This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our listeners who support us at patreon.com

and by University of California Press, which has loads of great titles, perfect for dig listeners like you.

One that you might like is war virtually, the quest to automate conflict, militarize data, and predict the future by Roberto J. Gonzalez.

Cultural anthropologist Roberto J. Gonzalez tells a gripping story of what lies behind the

autonomous weapons, robotic systems, predictive modeling software, and advanced surveillance programs

that are transforming the nature of military

conflict. The book takes a critical approach to the techno-utopian view of these advancements

and their dubious promise of less deadly and more efficient warfare. Taking an unflinching

look at the processes by which the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies have quietly joined forces with big tech, Gonzalez highlights the alarming prospect of an algorithmic future in which new military technologies threaten democratic governance and human survival.

War Virtually by Roberto J. Gonzalez.

Out now from University of California Press.

Welcome to The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin Magazine.

My name is Daniel Denver, and I'm broadcasting from Providence, Rhode Island.

We have come a long way from the summer of 2020's call to defund the police to Biden's recent state of the union injunction that we ought to do precisely the opposite.

Major social movements are almost inevitably met with reaction,

and the movement to shift funding from repression to care that exploded in the wake of George Floyd's murder has been no exception.

Today, my guests are Maryam Caba and Giamar, and we're discussing police, the politics of

policing, police abolition, and where reform fits and does not fit into it all. We see this backlash,

or what Maryam argues, is in fact a front lash every day, most, when a seemingly mentally ill and ideologically

idiosyncratic man, who recently lived in Milwaukee, came to New York and shot people on the subway,

that being somehow made into a sign of the collapse of order in New York City and the need for

more police to arrest what is framed as a dissent into the law of the jungle.

...