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Speaker 1: Welcome to it could happen here. Um the show that

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Speaker 1: is normally introduced by me shouting a tonally, but today

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Speaker 1: I did like a professional. Um, because today myself and

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Speaker 1: my colleagues Garrison and Christopher are talking to someone. I'm

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Speaker 1: very excited to chat with Mr Corey. Doctor. Oh Corey, Well,

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Speaker 1: hello the show. Thank you very much. It is my

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Speaker 1: pleasure to be on it. It's great to meet you

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Speaker 1: all and to be talking to you today. Corey. You

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Speaker 1: do a lot of writing about kind of technology and

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Speaker 1: surveillance and cultural issues around those. You're also an author.

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Speaker 1: You've written some great fiction. I think today will probably

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Speaker 1: talk most around books like Attack Service and walk Away,

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Speaker 1: But you've written a lot of wonderful stuff. Um. And

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Speaker 1: you've also worked with the e f F for years

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Speaker 1: and years. UM. So you you you're coming at what

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Speaker 1: I love about I mean, we're gonna be talking today

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Speaker 1: broadly about surveillance and kind of the future of of

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Speaker 1: the Internet. Will probably talk about some Metaversey stuff. What

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Speaker 1: I love about the way in which you think and

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Speaker 1: write about the future is that you're kind of coming

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Speaker 1: about it from a number of angles, both as like

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Speaker 1: a tech industry journalist, as a fiction writer imagining the

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Speaker 1: future and as somebody who's kind of weighted in as

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Speaker 1: an activist to this, And UM, I'm kind of wondering,

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Speaker 1: where do you see like the greatest potential for actual

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Speaker 1: like change? Um? Is it? Is it in kind of

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Speaker 1: Is it in lobbying and engaging as an activist or

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Speaker 1: is it in sort of imagining as a as a

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Speaker 1: as a fiction writer? What might be? So I I

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Speaker 1: see them as adjuncts uh, you know, diversity of tactics

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Speaker 1: and all that stuff. Um. The thing is that tech

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Speaker 1: policy arguments are often very abstract, uh, and they are

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Speaker 1: only visceral for the people who would provide the kind

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Speaker 1: of political will to do something about them. Usually that

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Speaker 1: that comes when it's too late, right, people, people care

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Speaker 1: about tech monopolies once the web is turned into five

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Speaker 1: giant websites filled with scripted shots of text from the

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Speaker 1: other four, But not when Yahoo is on a buying

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Speaker 1: spree of tech companies and we're saying, oh, that's how

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Speaker 1: tech companies grow, and all tech companies will grow in

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Speaker 1: the future by buying all their nascent competitors and rolling

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Speaker 1: them up into a big vertically integrated monopoly, which is

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Speaker 1: kind of how we got Facebook and Google and the

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Speaker 1: rest of it. And um, you need to be able

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Speaker 1: to make policy arguments to policy people, but you also

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Speaker 1: need to be able to put uh, some some sinew

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Speaker 1: and muscle on the bone of that highly abstract kind

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Speaker 1: of argument. And and that's where fiction comes in. It's

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Speaker 1: kind of a like a fly through of like an

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Speaker 1: emotional architects rendering of what things might look like if

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Speaker 1: we get it wrong or if we change it. It

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Speaker 1: preserves the sense of possibility, you know. I think one

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Speaker 1: of the great enemies of change is the inevitable is

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Speaker 1: um of capitalist realism and the idea that there is

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Speaker 1: no alternative. So if you can make people believe in

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Speaker 1: an alternative, than they might work for one. And certainly

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Speaker 1: the opposite is true. If people don't believe there is

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Speaker 1: any alternative possible, they won't work for one. Why why

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Speaker 1: would you? Uh? And so all of that together, I

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Speaker 1: think is part of how you mobilize people to care

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Speaker 1: about stuff. Yeah, I mean, that makes that makes total sense,

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Speaker 1: and it is. It's difficult, I think because I first

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Speaker 1: came into technology as a journalist, and it's very difficult

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Speaker 1: to get people to care about stuff. And I think

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Speaker 1: in particular privacy, which there was. It has been one

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Speaker 1: of the most interesting cases of like the kind of

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Speaker 1: thought leaders in in an industry freaking out over something

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Speaker 1: and people not really having an issue with it because

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Speaker 1: we kind of all agreed to hand over all of

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Speaker 1: our data to a number of big side not all,

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Speaker 1: but I don't know. I'm interested in your thoughts on that.

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Speaker 1: I understand the idea that like fiction is um is

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Speaker 1: a much better way to try to get people to

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Speaker 1: care about these things because it makes them feel as

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Speaker 1: opposed to kind of boarding on. I think people can

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Speaker 1: get kind of lost in the weeds of acquisitions and

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Speaker 1: like uh pivots and you know, tech companies acquiring each

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Speaker 1: other and whatnot. Well, look, I think that the part

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Speaker 1: of the problem with privacy, the reason that we were

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Speaker 1: late to wake up and do something about it, is

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Speaker 1: because it was obfuscated. You know, if you've ever seen

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Speaker 1: the maps of like how an ad tech stack works,

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Speaker 1: the flow diagrams, and there are some things that are

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Speaker 1: complicated because um, there are some things that are hard

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Speaker 1: to understand because they're complicated. And then there are some

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Speaker 1: things that are made complicated so they will be hard

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Speaker 1: to understand. And I think in the case of the

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Speaker 1: surveillance industry, the latter is true. And it wasn't just

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Speaker 1: that they were trying to play us for suckers, they

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Speaker 1: were also playing their customers for suckers. Right. One of

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Speaker 1: the reasons that the ad tech stack is such a

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Speaker 1: snarled hair ball is so that the people who buy

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Speaker 1: ads and the publishers who run ads can't tell how

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Speaker 1: badly they're being RiPP off by their intermediaries. But this

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Speaker 1: also has the side effect of making it very hard

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Speaker 1: for us to know as the as the kind of

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Speaker 1: inputs to that system, how our own dignity and private

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Speaker 1: lives and safety and integrity are being put to risk

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Speaker 1: by these systems as well. Um. And you know, it

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Speaker 1: may be that people, if they had been well informed

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Speaker 1: about what was going on, they might have been indifferent

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Speaker 1: as well. But I think that when most people were

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Speaker 1: very poorly informed, right when all there was was this

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Speaker 1: kind of that privacy discourse was just like stuff as

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Speaker 1: being your personal information is being siphoned up, but no

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Speaker 1: kind of specifics on how that was being used and

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Speaker 1: how that was being done and how it might bring

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Speaker 1: you to harm. Um, it's not clear that that you

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Speaker 1: can say that that the reason they were indifferent is

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Speaker 1: because they were fully informed and inn care if you

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Speaker 1: know that they weren't fully informed, if you know that

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Speaker 1: they were barely informed. M h, I mean yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think are absolutely right. Because when the Cambridge analytic a

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Speaker 1: scandal broke, which was I think one of the first

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Speaker 1: times that there was a really huge international story that

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Speaker 1: made it clear some of the consequences of all this, like,

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Speaker 1: it did provoke a lot of a lot of anger.

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Speaker 1: Um I I do you worry at all that, Like

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Speaker 1: there's a degree to which because it because people got

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Speaker 1: tricked or wherever you want to frame it, and it's

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Speaker 1: gone the the kind of um financialization of people's private data,

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Speaker 1: of people's like personal information, because that has gone so far,

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Speaker 1: there's a risk that people are just kind of inured

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Speaker 1: to it. Um yeah, well, well, I mean that kind

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Speaker 1: of gets to my theory change here, which is that

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Speaker 1: there is always gonna be uh a point of um

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Speaker 1: maximum and difference peak in difference. You know, Um, if

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Speaker 1: you think about something like being a smoker, the likelihood

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Speaker 1: that you care about cancer goes up the long or

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Speaker 1: you smoke, and the more health effects you feel. And

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Speaker 1: certainly there will come a point in your life when

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Speaker 1: you will only ever grow more worried about the effects

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Speaker 1: of smoking on your life. But there's also a point

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Speaker 1: of no return. Right. If the point at which you

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Speaker 1: you're you're concern reaches the point where you're actually going

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Speaker 1: to do something about smoking is the day you get

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Speaker 1: diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, then that um denialism

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Speaker 1: can slide into nihilism. You can say, why bother, right,

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Speaker 1: it's too late. It's like if if we spend years

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Speaker 1: arguing about the crashing population of rhinos and then finally

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Speaker 1: there's only one left, and you say you're right, there

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Speaker 1: was a problem, you might as well say, like, why

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Speaker 1: don't we eat him and find out what he tastes like?

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Speaker 1: It's not like the rhinos are ever going to come back, right,

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Speaker 1: And so for me, so much of the work is

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Speaker 1: about shifting the point of peak indifference to the left

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Speaker 1: of the point of no return on the timeline, so

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Speaker 1: that people actually start to care earlier, because it's it's

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Speaker 1: if you haven't a genuine problem, right, like the overcollection

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Speaker 1: of our private data, the mishandling of it, the abuse

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Speaker 1: of it, that genuine problem will eventually produce tangible effects

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Speaker 1: that are undeniable, right that that the our ability to

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Speaker 1: ignore it just goes monotonically down. It's the thing about

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Speaker 1: the climate emergency. You know, even if Shell had not

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Speaker 1: our Exon had not hidden the data it had on

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Speaker 1: the role that it's products were playing in climate change

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Speaker 1: in the seventies, it would have been hard to muster

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Speaker 1: a sense of urgency in the seventies, right because the

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Speaker 1: story is that in fifty years something bad's going to happen.

