System Crash
Tech giants like Google and Facebook have conquered — some would say killed — the internet. Elon Musk used his platform to help elect Trump, and Silicon Valley elites want to gut the public sector. OpenAI and Microsoft aim to wipe away millions of jobs. Uber is driving down wages. Apple is impenetrable. Amazon is inescapable. All this high tech, and our quality of life is getting lower. The system has crashed.
So, System Crash: a weekly tech news show willing to tell the hard truths about how tech — and the titans who own and operate it — is really transforming the world. Co-hosts Paris Marx and Brian Merchant dissect the stories that matter, break news of their own, offer expert commentary, and interview journalists, whistleblowers, authors, and tech workers and ordinary people fighting back.
System Crash
What the Trade War Means for Tech, Musk, and American Workers
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 tech, Elon’s status at the White House, and your iPhone—and what it all says about the way team Trump wields power and thinks about American workers.
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