Guests

We’re joined by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, co-authors of the book End Times Fascism, for a wide-ranging conversation on the multitrillion-dollar global investment in artificial intelligence and its reverberating effects around the world.

Klein recently spoke at the People’s AI Assembly, alongside other critics of the artificial intelligence industry, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former chair of the Federal Trade Commission Lina Khan. “The resistance to AI is taking many forms, and it’s really a resistance to oligarch power, which is concentrated in the hands of these tech companies,” Klein tells Democracy Now! “After 50 years of outsourcing and hollowing out of public functions of the state, the very last stage is the outsourcing of thinking, of intelligence itself.”

Taylor, a co-founder of the Debt Collective, warns that the “circular” debt financing of much of the AI economy is “a waste of resources that also endangers the public.” The AI buildout “is so intense, so frenetic and so redundant” that it risks causing a major economic crash akin to the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, Taylor says. If that happens, she adds, “Naomi and I think we need to use this moment, just like during the Great Depression and the New Deal era, to demand a real renovation, transformation, of our public services.”

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in Los Angeles, with Anjali Kamat in New York.

Leading critics of the AI industry gathered in New York Monday for the People’s AI Assembly. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani spoke about his recent decision to [enact] a one-year moratorium on students using artificial intelligence in public elementary and middle schools.

MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI: There’s a creep that comes with this, and there’s an intent to overwhelm that leaves people feeling as if there is simply no option anymore. And when we put in place this moratorium, it was not to prevent future use, as if AI wasn’t already being — AI was being used in schools. This was a moratorium on things that were already being used in schools in the absence of a comprehensive platform.

And I think this is the other part of — we’re seeing such a reckless adoption of technology without any kind of a reckoning with the limitations of that technology, right? We’re seeing reports of our military killing Iranian schoolchildren, and then a Pentagon investigation making it clear that an overreliance on AI was part of the killing of more than a hundred schoolchildren. This is the same technology that we’re talking about, but there is this desire to speak about it as if it is infallible, as if it cannot be questioned, as if the only people who could regulate it are the ones who are currently developing it.

AMY GOODMAN: That was New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaking about his recent decision to enact a one-year moratorium on students using artificial intelligence in public elementary and middle schools. He also talked about New York state’s moratorium on new large data centers. That was New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s decision to pause the permitting for those data centers.

MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI: One of the first things that’s critically important is to talk about what are all of the ramifications of AI as a technology, and when we’re talking about data centers, the environmental impacts that come with this. I think that’s one of the things that I really have appreciated from our governor, is the implementation of a moratorium on data center construction across the state of New York. That is critically important, and in a country that is so unbelievably polarized, to see data centers is one of the few things that cuts across party lines, where you see Republicans and Democrats who do not want to see these kinds of things being constructed —

ILANA GLAZER: That’s right.

MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI: — in their communities.

ILANA GLAZER: That’s right. That’s right.

MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI: And to me, that is also something that should be inspiring, in that it reminds us that the things that are causing people to be concerned about this are not driven by their party affiliation, but simply the very human costs of what comes with this. And that, I think, is both what the future should hold, is much more organizing in opposition to what these effects are, and I think that a lot of people in this room have been leading a lot of that. And then, I think, at the city level, the question is not just what we can do as a city in terms of our own policies, but also what we can do in the face of a complete abdication of a federal role.

ANJALI KAMAT: Other speakers at the People’s AI Assembly included Lina Khan, the former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission.

LINA KHAN: I think what we’ve seen, especially through the Web 2.0 era, when we saw the rise of major social networking firms, the rise of major social — rise of big search engines, is that these firms really used a philosophy of, you know, move fast and break things, and oftentimes assumed that the existing laws, the existing rules didn’t apply to them. And so, these are individuals that have become used to a certain level of impunity, elite impunity, that I think, you know, we’ve talked about in the past as being a broader cultural, social phenomena that results when we’re not holding the rich and the powerful to the same rules and the same standards that we do to everybody else.

I think, you know, there are a lot of magazine profiles and other assessments of, you know, looking at what these individuals are as a personal matter and, you know, their character. I think, to me, some of that is a little bit less interesting than this basic question of who is deciding in the first instance what trajectory these technologies take. And whenever you have a tiny number of elites getting to call the shots around this potentially transformational technology, that is going to be dangerous even if you have the most benevolent, well-meaning people in the driver’s seat. It really comes down to the concentration of power.