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Speaker 1: But here we are, fifty years on something bad is

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Speaker 1: really happening, and a lot of people are caring about it.

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Speaker 1: They still don't seem to care about it enough, or

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Speaker 1: maybe they've slid into nihilism. There's certainly, i think on

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Speaker 1: the part of the elites, a kind of nihilistic sense

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Speaker 1: that maybe they can all retreat to like mountaintops and

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Speaker 1: build fortresses and breathe their children by Harrier jet you know,

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Speaker 1: and and and you know that nihilism, I think is

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Speaker 1: is what you get when the point of no return

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Speaker 1: is passed before peak denial. Uh and the privacy um

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Speaker 1: catastrophe that is looming in our future that we haven't

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Speaker 1: quite reached yet. I mean, we've just had the first

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Speaker 1: kind of trickles of the dam breaking that's in our future.

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Speaker 1: It hasn't been enough yet to shift people away from it,

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Speaker 1: but but we might be getting there right. We might

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Speaker 1: we might eventually be able to do something about it.

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Speaker 1: And one of the things that will hasten that moment

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Speaker 1: is um restoring competition to those industries. That one of

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Speaker 1: the reasons that uh, the industry that spies on us

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Speaker 1: is able to foster denial and indifference is because it

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Speaker 1: is a monopolized industry. To companies control eighty percent of

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Speaker 1: the ad market, Google and Facebook, and as as monopolists,

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Speaker 1: they're able to extract huge monopoly rents. They're among the

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Speaker 1: most profitable companies in the history of the world. And

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Speaker 1: some of those monopoly rents, rather than being returned to shareholders,

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Speaker 1: can be mobilized to distort policy, to to make us

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Speaker 1: think that there's nothing wrong with the way that they

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Speaker 1: collect data and use it to forestall regulation, to pay

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Speaker 1: Nick Clegg four million a year to go around Europe

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Speaker 1: and the world and say, as the former Deputy Prime

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Speaker 1: Minister of the United Kingdom, I'm here to tell you

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Speaker 1: that Facebook is the friend of the democratic regimes of

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Speaker 1: the world. And and you know, if if the anti

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Speaker 1: monopoly movement, which is a thing I've become very involved with,

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Speaker 1: is able to go from strength to strength, it's surging now,

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Speaker 1: then one of the things that we might do is

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Speaker 1: is destroy the ammunition that's being used by these large

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Speaker 1: monopolistic firms to distort our policy and harm us in

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Speaker 1: these ways with impunity. And and then maybe we can

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Speaker 1: actually take the the nascent and natural alarm that people

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Speaker 1: do feel about the invasions of their privacy and and

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Speaker 1: actually turn that into privacy policy that is meaningful in

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Speaker 1: respect of these big companies that actually reigns them in. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I think I like that you frame it as

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Speaker 1: a privacy catastrophe because I think, I mean, what I

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Speaker 1: just exhibited earlier in this episode, is this this tendency

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Speaker 1: that I certainly see in myself and I see in

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Speaker 1: other people to get kind of beaten down by the

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Speaker 1: continued um excesses of this industry and the continued kind

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Speaker 1: of failure of anything to be done to curb it.

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Speaker 1: And I think you're right, it has to be viewed

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Speaker 1: as um as a calamity. And I and nothing I

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Speaker 1: think makes that clearer than some of watching some of

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Speaker 1: the stuff Facebook in particular has put out about their

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Speaker 1: plans for the metaverse, and kind of thinking back from

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Speaker 1: all of these sensors they want to store in your house,

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Speaker 1: all of the ways in which they want to map

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Speaker 1: everything around you. Um, they never you know, they they

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Speaker 1: kind of advertise as like you'll be able to play

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Speaker 1: basketball with somebody who's in a different state. But really

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Speaker 1: what it is is you're giving Facebook access to every

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Speaker 1: measurement of your body and you know, the pulse of

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Speaker 1: the beat of your heart and all this this stuff

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Speaker 1: that like maybe we don't quite know what it would

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Speaker 1: be useful for from a financialization standpoint, but it's unsettling

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Speaker 1: to think that they'll have to find a way because

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Speaker 1: they'll have it. You know, I don't know. I don't

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Speaker 1: know what is to be done about that, other than,

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Speaker 1: as you say, kind of breaking up these monopolies. Well,

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Speaker 1: and and I mean breaking up is like one of

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Speaker 1: the things we can do to monopolies, and and it

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Speaker 1: takes a long time, you know, Um A T and T.

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Speaker 1: The first enforcement action against it happened sixty nine years

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Speaker 1: before it was broken up in N two. I don't

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Speaker 1: think we can wait that long. But there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of intermediate steps, right, Like we can force them to

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Speaker 1: do interoperability, we can block them from from predatory acquisitions.

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Speaker 1: We can force them to divest of companies and engage

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Speaker 1: in structural separation. We can do all kinds of things.

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Speaker 1: It actually looks like the United King it was going

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Speaker 1: to stop them from buying Giffey, which might seem trivial

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Speaker 1: after all, it's just like animated jifts, but um, what

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Speaker 1: it actually is surveillance beacons in every social media application,

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Speaker 1: right because if you're hosting a Jeff from Giffey in

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Speaker 1: your message to someone else, Facebook has telemetry about that message. Um.

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Speaker 1: And so the the the not the i c O,

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Speaker 1: the Competition Competition and Markets Authority in the UK was like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is just gonna strengthen your market power. That's why

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Speaker 1: you're buying this company. You have too much market power already.

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Speaker 1: We're not gonna let you do it. Um. It was

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Speaker 1: almost the case that the Fitbit merger was blocked. Google's

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Speaker 1: Fitbit merger. I think it's still not too late to

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Speaker 1: roll it back. And Lena Cohn, who's the new fire

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Speaker 1: breathing dragon in charge of the FTC, who is an

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Speaker 1: astonishing person who was a law student three years ago.

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Speaker 1: Uh she has said, oh yeah, this this like one

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Speaker 1: point three trillion dollars worth of mergers and acquisitions that

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Speaker 1: you're doing right now to get in under the wire

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Speaker 1: before we start enforcing. Guess what, We're going to unwind

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Speaker 1: those fucking mergers if it looks like they were anti competitive.

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Speaker 1: And not only are you going to lose all the

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Speaker 1: money you spent on the M and A due diligence

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Speaker 1: and the paperwork and the corporate stuff, but all that

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Speaker 1: integration you're going to do between now and then, you're

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Speaker 1: gonna have to de integrate those companies when we tell

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Speaker 1: you that you don't have uh, you don't have merger

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Speaker 1: approval and you're on notice. You can't come and complain later, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: you can either get in line and wait for us

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Speaker 1: to tell you whether or not your merger is legal,

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Speaker 1: or you can roll the dice. But I tell you

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Speaker 1: what if you come up sneake, guys, you are fucked.

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Speaker 1: And that is amazing, right, that is a powerful change

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Speaker 1: in American industrial policy that really makes a difference. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, and that is a beautiful thing to think

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Speaker 1: of being in place and actually hitting as hard as

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Speaker 1: it could. Obviously, the concern is that like who will

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Speaker 1: be you know, picking the head of the FTC in

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Speaker 1: three years in change, and like how how how much

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Speaker 1: influence is Peter You're going to have their in the like, um, yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: and Peter Tiel of course love's monopolies. He says, competition

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Speaker 1: is for losers. So you're right, I mean, obviously, elections

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Speaker 1: have consequences, but you know, one of the ways that

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Speaker 1: you win elections is by making material differences in people's lives,

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Speaker 1: and so you know, if people are policy, then uh.

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Speaker 1: One of the most important policies Biden has set so

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Speaker 1: far is hiring Lena Khan and her colleagues Canter at

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Speaker 1: the d J and Tim Wu and the White House. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I would I would love nothing more than

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Speaker 1: to see particularly like Facebook reigned in at this point

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Speaker 1: because I'm one of the casualties of the of the

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Speaker 1: of the the ad market, like crash of started in

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Speaker 1: like two sixteen seventeen. It feels like the odds of

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Speaker 1: them being able to like, I don't know, We've got

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Speaker 1: three years where we know, you know, theoretically these policies

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Speaker 1: will be in place, and and I don't know, I'm

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Speaker 1: well like when I when I because the Republicans are

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Speaker 1: talking a lot about regulating social media too, about even

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Speaker 1: breaking up these companies, but they often tend to be

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Speaker 1: talking about it in a very different way and with

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Speaker 1: a very different kind of end goal in mind. Um

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Speaker 1: And I guess you know obviously they know that, right Facebook,

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Speaker 1: they are well aware that like this might be a

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Speaker 1: weight out the clock situation for them, and they have

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Speaker 1: some arrows in that quiver. I mean that may be so,

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Speaker 1: but also remember that Facebook's users are outside of the US,

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Speaker 1: and that even a change in administration here won't won't

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Speaker 1: um put Margaret vest Dagger, who's the Competition commissioner in

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Speaker 1: the EU, back in the bottle. And she's another fire breather, right,

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Speaker 1: She's another amazing person, And so you know I wouldn't

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Speaker 1: be too quick to write that off. I mean Facebook

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Speaker 1: needs its foreign markets, Yes, It's U S customers are

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Speaker 1: worth more to anyone else because we have the most

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Speaker 1: primitive privacy frameworks, so it can extract a lot more

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Speaker 1: data for like we're the we're the richest people with

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Speaker 1: a worse privacy, so that's that's um. You know, it's

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Speaker 1: a real home court advantage for Facebook, but it needs

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Speaker 1: that other eight percent of its users. It wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: what it is without them, and that makes it subject

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Speaker 1: to their jurisdiction. And you know, one of the things

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Speaker 1: about ad driven firms like Facebook, UM is that they

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Speaker 1: really need sales offices in country. Uh. So you know,

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Speaker 1: even before we we had the proliferation national firewalls, which

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Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a good thing. Um.

