Turning the World to $hit

Summary

Next Comes What — "Turning the World to $hit" (June 25, 2026)
Host: Andrea Pitzer
Episode Theme:
What the rise of global authoritarian "inshitification" (reducing public systems and services to deliberately degraded states) reveals about the world—and how strategies from the fight against past strongmen can help resist Trump's authoritarian movement.

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Episode Overview

This episode explores how the phenomenon of institutional decline—coined "inshitification"—is both a symptom and a tool of triumphant strongmen and far-right politics worldwide. Andrea Pitzer draws parallels between historic fascism, the deliberate destruction of healthy public goods, and the authoritarian playbook being followed by Trump and his allies. Using current headlines, historical context, and analogies from the tech world, Pitzer analyzes how societies are manipulated into accepting worse conditions, and what can be done to resist.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Globalization of Right-Wing Authoritarianism and "Inshitification"

• Rise of Authoritarian Leaders: Pitzer points out the worldwide surge of right-wing strongmen like Putin (Russia), Modi (India), and Xi (China), linking their methods to a deteriorating quality of life under their regimes.

  "The right wing movement has gone Global in the 21st century..." (00:00, Andrea Pitzer)

• Deliberate Degradation: The pattern includes bystander casualties (e.g., health crises) and direct sabotage of functioning systems, leading to worsened daily life.

  "For many people, nearly every part of daily life becomes worse under these governments." (00:37, Andrea Pitzer)

• "Inshitification" Defined:
  • Concept by Cory Doctorow, originally for tech but expanded to society: a product/service is intentionally degraded for profit/power without regard for long-term outcomes.

  "Cory Doctorow created the term a tragedy in three...when tech companies...then make worse when they try to expand it to appeal to businesses...then made even worse again to bleed it for profit..." (01:15, Andrea Pitzer)

2. Real-World Examples: Technology, Health, and the Political System

• Tech Sector: The Google Example:
  • Discusses how Google’s search results have deteriorated ("AI slop," excessive ads, SEO spam) as a metaphor for parallel declines in other systems.

  "You've probably noticed this Google search results suck these days." (01:51, Tech Industry Expert)

• Healthcare:
  • US and other right-wing governments are attacking basic healthcare, slashing Medicaid, leading to the closure of rural hospitals and increase in preventable deaths.

  "The US is leading the way on this front, causing the deaths of nearly a million people so far in this second Trump administration through Doge cuts..." (17:23, Andrea Pitzer)

• Immigration Policy:
  • The deliberate "inshitification" of immigration systems globally, with parallels drawn between US, EU, China, and India.

  "The idea of immigration as an avenue of possibility, health and wealth for everyone involved was deliberately destroyed." (13:01, Andrea Pitzer)

3. Historical Parallels: Nazi Germany and the Birth of Mass Detention

• Propaganda, Policing, and Camps:
  • Early fascist regimes, especially the Nazis, normalized poor governance and punishment, weaponizing propaganda to entrench a single-party state.

  "Fascism relied on mass communication technology and platforms to secure its base through propaganda..." (06:06, Andrea Pitzer)

  • Mass detention (concentration camps) as "inshitification" of police and military institutions: punitive, dehumanizing, and systemically self-perpetuating.

  "Concentration camps themselves were the deliberate remaking of tools taken from military tactics and law enforcement." (09:29, Andrea Pitzer)

4. Modern Day Echoes Across Borders

• Europe and Immigration:
  • Contemporary European policy shifts (detention, deportation to 3rd countries) mirror US tactics and rhetoric.

  "The European Parliament just last week voted to force the return of rejected asylum seekers, including the prospect of Trump-style tactics..." (13:26, Andrea Pitzer)

• China, India, and Myanmar:
  • Mass detention and ethnic targeting as tools of control, similar rhetoric and outcomes.

  "It was kind of unsettling to me...this kind of rhetoric is really a universal rhetoric." (13:10, Andrea Pitzer)

5. Climate Crisis and Super-Crisis Era

• Water Bankruptcy and Agriculture Collapse:
  • Climate change, water scarcity, and resulting migration/detention crises are actively mismanaged or worsened by policy "inshitification."

