations made against it.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/20/bbc-google-agrees-to-pay-28m-in-racial-bias-lawsuit/
The Verge: Google Search charged with breaking EU antitrust rules. “Google is breaking European antitrust laws by favoring its own Shopping, Hotels, and Flights search services over rival comparison providers, according to the European Commission. The EU announced in its preliminary ruling today that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, had also violated anti-steering rules under the Digital […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/20/the-verge-google-search-charged-with-breaking-eu-antitrust-rules/
New York Times: Nvidia Is Hosting the Super Bowl of A.I.. This link goes to a gift article. “More than 25,000 people were expected to congregate on Tuesday around the event, known as Nvidia GTC. The crowds filled a National Hockey League arena to hear a speech about the future of artificial intelligence from Mr. Huang, who has been nicknamed ‘A.I. Jesus.’ Nvidia, the world’s leading […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/20/new-york-times-nvidia-is-hosting-the-super-bowl-of-a-i/
Ah, #SoftBank is at it again, throwing $6.5B at #Ampere like someone's giving away free candy at a Silicon Valley Halloween party 
. Meanwhile, #Carlyle and #Oracle are cashing out faster than you can say "pump and dump," eagerly watching the fireworks from a safe distance 
.
https://group.softbank/en/news/press/20250320 #Investment #SiliconValley #HackerNews #ngated
Fast Company: Hollywood warns about AI industry’s push to change copyright law. “A who’s who of musicians, actors, directors, and more have teamed up to sound the alarm as AI leaders including OpenAI and Google argue that they shouldn’t have to pay copyright holders for AI training material. In an open letter, submitted to the White House Office of Science and Technology, more than 400 […]
[05:45] Europa moet zo snel mogelijk eigen tech bouwen. Zolang we Silicon Valley maar niet copy-pasten
Europese leiders zijn het eens: de EU moet nú een eigen digitale infrastructuur bouwen om minder afhankelijk te worden van Amerikaanse tech. Uitstekend plan. Zolang we maar goed kijken naar Silicon Valley – als een voorbeeld van hoe het níét moet.
Hij gaat er komen: de ‘EuroStack’, het Europese technologische ecosysteem. Hoe, wat en wanneer is nog ongewis, maar het waarom wordt met de dag duidelijker: Europa is te afhankelijk van Amerikaanse technologie en de Verenigde Staten zijn onder president Donald Trump een onberekenbaar risico geworden. Daarom moet de Europese Unie zelf gaan bouwen, en snel ook.
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https://decorrespondent.nl/15975?pk_campaign=rss-feed&pk_medium=rss&pk_source=publication&pk_kwd=all&pk_cid=eccbc87e4b5ce2fe28308fd9f2a7baf3
#Europese #EU #Amerikaanse #SiliconValley #EuroStack’ #Europa #VerenigdeStaten #DonaldTrump #EuropeseUnie #5
You can deal with this problem, or you can attack 'woke', you can't have both.
#SiliconValley #journalism #FOIA #PublicData #paywalls
"[Wired is] going to stop paywalling articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act."
Freedom of the Press Foundation: Wired is dropping paywalls for FOIA-based reporting. Others should follow. “…news readers often find themselves blocked by paywalls from reading important stories about government business. That experience is particularly frustrating for readers who are unable to access the groundbreaking investigative reports outlets like Wired magazine have been […]
Anything but stand up to the American tech companies pushing this Incel ideology onto kids....
https://news.sky.com/story/starmer-backs-campaign-to-show-adolescence-in-schools-13331968
"Je länger wir die sozialen, wirtschaftlichen und ökologischen Auswirkungen ignorieren, desto größer werden die Probleme. Das wiederum verstärkt die Neigung zu Rückzug, Isolationismus und apokalyptischen Fantasien – und zu aus der Verzweiflung geborenen Technologien und Businessplänen: ein Teufelskreis."
https://www.blaetter.de/ausgabe/2025/februar/prepper-mit-milliarden-das-mindset-der-tech-elite
#woke 