ANJALI KAMAT: That was Lina Khan, former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, speaking at the People’s AI Assembly, which was organized by the AI Now Institute and More Perfect Union.

We’re joined now by the award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein, who also spoke at the People’s AI Assembly. She’s co-author with Astra Taylor of the new book End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World. Astra Taylor is also with us.

AMY GOODMAN: Naomi, let’s begin with you. You just spoke at this AI assembly in New York, along with Arundhati Roy, the great writer from New Delhi, from India, who will be joining us tomorrow. Talk about — you know, we had you and Astra on when End Times Fascism was first published. You’ve now traveled the United States, Canada. You’ve been in Europe, as well. On this issue of AI, if you can talk about the resistance that’s growing and talk about how it’s being organized and the response at the top, how the billionaire tech bros, who are so supportive of President Trump now, though not always had they been, how they’re responding to this resistance?

NAOMI KLEIN: It’s great to be back with you, Amy and Anjali.

So, I mean, the resistance to AI is taking many forms, and it’s really a resistance to oligarch power, which is concentrated in the hands of these tech companies in particular. And people around the world — I mean, just listening to your previous guest and the Albanian uprising triggered by this plan for an island resort controlled by billionaires, right? This is the throughline of so much of the resistance, is an understanding that entire nations’ essential functions are being outsourced to these completely unaccountable companies. And AI is really just the final stage of it. I mean, this is a point that several of us were making at the AI assembly, is that after 50 years of outsourcing and hollowing out of public functions of the state, the very last stage is the outsourcing of thinking, of intelligence itself, right? And so, it really is a throughline, whether it is the Pentagon outsourcing targeting to companies like Anthropic and Palantir, or whether it is SpaceX with this extraordinary power to cut off satellite access to Ukraine in the middle of a war. This is really the final stage.

And so, it takes many different forms. In some cases, it’s parents organizing to say, “I don’t want a chatbot to teach my kid,” right? But in every case, it is this understanding, finally, that — you know, we’ve thrown around these phrases for so many years. Corporate power, right? What does it mean for corporations to become more powerful than governments? We are seeing it now, because we have these highly ideological corporations that are very open about their alignment with increasingly fascistic regimes, right? So, you have this alignment of Musk and Trump, Palantir, you know, inroads, increasingly deep inroads, into the NHS — we heard about this when we were in the U.K.; I’m sure you heard about it, too, Amy. People are very concerned: What data are these companies collecting as they go deeper and deeper into the most intimate and essential government functions, like healthcare? So, yeah, it looks different everywhere. Sometimes it isn’t articulated as being an anti-AI movement, but everywhere it is articulated as being about sovereignty, about control, about the outsourcing of their democracies.

ANJALI KAMAT: And as we see this upsurge of youth-led protests around the world, really —

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.

ANJALI KAMAT: — I mean, Albania, many, many different parts of Europe, India, all rising up — I mean, it’s really an example of what both of you talk about in your book of kind of hereness and being here. And can you talk about that idea, both of you, of — maybe you first, Naomi — of what is that alternative in this world where we have the fascists, you know, imagining and almost pushing our world towards dystopian futures —

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.

ANJALI KAMAT: — where the future isn’t for everyone, and the resistance to that being an insistence on staying and working with what we have?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I think about the French students — right? — who take to the streets after this historic summer of heat, of deadly heat waves, deadly across Europe, but particularly in France, right? Thousands and thousands of excess deaths in France just because of the heat. But the heat doesn’t stop at the end of the summer; it stretches into the fall. And students are coming back into classrooms that are impossible to stay in. They are so hot. Then you have these torrential downpours. The roofs are leaking. And young people are saying, “We just want to learn,” right?

And so, the ways in which young people’s lives are being mortgaged — right? — to the climate crisis, but then they make the connections, very directly: “You can’t fix the roof in our class or get us an air conditioner because you are spending so much on weapons, drones, autonomous warfare, giving it to these private companies. And just invest in us. We want to go to school. We’re here — right? — where we live. We we want to stay where we live.” I mean, you heard it from your Albanian guest: “We want to stay in Albania, but we can’t afford to. We’re being forced to migrate because our futures are being mortgaged,” right?

And so, it is such a simple message of: These oligarchs, these politicians, they believe paradise is elsewhere, on their billionaire islands, in outer space. We want these humble things. We want classes that work. We want teachers who have the ability to teach us, and not chatbots. And so, it is extraordinarily unifying, bipartisan, quite beautiful and militant, right? And this is why there is such a drive to paint these movements as something else, something alien, something scary. I think there’s a high level of infiltration to try to push them in that direction, but yeah, I think that’s a throughline. What do you think, Astra?