  "In January, United nations announced that the world should acknowledge that we are in an era of global water bankruptcy." (15:33, Andrea Pitzer)

6. Propaganda, AI, and the Threat of Parallel Realities

• Information Control and "Fifth Generation Warfare":
  • The use of propaganda is likened to "fifth generation warfare," where basic facts and shared reality are under attack.

  "They're engaged in what some call fifth generation warfare, the new era of propaganda where you fight over what is basic reality." (21:55, Guest Commentator)

• AI as a Tool of "Inshitification":
  • Concern about AI being used not for public benefit but for power, manipulating truth, and further eroding public trust.

  "The people running the AI companies are dedicated to the insidification of humanity." (22:04, Andrea Pitzer)

7. The Urgent Need for Resistance and a Better Future

• Lessons from Civil Rights and History:
  • Emphasizes the power and necessity of "maladjustment"—refusing to settle for survival under degraded systems.

  "There are some things in our society and some things in our world for which I'm proud to be maladjusted..." (26:06, Historian/Psychologist)

• Concrete Action and Hope:
  • Solutions exist; resisting "inshitification" at every level (local, national, systemic) is key. Calls for action around renewable energy, protecting social institutions, and learning from global examples.

  "We do not have to imagine some unattainable goals. The tools to build a better future already exist." (28:51, Andrea Pitzer)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Authoritarian Decline:
  • "Why inshittify everything? ...Because it reduces people's expectations and more importantly, it destroys their independence." (05:03–05:06, Andrea Pitzer & Guest Commentator)
• On Tech and Society:
  • "Every query starts with a blob of AI slop at the top of it. And then there's five paid results tagged with the word AD in eight point type." (02:21, Tech Industry Expert)
• On Fighting Back:
  • "Don't let those who claim to be your allies talk you into giving up before you have even tried to change the world." (25:43, Andrea Pitzer)
• On Historical Lessons:
  • "As Justice Antonin Scalia said of Japanese American internment, you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again." (11:08, Andrea Pitzer)
• Maladjustment as Virtue:
  • "I would like to say to you today in a very honest manner, that there are some things in our society and some things in our world for which I'm proud to be maladjusted ..." (26:06, Historian/Psychologist)
• On Hope and Agency:
  • "You don't even have to wait for the November election. You can tackle one small part on any of these issues and push for a program that would help people in your city, your town, your county or your state right now, today." (29:13, Andrea Pitzer)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–01:55: Global rise of the right, "inshitification" introduced; tech's role
• 06:35–07:54: Nazi Germany’s propaganda, punitive state as a template
• 09:21–14:39: Mass detention—historic and modern; global immigration policies
• 15:33–16:47: Water crisis as exemplar of super-crisis
• 17:23–18:31: Attacks on healthcare and critical services in the US and UK
• 20:30–22:36: Propaganda, AI manipulation, societal psychosis
• 24:35–25:08: Warning against giving up hope for improvement
• 26:06–26:44: Being "maladjusted" as a form of resistance
• 28:20–29:13: Charting practical paths forward; renewable energy and community action

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Final Message

Andrea Pitzer concludes that societal decline under authoritarians isn't inevitable or irreversible. The "inshitification" strategy seeks to lower expectations and independence, but history—and recent science and activism—offer tools and hope for resistance. She urges listeners to look for tangible, community-level change and to refuse to accept conditions as they are.

Takeaway:
It is not enough to settle for survival or degraded systems. Concrete resistance and vision are required, using both historical insight and the practical tools already available, to reclaim a future that values human dignity and possibility.

Transcript

[Andrea Pitzer]

The right wing movement has gone Global in the 21st century, it's okay to

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

be proud to be German. This is a very important principle.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And from Putin in Russia, want to thank Vladimir Putin and Modi in India, great guy.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

From Brexit, they call me Mr. Brexit.

