The fight over the future is rapidly unfolding before our eyes.
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fight → unfold → eyes
With debates roiling Washington over calls to rein in artificial intelligence before it’s too late as the U.S. continues to wage official and unofficial wars around the world, many of the world’s most powerful players are licking their chops.
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many → roil → chops
But these players have carefully concocted a plan: to hasten a familiar vision that combines biblical, militant, and futuristic images of the end times so they can save themselves.
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they → concoct → themselves
This week on The Intercept Briefing, host Akela Lacy interviews award-winning authors and documentarians Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, whose new book, “End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World,” maps the players who want to speed up the end of the world.
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who → interview → world
“We didn’t feel that the old ways of understanding who Trump is, what he’s trying to accomplish — even what fascism is — was fully capturing what we were seeing.
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we → feel → what
Here we’re thinking about invading Greenland, declaring Canada the 51st state, creating an ICE army, the relationship with El Salvador’s maximum-security prisons.
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Canada → think → prisons
So we’re trying to map this,” says Klein.
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Klein → try → this
It seemed to be “a fascism that had no vision of our world continuing.
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world → seem → vision
There’s always an apocalyptic quality to fascism, but there is a horizon for the in-group after the cataclysm, and we weren’t seeing that in this politics.
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we → ’ → politics
It was much more about bunkering down in and taking breakdown for granted.”
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It → bunker → breakdown
“End times fascism is an alliance of three main components,” says Taylor.
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Taylor → say → components
The religious fundamentalists who helped elect Donald Trump, wanting to hasten along a violent Armageddon so Jesus will return.
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Jesus → elect → Armageddon
The tech accelerationists “exalting in the possibility that some sort of super intelligence, some sort of digital being might take over.”
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sort → exalt → being
The ethnonationalists who view immigration as an existential threat, so they fortress the border and hoard resources.
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they → view → resources
“These different prongs find a kind of uneasy alliance in their conviction that this world’s going to hell and that their group will survive the wreckage,” says Taylor.
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Taylor → find → wreckage
It may sound bizarre.
uncertain
It → sound → ?
But that doesn’t mean we should ignore it, Klein says.
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Klein → mean → it
“This is a really dangerous pattern of thought: that out of the worst things possible comes the beautiful, glorious golden city.
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city → come → things
And that’s the template of all of these action films and video games, and it leads one to embrace the worst and to not fear what we should fear,” says Klein.
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Klein → ’ → what
“When Trump shares a video of a remade Gaza with a Trump Tower, he’s doing a version of that story.
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he → share → story
When Sam Altman says he’s summoning a digital god, and we’re going to have utopia with AI, and yeah, let me cover the whole world with data centers and accelerate the climate crisis because it’s going to be utopia … he’s doing the story.
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he → say → story
So we have to be able to identify it — because we’re all living with the consequences of this terrible story and we need better stories.”
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we → have → stories
“In this moment, we’re up against a fascism that is against all humans, in a way.
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that → ’re → way
We quote Kelly Hayes, an activist based in Chicago, and she says, ‘Every fascism has its subhumans, and for techno-fascists, it’s just humans in general.’
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it → quote → fascists
This is opening up a bigger fight beyond ‘I am a man’ to just like, this is life versus the machines, and there’s something very unprecedented about that and potentially very unifying,” says Taylor, noting that the collective uprising, across the political spectrum, against data centers shows people breaking free of one so-called inevitable future.
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people → open → future
For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
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you → listen → Podcasts
Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept.
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I → welcome → Intercept
Today, we’re going to talk about the apocalypse.
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we → go → apocalypse
You truly believe AI can kill us all in less than a decade?
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AI → believe → decade
Yes, I do.
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I → do → ?
If you’ve been disturbed by the increasingly dystopian flavor of today’s world, you’re not alone.
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you → disturb → world
It can be hard to keep track.
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It → keep → track
And if you listen to this show, you’re familiar with the imagery: Masked agents in the streets.
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you → listen → streets
First our war fighters are leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools.
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fighters → leverage → tools
Washington is in turmoil over calls coming from inside the house to regulate AI before it’s too late.
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it → come → AI
President Donald Trump has called the whole dustup a “hoax,” even as MAGA architect Steve Bannon appeared alongside Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to promote human control over AI, as Congress balks at renewed public pressure to do something — anything — before they recess again until November.
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they → call → November
When the future of humanity is at stake, we need binding international safety rules, not voluntary standards from the industry.
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we → need → industry
All they’re trying to do is to use a crisis and turn it to their advantage, turn it to their advantage by creating a moat, a cartel, where not only can’t other aspiring companies get in, but more importantly, they’re going to have a liability shift to the American people.
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they → try → people
None of this would come as a surprise to our guests today, award-winning journalists and documentarians Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, whose latest book documents the end-times ideology that unites the players trying to hasten just the final doomsday AI leaders are warning us about.
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leaders → come → us
Today, we’re discussing the players responsible for bringing the most Orwellian features of our collective imagination to life.
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we → discuss → life
…and 288 more, not listed.
The Aporia
