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 US intelligence agents

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 Kaba and Geomar, 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 recently 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

...