[Andrea Pitzer]

To the rise of Donald Trump, somebody

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

would say, oh, that's terrible. He's thinking, he's thinking.

[Andrea Pitzer]

President Xi of China, fascist style authoritarianism, has been battling to return to a kind of legitimacy around the world.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

Usually they say he's a horrible dictator type person. I'm a dictator. But sometimes you need a dictator.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Part of this phenomenon is that for many people, nearly every part of daily life becomes worse under these governments. Fears are growing over the reemergence of a flesh eating parasite in the United States that could threaten the nation's beef supply. It's a combination of bystander casualties, the measles outbreak in South Carolina, now the largest in the country, surpassing the outbreak in West Texas last year, and deliberate targeting of whatever is working in a society.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

The notion that a flu vaccine must be mandatory for every service member everywhere, in every circumstance, at all times is just overly broad and not rational.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And those things combine to make the whole country worse. More than 220 troops at Laund Air Force Base in San Antonio now have the flu, up from 160 cases reported just last week. Cory Doctorow created the term a tragedy in three just a few years ago for the process that results when tech companies plan a functional product for everyday users, which they then make worse when they try to expand it to appeal to businesses, and which eventually is made even worse again in the attempt to bleed it for profit without regard for long term outcomes.

[Tech Industry Expert / Commentator]

And you've probably noticed this Google search results suck these days.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The product is kept at the minimum level of functionality.

[Tech Industry Expert / Commentator]

Thanks to the 2024 Department of Justice antitrust case against Google. We know it sucks that will keep

[Andrea Pitzer]

enough users to continue baseline operations.

[Tech Industry Expert / Commentator]

It starts in 2019 when Google found that its growth had stalled out. After all, more than 90% of the world was using Google to search, but

[Andrea Pitzer]

there is no thought of actually making anything better.

[Tech Industry Expert / Commentator]

So that's how we get to the inside Google that we all live with today, where every query starts with a blob of AI slop at the top of it. And then there's five paid results tagged with the word AD in eight point type. That's 90% gray on white, which in turn sits over 10 spammy links from SEO companies that have generated their own

[Andrea Pitzer]

AI slob Doctorow wrote a book, not surprisingly, entitled Vinshidification, that came out last year. And in the window between when he first described the term and the book's arrival, the phrase expanded beyond just tech company policies and programs and is now used to reflect everything from planned obsolescence to government strategies.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

He was warned repeatedly in those in those sessions, you know, be careful of going after Iran. This is going to blow up in your face.

[Andrea Pitzer]

He proceeded anyway, like the rise of authoritarianism and shidification is also a global phenomenon. There are widespread fuel shortages across Russia. More than 50 regions are reporting fuel shortages. One by one, tech titans and political actors are ruining much of the promise of modern life.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

A 76 year cognitively impaired new Jersey man sustained fatal injuries while on his way to see someone he believed to be a woman he met online, but was actually a generative artificial intelligence chatbot.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Pick a thing. Television, science, news, college, the Internet. Anything really. And there are powerful people who could be making it better, but are actively destroying it. Silicon Valley billionaires are exploiting a loophole in our financial system that puts thousands of bank accounts at risk. This goes for the planet as a whole, from governance of societies to the material world itself. As the SpaceX IPO grabbed headlines this week, rocketing Elon Musk to trillionaire status, the Department of Justice has now intervened on behalf of SpaceX in a civil rights lawsuit over potential violations of the Clean Air act involving one of its X AI data centers. We appear to be destroying human possibility even as we have arrived at a seemingly unprecedented moment in human history in which we would be capable of providing for everyone and protecting the planet.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

Think Musk made at least $250 billion on Friday. Or 250,000 million. It does sound better when you do it like that, doesn't it? 250,000 million.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Yet those in power are taking the worst parts of modern life and degrading them further.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

It's enough money to completely eradicate extreme poverty worldwide for a But if he gave away $250,000 million dollars today, he'd still be as rich as he was on Friday morning.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Why inshittify everything?

