📚🎊✨ yay - joint book launch for @nsrnicek.bsky.social's Silicon Empires, @mayameme.bsky.social's Auto-Correct and my Public Data Cultures, in discussion with @joannazylinska.bsky.social & @noortjem.bsky.social on 3rd Dec, 7-9pm 💜 www.tickettailor.com/events/kings... @politybooks.bsky.social

Obligatory pinned post: my new book, The Revenge of Reason, is now available to buy: www.urbanomic.com/book/the-rev...

Today is the official UK publication day for Silicon Empires! I'm excited to have it out and hear what people think. There's an enormous amount happening every day in AI, and it's difficult to gain a stable perspective. I wrote the book to try and get some secure hold on that constant flux. 🧵

Today is the official UK publication day for Silicon Empires! I'm excited to have it out and hear what people think. There's an enormous amount happening every day in AI, and it's difficult to gain a stable perspective. I wrote the book to try and get some secure hold on that constant flux. 🧵

Two big changes to the precarity of the AI industry in the last year: (1) more and more companies are turning to debt to finance AI capex (see Meta, xAI, Oracle), and (2) OpenAI's flurry of deals in the past month are tying major companies to the fate of this startup

NEW clip from our new video essay with @nsrnicek.bsky.social. Essential viewing for understanding the AI economy. Full video here: youtu.be/2vN7vr0qwMo?...

I'm excited to share the final cover for Silicon Empires and very grateful for the kind words that others have offered. Pre-order here: www.amazon.co.uk/Silicon-Empi...

This is one of the core questions I try to answer in my upcoming book. Research has shown it's incredibly difficult for GPT producers to capture much, if any, of the downstream value. But big AI firms are all making a play to do precisely that - fuelling a series of different expansionary logics.

I have a new article out: "Do artifacts have political economy?" It's a riff on an old argument by Langdon Winner about the embedding of politics in technology #STS #sociology #technoscience #technology #innovation journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Announcing the new journal: "Historical Materialism: Workers and Capital" We've launched a new Historical Materialism project with a CfP for the first issue. Abstracts due 31st of October Full details and the new website here: workersandcapital.historicalmaterialism.org/index.php/jo...

AI's immense requirements for data, computation, and talent entrench the power of existing tech monopolies. Our podcast of the week frames AI as a general-purpose technology whose primary role is consolidating capital. With @nsrnicek.bsky.social on @smartcookies.bsky.social buff.ly/Nzoi8um

Happy to be part of this amazing speaker series organized by Utrecht University, especially @fabianlferrari.bsky.social . I'll talk about Latin American Critical AI studies. I'll be in such great company with @nsrnicek.bsky.social and @anavaldi.bsky.social cdh.uu.nl/event/cdh-on...

A second collection of essays on #Michael-Heinrich #Science-of-Value is out, eds S. Breda & me for. The special issue of #Dialettica-e-Filosofia can be downloaded at the link below. The table of contents is attached. www.dialetticaefilosofia.it/index.html #Marx #value #capital #money #crisis

This event is tomorrow and will be a great platform for the British left to build on autonomy.work/forum-2029/

NEW REPORT: Artificial Power, our 2025 Landscape Report, is out. Today’s AI isn’t just being used by us, it’s being used on us. We urgently need to reclaim public power over the future trajectory of AI. Another path is possible. Read the report: ainowinstitute.org/2025-landscape

What would an anti-oligarchic, republican economy look like? UBI? Wealth tax? Workplace democracy? Strong trade unions? Investment democracy? I explore a radical republican economics in my new book, 'The Wealth of Freedom', which is now out online. academic.oup.com/book/60075

New working paper alert!!! In this paper, I reexamine the claim that clothes washing machines have a causal impact on married women’s labor force participation using microdata from Brazil and a discussion based on feminist STS! ideas.repec.org/p/new/wpaper...

I wrote a review of @brunoleipold.com's brilliant book:

AI becoming more prone to blackmailing users, just as companies start giving AI access to our digital histories - what could go wrong?

The complete and utter depravity of this. There are no words. mondoweiss.net/2025/05/isra...

New paper! Latest work from @geoplace.bsky.social @oii.ox.ac.uk exploring the strategic unknowns embedded in the business models of digital care work platforms, published in Critical Sociology. Co-authors @fundaustek.bsky.social and Dr Alessio Bertolini. Read the full paper here: bit.ly/3F4WAJW

World Central Kitchen has run out of food to serve in Gaza. Its bakery ("recently the last working bakery in Gaza") is out of flour. There are 100,000+ tons of food in staging areas within driving distance of Gaza, and Israel refuses to let them in wck.org/news/gaza-up...

A must-read @platformsnsociety.bsky.social: Prodexchange: Digital–industrial economization in Google Search supply chain Koray Caliskan, Donald MacKenzie, Addie McGowan "search engines are not engines, it examines Google Search as a supply chain..." journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Dossier of four pieces on the life and work of Marina Vishmidt 💜🐚🦔🦇 1. Ray Brassier, ‘Crystal drills’ www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/crys...