ASTRA TAYLOR: Well, I think it connects to the AI issue really directly, too. These are cost-of-living protests, right? People are saying, “We need to be able to pay our rent.” This is why there’s a huge uprising across Spain of tenants and renters who can’t afford to live, and these students saying, “We need investment in our schools.” Well, where is the money going? As Naomi said, it’s being invested in militarism.

But here in the U.S., we have what the Financial Times reports is going to be a $10 trillion AI buildout between 2025 and 2032. Ten trillion dollars, that’s a criminal misuse of resources that could go into making lives better. And much of that is debt-financed. There are many circular deals, those are called, and financial shenanigans, you know, creating systemic instability in this, in this buildout.

So, it’s a waste of resources that also endangers the public, because, you know, reporting is now finally saying, in The Wall Street Journal, in the Financial Times, that the AI bubble is fraying, that there are signs that this corporate debt is distressed, and that this puts all of us at even deeper financial risk. So, that is, you know, another problem with oligarchy. And that is, as Naomi said, a unifying thread across all of these movements.

ANJALI KAMAT: And speaking of oligarchy, I mean, we’re just two weeks away from the midterms, and Elon Musk, a trillionaire, has funneled $276 million into Republican groups to boost the GOP, and that’s according to reporting in The New York Times. And this is coming at the same time as opposition to data centers is becoming one of the biggest bipartisan issues, I mean, even in Republican states. Can you talk a little bit more about this conundrum, how people are rising up against data centers, Republican and Democratic voters, but you also have this moment where Elon Musk is pouring in so much money to back the GOP?

ASTRA TAYLOR: Yes, Elon Musk is spending an inordinate amount of money, and he has the money to do it, and he’s done it before. He spent $300 million to elect Donald Trump. You know, but there’s also many tech oligarchs who are investing in Democratic races, as well, and hedging their bets. They understand that there might be a Democratic sweep in the midterms, and they want to rebrand themselves as, you know, sensible centrists, so they are investing across the board. And, you know, that speaks to the Albanian protesters who said, you know, both parties have a problem here.

So, I think on the data center resistance, I mean, what’s important to note is just how truly grassroots it is, right? People in the tech sector like to say that it’s funded by China or somehow not an authentic movement, but it really is, you know, people coming together across party lines around basic things. We don’t want a data center that pollutes, that poisons the air and water, that takes our jobs — right? — that fills the internet with slop. It’s an incredibly unifying thing. And, you know, I think part of how you combat the spending of somebody like Elon Musk, if you are a Democrat, is to speak directly to those concerns, have a strong position that says, “Yes, we are for humans and meeting human needs. We’re not on the sides of the robots and the machines.”

And that’s what we saw at this AI People’s Assembly. I mean, Mayor Mamdani talked about this one-year moratorium in elementary schools and middle schools. What the audience was cheering was: We want that for high schools, too. We want the moratorium to go all the way. We want it for more than a year, right? We don’t want this stuff. And I think that’s where the public’s at. The public is saying, “This isn’t inevitable. This technology isn’t necessarily transformative in a good way. And let’s stop.”

NAOMI KLEIN: And we want funding for schools and funding for libraries. Like, people are really making the connections, that when you systematically underfund the public sphere, which is where we are in the story of neoliberal capitalism after 50 years of disinvestment —

ASTRA TAYLOR: Yes.

NAOMI KLAIN: — then it becomes more appealing to say, “OK, well, maybe chatbots can teach kids,” because the teachers are underpaid, crowded classrooms, overwhelmed, not enough supports for high-needs kids. And it’s only then that you can propose something as absurd as this idea that maybe it would be good if a machine replaced the teacher, right? But if you have well-funded schools, well-funded libraries, it’s a lot harder to make that argument.

ASTRA TAYLOR: Well-funded hospitals.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.

ASTRA TAYLOR: Then you’re not going to want a robot doctor — right? — or a robot therapist. And so that public investment is insurance also against the encroachment of this dehumanizing technology.

NAOMI KLEIN: And Astra and I have really been focused —

AMY GOODMAN: As we —

NAOMI KLEIN: — on preparing for when the bubble bursts, because that’s when we have to be ready with big demands.

ANJALI KAMAT: Amy?