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

Nobody cares.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Because it reduces people's expectations and more importantly, it destroys their independence.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

People often talk about solving global poverty or essentially how do we make give everyone a very high standard of living. I think the only way to do this is AI and robotics.

[Andrea Pitzer]

So today I want to take a look at the deliberate worsening of government and the abandoning of any pretense of human stewardship of humanity's future in Society and the planet itself. At the end, I'll look how. Seeing it this way might help us think about what to do in this moment. So, first of all, this rise of a kind of fascist and shittification parallels the growth of authoritarianism. A century ago, the Nazis relied upon propaganda to create a society where only Germans they considered racially pure belonged. Fascism relied on mass communication technology and platforms to secure its base through propaganda. After Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, the Nazis started to take control of the media. They shut down independent newspapers and seized authority over radio, film, newsreels, theater and music productions, but fundamentally rejected government in the form of a hopeful positive development in human society.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

It was a gradual process, trading it

[Andrea Pitzer]

for one that had punishment as its baseline reflexive model.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

First, there were some kids who didn't greet you anymore, but it was so gradual that you accepted or not accepted, but tried to ignore these early manifestations of a change of ideology into evil.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It refused to serve its supporters except for solving the problems that aspiring authoritarians had themselves created or exacerbated.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

Everything was fine until, I don't know, I was maybe three or four. One of the kids that I played with called me a dirty Jew and beat me up.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Authoritarianism is the creation of a police state to force a population to settle for substandard governance and become grateful just to survive.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

And I remember one day I saw crowds of people forming, and eventually somebody

[Historian / Psychologist]

threw a rock through the window, broke

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

the windows, and the people went into the stores and simply took the merchandise. There were policemen standing there, and they did absolutely nothing.

[Andrea Pitzer]

A century ago, the fascist approach was an experimental one, and it was not clear exactly where it would lead. There were many around the globe who believed that capitalism was a failed economic and governing model, so either fascism or communism would be the natural successor. A variety of people had hope in one system or the other. We've had a few models run the experiments now, giving us a good sense of how fascism plays out. And so, as I've mentioned before, what we are running now is not any kind of novel exploration of a political future, but a return to one in which the outcomes were globally devastating.

[Historian / Psychologist]

The goal of the Nazi government, Goebbels

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

said, was that there should be only one opinion, one party and one faith in Germany.

[Andrea Pitzer]

I want to look at a few specific areas in which inshinification of existing systems and approaches in an attempt to return to fascism's 20th century debut are especially dangerous today. There are to be no minorities of opinion in the new Germany and no division of loyalties as usual, as in most episodes, there is a comparison here to concentration camp history. I'm very pleased to welcome you to this evening's event with Andrea Pitzer presenting her new book One Long Night. And that is in the Nature of Policing and Detention.

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

Barbed wire was mass produced in the 1870s and patented in the 1870s. So it existed before then, but it really came into high production then.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Concentration camps themselves were the deliberate remaking of tools taken from military tactics and law enforcement.

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

Right away, military strategists are using it different ways.

[Andrea Pitzer]

After dismantling any theoretically socially productive ideas underpinning the concept of just policing or a just war.

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

Well, it turns out if you order a whole bunch of barbed wire from Oliver Brothers in Pittsburgh, you don't have to have that many people.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Those in power instead embraced the institutionalization of unnecessary violence and incarceration on a mass basis against its own citizens or subjects.

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

Well, you have automatic weapons as well. Is the other invention that makes it possible to have a small guard force holding a large number of people in

[Andrea Pitzer]

a fixed setting again at a cost to the general populace. But with the argument that this pain was necessary for survival.

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

Policy planners will always return to mass detention because it seems as if it should work and it feels as if it could be done humanely.

[Andrea Pitzer]

This was a key way that law enforcement in detention, flawed institutions in every country were inchitified.

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

The damage done by concentration camps has never stopped the reflexive enthusiasm for their use.

