Paris Marx is joined by Makena Kelly to discuss how Elon Musk’s DOGE is reshaping the US government and the consequences that has for government employees and the wider public.

Makena Kelly is a senior writer at WIRED and writes the weekly Politics Lab newsletter.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Makena wrote about how DOGE is replacing government IT roles and also the COBOL Cowboys back in 2020.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn’t go to waste. We’re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here’s a preview of this week’s premium episode with Alex Hanna, the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Institute. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by Eoin Higgins to discuss how tech billionaires set out to change the media ecosystem and made it profitable for influential voices to shift to the political right.

Eoin Higgins is a journalist and the author of Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Read an excerpt of Eoin’s book on LitHub.
• Last year, Peter Thiel bragged to Ann Coulter about killing Gawker.
• Rick Perlstein wrote about the time he met Marc Andreessen.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn’t go to waste. We’re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here’s a preview of this week’s premium episode with Julia Black, a reporter on The Information’s Weekend Team. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by Liz Pelly to discuss how Spotify changes how we listen to music and the broader impacts it has on the wider music industry.

Liz Pelly is a music journalist and the author of Mood Machine.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• You can read an excerpt of Liz’s book in Harper’s.
• The CEO of Suno AI said people “don’t enjoy” making music.

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Paris Marx is joined by Chris Gilliard to discuss David Golumbia's final book Cyberlibertarianism and how right-wing politics shaped how we think about the internet.

Chris Gilliard is co-director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute and author of the forthcoming book Luxury Surveillance, coming in 2026.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• David Golumbia wrote an essay called “ChatGPT Should Not Exist” in December 2022.
• Matt Bors drew a comic called “You made become a Nazi!”
• Cyberlibertarianism is out now from the University of Minnesota Press.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn’t go to waste. We’re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here’s a preview of this week’s premium episode with Émile P. Torres, a postdoctoral researcher at Case Western University. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by Gaby Del Valle to discuss the inauguration of Donald Trump and what the tech oligarchy hopes to get from their relationship with him.

Gaby Del Valle is a policy reporter at The Verge and is working on a book on ecofascism that will be released by Bloomsbury in 2026.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Gaby wrote about Elon Musk’s plans for DOGE and the eugenic ideas in Silicon Valley.
• The Guardian published an opinion piece titled, “I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers.”
• Tesla applied for more H-1B visas as it was laying off thousands of workers.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn’t go to waste. We’re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here’s a preview of this week’s premium episode with Dan McQuillan, author of Resisting AI and a lecturer at Goldsmiths University of London. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by Jathan Sadowski to discuss the relationship between technology and capitalism, and what lessons can be taken from the Luddites to properly assess and understand these systems.

Jathan Sadowski is is the author of The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism. He’s also the co-host of This Machine Kills and a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Jathan wrote about AI and the Tinkerbell Effect in Futurism.

Support the show

Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn’t go to waste. We’re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here’s a preview of this week’s premium episode with Dwayne Monroe, a senior cloud architect and longtime consultant these kinds of projects. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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