Engineering Territory: Silicon Valley in Space

What’s that? A role reversal? On this episode, we’ve changed things up and your usual podcast host (me) is in the hot seat! Our fantastic guest-host Benjamin Tan—a PhD Candidate at Cambridge studying race and empire—asks me about my recent publication in the American Political Science Review about “Engineering Territory” and Silicon Valley’s outer space colonization projects.

We discussed what Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are up to in space, why terrestrial and celestial colonization are not as different as they may seem, what the history of the British East India Company can tell us about the Commercial Space Age, and how indigenous conceptions of property and space can problematize outer space, sovereignty, and territoriality—and the way we think about political power and rule today.

As always, you can listen to it here or subscribe here (Spotify) or here (Apple Podcasts). If you like us, please rate, review and share the Anti-Dystopians to help us get new listeners.

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• My article “Engineering Territory: Space and Colonies in Silicon Valley”, American Political Science Review

• Read guest-host Benjamin Tan’s articles on race and empire:

  • Hobson on White Parasitism and Its Solutions, Political Theory

  • Dissolving the Colour Line: L. T. Hobhouse on Race and Liberal Empire, European Journal of Political Theory

• Alina Utrata - Lost in Space, Boston Review

• Maybe in Your Lifetime, People Will Live on the Moon and Then Mars, New York Times

• Robert Nichols - Theft is Property!

• Philip Stern - Empire, Inc.

• Steven Press - Rogue Empires

• Adam Hochschild - King Leopold’s Ghost

• Andrew Phillips and JC Sharman - Outsourcing Empire

• MJ Rubenstein - Astrotopia

• Raymond Craib - Adventure Capitalism

• Malcom Harris - Palo Alto

• Quinn Slobodian - Crack-Up Capitalism

• British Library still unavailable due to a ransomware cyberattack

  • which is very bad politically and also to me personally, who has been trying to do some archival research there for ages

• The Funny Thing About Misogyny

  • amazing literary essay about jokes and gender oppression

• The End of Privacy is a Taylor Swift Fan TikTok Account Armed with Facial Recognition Tech

• British police are testing women for abortion drugs and requesting data from menstrual tracking apps after unexplained pregnancy losses.

• How the U.S.-China Rivalry Is Putting the Internet at Risk

• Patient privacy fears as US spy tech firm Palantir wins £330m NHS contract

• Blur tools for Signal

• DNA Testing Company 23andMe says private user data is up for sale after being scraped

• A Shazam for People: Clearview’s AI App Was a Hit Among the Rich and Powerful 

• Serbia: World Bank-funded digital welfare system exacerbating poverty, especially for Roma and people with disabilities

• How Spotify Is Quietly Supporting the Military-Industrial Complex

• Amnesty International: US-made munitions killed 43 civilians in two documented Israeli air strikes in Gaza

• Guide to action: Palestinian trade unions called for workers and trade unions around the world to take action to stop the flow of arms to Israel

Our episode with Dr Matt Mahmoudi on Automating Apartheid in Palestine.