Philip R. Conway

My org @fightforthefuture.org has been “de-googling” for the last year.

We’re totally off Google suite, Google docs, Drive, Calendar.

We’re using Signal and Element for chat, Nextcloud for docs, etc

Planning to publish a “how to” guide for other nonprofits and activist groups soonish.

Full page advert taking out in the Wall Street Journal by Palantir, titled “You’re being sold in AI future where you’re obsolete or relevant. We see it differently.“

It’s also very telling that Palantir’s marketing strategy is now leaning into a kind of patriotic workerism. Big Tech as the working man’s best friend.

They realise they need *some* sort of popular constituency, even if most people hate their guts. Trying to inherit the old hard hat conservatives.

A powerful and brilliantly presented assessment of the state of Big Tech geopolitics.

Their strategy, in short:

Become too big to fail and too depended upon to resist.

The Authoritarian Stack How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Next

Please take a minute to scroll through this—and share it.
It's the story of our time.

The Authoritarian Stack: How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic American—And Why Europe Is Next.

www.authoritarian-stack.info

When Harlem came to Handsworth Why comparing the present to the 1970s might be unfair on the 1970s

On Robert Jenrick's "white faces" comment as a symptom of the times

polycritical.substack.com/p/when-harle...

Contemporary liberalism conflates democracy with Discourse. If people are talking then there must be democracy happening.

Professional talkers, in particular, are loathed to consider that there might be anything more sacred than talking. God forbid they might actually have to think.

appearing later this month

global.oup.com/academic/pro...

The Forrest Gump of intellectuals.

Starmer team kicking themselves that they didn’t think of it first.

US has made an all-in bet on AI and Fossil Fuels. China on green tech. @katemac.bsky.social & I @parismarx.com podcast on how China's bet made Solar+batteries+EVs turn into business models of Coke cans-everywhere, cheap, accessible, satisfy the thirst for freedom.
techwontsave.us/episode/291_...

Challenging podcast by @ceps.eu with @dacemoglumit.bsky.social going from whether AI is a revolution or part of AI to how the necessary institutional innovations are best made

There is, however, something more to be said about the power of capital to manifest dreams. Regardless of when the coming crash arrives, and how deep it goes, the thaumaturgic powers of capital will push this dream to its limits, whatever the cost.

So, why does capitalism always need a Next Big Thing? Ask your friendly neighbourhood Marxist about the tendency of the rate of profit to decline.

Rabbit Holed Thank you to Emily Shepherd for her hard work reporting parts of this story, as well as her assistance clarifying details related to GAMA and finding company documents related to Rabbit and Cyber Manu...

It really was the exact same people, in many cases, who went from hawking crypto and/or NFTs to promising undeliverable AI products. They just rebranded their websites once OpenAI made chatbots the new hotness.

www.wheresyoured.at/rabbit-holed/

Crypto is an interesting technology without any sufficient use case. Gen AI is a useful technology without any sufficient business model.

The major technical and economic underpinnings of both are the same: mindbogglingly wasteful computation.

Capitalism always needs a Next Big Thing. This need is demand-driven, not supply-driven. It’s structural.

Seekers of the NBT don’t particularly care what that thing is. However, they will dive into each iteration of the same old story with equally evangelical zeal.

I studied International Relations as an undergrad because:

1. I’d been politicised by being a moody teenager.

2. I’d taken Politics at A Level.

3. During that time, 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq had happened.

4. A guy in my class mentioned his dad had studied IR. (I’d never heard of it before.)

Sure, DM me.

We sure are.

It’s like a magic eye poster that becomes more cursed the longer you look at it.

Headline: Researchers: The risk of summer heatwave in Norway doubled in seven years This summer's heatwave in Norway, Sweden and Finland was made ten times more likely due to man-made climate change. Photo: People joyously leaping off a boat into the sea Caption: The researchers write that this year’s heatwave led to an increase in the number of drowning accidents in Finland, Norway and Sweden

Inappropriate media photos illustrating heatwaves - this one wins a special prize for having a caption about increased drowning accidents.
Via @ketanjoshi.co

Academic publishing timelines being what they are, this chapter is not out yet. When it is, it'll be in an edited volume available for the low, low price of £143.00 (RRP).

www.tgjonesonline.co.uk/Product/Beri...

So, if you want to read an unofficial version, let me know.

However, I can readily believe that it will henceforth need to be a rather more underground and circumspect intellectual culture, much less at home within a professional volume on "Knowledge and Expertise."

Does critique, of the kind I defend in this chapter, have a future within whatever will be left of the university sector in years to come?

In some form, probably. The empire in which we live is decentred and contradictory.

Today, I am much more inclined to draw out the commonalities between the everyday positivity of the Capitol FM radio DJ and the professionalised post-critique of Latour, Felski, and the rest.

Oh for the days when PhD programmes could quietly plug away at convincing "good American kids [...] that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth," as Latour wrote more than two decades ago...

And what happens in the imperial capital so often foretells what is coming for the rest of us…

Oh for the days when inconvenient truths could simply be ignored!

This in turn, however, makes me rethink how much I conceded to the "post-critics."

The Trump administration has shut down more than 100 climate studies Tens of millions of dollars in NSF grants have been slashed, and scientists fear the US is about to lose a generation of climate researchers.

For decades, ever more rigorously assembled climate science was published — and then roundly ignored by those for whom it is inconvenient.

Today, however, an openly fascistic political formation in the US is seemingly hellbent on crushing such institutions.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/02/1...

In particular, I was struck by a passage in which I commented:

"Rigorously substantiated truth claims concerning environmental and climatic matters, constructed by communities and institutions dedicated to both their production and their scrutiny, are easily obtained."

For better or worse, I think what I have written about “the necessity of being negative” remains just as relevant as it was a few years ago.

However, there are also things that I would approach differently, today.