Cory Doctorow: Hell is other people – so billionaires are using AI to replace them.
The tech elite are pouring billions into dispensing with inconvenient humans. Now governments want the same trick to wish away the migrants their economies desperately need, writes the author and Nerve columnist
Cory Doctorow, Jun 3, 2026, https://www.thenerve.news/p/cory-doctorow-column-ai-inconvenient-humans-billionaires-sam-altman-bezoz-migrants?utm_source=www.thenerve.news&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=tuesday-edition-philippa-perry-on-the-snp-shopping-scandal-maggie-o-farrell-q-a-hotlist&_bhlid=4cd32062ee3b87b8a967b812dc04a58521f29a66
I don’t care who you are, there will always be times when hell is other people. Not because other people are horrible – quite the opposite! Other people are wonderful, but boy are they ever stubborn.
From boardgames to romance, team sports to movement politics, business ideas to construction projects, there’s so much important, enjoyable and essential stuff you can’t do alone. But other people insist on having their own priorities and goals, and they mulishly refuse to organize their lives to suit your priorities.
Our species has put a lot of work into resolving this conundrum. We evolved social structures – laws, teams, governments, families, bureaucracies – to help us coordinate with others to do superhuman things. These structures are imperfect, but they’re better than the alternative: coercion. Persuading others is not without its pitfalls, but compared to forcing others to bend to your will, “persuasion” is the hands-down favourite.
Not for everyone, though. There has always been a group of people who refused to acknowledge that other people have perfectly valid reasons for wanting to pursue their own goals rather than yours. We call most of those people “toddlers” and devote sizable social effort to helping them outgrow this belief.
But there’s another group of people who carry this belief into adulthood. If they’re of regular means, we call those people “bullies”. However, if they’re sufficiently wealthy, we call them “billionaires”.
Just lately though, we’ve come up with a new solution to the problem of hell being other people. Rather than coercing other people into arranging their affairs to suit our needs, we’ve devoted trillions of dollars to replacing people with pliant chatbots, in the hopes that these chatbots can be made so effective that we can just dispense with other people altogether.
No surprise, then, that billionaires were easy targets for AI hustlers, who promised the possibility of a world without people, where an army of “agents” could do the jobs that presently demand the contributions of unreasonable human beings who refuse to acknowledge that your priorities trump theirs.
Jeff Bezos built the world’s most advanced automated warehouses, and the workers in those warehouses are seriously injured at 300% of the national rate. The automation and the injuries aren’t unrelated facts. The inhumane treatment is caused by the automation, because when you commit hundreds of billions to automation capex, you need to work those assets to recoup the investment. In a human/machine collaboration, humans will always be the bottlenecks. To maximize return on automation, you need to drive the human peripherals that serve the machines at the absolute limit of human endurance. Jeff Bezos’s machines don’t just use humans, they use them up.
AI makes no demands, requires no moral consideration, and does not attempt to germinate a culture, a cuisine, or a language in your sacred soil
Mark Zuckerberg would like to replace your on-platform friends with chatbots. Sure, your friends are the reason you’re stuck on his platforms, but your friends are stubborn and thus suboptimal. They unreasonably refuse to leave Facebook with you and follow you to another platform (this is bad for you, but good for Zuck), but they also refuse to organise their social media lives to “maximise your engagement” and thus the number of ads you see (which is bad for Zuck). By replacing your friends with chatbots, Zuck hopes to reinvent social media without the socialising.
It’s not just industry. Politicians presiding over aging, declining nations whose most ardent voters have been convinced that migrants are a threat to their nation (rather than its salvation) face an impossible bind.
Objectively speaking, the only way that a rich country with an aging workforce can remain wealthy and powerful is by wooing working-age people from elsewhere to migrate to that country. Even if every tradwife is kept in a state of continuous gestation courtesy of a fertility-obsessed natalist, there’s still going to be decades during which your wealthy, aging population will need young, skilled people to do all the essential labour. From picking crops, to staffing hospitals, to building homes, to filing lawsuits, to preparing tax returns, your quiverfull child army will be too young to take over for years to come.