NAOMI KLEIN: Sorry, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask about the elections, both in this country and in, for example, Brazil. In São Paulo, protesters rallied outside the corporate offices of Meta Monday, accusing the social media giant of electoral interference ahead of Sunday’s runoff election between Lula, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the far-right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro. The protest came as Brazil’s electoral court gave Meta 24 hours to prove that it guarantees equal treatment for the campaigns of the two candidates, as required by law. Now, this follows widespread allegations that Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms are reducing the reach of Lula’s posts and boosting those of Bolsonaro and his supporters. Among those protesting Monday was Daniela Silva, a former Meta worker who once led efforts to shape Brazilian laws in Meta’s favor.

DANIELA SILVA: [translated] I left Meta in early 2025. A very important event took place at the company at that time, because Mark Zuckerberg announced that he would roll back several of the company’s integrity policies. He also declared that he would align himself with the Donald Trump administration, which was about to take office, to ensure that countries like Brazil and other Latin American countries would stop regulating its technologies, moving in a direction that went against the company’s economic interests. And for me, this kind of intervention crossed a very important ethical line.

AMY GOODMAN: And just a reminder when we’re talking about the power of these corporations, again, Meta does own Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. And in the United States just this past Saturday, organizers sought to make Saturday, the No Kings rally, the largest in U.S. history, but at the same time, the social media giant Meta has apologized after the No Kings coalition’s Instagram account was shut down for a number of hours during Saturday’s protests. I want to ask, Naomi Klein, about this power, as we talk about the midterms here. And, of course, the midterms here affect people all over the world, especially if there’s a total shift of Democrats controlling both the Senate and the House, to what’s happening in Brazil, the power of these social media giants.

NAOMI KLEIN: Absolutely, Amy. And, you know, I’ll just say, this is why Astra and I chose to use the word “fascism” when we described this system, which we’ve received some pushback for. But I think the — like, the people understand why we did so. It is a hallmark of fascism to have this extreme integration between large, like, dominant, monopolistic corporate players and the state, right? So, these are ideological companies in a lot of cases — right? — if we’re talking about Palantir, if we’re talking about SpaceX. Like, we don’t know who is driving the cutting off of satellites to Ukraine. And there’s a debate about this, right? I mean, is it the Trump administration, or is it just Elon Musk? They’re pointing fingers at each other.

In the case of Facebook and Meta, it’s more likely that they’re just following what the Trump administration wants. They want — they’ve been very clear that they want Bolsonaro to be reelected. He will immediately free his father. This is really about protecting elite impunity. They do not like the fact that Jair Bolsonaro is in jail and is one of the few of these figures who has faced consequences for actively trying to undermine an election and leading an insurrection. So, that’s the first thing that his son will do if he is reelected. So, we don’t know — but what we do know is this is very integrated, and this is what happens when you have this level of media integration. And we’re just seeing the results.

And just for Brazil, it’s important to remember that Facebook’s WhatsApp played an absolutely central role in electing Jair Bolsonaro in the first place. That platform was flooded with misinformation, lies, that helped elect Bolsonaro when he was way behind in the polls the first time. Then there was this era of contrition during the Biden years: “Oh, no, no, no. We’re putting up all these guardrails.”

Then Trump is reelected. The mask is off. “We’re going to do — we have better technology to spread deepfakes.” The number of deepfakes that Bolsonaro’s campaign has been flooding social media with, they’re just — you know, I just saw something yesterday where they took out an image of a man on the float with him and put in, like, a hot woman in a bikini, because they thought it looked better, and then held her up as the paragon for what femininity should be — a fake woman who doesn’t exist, right? I mean, it’s just so ludicrous.

So, the ability to spread misinformation has increased exponentially, thanks to AI, and there’s absolutely no regulations. And this is what is in store for the U.S., you know, midterms and presidential. So, you know, this is why Astra and I are very clear, like, it’s not just about changing the people at the top. This is systemic. And the Democrats, I mean, have to look at themselves if they do win this thing. Yeah.

ANJALI KAMAT: You know, you mentioned being prepared when the AI bubble bursts. And I wanted to ask you, Astra, if you can talk a little bit more about this AI bubble. I mean, we’re seeing headlines about, you know, $8 trillion being invested into data centers across the country, and these companies taking out massive amounts of debt. And the latest headline from the Financial Times is “AI debt worries spark surge in default insurance trading.” Why has AI-linked debt rocketed this year, and what does this mean?

ASTRA TAYLOR: Yeah, the buildout is so intense, so frenetic and so redundant, right? Each company is building out its own data centers in the hopes that it will win everything. And so, companies which were sitting on mountains of capital are now borrowing, and then that debt is being sold into pension funds, retirement funds, right? So it’s spreading throughout the economy. That had —

ANJALI KAMAT: The risk is spreading.

