{"id":127800,"date":"2026-08-03T09:58:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T09:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/127800\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T09:58:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T09:58:06","slug":"opinion-a-reading-list-for-our-age-of-a-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/127800\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | A Reading List for Our Age of A.I."},"content":{"rendered":"

In June<\/a>, I wrote about how the data center revolts happening across the country get to the heart of our greatest political problems. Artificial intelligence is not just a market product or a scientific achievement. It is a political theory. And it is gobbling up our democracy.<\/p>\n

The challenge this presents to a functioning democracy is immense. Democrats cannot just \u201cwin the midterms\u201d and go back to life before Donald Trump and his army of tech bros upended our way of life. We can talk about reforming the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, enshrining women\u2019s autonomy in the Constitution and getting money out of elections. But those things won\u2019t matter if we don\u2019t change our laws and norms about what I am calling data politics.<\/p>\n

All of the speculation and hype around A.I. is hiding the fact that the technology isn\u2019t just large language models or agents or data centers. It is the backbone of a superstructure that merges regressive politics with unchecked economic power in the guise of technological innovation. Put simply, there is too much money, some of it too untraceable, giving a small group of unelected people too much power over the people. That\u2019s data politics.<\/p>\n

Data politics is the right\u2019s answer to what\u2019s next after Trump: more Trumpism, without the man who gave away the country\u2019s store for personal gain. What should the left\u2019s answer be?<\/p>\n

To figure that out, I\u2019m proposing a bit of late-summer reading. I hope you\u2019ll join me.<\/p>\n

I was inspired by a list proposed by literary scholar Matt Seybold<\/a>. The list isn\u2019t definitive. Each of these books aims to explain how technology, politics, money and power are reshaping our world. I am reading some of these books for the first time; others, for the third or fourth. In reading them together, I\u2019m looking for common themes, patterns and novel questions about data politics. The goal isn\u2019t to find answers to a huge political challenge but to ask better questions about our political obligations.<\/p>\n

First, I\u2019m proposing three books about the tech C.E.O.s who are shaping data politics around the world. These books about Sam Altman, Jensen Huang and Elon Musk offer a window into how the global A.I. arms race isn\u2019t just about microchips and data centers. It is about reshaping culture and capital.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World\u2019s Most Coveted Microchip\u201d by Stephen Witt<\/p>\n

\u201cMuskism: A Guide for the Perplexed\u201d by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just those men who matter, of course. It\u2019s also how their corporations are rewriting the rules of capitalism beyond recognition, territory this ne xt group of books explores:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy\u201d by Gil Duran (available Aug. 18)<\/p>\n

\u201cTechnofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism\u201d by Yanis Varoufakis<\/p>\n

\u201cEnd Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World\u201d by Astra Taylor and Naomi Klein (available Sept. 15)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reading these books in conversation with other works, including Trump administration executive orders on A.I., widely circulated white papers from architects of Silicon Valley\u2019s political ambitions and the pope\u2019s recent address.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be talking with some of the authors on this list over the coming months to ask them about the ideas that most shook them and that should shake the rest of us. We\u2019ll call this our \u201cReading Ahead\u201d series. I hope that you\u2019ll join me in reading these, and that this is just the start of a long, and much-needed, conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In June, I wrote about how the data center revolts happening across the country get to the heart…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,982,64056,1556,25,28869,1555,39,1584,8937,64053,64051,64052,31783,7844,64054,58,1588,23962,4639,1109,64055,1576],"class_list":["post-127800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-altman","tag-and-the-worlds-most-coveted-microchip-book","tag-anthropic-ai-llc","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-books-and-literature","tag-computers-and-the-internet","tag-data-centers","tag-democracy-theory-and-philosophy","tag-elon","tag-empire-of-ai-dreams-and-nightmares-in-sam-altmans-openai-book","tag-hao","tag-karen","tag-law-and-legislation","tag-musk","tag-muskism-a-guide-for-the-perplexed-book","tag-nvidia","tag-openai-labs","tag-politics-and-government","tag-samuel-h","tag-social-media","tag-the-thinking-machine-jensen-huang","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}