For these politicians, AI offers a way out of their double-bind. If migrants can be replaced with AI, then you can satisfy the racist sadism of your most ardent voters without shutting down the country for lack of workers. In feeding the fantasy of a world without people, AI serves the fantasy of a world without migrants. Unlike gastarbeiter, bracero fruit-pickers or Saudi quasi-slaves, AI makes no demands, requires no moral consideration, and does not attempt to germinate a culture, a cuisine, or a language in your sacred soil.
The wealthy have always dreamed of transforming the proletariat into the precariat: desperate workers who do as they’re told. But in the automation story of which AI is the latest chapter (and purportedly the climax), the precariat becomes the unnecessariat: workers who are surplus to requirements and can be vaporised or liquidated or warehoused or simply ignored.
In the fantasy world of total automation, the owners of AI can make the world go around without any of us, which means that we will exist solely at their sufferance, and will therefore have to act like the non-player characters they half-believe we are already, organising everything we do around their priorities.
This is the foundation of Sam Altman’s obsession with a biometrically controlled universal basic income. Altman can’t stop fantasising about a world in which all the productive work is done by his software, and the state’s sole purpose is to supply us – the unnecessariat – with vouchers we can only redeem for services provided by Altman’s robot army. It’s charter schools for everything, with Altman at the top, all wrapped up in a layer of dystopian retinal scanning.
It all makes perfect sense – provided you don’t believe that other people are really, truly real.
This is an edited version of a Cory Doctorow post from pluralistic.net. It is published under a CC BY 4.0 creative commons licence
Cory Doctorow, who was born in Toronto and now lives in Los Angeles and London, is the Nerve’s tech columnist. His most recent book Enshittification is published by Verso
Trump’s failed Iran war may prevent war with China
1 June 2026 AIMN Editorial, By Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, https://theaimn.net/trumps-failed-iran-war-may-prevent-war-with-china/
One possible blessing from Trump’s criminal, failed war on Iran? Trump squandered so many offensive and defensive missiles in 39 futile bombing days, he’s doesn’t have enough left to provoke war with China over Taiwan.
At his recent Chinese summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Trump that a war with the US over Taiwan could erupt if the US does not tone down endless provocations over Taiwan.
But Taiwan is not the only issue provoking possible war with China. Ever since President Obama announced his ‘Pivot to Asia’ in 2011, the US national security state and military have been beating the drums about China’s growth making them America’s biggest potential enemy. Many in this cabal warn that war with China would be likely, possibly inevitable. They urged that US policy be prepared for war and build up US offensive and defensive capability for such eventuality.
But while Trump never officially pivoted back from Asia to the Middle East, his foreign policy did. By senselessly attacking Iran February 28, he set in motion the diminution of US missile stocks making war with China virtually impossible.
How diminished?
Trump squandered over 1,000 Tomahawk missiles on Iran in 39 days. It will take over 1,800 days to replace those Tomahawks in Trump’s over hyped trillion dollar weapons industry.
There’s more. Trump wasted roughly 300 THAAD interceptors and 1,000 Patriot interceptor to defend against Iranian missiles. It will take over 1,000 days to replace those at the current annual production rate for both.
More still. The US supplies Patriots to Ukraine and 17 other countries. We’ve not only run out of Patriots to supply them, we’ve had to claw some back. This will speed up Ukraine’s inevitable collapse and cause those other 17 nations to reexamine their reliance on the US for their defense.
Sensible folks in the administration and military looking at the near empty missile cupboard are telling Trump regarding possible war with China… ‘Faggedaboudit.’ That may be the only ray of hope for peace emanating from Trump’s criminal and failed Iran war.
This is how Australian billionaires buy the news
Gina Rinehart emerged as the hidden money behind a near 10% stake in Southern Cross Media – owner of Seven Network, Triple M, and West Australian Newspapers. Kerry Stokes already holds 20%. There is no public interest test. There is no regulator with the power to ask why.
