How Palantir, Google & Amazon armed Israel's genocide in Gaza | Antony Loewenstein | The Big Picture

What does the war look like in the age of AI?

This week on the Big Picture Podcast, we’re joined by author and investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein.

We spoke to Loewenstein early in 2024 about his best-selling book ‘The Palestine Laboratory’ - which chronicled how Israel tests high tech weapons in Gaza before exporting them to the world.

Since then, The Palestine Laboratory has been turned into a documentary with Al Jazeera, where Loewenstein travels to Mexico, Greece, India and South Africa to investigate how this technology is changing law enforcement and government surveillance around the world.

Part of his work has examined how Silicon Valley and the AI sector have fueled the rise of a new arms race, one where technology giants like Microsoft and Amazon now compete for lucrative defence contracts worth tens of billions of dollars.

These are the same companies that once promised only to use their powers for good. Google famously enshrined the words ‘Don’t Be Evil’ into their manifesto.

But what was happening behind the scenes was a different story.

Watch our first interview with Antony Loewenstein talking about his book 'The Palestine Laboratory':    • How Israel tests weapons in Gaza, then sel...  

TIMECODES:
0:00 - Intro
03:00 - Silicon Valley is showing its true face
05:00 - Palantir and American militarism
10:20 - Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Israel
14:20 - Testing AI weapons in Gaza
19:00 - Israel seeks revenge
23:00 - Big Tech and Israel
28:00 - Ideological shift in silicon valley
34:30 - Disrupting the weapons industry
37:00 - Israel's survival relies on militarism
41:20 - Tech and democracy
45:30 - Breaking up big tech
58:00 - Technology and power

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