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Speaker 1: These large global firms that operated UM sales offices in country,

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Speaker 1: in every territory they worked in, were vulnerable to regulation

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Speaker 1: because if you have staff in a country, then you

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Speaker 1: have someone that can be arrested, right, And so it's

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Speaker 1: not like they can just be like I don't know,

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Speaker 1: like the Tour Project, which just you know, it has people,

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Speaker 1: um who who sit in hack on tour who are

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Speaker 1: close to lawyers who can defend people who sit on

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Speaker 1: hack and on tour. Uh. You know, if the Tour

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Speaker 1: Project had to have staff full time in Turkey and

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Speaker 1: China and Russia and Syria in order to operate, it

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Speaker 1: would be a very different project. But you know, Facebook

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Speaker 1: and Twitter and Google they all have staff in those

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Speaker 1: countries and it makes them vulnerable to regulation. And so,

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Speaker 1: you know, China is really interesting because because um she

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Speaker 1: Jin Ping, for his own reasons which are not my

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Speaker 1: reasons and distinct from the Democrats and the Republicans reasons,

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Speaker 1: is doing stuff to rein in big tech in China.

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Speaker 1: And it's actually quite interesting because you know the argument

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Speaker 1: that Nick Klegg makes when he says why we shouldn't

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Speaker 1: break up Facebook, as he says, uh, you know, China

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Speaker 1: is coming for your UM, for your I P and

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Speaker 1: for your industrial competitiveness with its big tech giants that

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Speaker 1: it treats as national champions that projects soft power around

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Speaker 1: the world. Meanwhile, China is like these tech giants. We

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Speaker 1: hate these tech giants. They present a countervailing force to

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Speaker 1: the hedgemony of the the Communist Party and the and

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Speaker 1: the executive branch that she should bring sets at the

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Speaker 1: off of we're gonna neuter them and we're gonna we're

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Speaker 1: gonna disappear their founders like Jack Montt fucking googlogs right like,

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Speaker 1: they're like, we don't want national champions because the nation

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Speaker 1: that you know, we bow and Ali Baba is the

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Speaker 1: champion four is we Bow and Ali Baba and tense

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Speaker 1: that they're not They're not champions for China by any

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Speaker 1: stretch of the imagination. They don't give a shit about China.

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Speaker 1: And so you know, they're all of these companies are

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Speaker 1: going to face regulatory pressure, anti monopoly regulatory pressure all

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Speaker 1: over the world, and you're you're so much more um optimistic.

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Speaker 1: I guess about about the potential for that to bite

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Speaker 1: than a lot of people I talked to, and I

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Speaker 1: think more knowledgeable as well. And I kind of wonder

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Speaker 1: because there's this very strong, obviously influenced by decades of

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Speaker 1: cyberpunk attitude that like, we're in this age of mega

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Speaker 1: corporations whose power is you know, there's nothing that can

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Speaker 1: stop Amazon from doing what Amazon wants to do, right,

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Speaker 1: Facebook is going to keep doing whatever they want to

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Speaker 1: do forever. You clear really don't believe that, and I

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Speaker 1: you know, you clearly know your stuff. I'm wondering why

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Speaker 1: you think that that image is still persist, so persistent

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Speaker 1: that like attitude in our heads of these these these

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Speaker 1: are kind of monolithic forces in our society that um

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Speaker 1: just have to be endured. So I think it's a

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Speaker 1: belief in the great forces of history, right, um, and

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Speaker 1: the great man theory. You know that the the these

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Speaker 1: um Uh you know that these rich people are driving history. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: these these these powerful figures are driving history. They're in

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Speaker 1: charge there in the driver's seat. I mean, that's kind

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Speaker 1: of what's behind Trump arrangement syndrome, right, the idea that

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Speaker 1: Trump is uniquely powerful and talented demagogue as opposed to

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Speaker 1: just like a demagogue shaped puzzle piece that fit in

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Speaker 1: the demagogue shaped hold that was left by the collapse

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Speaker 1: of credibility of capitalism. Uh. And you know, a man

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Speaker 1: who is clearly too stupid to be a cause of

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Speaker 1: any thing and will only ever be the effect of something.

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Speaker 1: And uh, you know the for me, the theory of

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Speaker 1: history and how it goes was really transformed by an

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Speaker 1: exercise that my friend Ada Palmer does. So. Aida is

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Speaker 1: a science fiction novelist. She's she's just published the fourth

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Speaker 1: book of her Terra Ignota series, her debut series. It's

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Speaker 1: in an incredible series of books. But she's a real

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Speaker 1: like kind of multi talented, multi threat. So she's a

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Speaker 1: librettiston singer who has produced album length operas based on

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Speaker 1: the Norse mythos. She's also a tenured history of um

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Speaker 1: a tenured professor of Renaissance history in Florence at the

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Speaker 1: University of Chicago, where she studies heterodox information, pornography, homosexuality, witchcraft,

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Speaker 1: and so on. During the Inquisitions and every year with

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Speaker 1: her undergrads, she reenacts through a four week long live

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Speaker 1: action role playing game, the Election of the Medici's Pope,

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Speaker 1: and each of her students takes on the role of

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Speaker 1: a cardinal from a great family and the in the

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Speaker 1: actual election of the I forget what year was, uh

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Speaker 1: fourteen ninety or something, I forget, but they each take

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Speaker 1: on this role and they have a character sheet and

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Speaker 1: has motivations like a dinner party, murder mystery. But for

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Speaker 1: four weeks they make alliances, break alliances, stab each other

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Speaker 1: in the back uh stage surprise reversals. And at the

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Speaker 1: end of the four weeks there's this u faux Gothic

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Speaker 1: cathedral on campus and they dress up in costume. Aida

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Speaker 1: has a a Google alert for theater companies that are

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Speaker 1: getting rid of their costumes, so she clothes them in

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Speaker 1: the garb of the Medici's cardinals and they gather and

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Speaker 1: they go into a room and then a puff of

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Speaker 1: smoke emerges and you get the new pope. And every

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Speaker 1: year four of the final candidates, Uh, there are four

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Speaker 1: final candidates rather, and two of them are always the

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Speaker 1: same because the great forces of history bear down on

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Speaker 1: that moment to say those people will absolutely be in

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Speaker 1: the running for the for the papacy, and two of

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Speaker 1: them have never once been the same, because human action

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Speaker 1: still has space to alter the outcomes that are prefigured

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Speaker 1: by the great forces of history. And so for me,

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Speaker 1: the idea of being an optimist or a pessimist has

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Speaker 1: always felt very fatalistic. It's this either way, this idea

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Speaker 1: that the great forces of history have determined the outcome

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Speaker 1: and human action has no bearing on it. And I

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Speaker 1: think that rather than optimism or pessimism, we can be hopeful.

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Speaker 1: And that's the word you use before. Hope is the

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Speaker 1: idea not that you can see a path from here

431
00:23:47,080 --> 00:23:49,560
Speaker 1: to the place you want to get to, but rather

432
00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:51,440
Speaker 1: that you haven't run out of things that you can

433
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:54,600
Speaker 1: do to advance your your goal, right, Because if you

434
00:23:54,640 --> 00:23:57,600
Speaker 1: can take a step to advance your goal, you can

435
00:23:57,600 --> 00:24:01,720
Speaker 1: ascend the gradient towards the heat that you're trying to reach,

436
00:24:02,240 --> 00:24:05,320
Speaker 1: then you will attain a new vantage point, and from

437
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:07,760
Speaker 1: that vantage point, you may have revealed to you courses

438
00:24:07,760 --> 00:24:11,280
Speaker 1: of action that you didn't suspect before you took that step.