[Andrea Pitzer]

They were warped entirely out of any productive goal and bent to serve the powerful in new expanded and weaponized forms, eventually requiring millions to settle, not even for surviving so that the government and in its authoritarian led form, whether that was Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Serbia, Pinochet, Chile and so on, so those governments could continue.

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

As Justice Antonin Scalia said of Japanese American internment, you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And I've spent a lot of episodes talking about the long standing pre Trump dangers of the U.S. immigration system and the ways that it has been warped over the last century or more. Andrea Pitzer, welcome back to Democracy Now. Why don't you talk about why you've chosen to do this? Global history of concentration camps anti immigrant rhetoric has certainly flourished in other places around the globe, from Myanmar to the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

There's really a very long story that I think needs to be paid attention to because these things don't rise out of nowhere.

[Andrea Pitzer]

But the US has recently been leading the pack on large scale demonization and abuse of refugees and those seeking economic migration. Well, one of the places that you mention in the book is Burma and the Rohingya camps there. So can you talk about what you found when you were there in 2015? What has been extraordinary to witness during my lifetime is the dismantling of programs that had been functional or at least effective parts of immigration policy that had been developed in ways that benefited both the US and those who wanted to be here.

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

I went there in June 2015, and it was very interesting because when I went, it was just two weeks after Donald Trump had declared his candidacy and no one was taking him seriously at that point.

[Andrea Pitzer]

There weren't necessarily lot of them, but they did exist.

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

But the rhetoric he was using already about Muslims, about Latinos, was exactly the rhetoric that I heard when I landed in Sitwe, which is on the western coast of Myanmar and is the capital of Rakhine State, where these Rohingya camps are located.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In the last three decades, however, the idea of immigration as an avenue of possibility, health and wealth for everyone involved was deliberately destroyed.

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

And it was kind of unsettling to me at that time to notice so clearly that this kind of rhetoric is really a universal rhetoric.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Yet we've seen Europe dealing with migration brutally as well.

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

And the brakes on it seem to be how strong are the institutions in

[Andrea Pitzer]

a given place, offering some pretense of care for humanitarian ideals, even as the European Parliament just last week voted to force the return of rejected asylum seekers, including the prospect of Trump style tactics to formally institutionalize deportation to third party countries like Rwanda, Uganda and Uzbekistan. Right now, the European Union and the countries are more concentrating on what they

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

call the external dimension of migration, meaning

[Andrea Pitzer]

they want to find places where they

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

can send rejected asylum seekers to once

[Andrea Pitzer]

they are not allowed to stay in Europe anymore. The Spanish government, to their credit, has denounced this approach from the beginning and tried to stand against it. French President Emmanuel Macron recently declared the approach neither effective nor consistent with our principles. Macron has said that France will not use this approach, but we'll see if the government actually takes any meaningful action against its implementation. The active inchitification of immigration policy has had political benefits for the leadership of any number of countries.

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

Denmark is working together with the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Greece to set up

[Andrea Pitzer]

these so called return hubs. And there has been a vast expansion around the world of human degradation related to places that have combined expanded detention with punishing immigrants. The Pope, he chose to close his week long Spain trip this Friday with a decidedly pro migrant message. How's that gone down in Spain today. It is no accident that we see mass detention as a border region response in Xinjiang through the Chinese government's role there in Assam, India on the southern border of the US and as I said, in Europe as well.

[Tech Industry Expert / Commentator]

Very well.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The message has been seen as a message of humanity. The Pope said things like today's foreigner could be the neighbor or brother of tomorrow. His message is seen as a criticism

[Andrea Pitzer (Guest Interviewee)]

of the far right party vox among others.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And due to the deliberate dismantling of effective climate policy, as the planet continues to warm, we can expect to see a lot more of immigration crises, border crises and detention crises. In January, United nations announced that the world should acknowledge that we are in an era of global water bankruptcy. The report argued that terms like water stress and water crisis no longer capture the scale of the problem and move for realistic of the resource. The United nations report has called on governments to stop treating water scarcity as a temporary crisis and instead manage it as bankruptcy, acknowledging irreversible losses, protecting remaining resources and policies that match hydrological reality. Water access and the collapse of agriculture which is dependent on water, are often key drivers of border crossings. In fact, in Iraq, farmers are confronting what experts describe as water bankruptcy amid unusually low rainfall, with the region's two main irrigation projects halted due to the lack of supply. Lack of food and water also often spark violent conflict which leads to further migration.

