Israel’s most lethal operation in Gaza is under way

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Israel’s most lethal operation in Gaza is under way"

Podcast: The Listening Post (Al Jazeera)
Date: September 6, 2025

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Overview

This episode delivers a scathing examination of Israel’s intensified military operation in Gaza, highlighting the ever-growing international accusations of genocide, the unraveling of Israeli and Western media narratives, and the cynical use of propaganda both on the battlefield and in the coverage of events. It also explores the broader media complicity, the targeting of Palestinian journalists, and concludes with a segment on the influence of science fiction on Silicon Valley's tech titans, raising questions about ethical technology futures. Finally, the episode briefly touches on Chinese political theatre and global power shifts.

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Key Discussion Points

1. The Gaza Offensive: Genocide, Propaganda, and the Echo Chamber

[00:59 – 10:40]

• Scale of Assault: Israeli forces now target Gaza City with both military might and a fierce propaganda apparatus. The operation is described as deliberate ethnic cleansing, aimed at leveling neighborhoods and displacing close to a million Palestinians.
• International Consensus of Genocide: Over a hundred globally renowned war crimes experts publicly denounced Israel’s actions as genocide—joining human rights groups and Israeli scholars. Yet, Israeli officials dismiss these as “Hamas-driven lies,” continuing their campaign largely unchecked by meaningful accountability.
• Narrative Collapse: The episode repeatedly underscores the unraveling of Israel’s media narrative:
  • Quote [04:23]: “Hardly anybody in the outside world continues to believe the Israelis. Certainly normal Western publics have given up entirely on the Israeli narrative.” — Expert Commentator 1
  • Despite official claims that defeating “the last Hamas stronghold” is the goal, similar claims have been made and discredited at prior stages (Rafah, Khan Yunis, previous Gaza City assaults).
• Discrediting Western Media: The credibility of outlets like Reuters, long regarded as authoritative, is being shredded as they adopt Israeli official narratives, even when reporting on their own staff being killed.

2. Who Bears Responsibility? Society vs. Leadership

[05:32 – 08:13]

• Netanyahu as Scapegoat: A recurring media trope externalizes blame onto Netanyahu, suggesting his personal extremism drives the war, sparing Israeli society at large from accountability.
  • Quote [06:37]: “The depiction of the Israeli genocidal project in Gaza as Netanyahu’s alone serves several different functions. One is to give cover to Israeli society itself.” — Expert Commentator 1
  • Polls consistently show overwhelming support within Israeli Jewish society for the military’s actions and the blockade of humanitarian aid.
  • Quote [07:26]: “It suits Western audiences... to find a boogeyman… The majority of Israeli society has become incredibly genocidal, racist in their rhetoric, in their politics.” — Expert Commentator 4

3. The Assault on Palestinian Journalists & Media Complicity

[08:24 – 12:20]

• Targeting Journalists: Extensive evidence is presented outlining the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza—especially Palestinians, but also Western employees, as seen in the death of Reuters camera operator Hussam Al Masri.
• Media’s Cowardice and Complicity: Outlets like Reuters are criticized for parroting Israeli claims about “Hamas cameras,” only correcting the narrative after public outcry.
  • Quote [09:22]: “Reuters didn’t even have the courage to say they bombed our own camera… The complicity is staggering. It’s unprecedented. I’ve never seen anything like this.” — Analyst 1
• Propaganda Campaigns Increase: Israel escalates efforts to smear and discredit Palestinian journalists, rolling out AI-powered doxing sites like MediaWatch Legal with government backing.
  • Quote [12:20]: “The Israelis are doubling down… This past week [they] launched a new project that claims to ‘uncover the hidden ties between journalists and Hamas’… produced using AI.”