439
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:13,760
Speaker 1: So so long as the step is available, there's always

440
00:24:13,760 --> 00:24:16,400
Speaker 1: another step lurking in the wings that you can't see

441
00:24:16,440 --> 00:24:19,119
Speaker 1: from where you are. And the reason I'm hopeful about

442
00:24:19,160 --> 00:24:22,280
Speaker 1: this is I can think of like fifty things that

443
00:24:22,320 --> 00:24:26,280
Speaker 1: could improve the monopoly picture that we're living in now,

444
00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:29,520
Speaker 1: and it's up from thirty things last year. And so

445
00:24:29,760 --> 00:24:31,520
Speaker 1: even though I don't know how we get from here

446
00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:33,800
Speaker 1: to a better future, and even though I absolutely see

447
00:24:33,800 --> 00:24:38,760
Speaker 1: the blockers you're talking about Trump landslide, uh losing Congress

448
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:42,720
Speaker 1: because they let Joe Mansion and Christmas Cinema Newter the

449
00:24:42,720 --> 00:24:45,880
Speaker 1: build back better Bill, Um, you know all of those

450
00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:49,440
Speaker 1: things that can happen. I have hope, you know, which

451
00:24:49,440 --> 00:24:52,040
Speaker 1: is not the same as optimism or a belief that

452
00:24:52,119 --> 00:24:55,359
Speaker 1: things will be great, or even even like a sense

453
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:57,879
Speaker 1: a lack of a sense of foreboding. I have that

454
00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:01,840
Speaker 1: in spades. But I have that when the next phase

455
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:05,240
Speaker 1: of the fight begins, that we will have many um

456
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:09,160
Speaker 1: vulnerable spots we can strike at, and that we can

457
00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:13,320
Speaker 1: capitalize on whichever victories we attain to find more vulnerabilities

458
00:25:13,320 --> 00:25:16,520
Speaker 1: and move on. I think that's so important and I

459
00:25:16,520 --> 00:25:18,679
Speaker 1: think it goes in line with to bring up climate

460
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:20,480
Speaker 1: change again. The idea that like one of the most

461
00:25:20,480 --> 00:25:22,960
Speaker 1: toxic things you can think are e climate change is

462
00:25:23,040 --> 00:25:25,920
Speaker 1: that there's nothing to do. We're already past every point

463
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:28,920
Speaker 1: of no return and there's no there's no positive action

464
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:30,639
Speaker 1: because it just leads you to doing the same thing

465
00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:34,240
Speaker 1: as the people who deny it. Um. And it's Yeah,

466
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:38,719
Speaker 1: I think it's it's very important to um recognize that like,

467
00:25:38,840 --> 00:25:40,520
Speaker 1: not only are there things you can do, but when

468
00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:42,640
Speaker 1: you do those things, you start taking those steps, other

469
00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:47,000
Speaker 1: steps reveal themselves. Yeah. Um. And you know what, if

470
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:51,640
Speaker 1: you're feeling nihilistic about about climate I'm nearly through Saul

471
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:55,479
Speaker 1: Griffith's book Electrify Uh. Saul's an old friend of mine.

472
00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 1: He's MacArthur Winner's electrical engineer, and he's just done the

473
00:25:59,400 --> 00:26:01,399
Speaker 1: He's it's a popular engineering book. It's one of my

474
00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:04,760
Speaker 1: favorite genres. They're like popular science books, except instead of

475
00:26:04,800 --> 00:26:06,640
Speaker 1: telling you about how science works, they tell you about

476
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:10,200
Speaker 1: how engineering works. And he's basically like, here is why

477
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:13,080
Speaker 1: all the estimates of how much renewable as we need

478
00:26:13,160 --> 00:26:19,240
Speaker 1: are hugely overestimated, And it's basically that like keeping uh

479
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:23,679
Speaker 1: fossil fuel power online requires a lot of fossil fuel, right,

480
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:27,240
Speaker 1: so something like of that estimate is just it's the

481
00:26:27,440 --> 00:26:30,440
Speaker 1: energy that we need to make the energy and it's

482
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:33,679
Speaker 1: not present in electrical models. Here's how we can manufacture it.

483
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:36,359
Speaker 1: Here's how we can distribute it. Here is basically how

484
00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:41,920
Speaker 1: if we can figure out the financing, Americans can uh

485
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:45,040
Speaker 1: spend less money every year than they do now to

486
00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:48,119
Speaker 1: get more stuff that they love every year that we

487
00:26:48,119 --> 00:26:52,560
Speaker 1: can do this without hair shirts. It's a spectacular book. Um,

488
00:26:52,600 --> 00:26:55,520
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't agree with everything Saul says

489
00:26:55,560 --> 00:26:59,639
Speaker 1: every all the time, but he is very careful about

490
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: is technical facts. There aren't technical errors in this. There

491
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:06,480
Speaker 1: might be assumptions that we disagree with, but as a

492
00:27:06,520 --> 00:27:09,880
Speaker 1: technical matter, he's basically written a piece of design fiction

493
00:27:10,280 --> 00:27:14,040
Speaker 1: in which, over the next fifteen years, using clever finance

494
00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:18,800
Speaker 1: and and solid engineering, we really actually do avert the

495
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 1: climate emergency. And yeah, as always, kind of the main

496
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:26,680
Speaker 1: barriers to doing the best version of the thing is

497
00:27:26,840 --> 00:27:29,680
Speaker 1: the political realities on the ground. You know, you have

498
00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:32,320
Speaker 1: to but I think that's the that's the value of

499
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:35,520
Speaker 1: at least trying to make it clear that there are options.

500
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:48,399
Speaker 1: I wanted to shift for a moment um. I was

501
00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:51,640
Speaker 1: thinking recently about I think probably the earliest back book

502
00:27:51,640 --> 00:27:55,440
Speaker 1: of yours that I've read, Pirate Cinema, which is heavily involved.

503
00:27:55,440 --> 00:27:58,320
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to you know, if you're one

504
00:27:58,320 --> 00:28:00,840
Speaker 1: of the folks like me, uh was on the Internet

505
00:28:00,840 --> 00:28:04,000
Speaker 1: back when you know, file sharing sites, when that was

506
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:06,360
Speaker 1: a huge topic of discussion, when the r i A

507
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:10,280
Speaker 1: Was going after people, when like copyright was kind of

508
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:14,240
Speaker 1: a a much more prevalent part of kind of the

509
00:28:14,280 --> 00:28:17,800
Speaker 1: online discourse. Um. It deals a lot in that and

510
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:20,040
Speaker 1: these kind of I think there's elements of it that

511
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:23,960
Speaker 1: kind of prefigured what Disney has done buying up every

512
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:27,159
Speaker 1: imaginable fictional property in the world. And that's kind of

513
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:30,520
Speaker 1: the the elements of dystopia that book deals with is is,

514
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:34,000
Speaker 1: you know, the attempts of these this these giant multinational

515
00:28:34,080 --> 00:28:38,040
Speaker 1: entertainment corporations to shut down the free tape trading of ideas,

516
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:41,280
Speaker 1: remixing and all that stuff. And then kind of thinking

517
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 1: about the difference between the focus of that and the

518
00:28:44,080 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 1: focus of books like Attack surface where you're really delving

519
00:28:46,880 --> 00:28:50,360
Speaker 1: more into you know, I the fictional versions of real

520
00:28:50,400 --> 00:28:54,040
Speaker 1: life companies like Tiger Swan that do it uh the

521
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:57,840
Speaker 1: surveillance on protesters and all around the world, and that

522
00:28:57,840 --> 00:29:00,680
Speaker 1: are kind of using tactics that were and yeared by

523
00:29:00,760 --> 00:29:05,480
Speaker 1: other contractors, and like Iraq and Afghanistan years earlier. I

524
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:07,480
Speaker 1: guess kind of the things that I find interesting about that,

525
00:29:07,520 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 1: as I can remember when I was first on the Internet,

526
00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:14,280
Speaker 1: the big social kind of crusades online with the people

527
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:17,120
Speaker 1: that that I paid attention to at least was all

528
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 1: around copyright. It was about not just you know, the

529
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:23,520
Speaker 1: attempts to stop people from remixing and sharing copyrighted work,

530
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:28,239
Speaker 1: but about um attempts to like buy up copyrights and

531
00:29:28,400 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 1: like into these these ever kind of larger uh UM agglomerations,

532
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:37,000
Speaker 1: and and that's kind of hit. It seems to have

533
00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:39,719
Speaker 1: hit like a terminal point with the you know, movies

534
00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 1: like Ready Player one and kind of a lot of

535
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 1: the stuff we're seeing in Marble where everything is showing

536
00:29:44,880 --> 00:29:49,600
Speaker 1: up everywhere, Space Jam two UM. I guess the part

537
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 1: of it that feels less dystopian the days attempts to

538
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:54,960
Speaker 1: crack down on file sharing, which I don't think went

539
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:57,800
Speaker 1: kind of in the worst case scenario. I'm interested actually

540
00:29:57,800 --> 00:30:00,320
Speaker 1: in your thoughts on that, um, because I can remember,

541
00:30:00,360 --> 00:30:02,880
Speaker 1: you know, when the r I A would be threatening

542
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:05,840
Speaker 1: people with years in jail and whatnot over sharing stuff

543
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:08,480
Speaker 1: on kaza we seem to be I don't know. Is

544
00:30:08,480 --> 00:30:10,360
Speaker 1: it just that it gets less like I'm interested in

545
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 1: your in your thoughts on that. Is it just that

546
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 1: it's less publicized when they cracked down on people, or

547
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 1: has kind of the nature of their response to that

548
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:20,080
Speaker 1: really changed. Well, I think that what's happened with the

549
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 1: kind of steady state of the copyright wars has been

550
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 1: the introduction of brittleness and fragility into our speech platforms

551
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:32,760
Speaker 1: like Twitter, uh and and Facebook and YouTube, where it's

552
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:36,560
Speaker 1: very easy to get material removed by by making copyright

553
00:30:36,600 --> 00:30:39,520
Speaker 1: claims um. And you know, we see that with the

554
00:30:39,560 --> 00:30:43,000
Speaker 1: sleazier side of the reputation management industry, where they use

555
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 1: bogus copyright claims to take down criticisms. You you know,

556
00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:51,000
Speaker 1: there was a group of leftists who are really celebrating

557
00:30:51,160 --> 00:30:54,040
Speaker 1: the idea that if you if Nazis were marching in

558
00:30:54,080 --> 00:30:57,040
Speaker 1: your town, you could stop them from uploading their videos

559
00:30:57,040 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 1: by playing copyrighted music in the background, and I was like,

560
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:03,000
Speaker 1: you have no idea, what a terrible fucking idea that is.