ASTRA TAYLOR: The risk is spreading throughout the economy. And, you know, you just read that Financial Times headline, which, essentially, it mentions credit default swaps. Now, anyone who lived through the 2008 crisis kind of has PTSD at that phrase. Those are — you know, sales of credit default swaps are soaring, and they’re soaring because the risk is intensifying. So, it’s a kind of insurance against default. But it’s just a sign that financial markets are getting worried.

So, you know, I think we can learn lessons from past financial crises. So, 2008, you know, the problem was that the bankers who caused the crisis were not held accountable. They benefited from that elite impunity that we’re talking about and that Lina Khan was mentioning, right? So, the call at Occupy Wall Street was “Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.” And many people lost their homes. Black and Brown families lost half of their collective wealth in this country; it was wiped out.

But something different happened during COVID. When the COVID crisis happened and there was a shock to the economy, a whole bunch of federal money went out and did buy up corporate debt from big corporations and helped sort of, you know, Wall Street. But we also propped up a social safety net, a welfare state, overnight, which is a reminder that we can do that with federal money, as well. We don’t just have to bail out the banks or the bad actors, right? So there’s a big lesson there.

The last lesson I think we should learn from is, right before the 2024 election, Silicon Valley Bank and some other crypto-associated banks got a bailout. And they did not need to be bailed out, right? They were not economically critical banking infrastructure. And then, the people who got that bailout, many of them — so, figures like David Sacks, who is Donald Trump’s crypto czar — then went and joined the Trump administration.

So, I think there’s some lessons. You know, the lesson from 2008 is there should be accountability for the people who caused the crisis. We cannot let them off the hook. The lesson from the COVID pandemic is we can help people. We need a people-first bailout. We need to be big and visionary. Naomi and I think we need to use this moment, just like during the Great Depression and the New Deal era, to demand a real renovation, transformation, of our public services.

The lesson from the Silicon Valley Bank incident is: Let some things fall. Now, we don’t want the dominoes to fall throughout the whole economy, but some entities do not deserve to be bailed out. We should talk about whether we actually need companies like OpenAI. Do we need Anthropics? Right? When they are — ultimately, when the promise of the tech they are building is “We’re going to take all the jobs and take all the money and, you know, replace human beings with robots,” maybe those companies don’t actually deserve to be saved.

ANJALI KAMAT: And this as Anthropic and OpenAI are approaching massive IPOs.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, we just have —

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.

ASTRA TAYLOR: Yes, and losing — but approaching massive IPOs while also telling us that their revenue projections are completely, you know, absurd. Like, you know —

NAOMI KLEIN: We don’t think they should be allowed to IPO, just straight up. And, you know, they’re also saying they might wipe out humanity. You know, this should preclude your right to sell shares in a company. The solution to that is not to give everybody a share.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you, as we wrap up — I’m here with you, joining you from Los Angeles.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Naomi, let’s talk for one minute about the ballot initiative Prop 40, California’s —

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — proposed billionaire tax. If passed, it would impose a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of the state’s more than 200 billionaires. Supporters say the wealth tax could raise up to $100 billion, with about 90% going toward healthcare, helping some 3 million Californians from losing coverage as a result of sweeping federal healthcare cuts. And, of course, the billionaires have faced — are pouring money into the opposition. Google founder Sergey Brin has poured over $100 million into opposing Prop 40. Your final response on this?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, we really think that this crystallizes the battle lines of — you know, we call these billionaires traitors to creation, traitors to humanity, because they are so willing to abandon it all, you know, whether it’s abandoning Earth or abandoning the state of California. I mean, these Google executives, who are so wealthy, have already moved their primary residences out of California in their little temper tantrums of having to pay a one-time 5% tax to defray the cuts that they supported from the Trump administration. So, you know, and then these are the same companies who are saying, “Don’t worry. If we wipe out your jobs, we’ll take care of you.” So, people in California want to take care of each other, want to stay, and the billionaire class wants to leave. But Democrats like Newsom are also part of the huge problem. There’s a war within the Democratic Party that has tremendously high stakes.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, Naomi Klein, Astra Taylor, co-authors of End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World.

A very happy birthday today to Robby Karran! That does it for our show. Steal This Story, Please! is out on digital platforms anywhere you like to watch movies. I’m Amy Goodman, with Anjali Kamat.