4. Genocide Denial and Shielding Perpetrators

[10:40 – 11:58]

• Denial as Platforming: Despite strong historical precedents, genocide denial in Gaza remains normalized in mainstream Western discourse.
  • Quote [10:40]: “If you see someone saying the Rwanda genocide never happened… they’d be immediately disqualified. But the denial of the genocide in Gaza is still being treated with acceptance.” — Analyst 1
• Media Accountability Ahead?: There’s a clear warning to news institutions:
  • Quote [11:15]: “When there is a tribunal… I think a lot of journalists should be there with them… The media has basically been creating the ground on which the genocide can continue.” — Expert Commentator 2

5. Technology Titans, Sci-Fi, and the Future of Power

[14:29 – 24:53]

• Tech Bros’ Sci-Fi Obsession: The episode shifts tone to analyze how influential tech leaders like Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel, and Altman draw inspiration from science fiction’s often dystopian visions—sometimes missing their cautionary messages.
  • Quote [16:53] (Tech Expert): “The number of things that I think Her got right, this idea that it is going to be this… conversational language interface… was incredibly prophetic… more than a little bit inspired us.”
  • Mark Zuckerberg’s pursuit of the “metaverse” is critiqued as a misunderstanding of Snow Crash’s satirical, dystopian warning.
• Cherry-Picking Ethics: Tech titans are accused of adopting the “cool” elements of sci-fi while disregarding deeper social, economic, and ethical questions.
  • Quote [17:49]: “They take the shiny technology part… and they ignore the social, political and economic implications.” — Expert Commentator 3
  • Quote [23:28] (Science Fiction Writer): “There’s a meme about the torment nexus… The next thing is Texio has announced that they’ve invented the torment nexus. It’s kind of disturbingly accurate these days.”
• Transhumanism and Big Visions: The ideology underpinning Silicon Valley dreams—transhumanism, extropianism, longtermism—aims to radically transform humanity, often in ways beneficial only to the ultra-rich.

6. Brief on Global Power Shifts

[24:53 – End]

• China’s Political Theatre: The episode wraps with analysis of Xi Jinping’s grand military parade and its international impact, symbolizing China’s determination and the shifting global balance of power—echoed in Donald Trump’s reactionary comments.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|----------------------------|-------| | 04:23 | Expert Commentator 1 | “Hardly anybody in the outside world continues to believe the Israelis. Certainly normal Western publics have given up entirely on the Israeli narrative.” | | 06:37 | Expert Commentator 1 | “The depiction of the Israeli genocidal project in Gaza as Netanyahu’s alone serves several different functions. One is to give cover to Israeli society itself.” | | 07:26 | Expert Commentator 4 | “It suits Western audiences… to find a boogeyman… The majority of Israeli society has become incredibly genocidal, racist in their rhetoric, in their politics…” | | 09:22 | Analyst 1 | “Reuters didn’t even have the courage to say they bombed our own camera… The complicity is staggering. It’s unprecedented. I’ve never seen anything like this.” | | 10:40 | Analyst 1 | “If you see someone saying the Rwanda genocide never happened… they’d be immediately disqualified. But the denial of the genocide in Gaza is still being treated with acceptance.” | | 11:15 | Expert Commentator 2 | “When there is a tribunal… I think a lot of journalists should be there with them… The media has basically been creating the ground on which the genocide can continue.” | | 16:53 | Tech Expert | “The number of things that I think Her got right, this idea that it is going to be this… conversational language interface… was incredibly prophetic… more than a little bit inspired us.” | | 17:49 | Expert Commentator 3 | “They take the shiny technology part… and they ignore the social, political, and economic implications.” | | 23:28 | Science Fiction Writer | “There’s a meme about the torment nexus… The next thing is Texio has announced that they’ve invented the torment nexus. It’s kind of disturbingly accurate these days.” |

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:59 – 05:32: Overview of current Gaza offensive and international condemnation
• 05:32 – 08:13: Blame narratives – Netanyahu vs. Israeli society, Western complicity
• 08:24 – 12:20: Journalists targeted in Gaza, Reuters complicit, Hasbara propaganda ramp-up
• 12:20 – 14:29: Smearing Palestinian journalists and new government propaganda sites
• 14:29 – 24:53: Tech titans, science fiction, and the future – the ethics and blindness of technological utopianism
• 24:53 – End: China's military parade and global power shifts