561
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:05,960
Speaker 1: And you know, within a couple of years, cops and

562
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills were doing it. Whenever people tried to film

563
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:10,560
Speaker 1: the police there, they would just turn on some Taylor

564
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:13,560
Speaker 1: Swift to try and stop uploading. Um. You know, the

565
00:31:13,920 --> 00:31:18,560
Speaker 1: thing about the copyright wars is that the real action

566
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 1: turned out to be in um wage theft through monopolization. So,

567
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:29,960
Speaker 1: you know, the neutering and destruction of label independent music

568
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:34,320
Speaker 1: distribution platforms like Kazah or Groxter or Napster, and the

569
00:31:34,360 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 1: Supreme Court decision, the Groster decision that supported that meant

570
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: that the only um way that you could launch a

571
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 1: service like that was in cooperation with the big labels,

572
00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:49,720
Speaker 1: and the you know, most successful one is Spotify. Spotify

573
00:31:49,800 --> 00:31:53,440
Speaker 1: is actually partially owned by the labels, and the labels

574
00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 1: use that ownership steak to negotiate a kind of formalized

575
00:31:57,800 --> 00:32:02,760
Speaker 1: wage theft where they allowed for a lower perse stream

576
00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:06,040
Speaker 1: rate because when they get royalties for a stream, part

577
00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 1: of that money goes to their musicians. And that meant

578
00:32:09,920 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 1: that the firm Spotify retain more profits which it returned

579
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 1: to it in the form of higher dividends, and dividends

580
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:19,680
Speaker 1: go just straight to their shareholders. They don't that there's

581
00:32:19,680 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 1: no claim that musicians can make on this. And because

582
00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:26,480
Speaker 1: they set the benchmark rate, it meant that everyone, irrespective

583
00:32:26,520 --> 00:32:27,960
Speaker 1: of whether you were assigned to one of the big

584
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 1: three labels, ended up getting the same per stream rate

585
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:36,920
Speaker 1: as as Universal's artists, so they were able to structure

586
00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:40,120
Speaker 1: the whole market. In the meantime, in the industrial side,

587
00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:43,480
Speaker 1: UH copyright laws, notably Section twelve of one of the

588
00:32:43,480 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 1: Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which is a law past that

589
00:32:48,240 --> 00:32:52,000
Speaker 1: makes it a felony to remove DRM to bypass a

590
00:32:52,040 --> 00:32:55,640
Speaker 1: technical protection measure UM that has become the go to

591
00:32:55,960 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 1: system for blocking, repair, interoperability UH and to prevent third

592
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:06,720
Speaker 1: parties from um UH from from creating services or add

593
00:33:06,760 --> 00:33:11,960
Speaker 1: ons that accomplish positive ends like improved accessibility, improved security,

594
00:33:12,560 --> 00:33:16,080
Speaker 1: um AD blocking and privacy and so on. They just say, well,

595
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:18,880
Speaker 1: you know, we we put a one molecule thick layer

596
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:21,560
Speaker 1: of DRM around, say YouTube, and when you make a

597
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:26,200
Speaker 1: YouTube downloader for archival purposes or whatever, UM you you

598
00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 1: just create a um A. UH you bypass our technical

599
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:33,760
Speaker 1: protection measure, and so you're committing a felony and you

600
00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:35,840
Speaker 1: can go to prison for five years and and pay

601
00:33:35,840 --> 00:33:38,880
Speaker 1: a five thousand dollar fine. And so you have this

602
00:33:38,960 --> 00:33:43,440
Speaker 1: like relentless monotonic expansion of DRM into like automotive tractors.

603
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:48,360
Speaker 1: Medtronic uses it to block people from fixing ventilators. UM.

604
00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:53,720
Speaker 1: So you know this, this UM assault on the ability

605
00:33:53,800 --> 00:33:58,440
Speaker 1: to reconfigure a technology that is ever more prevalent in

606
00:33:58,440 --> 00:34:01,640
Speaker 1: our lives and that recently holds our lives in its

607
00:34:01,720 --> 00:34:04,760
Speaker 1: in its hands right its choices determine whether we live

608
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:08,200
Speaker 1: or die has been really consequential. And I know, we

609
00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:10,520
Speaker 1: don't really think of it as a copyright problem. We

610
00:34:10,520 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 1: think of it as right to repair. We think of

611
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:16,319
Speaker 1: a security auditing our accessibility. But the rule that is

612
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 1: being used to block into operability is a copyright law.

613
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:22,799
Speaker 1: It's what printer companies used to stop you from buying

614
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:26,120
Speaker 1: third party inc um. It's what Apple uses to stop

615
00:34:26,120 --> 00:34:28,480
Speaker 1: you from installing a third party app store. And you

616
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:30,560
Speaker 1: know the absence of a third party app store is

617
00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:34,640
Speaker 1: why when Apple removed all the working VPNs in China,

618
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:38,120
Speaker 1: Chinese users couldn't just switch to another app store that

619
00:34:38,160 --> 00:34:41,319
Speaker 1: had working VPNs in it. And so you know that

620
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:45,000
Speaker 1: this um endgame of the copyright wars is I think

621
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:50,840
Speaker 1: a lot more dystopian than merely suing college kids. Uh,

622
00:34:51,080 --> 00:34:54,640
Speaker 1: it's it's actually really screwed us in ways that are

623
00:34:54,680 --> 00:34:59,080
Speaker 1: that are hard to fathom. Yeah, it's a fascinating example

624
00:34:59,080 --> 00:35:02,040
Speaker 1: of kind of Dystopi creep because, at least kind of

625
00:35:02,040 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 1: from my more more ignorant position, when I was nineteen,

626
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:07,160
Speaker 1: I was like worried that all of these these people

627
00:35:07,200 --> 00:35:09,960
Speaker 1: remixing music and movies that I liked, like we're going

628
00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:12,320
Speaker 1: to get cracked down on or have their stuff pulled

629
00:35:13,040 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 1: um And the kind of thing that I didn't I

630
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:19,279
Speaker 1: don't think a lot of people saw coming until it hit.

631
00:35:19,360 --> 00:35:21,520
Speaker 1: I certainly didn't, was what you were just talking about

632
00:35:21,560 --> 00:35:24,640
Speaker 1: the fact that kind of the logic of how these

633
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:27,759
Speaker 1: these entertainment companies were looking at like an album or

634
00:35:27,800 --> 00:35:29,799
Speaker 1: you know, a movie and and cutting up pieces of

635
00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:32,759
Speaker 1: that they've they've applied to like a tractor, you know,

636
00:35:32,880 --> 00:35:35,040
Speaker 1: and now you can't like repair your John Deer or

637
00:35:35,080 --> 00:35:38,400
Speaker 1: modify your John Deer so it works better. And then

638
00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:40,680
Speaker 1: you know, you you get situations like we just kind

639
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:43,279
Speaker 1: of averted with the John Deer strike, where there was

640
00:35:43,320 --> 00:35:45,400
Speaker 1: a very real possibility that we wouldn't be able to

641
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:47,360
Speaker 1: get a large chunk of a harvest because there wouldn't

642
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:48,880
Speaker 1: be parts and you can't put your own in. And

643
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:51,719
Speaker 1: that's to think that that the thought process that let

644
00:35:51,800 --> 00:35:55,840
Speaker 1: us there started with like trying to protect Metallica. In

645
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:58,600
Speaker 1: some ways, it's kind of funny. And this is why

646
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:02,080
Speaker 1: the anti monopoly critique is great because it shows you

647
00:36:02,120 --> 00:36:05,280
Speaker 1: that there's cause for solidarity between John Deere tractor owners

648
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: and John Deere tractor UH makers the workers who work there.

649
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:13,239
Speaker 1: Because the same force that has allowed John Deere to

650
00:36:13,400 --> 00:36:17,719
Speaker 1: cram down its workforce for forty years is the is

651
00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:21,440
Speaker 1: the force that allows it to um uh take away

652
00:36:21,480 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 1: the agency and economic liberties of farmers who own John

653
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 1: Deere tractors. And it's it's the it's the political power

654
00:36:29,160 --> 00:36:31,719
Speaker 1: that comes with monopoly. And so you know, if John

655
00:36:31,719 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 1: Deere were a smaller, weaker firm, it would be less

656
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:39,719
Speaker 1: able to resist both the claims of its workforce and

657
00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 1: the claims of its um UH customers. Mhm yeah, I

658
00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:47,120
Speaker 1: mean that makes that makes sense, and it is like

659
00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:49,960
Speaker 1: I like that idea of of because it's not just

660
00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:53,920
Speaker 1: kind of solidarity between John Deere purchasers UM and and

661
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:57,120
Speaker 1: the people who work in the factories. It's also there's

662
00:36:57,160 --> 00:37:01,279
Speaker 1: kind of solidarity between a wide like anyone concerned with

663
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:06,440
Speaker 1: UM copyright. It's a much broader base of solidarity than

664
00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:08,760
Speaker 1: just people who are worried about you know, what's happening

665
00:37:09,040 --> 00:37:11,520
Speaker 1: uh to fiction or like what Disney is doing to

666
00:37:11,680 --> 00:37:14,480
Speaker 1: like copyrights around Mickey Mouse or whatever. Like it's it.

667
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: You can you can draw in concerns from right to

668
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:20,440
Speaker 1: repair to a bunch of other things, which potentially means

669
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:24,720
Speaker 1: there's there's a greater body of people available for action

670
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:28,080
Speaker 1: if you can make them see kind of um converging

671
00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:31,120
Speaker 1: interests there, which is I think is an interesting idea. Well,

672
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:33,640
Speaker 1: I think you're getting something really important and this is UM.

