Some news, as they say: System Crash is going on hiatus as Brian and Paris are overloaded with other projects they need to take care of. Thanks for plugging in, and stay tuned to this feed for updates on what's next. Until then, subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine, check out Paris’ newsletter Disconnect, and go listen to Tech Won’t Save Us. Support the show

Brian is out this week, so we’re dropping one of our bonus episodes to give you a preview of the benefits of supporting the show over on Patreon. In the episode, Brian and Paris dig into Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey’s scary vision for the future of warfare — and how he plans to profit off the whole thing. Arming countries to the teeth with automated weapons, to the degree they’re considered “porcupines,” might sound bad to some people, but to Luckey it’s the obvious goal of the Western “warrior ...

This week on System Crash: Canada drops its digital services tax under pressure from Trump, the 10-year ban on state-level AI regulation is dead, and the backlash to generative AI just keeps growing. Plus, Peter Thiel and his buddies are starting a new bank named after something else from Middle Earth, Microsoft is cutting thousands of jobs, and people are using chatbots to text their friends. Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect. Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine. ...

This is a preview of System Crash’s monthly bonus episode, where Paris and Brian present the first System Crash Culture Club by interrogating the new film Mountainhead and how it gets into the minds of our Silicon Valley oligarchs. To get the full bonus episode, become a supporter on Patreon. Support the show

This week on System Crash: A court rules Anthropic can train on copyrighted works as long as they’re not pirated, and Elon Musk rolls out Tesla’s Robotaxi service in Austin — with all the problems you’d expect. Plus, Australia’s social media ban for under 16s moves forward, a new Fairphone is coming soon, Brian has a new series, and more! Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect. Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine. Support the show

This week on System Crash: A new player is about to take the smartphone world by storm, the AI industry is forging deeper partnerships with the military, and the Iran-Israel conflict is already overrun with AI slop. Plus, Tesla pauses production again, AI is creating problems for libraries, some Danish governments want to get off Microsoft, and more! Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect. Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine. Support the show

This is a preview of System Crash’s monthly bonus episode, digging into Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey’s scary vision for the future of warfare — and how he plans to profit off the whole thing. To get the full bonus episode, become a supporter on Patreon. Support the show

This week on the show: The Donald Trump/Elon Musk feud continues into a second week and protests torch Waymos as Trump ramps up an authoritarian clampdown of Los Angeles. Plus, Ohio state mandates AI use to make undergrads “bilingual” in AI, video game performers have a tentative union agreement, Chinese tech companies are restricting AI tools, and more. Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect. Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine. Support the show

This week on the show: Elon Musk is out at DOGE, kind of. He leaves with a black eye, literally. And figuratively. We dive into what Musk’s exit means for the Department of Government Efficiency, the role of the Tesla Takedown protests in tanking his reputation, and where things stand to go from here. PLUS: Musk’s failed quest to kill OpenAI’s Stargate, Palantir’s mass data collection on Americans, and so much MORE. Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect. Subscribe to Brian’s newslette...

This week on System Crash: Sam Altman and Jony Ive announce they’re expecting — a piece of AI hardware. Donald Trump wants to hit iPhones with a 25% tariff if Apple doesn’t start making them in the United States, and we discuss whether that’s possible. Plus, BYD beats Tesla in Europe, Google’s Veo 3 goes viral, Duolingo tries to clean up its AI mess, Marc Andreessen’s techno-optimist screed gets a print edition, and so much more! Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect. Subscribe to Bria...

This week on System Crash: A new poll shows that nearly half of all teens wish the internet simply did not exist, and what can we say, the children are the future. Meanwhile, the reason why the kids hate the internet are dead set on making it all worse: Google and Microsoft announced their plans to continue stuffing AI into every available surface—the future they see is 100% AI-generated. Plus, SpaceX flexes its legislative muscle in Texas, an AI-generated book list makes it into print, Netfl...

This week on System Crash: The Vatican has spoken and we have a Luddite Pope; the Republicans are pushing a 10-year ban on state AI regulations to sate their tech industry friends; and Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia shows the power and geopolitics behind AI. Plus, Canada’s AI minister, UK artists pushing back on copyright changes, Microsoft layoffs, and more. Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect. Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine. Support the show

This week on System Crash: AI madness hits a new peak: Mark Zuckerberg has a plan to give everyone AI companions, OpenAI’s boardroom drama gets a new chapter, and the impact of AI on education and work has become a full-fledged disaster. Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect. Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the Machine. Support the show

This is a preview of System Crash’s monthly bonus episode, pulling back the curtain on former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s pivot to a national security hawk using the threat of China to sell artificial intelligence to the military. To get the full bonus episode, become a supporter on Patreon. Support the show

This week on System Crash: Mark Carney is elected prime minister of Canada with a promise to take on Trump and accelerate AI adoption. Jeff Bezos backs down on Amazon’s plans to display how much tariffs have increased prices. Tech billionaires are radicalizing in a bunch of weirdly named Signal groups. Plus, X users drop, Duolingo replaces workers with AI, Microsoft pulls back on data centers, and more! Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect. Subscribe to Brian’s newsletter Blood in the...

Elon Musk is trying to clean up the mess his DOGE escapades have made for Tesla — and it’s not going very well. Brian and Paris dig into the terrible news he had to share in the company’s earnings call and whether we should really believe his claims about scaling back his DOGE involvement next month. Either way, the right still loves the idea: Paris speaks with DeSmog Global Managing Editor Geoff Dembicki about a recent conference where Canadian conservatives — including an Amazon senior prin...

In the latest episode of our Elon In Power series, we’re joined by sci-fi authors and Our Opinions Are Correct co-hosts Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders to dig into how science fiction shaped Elon Musk, and how Musk uses it to shape his own mythology. We explore the problems with how Musk interprets (and fails to interpret) sci-fi stories, and the ways sci-fi memes are deployed to justify the visions of the future tech billionaires are trying to realize. Annalee and Charlie Jane also sh...

Liberation Day has come and gone, leaving Brian and Paris to pick up the pieces. So the Trump administration may or may not have used ChatGPT to whip up its half-assed plans to instigate a global trade war, which tanked the market for days on end before Trump hit the pause button. There’s still much wreckage to sort through: Elon Musk is furious at Trump’s top trade adviser, China isn’t giving in, and electronics are about to get a lot more expensive. We dig into what all this means for big t...

After a few weeks of digging into Elon Musk’s past, Brian and Paris are taking a little break to dig into recent tech developments. They discuss the troubles facing Tesla, OpenAI’s new funding round, and the despicable display of AI-generated Studio Ghibli images circulating on social media. Plus, they discuss some important labor stories and how Google’s AI Overviews are hurting website traffic. Brian mentioned an article called “AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism.” Subscribe to Paris’s new...

In our new series Elon In Power, we’re digging into the billionaire’s history to find out how he got to this point and what his past tells us about who he is today. For our second episode, Ludicrous author and Autonocast cohost Ed Niedermeyer joins the show to dig into the history of how Elon Musk took over and reshaped Tesla, how he built the company through deception, and why it’s not a vulnerable part of his corporate empire. Subscribe to Paris’s newsletter Disconnect. Subscribe to Brian...