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Conclusion

This episode of The Listening Post delivers an unflinching indictment of both Israeli actions in Gaza and the systemic failures of Western media. It highlights how propaganda, narrative management, and media complicity have enabled what is increasingly being recognized as genocide, while also exploring the darker visions being brought to life by Silicon Valley elites inspired—perhaps dangerously—by science fiction. The episode closes with a reminder of shifting global geopolitics, signaling turbulent times ahead in both media and world affairs.

Transcript

[Host]

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[Main Narrator]

Israeli forces set their sights on Gaza City as the country's politicians dismiss the growing consensus that what they are inflicting on Palestinians is a clear cut case of genocide. Targeting journalists with bombs and bullets is not enough for Israeli leaders who are now pumping even more propaganda to into the mix. Plus our earthly reality that seems more and more like science fiction and the tech bros working to take us there. This past week, Israel was accused yet again of conducting a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. More than 100 of the world's leading experts on war crimes added their names to the list of human rights groups and academics who had already drawn that same conclusion. And yet again, Israel dismissed the finding, calling it Hamas driven and carried on with its ethnic cleansing of the Strip. Gaza City, where nearly a million Palestinians are packed in, is in the midst of being leveled. Journalists are still getting killed, targeted by Israelis, some while working for Western news organizations, one of which, Reuters, actually succumbed to Israeli propaganda even as it reported on the death of its own cameraman. As Gaza is reduced to rubble and the Israeli narrative collapses under the weight of its own contradictions, this story is further shredding the credibility of news sources that people used to believe in. Trust that, like the wasteland that is Gaza, will be challenging, if not impossible, to rebuild the Israeli military. Israeli's offensive in Gaza City, the largest Palestinian population center of them all, bears the hallmarks of an end game, the official Israeli narrative. The city is one of Hamas's last remaining strongholds and Israel must, quote, defeat the enemy. The real objective? To seize Gaza City, level its neighborhoods one by one, blowing them up, bulldozing them into rubble, force out the roughly 1 million people who live there and spin the story in ways that make no sense through messaging that has grown less disciplined and much less effective.

[Analyst 1]

You basically see a schizophrenic Israeli campaign when it comes to propaganda messaging. They are trying to say that Gaza City is the remaining stronghold of Hamas.

[Main Narrator]

Israel's security cabinet instructed the IDF to.

[Analyst 2]

Dismantled the two remaining Hamas strongholds in.

[Main Narrator]

Gaza City and the central camps.

[Analyst 1]

But Israel said the exact same thing about Rafah. They said it about Khan Yunis, they said it about Gaza City before when they invaded it at least three to four times. And you're seeing Israeli generals saying this is not true, this is not going to defeat Hamas. Israeli ministers as well, stating it in Hebrew. The message is more clear and honest. It's very straightforward.

[Expert Commentator 1]

The big issue is that hardly anybody in the outside world continues to believe the Israelis. Certainly normal Western publics have given up entirely on the Israeli narrative. The people who still cling to the narrative are the US government, for example, a few other governments in the West. But these justifications, they fall on deaf ears because they are unbelievable in every possible sense of that term. And the Israelis, of course, they have a different story that they circulate inside their own society, in their media, which is also all about we have to find what they call the hostages, in fact prisoners. But of course, materially what they are engaged in is the destruction of an entire society. And that of course is the point.

[Expert Commentator 2]

International pressure is starting to get inside, where we're hearing more and more of incidents where Israelis are kicked out of hotels when they sign in with an Israeli passport. People say we don't want to have you here. People say we don't want anything to do with you because of what your country is doing. So Israelis are feeling more and more cornered by international oppression. But internally there's no accountability at all.