[Tech Industry Expert / Commentator]

Shidification is coming to every sector.

[Andrea Pitzer]

We are moving into an era of the creation of a super crisis, a

[Tech Industry Expert / Commentator]

period of omnishambolic poly crisis through the

[Andrea Pitzer]

deliberate dismantling of effective immigration, climate and detention policy.

[Tech Industry Expert / Commentator]

The long ominous rumble of climate change, authoritarianism, genoci, xenophobia and transphobia turned into an avalanche.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And as with each of the examples I've already given, we've seen attacks on basic health care globally as well.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

It's money that's taken away from things that are destructive to the country and

[Historian / Psychologist]

from organizations that hate you to you.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The US is leading the way on this front, causing the deaths of nearly a million people so far in this second Trump administration through Doge cuts to the U.S. agency for International Development Overseas.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

He's a businessman with a trail of false and broken promises. He's also responsible for hundreds of thousands of global deaths, possibly millions.

[Andrea Pitzer]

In addition, the Republican led Congress has voted to slash state Medicaid funds by 665 billion in the coming years.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

Now rural hospitals could be hit hardest since many older and lower income patients

[Andrea Pitzer]

rely on those programs and an already janky and outdated system has been rendered non functional and further Inshidified in part in this case so that its foes can pay one another off in the form of tax cuts and grifting no bid contracts in other arenas like immigration detention or pool realigning.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

This will last for at least 50 years and you'll never have a leak. It's very strong. You couldn't if you had a knife. I don't want to give anybody ideas. If you had a knife, you can't even cut it.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And just as leaders in the United Kingdom have injected both homegrown xenophobia and Trump style immigration rhetoric into its political races to secure power, they have also attacked the National Health Service there, attempting to insidify it to be more like the US system.

[Tech Industry Expert / Commentator]

Are the contractors who did the initial work for the reflecting pool, are they to blame for the current condition or is it vandalism?

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

No, we have vandalism.

[Andrea Pitzer]

No vandals.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

You know, we have a hundred and we have a, I think 290, 300 foot it slit right through it. Probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind.

[Andrea Pitzer]

When a government manages to insertify enough aspects of a society, it breaks down services in a number of sectors.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

It is a pleasure to welcome back to the program Gil Duran journalist, founder

[Andrea Pitzer]

of Nerd Reich Even if it winds up losing its future authoritarian bids at the ballot box, the corruption and dysfunction lead to poor outcomes across the board for a much longer time.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

What is it about these people who work in tech that they believe that A they're the elite and B, that the elite should basically just run everything?

[Andrea Pitzer]

You end up with society toggling between reformers and extremists, volleying between polarized outrage and fury over the government failing to

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

function well, I think it's the derangement and psychosis that results from too much money.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Reformers may be tempted to embrace the authoritarian model in an attempt to try to fix the system quickly enough or simply fail to have enough time to correct entrenched problems before they're forced out of power again.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

These people have gone totally insane. And now they are on a quest not only to seize all of American political power and establish a monopoly of political power that overthrows our democracy.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Propaganda is how political actors convince people that something bad is good.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

A lot of them think they're going to live forever, become transhuman, meld with AI and travel throughout the universe, colonizing other galaxies and harvesting the energy of the other stars. So we have a great outbreak, an existential outbreak of delusional thinking in Silicon Valley. And because of the money they have. It's a danger to all of us.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And the fact that we're having a global return to fascist style governance even as some people are successfully fighting. The trend underlines the effectiveness of propaganda over time.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

This is a general affliction of the wealthy that adds to their psychosis and delusion is that everybody wants to placate and please them and be sycophantic.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Once the cult of personality is established, it is hard to undo.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