673
00:37:33,960 --> 00:37:36,600
Speaker 1: This comes from James Boyle, who's a copyright scholar at

674
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:39,800
Speaker 1: Duke University and was really involved and found in creative

675
00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:43,240
Speaker 1: commons and in those early copyright fights and and Jamie

676
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:46,400
Speaker 1: makes an analogy to the coining of the term ecology.

677
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:49,840
Speaker 1: He says that before the term ecology came along, you know,

678
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:51,919
Speaker 1: someone us cared about owls and someone us cared about

679
00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:54,960
Speaker 1: the ozone layer, but it wasn't really clear that we

680
00:37:54,960 --> 00:37:57,279
Speaker 1: were on the same side. You know, it's not clear.

681
00:37:57,320 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 1: If you're Martian looking through a telescope, you might be

682
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 1: hard pressed to explain why. You know, the destiny of

683
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:06,520
Speaker 1: charismatic charismatic nocturnal birds and the gaseous composition of the

684
00:38:06,560 --> 00:38:10,279
Speaker 1: upper atmosphere were the same issue. Right in the term ecology.

685
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:13,640
Speaker 1: Let all these people who cared about different things find

686
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 1: a single point to rally around. It turned a thousand

687
00:38:16,520 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 1: issues into one movement. And I think that in the

688
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:22,279
Speaker 1: in the course of resisting corporate power, which is to say,

689
00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 1: resisting monopoly, we have the potential to weld together people

690
00:38:26,080 --> 00:38:29,920
Speaker 1: from very diverse fields. You know, farmers and people who

691
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:32,520
Speaker 1: make tractors. Sure, but you know, if you grew up

692
00:38:33,160 --> 00:38:37,120
Speaker 1: watching professional wrestling and now you're aghast that the wrestlers

693
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 1: that you loved are begging on go fund me for

694
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:43,240
Speaker 1: pennies to die with dignity, you know once someone explains

695
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:45,880
Speaker 1: to the reason that that's happening is that thirty wrestling

696
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:48,840
Speaker 1: leagues became one wrestling league that was able to practice

697
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:53,040
Speaker 1: worker's classification, turn those performers into contractors, take away their

698
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:56,000
Speaker 1: health insurance and leave them to die. Then suddenly you're

699
00:38:56,040 --> 00:38:57,560
Speaker 1: on the same side of the people who were worried

700
00:38:57,560 --> 00:39:00,279
Speaker 1: about big tech and big tractor, and the people are

701
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:02,360
Speaker 1: worried about the fact that there's only one manufacturer of

702
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:06,799
Speaker 1: cheerleading uniform uniforms, and two manufacturers of athletic shoes, and

703
00:39:07,400 --> 00:39:10,719
Speaker 1: two manufacturers of spirits, and two manufacturers of beer. One

704
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:14,400
Speaker 1: manufacturer of eyewear that also owns all the eye wear

705
00:39:14,600 --> 00:39:17,720
Speaker 1: stores and the eyewear ensure. You know that Duff Beer

706
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:20,359
Speaker 1: thing from the early Simpsons, where there's like Duff Beer,

707
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:28,360
Speaker 1: Rispberry Thing, Dulci, Gabana, Oliver, People's Bauschan, Loam, Versaci. Every

708
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:31,760
Speaker 1: eyewear brand you've ever heard of is one company coach

709
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:36,399
Speaker 1: all of them. And they also own Sunglass Hut and

710
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:41,640
Speaker 1: uh Target Optical and Sears Optical, and lens Crafters and

711
00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:44,719
Speaker 1: Spec Savers and every other eyewear story you've ever heard of.

712
00:39:45,040 --> 00:39:47,880
Speaker 1: And they bought all the labs that make the lenses,

713
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:49,680
Speaker 1: so more than half the lenses in the world come

714
00:39:49,719 --> 00:39:53,959
Speaker 1: from them. A division called and they bought Imed, which

715
00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:56,360
Speaker 1: is the company that bought all the insurance companies that

716
00:39:56,480 --> 00:39:59,319
Speaker 1: ensure I wear and so they're also the company that's

717
00:39:59,400 --> 00:40:03,960
Speaker 1: ensuring glasses your your eyes one company, and I Wear

718
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:06,640
Speaker 1: costs a thousand percent more than it did a decade ago.

719
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 1: They stole our fucking eyes. Right, So people who care

720
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:13,160
Speaker 1: about that have common cause with people who care about

721
00:40:13,160 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 1: wrestlers and people who care about beer and big tech

722
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:19,919
Speaker 1: and the fact that there's four shipping companies and they

723
00:40:19,920 --> 00:40:22,040
Speaker 1: have no competitive pressure and so they just keep building

724
00:40:22,080 --> 00:40:25,080
Speaker 1: bigger ships that gets stuck in the fucking Suez canal Right,

725
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:30,560
Speaker 1: we're all on the same side. Yeah, And I I

726
00:40:30,600 --> 00:40:34,400
Speaker 1: like the idea that I like. I like hoping that

727
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:37,120
Speaker 1: that kind of inherent solidarity, if you can point it

728
00:40:37,120 --> 00:40:40,480
Speaker 1: out to people, is potentially an antidote to, or at

729
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:42,520
Speaker 1: least a partial antidote to the level of the layer

730
00:40:42,560 --> 00:40:46,160
Speaker 1: of politicization that's fallen down over everything, um that stops

731
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:49,120
Speaker 1: people from actually considering matters but instead considering like, I

732
00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 1: don't know, is this owning the libs? Right? Like if

733
00:40:51,520 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 1: you if they if if you can get them to

734
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:57,320
Speaker 1: see that, like, yeah, their favorite wrestler is like dying

735
00:40:57,400 --> 00:40:59,840
Speaker 1: because he couldn't afford insulin, and that that that's t

736
00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:02,319
Speaker 1: i'd to the issue of like the reason his dad

737
00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:05,000
Speaker 1: can't get tractor parts this year or whatever, um, and

738
00:41:05,040 --> 00:41:07,960
Speaker 1: that that's tied to other issues that are maybe championed

739
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:11,440
Speaker 1: by people he would reflexively dismiss. But like, yeah, I

740
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:15,160
Speaker 1: I I find that really inspiring. It's still a significant

741
00:41:15,520 --> 00:41:19,719
Speaker 1: there's a significant challenge for people who are trying to

742
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:22,399
Speaker 1: make those connections, for folks who are who are trying

743
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:25,960
Speaker 1: to like inform them of that state. I mean, yeah,

744
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:28,839
Speaker 1: that's true. And you know, like Steve Bannon will tell

745
00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:31,720
Speaker 1: you that the reason to do cultural world culture culture

746
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:35,600
Speaker 1: war bullshit is because politics are down downstream from culture,

747
00:41:35,640 --> 00:41:37,759
Speaker 1: and there's probably an element of truth to that. But

748
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:39,920
Speaker 1: I also think the reason that people find culture war

749
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:44,040
Speaker 1: bullshits so attractive is because they got nothing else. Yeah,

750
00:41:45,160 --> 00:41:46,799
Speaker 1: I think we we talked about that a lot within

751
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:50,360
Speaker 1: the context of conservative for politics. I grew up very conservative,

752
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 1: and I do remember how the tenor of things I

753
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: was hearing through the bush ears changed from advocation of

754
00:41:56,640 --> 00:42:00,480
Speaker 1: policies to just all culture war, all the time, all

755
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:02,759
Speaker 1: all striking the dims all the time. And it was

756
00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:06,640
Speaker 1: the kind of um it. And that's not the only

757
00:42:06,719 --> 00:42:08,400
Speaker 1: place that's happen. You see it on the left to

758
00:42:08,680 --> 00:42:12,040
Speaker 1: absolutely like it's it's endemic now it's it's a poison

759
00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:15,480
Speaker 1: and kind of the discourse. But I think that there's

760
00:42:15,640 --> 00:42:17,799
Speaker 1: a lot that needs to be I think there's a

761
00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:20,280
Speaker 1: lot to be discovered still for like how to break

762
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:32,719
Speaker 1: people out of that. I'm kind of bullish when we

763
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:34,600
Speaker 1: talk about these issues like you were bringing up with

764
00:42:34,640 --> 00:42:37,160
Speaker 1: sort of the monopolization of these industries you wouldn't expect

765
00:42:37,160 --> 00:42:41,240
Speaker 1: to be monopolized. I'm hopeful about the future that stuff

766
00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:43,359
Speaker 1: like three D printing presents for that. We have an

767
00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:47,320
Speaker 1: organization in Portland that does kind of three D printing glasses,

768
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:50,000
Speaker 1: frames and stuff and is helping people with that sort

769
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:54,080
Speaker 1: of stuff. And I'm in conversations with like the Four

770
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:58,840
Speaker 1: Thieves Vinegar Collective. I think it's called UM. Yeah. Some

771
00:42:58,880 --> 00:43:00,799
Speaker 1: of the folks doing like ing to do working on

772
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical hacking making at the moment like lower cost UH

773
00:43:05,920 --> 00:43:09,879
Speaker 1: kind of home scratch brood versions of like different AIDS medications,

774
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:13,440
Speaker 1: and the Holy Grail is doing that with um insulin

775
00:43:13,520 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 1: effectively UM and I think it is. And I do

776
00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:20,000
Speaker 1: think one of the things that's exciting about that is

777
00:43:20,040 --> 00:43:22,680
Speaker 1: because the way in which the way in which collaboration