[Main Narrator]

One angle keeps surfacing in the coverage of Gaza to typically when confrontations occur between Prime Minister Netanyahu and his subordinates on what Israel should do next.

[Host]

Prime Minister Netanyahu's new war plan has.

[Expert Commentator 3]

Come under fire from some of the.

[Host]

Israel Defense Forces top brass.

[Main Narrator]

It's the idea that this is Benjamin Netanyahu's genocide, not Israel's. As if citizens of the Middle East's self declared only democracy should be spared any blame for the war crimes committed in their name, that they are somehow powerless to change Israel's course. Politically anti war protests there have grown in size, but polls consistently show the vast majority of Israelis still support what their military is inflicting on the people of Gaza. So that narrative that this is all Netanyahu's doing is simply inaccurate. And it distracts attention away from what underpins this genocide, which when you boil it down, is ethno nationalism and racial supremacy.

[Expert Commentator 1]

The depiction of the Israeli genocidal project in Gaza is Netanyahu's alone. It serves several different functions. One is to give cover to Israeli society itself. Poll after poll after polls have shown that Israeli Jewish society overwhelmingly supports what the army is doing in Gaza. The majority of Jewish Israelis, for example, want to maintain the suspension of humanitarian aid into Gaza. What Israeli society wants is what Israeli society has always wanted, which is the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. That's the premise on which the State of Israel was founded. There's nothing new there. But by focusing on Netanyahu, it's as though we can remove the symptom from the cause.

[Expert Commentator 4]

It suits Western audiences whether that's the media, whether that's institutions of accountability, like think tanks to find a boogeyman, a kind of scapegoat to deal with an unpalatable reality, which is that the majority of Israeli society has become incredibly genocidal, racist in their rhetoric, in their politics. It's also very self serving for many of these institutions in the west to delude themselves into thinking that there is still a salvageable segment of Israeli society that they can still speak to.

[Main Narrator]

There's only one real group in Israel that wants this and that's the hard line right wing coalition partners of Benjamin Netanyahu.

[Expert Commentator 4]

But unfortunately that segment no longer exists. And that's something that a lot of Western institutions, whether that's medias or others, have really failed to grapple with.

[Main Narrator]

Throughout Israel's relentless targeting of Palestinian journalists in Gaza, Western news outlets have repeatedly failed to stand up for the victims, their supposed colleagues. Reuters recently took that a step further when Hussam Al Masri, a camera operator the agency had hired, and four other journalists at the Nasser hospital were killed in an Israeli attack while Al Masri was live streaming video from the hospital roof.

[Analyst 1]

According to our initial inquiry, there was a Hamas camera.

[Tech Expert]

We were tracking it, we cross referenced it with intelligence and then we executed strike against it.

[Main Narrator]

When Israeli spokesman already notorious for lying about attacks on journalists called the source of that live feed a Hamas camera, Reuters rolled over and used that characterization in its own coverage of the attack language it would later change.

[Analyst 1]

It's the very essence of Israel's genocide in Gaza to go after every single hospital, every single journalist there and he was bombed for setting up a Reuters camera for live streaming. Reuters knew it was their own camera that is set up there. Reuters didn't even have the courage to say that they bombed our own camera on that rooftop. So the complicity is staggering. It's unprecedented. I've never seen anything like this.

[Analyst 2]

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza Committing genocide in Gaza.

[Main Narrator]

Genocide in Gaza Western media outlets had to confront reality this past week when more than 100 of the world's foremost experts on genocide called the assault on Gaza what it is.

[Tech Expert]

Certainly a growing chorus of voices across the spectrum who are saying that what Israel is carrying out in Gaza is not simply a war, but is also a genocide.

[Main Narrator]

Those scholars have finally caught up with what Palestinians have been saying from the start and what so many others concluded long ago. Bodies like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Israeli rights organization Bethselem, as well as Israeli scholars. The response from Israeli officials to the statement of had a familiar ring to it that it was, quote, entirely based on Hamas campaign of lies.