Symposium on Information Controls on 16th May, bringing together academic and civil society perspectives on information controls around the world: www.kcl.ac.uk/events/sympo... #disinformation #algorithms #censorship #infrastructure #internetstudies @kingsdh.bsky.social @kingsartshums.bsky.social

Excellent analysis of BYD’s global expansion, by @paologerbaudo.bsky.social.

With proofs now edited and index completed, The Rise of the Platform Music Industries by @allanwatson1.bsky.social and me is all set for publication in June 2025. Phew! Delighted too with @agendapub.bsky.social's clever cover design. www.agendapub.com/page/detail/...

Submitted the final version of my next book on AI, Big Tech, and the geopolitical struggles over them. Now hopefully nothing important happens on those topics before it comes out... Pre-order here: www.amazon.co.uk/Silicon-Empi...

Submitted the final version of my next book on AI, Big Tech, and the geopolitical struggles over them. Now hopefully nothing important happens on those topics before it comes out... Pre-order here: www.amazon.co.uk/Silicon-Empi...

Musk's wealth is now concentrated in SpaceX and they just received a $5.9 billion military contract www.theregister.com/2025/04/07/s...

Just out! Open access article with @nieborg.bsky.social on "Analyzing institutional platform power" journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... #power #platforms #digital #bigtech Preparing the ground for our book on Platform Power!

"Corporate Planning remains as crucial in the age of intellectual monopoly capitalism as in the age of industrial capitalism. Yet, we identify transformations regarding purpose, means, knowledge and temporality." academic.oup.com/ser/advance-... with @ceciliarikap.bsky.social and Hannah Bensussan

Video obtained by my colleague Farnaz Fassihi shows how the IDF deliberately attacked, over several minutes, a convoy of ambulances and other emergency vehicles in #Gaza. #Israel wrongly claimed that the vehicles drove without emergency signals and headlights. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/w...

If you're around KCL on 9 April, join us for a timely panel on 'AI & DATA ECOLOGIES'. We will have amazing speakers: Mike Duggan, @jwyg.bsky.social , @lboungr.bsky.social , @tavmos.bsky.social, Gavin Williams and Maud Borie. You can register here: lnkd.in/eQSTNGBp

AI's impact on working hours and leisure time cepr.org/voxeu/column...

Please share! I'm editing a special issue of international labor and working class history on "The Global Labor History of Artificial Intelligence" with Susannah Glickman (Stony Brook). Please submit an abstract (just 250 words) for our issue if this is your topic! networks.h-net.org/group/announ...

The very first paper from our large comparative project - the World Elite Database - is out. Lots of coordination and important discussion on comparing elites allow us to - for the first time really - compare elites across very different national contexts. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Applications are now open for 20 interdisciplinary jobs in AI at King’s College London: King’s AI+ Academic Fellowships, advancing AI across *all* disciplines (yes, inc. Arts & Hums — come and work with me!). www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/role/ki... @kingsdh.bsky.social @kings-dfi.bsky.social

Innocent people — undesirables, political dissidents — are being sent to camps here and abroad. A scapegoated minority is being persecuted, made an example of. Wrongthink is being stricken from government institutions and civil society. There is no more "if" authoritarianism arrives. It's here.

Melinda Cooper on Trump, Doge, and the mutations of the neoliberal state. www.dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

1/W/Musk-China news, new paper alert! Instead of conflicts of interest, we should talk of economic entanglements. Western firms risk becoming agents of autocratic states, who use global ties to undermine national security of the west. www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6wxin... www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/u...

DeepSeek, Unitree, and BrainCo—leaders in AI, robotics, and brain-computer interface technologies—are all Hangzhou-based. Thats no accident. I wrote about how Hangzhou used talent-focused policies to outpace tier one cities in emerging technology innovations. www.valueadded.tech/p/industrial...

If you're critical of the US government and you are planning to cross the US border any time soon, today is a good day to review EFF's border search pocket guide: www.eff.org/document/eff...

'sold as slave labor to El Salvador' is I honestly think a fair way of describing it

NEW: The WIRED crew takes you inside the first 6 weeks of DOGE, laying out in great detail how Elon Musk installed loyalists across government who gained access to our country's most sensitive computer systems. “This is a digital coup,” one USAID source told me. www.wired.com/story/elon-m...

With Tesla's stock plummeting, Musk's wealth is now primarily concentrated in SpaceX - in an industry which is even more government-dependent than EVs www.bloomberg.com/billionaires...

Why are minerals so central to geopolitics? How green are electric cars? Why is anti-mining protest increasing? Can the inequalities of the global economy be transformed? I tackle these topics in my book EXTRACTION: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism 👀 September 2025 @wwnorton.bsky.social