As tech billionaires build out massive, energy-hungry infrastructure to power artificial intelligence, a surprising bottom-up resistance is uniting communities across the country. Astra Taylor—documentary filmmaker, Debt Collective co-founder, and co-author of an upcoming book on fascism with Naomi Klein—joins the show to explain why the fight against hyperscale data centers is fundamentally about political economy and democratic control. We discuss how these multi-billion-dollar developments drain local water and power supplies while offering little more than a handful of low-wage jobs, why the corporate wing of the Democratic Party is missing a major winning issue by running away from anti-monopoly politics and student debt cancellation, and how localized, collective organizing remains our best defense against a rising oligarchy.
Right Now with Perry Bacon: a twice-weekly show diving into U.S. politics, democracy, and the authoritarian threats facing America. Each episode, Perry strives to go beyond daily headlines and actually connect the dots to what’s happening in America.
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