[Analyst 1]

It's the strongest case for genocide in modern history. The denial of it only disgraces and discredits its protagonists. If you see someone saying the Rwanda genocide never happened or the genocide against the Rohingya never happened, they would be immediately disqualified from, from the mainstream media, from the public debate. Basically that's a lie. There is no genocide in Gaza. But the denial of the genocide in Gaza is still being treated with acceptance that if you deny the genocide, you increase your chances of being platformed.

[Expert Commentator 2]

So when there is a tribunal and the generals and the leaders that have been orchestrating the genocide will pay the price for it, I think a lot of journalists should be there with them. The media has basically been creating the ground on which the genocide can continue. When reckoning comes, a lot of people should be charged with publicity and media outlets should also pay the price.

[Main Narrator]

As we just reported, there is nowhere near enough outrage on Western news outlets over Israel's never ending slaughter of Palestinian journalists. That has not stopped Israel, however, from ramping up its Hasbara campaign. And this past week it launched a new propaganda push targeting reporters in Gaza. Tarek Nafa has been on this story.

[Analyst 2]

Throughout the genocide, Israeli officials have followed a pattern of smearing Palestinian journalists both before and after their killings. Many journalists who have reported from Gaza, so called journalists, are simply terrorists with a press vest on. Despite condemnations from governments and press freedom groups, the Israelis are doubling down. This past week, Israel's Minister for Diaspora affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Shikli, launched a new project that claims to, quote, uncover the hidden ties between journalists and Hamas. The website mediawatch Legal uses social media to allege Hamas affiliation through a tangled web of mutual friends and names mentioned in Facebook posts. Initially, the site was pretty sloppy. It contained multiple typos and misidentified journalists with incorrect photos. Those errors may have something to do with the fact that the website was produced using AI. The firm behind it is AI powered data analytics firm Penlink, which has a long history of working with US law enforcement. At one point, Penlink received a $20 million US government contract to surveil American Internet users. Despite its shady background, the new site has been shared widely in pro Israel circles. The messaging and the graphics bear striking similarities to other pro Israel doxing websites like Canary Mission and UN Watch, which give off a veneer of legitimacy, but which are really propaganda outfits. Like those sites, MediaWatch encourages users to report so called fake journalists. This is just the latest effort in a years long campaign by Israel to tarnish Palestinian journalists. Such campaigns are sometimes noted for being slick and heavily funded. This one feels a bit amateurish and whoever's behind it seems to understand that too. The last time we checked, the website had been taken down for maintenance.

[Main Narrator]

Thanks Tarek Machines with an intelligence that seems human. Algorithms that know what's coming and predict our behavior Earthlings Ticketed for life in outer space A few decades ago, this was the stuff of science fiction. Now it's reality. And behind that reality is a clique of big tech titans. Names like Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel and Altman. Men who have been steeped in sci fi books like Snow Crash and Starship Troopers, films like Ready Player One and her TV series like Star Trek. Those imagined tech futures tend to come with a dystopian side, the excesses and oppressions of machine culture. But to tech entrepreneurs, warnings about the dangers of imaginary utopias are overblown. Either that or they are perfectly aware of the worlds they are building. The Listening Post's Meenakshiravi now on the tech titans who say they want to make life better, but are taking their cues from some of the bleakest futures sci fi has to offer.

[Host]

These are some of the most powerful men on earth.

[Tech Expert]

First live demo in leaders of corporations.

[Host]

Worth trillions of dollars. Innovators who have changed how much of the world lives. Nothing gets them as excited as new tech.

[Tech Expert]

Oh my God.

[Host]

And the possibility of making science fiction into science reality.

[Science Fiction Writer]

I think science fiction has always been an influence on people working in technology, especially in Silicon Valley. As a science fiction writer, if I ever meet anybody from those industries, they're always instantly interested.

