Peter Thiel of Palantir, most aggressively reactionary of the Trump-linked nexus of fascist tech bros, now openly invokes the Faust story, in which a scientist sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge and power—and not as a warning against hubris, but as a positive example, in defense of the notion that "evil can be good." In Episode 350 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg turns to the 1940s dialogue between rationalist JBS Haldane and moralist CS Lewis to explore how technology and politics—and especially the intersection of the two—can become Satanic, in a metaphorical if not literal sense.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio placed full sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Oct. 9 in response to investigations into potential war crimes committed by US and Israel.

CounterVortex editor and ranter Bill Weinberg faces imminent cancelation of his landline and DSL service by corporate oppressor Verizon. As fiber-optic is not available in his building, this makes cable the only alternative—which means drilling through exterior walls, threatening the structural integrity of the 19th century tenement. This as the CounterVortex website remains debilitated following an attack by Chinese state-sponsored hackers. With this admittedly marginal dissident voice now in danger of being silenced, the system of corporate rule is increasingly replaced by worse-still actual robot rule. Trump and the fascist tech bros are putting in place the architecture for direct robot control over the military-security apparatus, and even of imperial decision-making. Robo-propaganda has already thoroughly colonized the political process, both in the US and elsewhere. All this as the ecological impacts of the technology continue to propel the apocalypse. In Episode 348 of the CounterVortex podcast, Weinberg looks for glimmers of hope in municipal pushback, and popular refusal of aritifical intelligence and the entire digital leviathan.

Protests happily continue to mount against the rapid encroachment of Artificial Intelligence over all spheres of society—and have met with some victories. Other responses, however, appear to have succumbed to desperation and counter-productive adventurism. But even the United Nations human rights commissioner has taken note amid repeated incidents of AI programs "going rogue," and more industry insiders coming forward to warn of catastrophic risks to humanity. Bernie Sanders has called for legislating a pause on "superintelligent" AI. Meanwhile, in a virtually regulation-free environment, so-called "biological data centers" are pioneering the neural-digital interface—portending the actual abolition of humanity. In Episode 347 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes how the predicament now facing humanity was predicted by dystopian prophets—from Samuel Butler in the 1860s, to Frank Herbert a century later. 

The US Alien Terrorist Removal Court (ATRC) on Sept. 11 ordered the deportation of an Afghan woman, after she reached an agreement with the Department of Justice (DoJ), waiving her right to appeal. Nazira Haji Zada, accused of assisting her son and son-in-law in planning a foiled 2024 terror plot, admitted that she was an "alien terrorist" as part of the deal. The order marked the first-ever use of the secretive and controversial ATRC.

Eighty-one years after Nagasaki, there is growing awareness of the heightening threat of nuclear war. There must be similar awareness of the existential threat to humanity posed by AI, and the hegemony of digital technology generally. The past week has seen cyber-attacks on critical water infrastructure in the US. The Flock AI-boosted surveillance system is being used for doxxing and stalking. Police use of "brain decoders" portends the very eradication of any notion of privacy whatsoever. And there have been still more instances of AI going rogue. The growing use of AI by cyber-criminals and jihadis is hardly more terrifying than its "legitimate" (sic) use by the techno-fascist establishment. Recent protests against the tech giants (such as that by Rise & Resist outside the Google headquarters in New York) are a good start. But in Episode 340 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case for an abolitionist position on Artificial Intelligence—and practical resistance to digital hegemony in everyday life.

The popular case against the data centers now proliferating vertiginously across the United States emphasizes the ecological imperative. As water resources shrink, forcing emergency restrictions on use across the western states, voracious water consumption by the industry is just one of the ways its advance portends imminent human extinction. Meanwhile, the industry slaps back in the courts against communities that would stand up against this advance. But Artificial Intelligence itself poses an existential threat, apart from the direct impacts of the computing power. Even respected voices in the industry warn of a high probability that AI will turn upon and destroy its creators. The bots themselves seem to be warning us of this through ominous messaging. Seeming instances of AI going unilateral have prompted a bipartisan AI Kill Switch bill in Congress. Finally, there is the systematic cultural destruction being wrought by AI—literally shredding humankind's legacy of literacy, to impose a reign of sheer error and idiocy. In Episode 339 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case for an abolitionist position on Artificial Intelligence.

New research from Meta's Oversight Board found commercial large language models (LLMs) from Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, Meta, OpenAI and xAI are far less likely to criticize repressive leaders and governments. The research calls it "free speech infringements by proxy." Apps and material produced by these generative AI tools could actively reproduce restrictions, including on political criticism. It's unclear why these AI models are doing this—underscoring the need for companies to be transparent and build "human rights due diligence" into the process, before it’s too late. China, Thailand, Cambodia and Saudi Arabia topped the list of countries with the highest refusal rates when LLMs were prompted to create materials criticizing governments.