Obviously, that, you know, hypocrisy is a kind of a complete and total defining characteristic of the kind of liberal empire the United States is.

It's a liberal empire that supposedly prevents these kinds of access to everybody.

But on the other hand, allies can do whatever the hell they want to, including committing genocide as we're watching it.

Hello and welcome to Takwon Sebas made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host,

Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Laleigh Kalili. Lale is a professor of golf studies at the University of Exeter and the author of the forthcoming book Extractive Capitalism.

I've been wanting to do a show on the Middle East for a while, and in particular, the developments

that we're seeing in relation to the use

of technology, the pursuit of different technologies, and how it plays into this broader

geopolitical game that the United States is involved in as it tries to maintain its position in the

world and its broader global influence. After Donald Trump went to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates earlier this year,

I knew that this was something I wanted to talk about. I knew I wanted to do an episode on it.

But then after seeing the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities more recently, I figured,

okay, you know, it's time to have this conversation. It's time to dig into this important topic,

especially when there is so much going on in the Middle East that, yes, is related to broader political issues, but also does have a relationship to what we are talking about on this show because of how technology is so integral to so much of what we do and not just digital technology, but other forms of technology

as well as we'll get into in the show. And so as I was thinking about this topic, there was a clear

name that came to mind who I wanted to speak to about this. And that was obviously Lale, even though

she was only on the show a few months ago, but still, it was fantastic to have her back on the show

to dig into these

really important details, where we talk not just about how the United States wants to control

which technologies different countries can have access to because of the relative level of

power that that gives them, but also how it uses technology in order to try to increasingly

keep certain countries within its sphere of influence while others

...