[Tech Expert]

It's always the science fiction guys.

[Main Narrator]

They think of everything first and the.

[Tech Expert]

Builders come along and they make it happen. A lot of major founders and CEOs have talked pretty extensively about their own love of science fiction. Yeah, I think like sci fi movies.

[Main Narrator]

Video games can be pretty inspiring and thought provoking about what are some like.

[Tech Expert]

Impossible sounding technologies that maybe could work somehow. Elon Musk talks a lot about loving the Scottish sci fi writer Ian M. Banks culture series. Jeff Bezos of Amazon is, in addition to being a huge Lord of the Rings fan, is also a big fan of the culture. Sam Altman of OpenAI has been talking a lot about the Spike Jonze movie Her, starring Scarlett Johansson as an AI.

[Host]

Hello, I'm here.

[Expert Commentator 4]

Hi.

[Main Narrator]

Hi, I'm Samantha.

[Tech Expert]

The number of things that I think her got right, this idea that it is going to be this like conversational language interface that was incredibly prophetic and certainly more than a little bit inspired us.

[Expert Commentator 3]

The tech titans have drawn on many different ideas from science fiction, and they range from the imaginative to the grotesque.

[Tech Expert]

We will take materials from the moon.

[Expert Commentator 1]

And from near earth objects and will.

[Tech Expert]

Build giant colonies and people will live in those.

[Expert Commentator 3]

Science fiction itself as a genre is not just about the technology, it's about the kind of implications for society. But I think the kind of way in which tech titans take it is that they take all the shiny technology part of it and they ignore the social, political and economic implications of those.

[Host]

The tech bros who wield so much influence over our lives and wouldn't be the first to have misinterpreted, misunderstood or just missed the ethical lessons in the literature and films they consume. However, given their intelligence and the caliber of their teams, what they're doing seems to go beyond a simple misreading of sci fi. Follow them closely and a pattern emerges of cherry picking cool concepts, ideas that can become products, innovations that sort of stretch the limits of science and even necessity, and if it all works out, can make them a whole lot of money.

[Tech Expert]

I love science fiction. I mean, I have spent a lot of time reading that.

[Host]

One example of this kind of ethically dismissive sci fi fascination is demonstrated by Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, CEO of social media behemoth Meta.

[Expert Commentator 1]

Are there any books in particular, writers in particular?

[Tech Expert]

There are some that are just classics around this. Right. So I think at this point anyone who's interested in this space would read Ready Player One and Snow Crash. Snow Crash. I think Zuckerberg's relationship to Snow Crash is harder for me to understand precisely because Snow Crash is very much a dystopian satire. It's super powerful and it is sort of the science fiction future that I think we all hope to get to. It's very interesting to me that Zuckerberg has sort of latched onto it as a vision of a future that he wants to bring about an embodied Internet where you're in. In the experience, not just looking at it. And we call this the Metaverse. I wouldn't be so rude as to suggest that Zuckerberg hasn't read the book, but I think this is an example of something where he's seen a framework, an idea of a kind of full virtual reality cyberspace that you can travel to and within. Hey, are you coming? Yeah, just gotta find something to wear. All right, perfect. Oh, hey, Mark.

[Analyst 1]

Hey.

[Tech Expert]

What's going on?

[Science Fiction Writer]

I think what's really interesting about a lot of the Silicon Valley CEOs, people like Elon or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, these guys aren't really engineers or innovators anymore. They're just money men.

[Tech Expert]

I was AI nerd my whole life. I watched sci fi shows growing up and I always thought it would be really cool if someday somebody built it.

[Science Fiction Writer]

Sam Altman's a perfect example of this. He's not an AI programmer. He's not worked in that field himself as an engineer. So it's easier for them to become vision guys selling themselves as an innovative brand, as someone that sees the future. And science fiction allows them to do that.

