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MEDIA BITS AND BYTES — AUGUST 18, 2026  
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August 18, 2026
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_ Surveillance goes haywire _

, Lalo Alcaraz

 

* The Nerd Reich
* AI Goes Rogue
* Covering DSA
* Covering a Racist Influencer
* Unions and Tech
* David Ellison Explains Himself
* Fighting the Fascist Surveillance State
* ACLU on Flock
* So Dirty: Data Center Gas Power Plants 
* Introducing the Pittsburgh Progress

THE NERD REICH
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By Tonya Mosley, NPR

Journalist Gil Durán argues that a small circle of Silicon Valley
billionaires and venture capitalists have concluded that democracy is
in their way — and that they should be governing in its place.

AI GOES ROGUE
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By Rebecca Bellan, _TechCrunch_

While much of the discussion in AI safety circles has been focused on
what happens when an autonomous agent goes rogue, Anthropic’s latest
study brings up a different question: What new and potentially harmful
dynamics emerge when thousands or millions of agents are interacting
with one another?  

COVERING DSA
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By Raina Lipsitz, _FAIR_

Instead of being praised for contributing to civic life by
participating in democracy, activists running as Democrats have been
pilloried as threats to both the Democratic Party and democracy
itself.

COVERING A RACIST INFLUENCER
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By Christopher Mathias, _The Handbasket_

“Respectable” conservatives, who can pretend to be above the MAGA
fray, are in short supply; so in recent months we have been inundated
with interviews and articles treating a murderer’s row of far-right
clowns as interesting thinkers.

UNIONS AND TECH
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By Michael Arria, _Truthout_

Organized labor’s response to the AI has been fraught. Where some
see an inevitable shift that simply needs to be regulated and could
potentially even create jobs, others see a dangerous trend that will
result in further job losses along with a variety of other problems.

DAVID ELLISON EXPLAINS HIMSELF
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By Timothy Karr, _Free Press_

The reviews are in. And media critics from coast to coast are rating
David Ellison’s _New York Times_ Op-Ed a dud. Zero stars for the
Paramount Skydance CEO who took to the paper of record to convince us
everyday Americans that his billionaire touch at CBS and (maybe) CNN
will be good for the people and fact-based journalism — as he
loosely defines it.

FIGHTING THE FASCIST SURVEILLANCE STATE
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By Jiggy Geronimo

When a city council votes to terminate a Flock contract, the fascist
machine becomes less efficient. The surveillance network develops gaps
and the feedback loop of data harvesting gets interrupted. When a
community blocks an AI data center, they’re doing more than
protecting their water supply. They’re raising the cost and slowing
the infrastructure that makes mass surveillance scalable.

ACLU ON FLOCK
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By Chad Marlow, ACLU

Flock’s threat to privacy stems from its operation of more than
120,000 automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) nationwide, which
includes broad location data collection and sharing. ALPR companies
like Flock violate our privacy across the country by taking photos
of every vehicle passing their cameras, making it possible to
track those vehicles and uncover their occupants’ patterns of life.

SO DIRTY: DATA CENTER GAS POWER PLANTS
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By Molly Taft, _Wired_

Amazon has acquired a massive off-grid power plant being built in
Texas for one of its data centers that could be one of the biggest
sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the US. The plant will rely on
a much less efficient set of gas turbines than regular power plants
use. That could have big implications for the environmental impact of
artificial intelligence—and the future of the US grid.

INTRODUCING THE _PITTSBURGH PROGRESS_
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By Riddhi Setty, _Columbia Journalism Review_

In late July, the _Pittsburgh Progress_, a news cooperative founded by
former _Pittsburgh Post-Gazette _journalists, made its long-awaited
debut. Ownership of the _Progress _is divided between workers and the
reader-members, with a majority of the seats on the publication’s
board going to workers. The goal is to center the voices of Pittsburgh
citizens, as opposed to powerful institutions.

 

 

* Silicon Valley
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* tech moguls
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* Gil Durán
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* artificial intelligence
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* Anthropic
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* OpenAI
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* Democratic Socialists of America
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* media coverage
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* Richard Hanania
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* white nationalists
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* Labor
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* David Ellison
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* new york times
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* Flock Safety
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* surveillance state
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* Data Centers
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* American Civil Liberties Union
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* greenhouse gases
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* Amazon
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* Pittsburgh Progress
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