Computer Says Kill: The Toxic Love Triangle of Big Tech, Big War & Big Science w/ David Gray Widder

Academia, Big Tech, and the military are caught in a sordid love triangle — and their love language is money.More like this: Computer Says Kill: The Blank Check to Beat China w/ Lis SiegelFor part five of Computer Says Kill, researcher David Widder describes the powerful trifecta that is academia, Big Tech, and the US military: all of them need each other to survive, but who is benefiting the most? Half of Carnegie Mellon’s research funding comes from the DoW or the DHS — and David will explain how it’s being used to both prop up war apparatus, and serve as an on-ramp to Big Tech platforms.Further reading & resources:It’s about power: What ethical concerns do software engineers have, and what do they (feel they can) do about them? — David Widder et al, June 2023Basic Research, Lethal Effects: Military AI Research Funding as Enlistment — David Widder et alOpen (For Business): Big Tech, Concentrated Power, and the Political Economy of Open AI — David Widder, Sarah West, Meredith Whittaker, August 2023 To Build Our Future, We Must Know Our Past: Contextualizing Paradigm Shifts in Natural Language Processing — Sireesh Gururaja, Amanda Bertsch, Clara Na, David Widder, Emma Strubell, December 2023What Tech Calls Thinking by Adrian DaubThe Undone Computer Science ConferenceComputer-vision research powers surveillance technology — Nature Magazine, June 2025What’s happening in Memphis with Anthropic? — The Maybe Media**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**Computer Says Maybe is produced by Georgia Iacovou, Kushal Dev, Marion Wellington, Sarah Myles, Van Newman, and Zoe Trout