But the more grim side of this is that this is part of their propaganda game. They know they're lying.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Witness all the former Iran hawks now lining up to praise Trump's war there.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

Because of the decisive leadership of President Trump as commander in Chief, we're now taking the fight directly to the heart of global terrorism.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The power of propaganda is one of the many reasons I'm reluctant to see AI use expand among the general public.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

They know they're not telling the truth,

[Andrea Pitzer]

where it is seen more as magic than some kind of technical tool.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

They're engaged in what some call fifth generation warfare, the new era of propaganda where you fight over what is basic reality, what is basic facts itself.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The people running the AI companies are dedicated to the insidification of humanity.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

So they're playing the old Trump game of just completely fabricating a reality.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Holding the levers of power on a society that becomes dependent on AI tools for basic information and facts about the world is an extraordinarily dangerous position for the human race to be in.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

Their strategy to create a parallel reality and to operate from that they've seen with X that you can create these economies of false information that have real world impacts.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And today this inshinification approach is the one that gets sold to us in a number of ways by actors who present themselves as the sane adults in the room.

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

Robotics and AI. This is really the path to abundance

[Andrea Pitzer]

for all we've seen. Ostensibly liberal thinkers. The ranking Democrat member of the House Intel Committee is part of this secret society. Apparently Cory Booker. People concerned about the abundant creation of basic human services who have secretly been going to closed door meetings, apparently paying to do so with open opponents of democracy and human rights like tech surveillance, Bear and Peter Thiel. More than 200 of the world's elites registered for a retreat whose agenda runs from panels on cult building and sex to prepping for World War iii. An associated app offers matchmaking. We see people asking us to give up principles, not to reset priorities through protracted negotiations of how best to codify laws or seek accountability or balance community needs, but through Mercenary attempts to squash any calls for an actual better world.

[Tech Industry Expert / Commentator]

The insidernet was purpose built for this kind of apocalyptic co option, organized around giant corporations who would trade a habitable planet and human rights for a 3% tax cut.

[Andrea Pitzer]

These people tell us that we have to preemptively inshitify our political platforms and the planet and give up any vision for a better society, just settling for the trade offs that they have determined are valuable, all of which involve throwing critical things under the bus in unnecessary ways to fit their vision of politics.

[Tech Industry Expert / Commentator]

The perpetrators of these crimes against humanity have weaponized the Internet, colonizing the 21st century's digital nervous system, using it to attack its host, threatening civilization itself.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Beware those who claim we have to trade off protecting other human beings or preserving the planet against the current violence being inflicted on both.

[Tech Industry Expert / Commentator]

It did not have to be this way. The insidernet was not inevitable.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Ask yourself who benefits from encouraging the idea that people cannot have expectations that society is capable of managing diverse and complex needs, but instead has to default to corporate and police power and settle for survival?

[Tech Industry Expert / Commentator]

We can build a place where we can resist and survive climate collapse, fascism, genocide and authoritarianism.

[Andrea Pitzer]

A New Good Internet the Right understands that it isn't a question of moderating to the middle Secretary General of the

[Guest Commentator / Analyst]

United Nations, Antonio Guterres, but a question

[Andrea Pitzer]

of moving the political valence of the conversations and perhaps the whole political framework closer to you.

[Climate and AI Expert]

Climate action is under attack from partisan politics and fossil fuel interests, but public support remains high.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Don't let those who claim to be your allies talk you into giving up before you have even tried to change the world.

[Historian / Psychologist]

Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in psychology. It is the word maladjusted because we

[Andrea Pitzer]

do need to be thinking in world changing terms that are also cognizant of what work has to be done to accomplish that.

[Historian / Psychologist]

I would like to say to you today in a very honest manner, that there are some things in our society and some things in our world for which I'm proud to be maladjusted in

[Andrea Pitzer]

the U.S. black activists and their allies did exactly this during the civil rights movement in astounding ways that easily could have led instead for them to settle for mere survival rather than continuing to make demands on an unjust society.

