The Economic Strike is ON
Plus: I Was Trapped in Chinese Mafia Crypto Slavery
Dear Citizens,
Things are getting weird out there. Is it just us, or does everyone seem to be jumping ship from Big AI before the “much bigger than COVID” shark-jump moment where AI just takes over? Or worse? You’ll always have us, Citizens.
Here’s what else to read, watch and do this week.
✊ ONE ACTION: Strike! Strike! Strike! ✊
From the great Scott Galloway is a mega-action, a “targeted, month-long national economic strike” going after tech companies and firms enabling ICE. He writes: “In sum, the shortest path to change without hurting consumers is an economic strike targeted at the companies driving the markets and enabling our president.”
Galloway’s proposal is prescriptive, step by step and very easy to follow, with tiered groups of what you can unsubscribe from and boycott to drive maximum impact.
👉 Bonus action: Missed the second edition of the Citizens Understand? We traced the lines from the Epstein files to Peter Thiel, Palantir and Peter Mandelson - mapping how extreme wealth and foreign influence are wiring themselves into UK public services, backed by more than £630m in contracts(?!?!).
Feel hopeless? Fair.
Foxglove has a petition demanding the government publish the full details of Mandelson’s links to Palantir. And while you’re at it, sign our petition calling for a Parliamentary debate on the expanding use of these systems.
We surface practical ways to turn public concern into political action every week. Subscribe and get it in your inbox.
📱 ONE READ: Way Out There Even for Waymo 📱
What’s a driverless car to do when its door won’t close? Call a doordasher, of course. In a bit of dystopia squared, 404 media has the latest on a new app-on-app workaround:
The companies have launched a pilot program in Atlanta, where “during the rare event a vehicle door is left ajar, preventing the car from departing, nearby Dashers are notified, allowing Waymo to get its vehicles back on the road quickly.”
“The program,” Joseph Cox writes, “is unusual in that Dashers are more often delivering food than helping out a driving robot.”
Also? Lol -
(Waymo said the response was on background, but 404 Media never agreed to such a condition. It is standard journalistic practice for both a company and a reporter to need to agree that a conversation is on background or off the record beforehand; this is to prevent companies simply saying something is off the record when answering basic questions.)
💥 ANOTHER READ: Of course it’s a coup 💥
Our founder Carole Cadwalladr has long been banging the drum that what’s happening right now, in America, in real time, is a coup. This essential read from Timothy Snyder bangs that same drum. He looks at who controls the machinery of government and writes: when unelected actors seize power with no right to it, of course it’s a coup.
👉 Bonus read: Our own Alice McCool clocks in with a big investigation into Viktor Orban and Putin’s dangerous disinformation push (putsch?) into UK universities.
We’re a reader-supported publication explaining how power operates and organising to challenge it.
😳 ONE WATCH: JFC That’s Horrible 😳
Since we’re not exactly cheering you up this week, how about a look inside a crypto scam slave compound? Sure! WIRED has this terrifying interview with “a computer engineer from India, trapped far from home inside an isolated compound, forced to work long hours luring western victims into fake crypto investments.”
👀 ANOTHER WATCH: How deep does this go? 👀
Peter Thiel is everywhere right now. The press, the files - oh - and the British government. Carole Cadwalladr spells out how Thiel’s Palantir has gotten its claws into everything from NHS data to Britain's defence system.
👉 Bonus watch: This remarkable short film from Dis Magazine, Welcome to Jankspace. (CW: language dystopia) We’re not sure what it is, but it will keep you up tonight.
That’s all for this week,
Team Citizens
*PS - Join our Signal Chat if you haven’t already! There's over 350 people in there now.