778
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:24,520
Speaker 1: on three D printing works in the way in which

779
00:43:24,560 --> 00:43:27,400
Speaker 1: actually spreading, like the ability to do stuff works. I

780
00:43:27,400 --> 00:43:31,920
Speaker 1: think it synergizes nicely with the ability of people to

781
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:34,439
Speaker 1: kind of reach other folks through writing or other forms

782
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:36,399
Speaker 1: of content, because they can both spread through the same

783
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:38,520
Speaker 1: You can have a video or a story, and you

784
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 1: can have like kind of embedded guides on how to

785
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:44,520
Speaker 1: do that. Um I I I don't know that I've

786
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 1: I've runned into a lot of your writings on kind

787
00:43:47,480 --> 00:43:49,520
Speaker 1: of the potential of three D printing in this space,

788
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:52,719
Speaker 1: But I'm interested, like to what do you do? Are

789
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:54,880
Speaker 1: you looking at that as kind of an area of

790
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:57,360
Speaker 1: hope or do you see that still is kind of

791
00:43:57,360 --> 00:44:00,520
Speaker 1: too too niche and labor focus to really actually take

792
00:44:00,560 --> 00:44:02,200
Speaker 1: off in the way that it would need to to

793
00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:04,960
Speaker 1: crack some of these nuts. This is where I do

794
00:44:05,080 --> 00:44:08,080
Speaker 1: my my Woody Allen. You know nothing of my work

795
00:44:08,440 --> 00:44:11,760
Speaker 1: stick because I had this novel Maker Makers in two thousand.

796
00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:18,240
Speaker 1: It's it's why uh Bree Pettis went out and founded

797
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:21,880
Speaker 1: Maker bought uh and it's you know, credited with like

798
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:26,080
Speaker 1: kickstarting the homebrew three D printed revolution. Blah blah blah blah,

799
00:44:26,080 --> 00:44:29,080
Speaker 1: blah and um, and it was a very bullish novel

800
00:44:29,120 --> 00:44:32,680
Speaker 1: about three D printing. I Um, you know, the reality

801
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:34,680
Speaker 1: hasn't lived up to the hype yet. It may just

802
00:44:34,719 --> 00:44:36,799
Speaker 1: be that we're in the long trough of despair, as

803
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:40,840
Speaker 1: the Gardner hype cycle model has it. Uh. But you know,

804
00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:44,600
Speaker 1: I think the problem with UM three D printing was

805
00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:47,560
Speaker 1: that the patents had been concentrated into the hands of

806
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:51,280
Speaker 1: two large firms that had bought all their competitors, including

807
00:44:51,280 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 1: Maker Bought and UM. When those patents finally expired, the

808
00:44:55,239 --> 00:44:59,280
Speaker 1: big one was the laser centering of of powder patent expired.

809
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:01,919
Speaker 1: It just wasn't a big bang. And I think it's

810
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:05,239
Speaker 1: because the supply chain for it still had a lot

811
00:45:05,239 --> 00:45:09,840
Speaker 1: of proprietary elements, and so producing the powder and producing

812
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:15,239
Speaker 1: the components that allowed for that powder printing remained a

813
00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:18,360
Speaker 1: very high bar, and so we just didn't see the

814
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:20,959
Speaker 1: kind of new industry emerged that we would have hoped for.

815
00:45:21,360 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 1: And you know, it's like seven years since those patents expired.

816
00:45:24,320 --> 00:45:26,719
Speaker 1: Five years since those patent expired. Now we're seeing a

817
00:45:26,760 --> 00:45:29,359
Speaker 1: few more of those powder printers. You get a lot

818
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:33,560
Speaker 1: more like you've cured epoxy printers because those came off

819
00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 1: patent earlier and they have a less complicated supply chain. Um.

820
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:40,720
Speaker 1: But still, I mean mostly when we talk about printers,

821
00:45:40,719 --> 00:45:44,279
Speaker 1: we're talking about filament, and just filaments just not a

822
00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:47,520
Speaker 1: great technology. It's been pushed in ways that you wouldn't

823
00:45:47,560 --> 00:45:50,520
Speaker 1: even believe, and people have figured out how to do

824
00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:56,239
Speaker 1: absolutely incredible things with it. But it's not It's not

825
00:45:56,400 --> 00:45:59,200
Speaker 1: something that you would make aerospace components for, you know,

826
00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 1: It's it's something that you make um novelty dungeons and

827
00:46:03,719 --> 00:46:07,520
Speaker 1: dragons dice out, Yeah, which is an important industry to disrupt.

828
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:10,680
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong, but I'm with you. I can

829
00:46:10,719 --> 00:46:12,799
Speaker 1: remember paying thirty bucks for a set of dice as

830
00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:16,680
Speaker 1: a kid and thinking, somebody's gotta fix this scam. I

831
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:19,440
Speaker 1: can produce something for Christmas, Robert, thank you, Garrison. And

832
00:46:19,480 --> 00:46:21,640
Speaker 1: you know now I I own a I bought a

833
00:46:21,640 --> 00:46:23,400
Speaker 1: comic con a couple of years ago. I bought a

834
00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:27,080
Speaker 1: tiny little D twenty made out of meteoric or I

835
00:46:27,080 --> 00:46:29,920
Speaker 1: have a sky metal D twenty. Oh now that's yeah,

836
00:46:30,080 --> 00:46:34,040
Speaker 1: that's that's classy. Um. I'm curious. We've got a little

837
00:46:34,040 --> 00:46:35,799
Speaker 1: bit of time left and I wanted to ask in

838
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:38,400
Speaker 1: your your novel Attack Surface. I know it was released

839
00:46:39,160 --> 00:46:43,560
Speaker 1: right October, if I'm not mistaken. UM. And obviously a

840
00:46:43,600 --> 00:46:45,640
Speaker 1: lot of that deals with again these kind of like

841
00:46:47,120 --> 00:46:49,600
Speaker 1: corporations that have been contractors for the D O D

842
00:46:49,719 --> 00:46:53,440
Speaker 1: doing like fucked up surveillance shit in Iraq and Afghanistan

843
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:56,880
Speaker 1: bringing that technology to crack down on like US, uh,

844
00:46:57,000 --> 00:47:00,560
Speaker 1: sort of dissident left wing political movements. Him's out the

845
00:47:00,640 --> 00:47:05,080
Speaker 1: year that we have a nationwide kind of uprising. UM

846
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:07,719
Speaker 1: that a lot of fucked up surveillance ship that had

847
00:47:07,719 --> 00:47:10,400
Speaker 1: been kind of demoed state side around it, like standing

848
00:47:10,480 --> 00:47:12,879
Speaker 1: Rock and whatnot, gets gets really put into its own

849
00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:17,879
Speaker 1: How much of that was written before ship went down?

850
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:20,680
Speaker 1: And I and I'm assuming, like, I don't know exactly

851
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:23,040
Speaker 1: how your process works, but I'm wondering, like, I assume

852
00:47:23,080 --> 00:47:25,960
Speaker 1: you started the project before everything went the way it

853
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:28,840
Speaker 1: did last summer. How much did kind of what happened

854
00:47:28,880 --> 00:47:33,319
Speaker 1: last summer affect the way you imagined that technology in

855
00:47:33,360 --> 00:47:36,800
Speaker 1: those tactics functioning in that book. Yeah, the the timeline

856
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:40,960
Speaker 1: goes the other direction. I wrote that book before the

857
00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:45,560
Speaker 1: summer uprising, UM, long long, long long before that, And

858
00:47:45,600 --> 00:47:49,000
Speaker 1: I wrote it about things like UM, the surveillance technology

859
00:47:49,040 --> 00:47:52,880
Speaker 1: we saw in Belarus and chev and also at Occupy

860
00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:58,040
Speaker 1: and Standing Rock and at other Black Lives Matter demonstrations

861
00:47:58,040 --> 00:48:02,000
Speaker 1: and uprisings in Americus, Assimila, and if you you know,

862
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:08,880
Speaker 1: also the monotonic expansion of surveillance leagues right where you know,

863
00:48:08,960 --> 00:48:11,960
Speaker 1: first we learned about MC catchers, and then we learned

864
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:15,040
Speaker 1: about dirt boxes, which are MC catchers on airplanes, and

865
00:48:15,440 --> 00:48:17,960
Speaker 1: you know, like we just all of that stuff leaked

866
00:48:18,000 --> 00:48:21,279
Speaker 1: like crazy because you know, these surveillance giants are are

867
00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:25,400
Speaker 1: not good at what they do, right, which isn't a

868
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:28,759
Speaker 1: reason we should be hopeful. A company that's bad at

869
00:48:28,760 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 1: what it's it does is in some ways even worse

870
00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:35,680
Speaker 1: because one of the ways that they're incompetence expresses itself

871
00:48:36,239 --> 00:48:38,080
Speaker 1: is that they often gather a bunch of data on

872
00:48:38,120 --> 00:48:42,600
Speaker 1: innocent people and then leak it right, not maliciously, just

873
00:48:42,719 --> 00:48:48,680
Speaker 1: through incompetence. Um. And so you know, the this expansion

874
00:48:48,680 --> 00:48:51,000
Speaker 1: of surveillance has like been on my mind for a

875
00:48:51,040 --> 00:48:53,480
Speaker 1: long time, and I've been writing about it, well at

876
00:48:53,520 --> 00:48:55,759
Speaker 1: least since Little Brother, right, so two thousand and six,