[Host]

There's a palpable thrill for many tech entrepreneurs when something jumps out of the pages of a sci fi book or an episode of a futuristic TV series into the realm of the possible. There's Elon Musk's neurotechnology company, Neuralink.

[Tech Expert]

Neuralink, an experimental brain computer interface that.

[Main Narrator]

Allows patients to control technology with their mind.

[Host]

Jeff Bezos, once best known as the founder of Amazon, is now also known as the man behind space technology company Blue Origin. His ambition isn't just commercial space travel. He is looking at human colonies in outer space.

[Tech Expert]

Was the idea of manufactured worlds.

[Expert Commentator 1]

These are very large structures, miles on.

[Tech Expert]

End, and they hold a million people or more each.

[Expert Commentator 1]

This is a very different kind of.

[Host]

Space colony on many levels. These tech titans seem to be playing God. Probe them though, and they'd insist they're merely pushing humanity's limits to so that certain people, the rich, ambitious, intelligent, can become more like God.

[Tech Expert]

Yeah, transhumanism, you know, the ideal was.

[Analyst 2]

This radical transformation where your human natural.

[Tech Expert]

Body gets transformed into an immortal body.

[Host]

These fantasy goals are the product of a pretty extreme set of ideologies that many tech bros and sci fi geeks adopt. They've been summarized in an academic paper into a neat acronym tess Transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, Cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism and longtermism. It's a lot of words to Google. In short, these are a set of notions that reinforce the need to build tech enhanced humans. People with faster brains, who biohack their bodies to perform with minimal sleep, for instance, and who do things like build colonies in space so that the longevity of humankind is ensured.

[Main Narrator]

There's likely to be another dark ages.

[Tech Expert]

Particularly if there's a third world war.

[Main Narrator]

Then we want to make sure that.

[Tech Expert]

There'S enough of us to bring civilization back. I think that's why it's important to get a self sustaining base, ideally on Mars.

[Host]

It would be easy to dismiss these as fringe delusions of wealthy eccentric western tech bros. But this tight clique of ultra rich businessmen control some of the most significant technologies used around the world. And they also have a lot of influence with the most powerful and the most dangerously eccentric man on earth.

[Expert Commentator 3]

There's a notion that we can get to a world we want through techno solutionism. Technology is the solution in these minds. If we just build this thing correctly, then we can solve political and social problems.

[Science Fiction Writer]

So there's a meme about the torment nexus, which is the idea that a science fiction author has written a book where there's a terrible torturous technology called the torment Nexus. And then the next thing is Texio has announced that they've invented the torment nexus. It's kind of like disturbingly accurate these days.

[Tech Expert]

A bunch of people have read books that are quite clearly and explicitly warning against a particular kind of technology and taking from it the idea that they should in fact create that technology. And I think AI is an interesting thing to talk about here because on one level, many people who even work in the AI industry believe that they are creating a technology with the power to destroy the world, and yet for some reason continue to work on it. If you have this incredible new technology, you can maybe get much closer to the kind of computer that exists, that exists in sci fi.

[Expert Commentator 3]

Tech giants see no downside. But that's not how sci fi works. Sci fi works as saying you've changed something fundamental about the society. What happens to the entire world around this, who is harmed and who's losing. And I think the tech titans really don't think about that at all. They only think about this as an unlimited upside. And that's a huge issue.

[Main Narrator]

And finally, the carefully orchestrated political theater coming out of China this past week. Xi Jinping presided over one of the country's biggest ever military parades. It was a lavish show marking the 80th anniversary of China's Second World War victory over Japan. Xi boasted that the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is unstoppable, while he was flanked by the leaders of Russia and North Korea. If the intention was to spook the administration in Washington, that seems to have worked. Donald Trump posted a message to President Xi saying, please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un as you conspire against the United States of America. The message that Beijing was sending that Trump was reacting to the center of global power is shifting. The era of US Hegemony is coming to an end. And here at the Listening Post, we'll stay on that story to see how it plays out.