[Historian / Psychologist]

I call upon all men of goodwill to be maladjusted to these things until the good society is realized.

[Andrea Pitzer]

If the far right has its own history that it is trying to inflict once more on the country, so do we.

[Historian / Psychologist]

I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few and leave millions of God's children smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Despite all this churn to the detriment of human beings, the world has given us tremendous examples of how to resist all this. But we have to consciously look specifically at how to counter the inshitification approach.

[Climate and AI Expert]

AI is also hungry for land, water and power. The data centers behind it already consume more electricity than most nations.

[Andrea Pitzer]

When extremists and their collaborators destroy the guardrails and protections around functioning government institutions,

[Climate and AI Expert]

by 2030 they could use more power than all but five countries and enough water to meet the basic needs of all 1.3 billion residents of Sub Saharan Africa. For an entire year.

[Andrea Pitzer]

The government becomes incapable of actually producing anything useful for citizens in terms of services.

[Climate and AI Expert]

They take up land too often in places that see few of the benefits,

[Andrea Pitzer]

and people stop expecting government to meaningfully address society's needs.

[Climate and AI Expert]

Despite these obvious concerns, communities are often let in the dark about the environmental impact of infrastructure rising around the world.

[Andrea Pitzer]

It isn't possible to undo all the harm that the inshinification of any of these policies have inflicted on the country and the world. But we do have the tools at hand to put an end to the current nightmare.

[Climate and AI Expert]

I'm calling on every major AI company to measure and publicly disclose the full environmental impact of its systems, carbon, water and land footprints, and commit to power every data center with renewable energy by 2030.

[Andrea Pitzer]

We do not have to imagine some unattainable goals. The tools to build a better future already exist.

[Climate and AI Expert]

No more hidden costs, no more shifting the burden onto those least able to bear it.

[Andrea Pitzer]

And in some cases, our moment in history, backed by a lot of research and scientific work, has provided us with solutions.

[Climate and AI Expert]

Already, it's time to come clean.

[Andrea Pitzer]

Renewable energy is ramping up and will continue to do so. This, of course, is another arena in which the Trump administration has been sabotaging human progress by trying to shut down and limit solar and wind powered production of energy while promoting coal and oil. In March, the administration announced a nearly $1 billion payout to total Energy, which is a French company, to abandon an offshore wind project. But the world is not waiting. Far, far away from the Strait of Hormuz, something really interesting is happening. Though the US will be behind because of the Trump administration's sabotage, countries are changing their energy strategy almost overnight. The technology continues to improve. Batteries, store electricity and keep it on hand. Not to power small devices, but homes, factories and even entire electricity glues. It's a rapidly growing industry that many see as the next frontier in clean energy and one China dominates. Reducing the power of fossil fuel companies will lead to a more stable world and help in slowing climate change and giving us more opportunities to preserve as much as possible here on Earth. In health care as well. Though Trump and his allies have targeted technology like MRNA vaccines directly, they're proving to be miraculous discoveries. Most Americans became familiar with MRNA technology during the pandemic. Well now the same tech that helped deliver Covid vaccines could keep some of the deadly cancers from coming back. We can demand the reprioritization of merit based research funding and government support for research projects insisting on local issues around detention, around improving health care, on effective water policy, on addressing the nuts and bolts of climate change Right where you live is revolutionary. It is world changing. I've talked before about Hungary, South Korea, Brazil and other places that have demanded a government accountable to the people. None of them are perfect movements, but they have shown how we, imperfect as we are, might also take our countries back. Not by listening to those who tell us to settle for mere survival or for the degraded life that they would trade us to keep them in power, but something that respects the dignity of everyone. You don't even have to wait for the November election. You can tackle one small part on any of these issues and push for a program that would help people in your city, your town, your county or your state right now, today. Thanks for listening to Next Comes what? Please share this with one person who's looking for ways to survive this mess. To support this podcast, please become a paid [e-mail] and consider giving Next Comes what? A five star review where you get your podcasts and that's it.