877
00:48:55,800 --> 00:48:58,520
Speaker 1: I wrote that novel, and I've had my finger in

878
00:48:58,560 --> 00:49:00,840
Speaker 1: that Yeah, So I've had my finger in that for

879
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:04,120
Speaker 1: all that time, and and working with the f F,

880
00:49:04,160 --> 00:49:09,320
Speaker 1: it's impossible to miss. Sure. Was there a degree to which, um,

881
00:49:09,400 --> 00:49:11,280
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess we're you surprised by anything

882
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 1: that happened last him? Or did it just kind of

883
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:16,800
Speaker 1: comprehensively feel like these are everything slotting into place that

884
00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:18,880
Speaker 1: I knew was heading in this direction? Because yeah, I mean,

885
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:22,680
Speaker 1: you're right, I did, like there was like everything was

886
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:28,160
Speaker 1: kind of presaged um years before. Yeah, I'm wondering if

887
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:31,080
Speaker 1: if there was anything that kind of surprised you, um

888
00:49:31,160 --> 00:49:33,080
Speaker 1: or was it? Was it all just sort of what

889
00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:36,600
Speaker 1: you've been braced for. Yeah, I don't feel like there

890
00:49:36,600 --> 00:49:39,920
Speaker 1: were any kind of surveillance surprises. I mean the reverse

891
00:49:40,120 --> 00:49:44,759
Speaker 1: the use of reverse warrants. I think we all kind

892
00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:47,680
Speaker 1: of assumed was going on. There had been hints of

893
00:49:47,719 --> 00:49:51,600
Speaker 1: it in Google's warrant canarias beforehand. But you know those

894
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:54,759
Speaker 1: geofense warrants, which again, if you're like sitting there going oh,

895
00:49:54,840 --> 00:49:59,440
Speaker 1: geofense warrants are awesome because they're catching the one six rioters, Like, dude,

896
00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:02,920
Speaker 1: you are going to be so disappointed, Holy sh it,

897
00:50:03,560 --> 00:50:07,080
Speaker 1: that's not where they're going to keep using this. Yeah. UM,

898
00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:10,040
Speaker 1: so you know, learning more about those reverse warrants I

899
00:50:10,080 --> 00:50:13,600
Speaker 1: think was was interesting. UM, but I don't feel like,

900
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:15,640
Speaker 1: I don't well off the top of my head, I

901
00:50:15,680 --> 00:50:18,960
Speaker 1: can't say that there was any new technical stuff that emerged,

902
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:21,640
Speaker 1: you know. I I, um kick started the audio book

903
00:50:21,719 --> 00:50:25,799
Speaker 1: for Attack Surface UH, and I offered as like the

904
00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:28,560
Speaker 1: top tier you could commission short stories in the Little

905
00:50:28,560 --> 00:50:31,319
Speaker 1: Brother universe, and there were three of those and I

906
00:50:31,360 --> 00:50:33,480
Speaker 1: just finished the first of them, and it's about um

907
00:50:33,920 --> 00:50:38,640
Speaker 1: future pipeline protests and uh. You know, I spent a

908
00:50:38,680 --> 00:50:42,000
Speaker 1: lot of time in my research looking at the surveillance

909
00:50:42,040 --> 00:50:44,520
Speaker 1: that was done on the pipeline protests, and a lot

910
00:50:44,520 --> 00:50:47,680
Speaker 1: of it was provocateurs and undercovers who were just terrible

911
00:50:47,719 --> 00:50:52,080
Speaker 1: at their jobs, right, like the intercepts, long publication of

912
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, long documents about how those operators worked.

913
00:50:56,280 --> 00:50:59,160
Speaker 1: We just like showed up in military haircuts and combat

914
00:50:59,200 --> 00:51:02,120
Speaker 1: boots and then we're like, Hey, I'm from Portland and

915
00:51:02,160 --> 00:51:04,720
Speaker 1: I'm here because we're gonna funk up some bad guys.

916
00:51:04,800 --> 00:51:07,480
Speaker 1: Let's go do it. Let's go do violence and save

917
00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:10,480
Speaker 1: Indian country. And like everyone was like you, like, does

918
00:51:10,520 --> 00:51:14,839
Speaker 1: anyone want to buy drugs and and the actual protesters

919
00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:19,319
Speaker 1: were like you're a provocateur, like go away, you know,

920
00:51:19,400 --> 00:51:21,520
Speaker 1: like they could tell I mean, I guess you know,

921
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:23,360
Speaker 1: there are a lot more effective in the UK and

922
00:51:23,640 --> 00:51:27,919
Speaker 1: infiltrating the climate movement. You know, they impregnated several protesters,

923
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:30,960
Speaker 1: so you know, and had long term relationships with them

924
00:51:30,960 --> 00:51:34,720
Speaker 1: and raised kids with them. So there is no here stories.

925
00:51:35,239 --> 00:51:37,879
Speaker 1: Yeah here, it was not that we did just didn't

926
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:41,919
Speaker 1: see that incredible efficacy. Yeah, And I do think that

927
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:44,520
Speaker 1: that's I think kind of the message I took out

928
00:51:44,520 --> 00:51:46,920
Speaker 1: of it because I I was I started reporting on

929
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:49,440
Speaker 1: like dirt boxes back during Standing Rock, just having them,

930
00:51:49,440 --> 00:51:51,759
Speaker 1: like it explained to me by people who were on

931
00:51:51,800 --> 00:51:54,279
Speaker 1: the ground when I showed up that like, yeah there's

932
00:51:54,280 --> 00:51:56,879
Speaker 1: this your like phones don't work the same out here,

933
00:51:56,920 --> 00:51:58,520
Speaker 1: and like we're trying to figure out what's going on,

934
00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:00,640
Speaker 1: but like everything is is in it's not just that

935
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:03,120
Speaker 1: we're out in the sticks or anything. And I think

936
00:52:03,160 --> 00:52:05,600
Speaker 1: the only surprise, the big surprise for me last year

937
00:52:05,640 --> 00:52:10,160
Speaker 1: was how I think how little the technology accomplished for

938
00:52:10,239 --> 00:52:12,719
Speaker 1: them and how much it just it just wound up

939
00:52:12,719 --> 00:52:15,000
Speaker 1: back down to violence. Was like that was kind of

940
00:52:15,040 --> 00:52:17,680
Speaker 1: the for all of the toys they had, the toys

941
00:52:17,719 --> 00:52:20,080
Speaker 1: that actually made the most difference was gassing and beating

942
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:24,319
Speaker 1: people and violence and like old fashioned informants that was

943
00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:26,879
Speaker 1: that was the stuff, and just having a dude there. Yeah,

944
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:29,920
Speaker 1: they were really relied on. And the fact that you

945
00:52:30,080 --> 00:52:32,960
Speaker 1: that that you, Corey, weren't super surprised, but anything last year,

946
00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:35,719
Speaker 1: I think kind of just more shows kind of the

947
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:38,520
Speaker 1: strength of your work in terms of how you're very

948
00:52:38,560 --> 00:52:42,040
Speaker 1: good at seeing the trends that are already happening but

949
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:45,640
Speaker 1: taking them to their next logical place. Um. And it's

950
00:52:45,640 --> 00:52:48,320
Speaker 1: a really great way to kind of get a sense

951
00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:52,319
Speaker 1: of what is something, what what will something maybe look

952
00:52:52,400 --> 00:52:54,759
Speaker 1: like in the next decade or so, because it's it's

953
00:52:54,760 --> 00:52:57,839
Speaker 1: all based on already existing stuff, just in different kind

954
00:52:57,840 --> 00:52:59,680
Speaker 1: of original ways. So that's why I think it's it's

955
00:52:59,719 --> 00:53:03,200
Speaker 1: so useful to look at your books as as an activist,

956
00:53:03,480 --> 00:53:07,160
Speaker 1: specifically around like surveillance and stuff, because it's it's just

957
00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:10,960
Speaker 1: really it's it's really good for kind of keeping keeping

958
00:53:10,960 --> 00:53:14,640
Speaker 1: an eye on keeping your head, yeah, and keeping an

959
00:53:14,680 --> 00:53:16,879
Speaker 1: eye on what's keeping an eye on you, um, and

960
00:53:16,920 --> 00:53:19,399
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. This was a really lovely

961
00:53:19,440 --> 00:53:22,279
Speaker 1: conversation was a lovely last thing to do in my

962
00:53:22,400 --> 00:53:25,920
Speaker 1: home office in because I leave tomorrow and won't be

963
00:53:25,960 --> 00:53:28,640
Speaker 1: back until the next year, and then I'm actually gonna

964
00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:30,960
Speaker 1: be offline for a month after a joint replacement, so

965
00:53:31,520 --> 00:53:33,480
Speaker 1: it was it was really lovely to meet you all

966
00:53:33,520 --> 00:53:35,600
Speaker 1: on to chat with you. Thanks so much for chatting

967
00:53:35,600 --> 00:53:42,120
Speaker 1: with us today. Glory My pleasure. It Could Happen Here

968
00:53:42,200 --> 00:53:44,760
Speaker 1: is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcast

969
00:53:44,840 --> 00:53:47,120
Speaker 1: on the cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone

970
00:53:47,160 --> 00:53:49,000
Speaker 1: media dot com, or check us out on the I

971
00:53:49,080 --> 00:53:52,400
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

972
00:53:52,960 --> 00:53:55,080
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated

973
00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 1: monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks

974
00:53:58,640 --> 00:53:59,160
Speaker 1: for listening.