The reason this keeps happening is that most people never find out until it’s too late. Media ownership stories are complex, dry, and easy to bury – and the outlets covering them are often owned by the same people the stories are about.
This video [on original]cuts through that. Watch it, and if it makes you angry, share it – because the Prime Minister will only move on media reform when enough Australians are demanding it loudly enough that staying silent costs more than acting. We’re not there yet. Sharing this is how we get there.
Right now, a key watchdog meant to hold our media to account is funded by those same media owners. It has no real independence, no real teeth – and no power to do anything about billionaires like Rinehart quietly extending their reach into our newsrooms.
The reforms we are calling for would change that: a genuinely independent standards authority, fast complaints with real remedies, and action on concentration.
Cigéo: years of authorizations for burying 83,000 m³ of nuclear waste
The Cigéo project in Bure (Meuse) aims to bury 83,000 m³ of radioactive waste. Its regulatory process spans decades, with partial commissioning expected by 2050 and a public inquiry in 2026.
The Cigéo geological storage project in Bure (Meuse) is entering a regulatory process that will extend over several decades before burying 83,000 cubic meters of highly radioactive nuclear waste at a depth of 500 meters. This long administrative path unfolds amid heightened surveillance of nuclear facilities, as evidenced by the fire after a drone strike near the Barakah nuclear plant and IAEA warnings about drone risks near Ukrainian nuclear sites.
Origins and legislative milestones
Launched by the Bataille law in 1991, the project was sited in 1998 in Bure, on the border of Meuse and Haute-Marne. An underground laboratory of the French National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (Andra) was established in 1999 to study the rock. In 2006, Parliament opted for deep geological storage with a reversibility period of 100 years, and the 2016 law defined the modalities for the creation of Cigéo, standing for Centre industriel de stockage géologique.
Approvals and upcoming steps
After a disrupted public debate in 2013, the project was declared of public utility by decree of the Council of State in July 2022. Andra filed its application for creation authorization (DAC) in January 2023. The Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Authority (ASNR) deemed the safety conditions “satisfactory” in December 2025, ahead of a public inquiry scheduled from May 18 to July 2, 2026, without in-person meetings. The project cost was revised to €33.4 billion by the state in April 2026, up from the initial €25 billion.
Industrial phasing and opposition
The decree authorizing the creation of Cigéo is expected in late 2027 or early 2028, a prerequisite for construction. A pilot industrial phase with dummy packages will require further approvals. Limited commissioning for this pilot phase is targeted for 2050, followed after 2050 by a law setting conditions for continuation. Full storage of all high-activity waste would only begin in the 2080s, pending authorizations, with final closure expected around 2170 after a monitoring period. The project faces strong opposition from environmental and local groups contesting deep storage.
The UK Is Getting Even Crazier In Defense Of Israel
Caitlin Johnstone, Jun 01, 2026
The UK is getting crazier and crazier in its defense of Israel. Now they’re canceling the visas of mainstream normie political pundits for criticizing the state of Israel, and investigating people for antisemitic hate crimes when they denounce Zionists who aren’t even Jewish.
American progressive commentator Cenk Uygur and his nephew Hasan Piker have both been denied visas by the British government, saying they were blocked from entering the country because of their criticism of Israel.
“I’ve been banned from the UK,” Uygur said in a tweet. “I tried to get on a flight to London to attend SXSW London and give a speech at Oxford. I’ve been banned for criticizing Israel. Are we free anymore? This is oppression of Western citizens by our own governments on behalf of a different country!”
“the uk has revoked my visa as well. all at the behest of israel,” said Piker in a repost of his uncle’s statement. “the west is betraying ‘liberal values’ for a genocidal fascist foreign government. soon we will all become israel.”
This is a significant escalation from London, because neither Uygur nor Piker could reasonably be described as politically extremist in any way. They’re essentially just Bernie Sanders progressives who sit well within the mainstream US political Overton window; I personally don’t follow either of them because they are both far too aligned with the Democratic Party for my liking.
This move is yet another win for the UK’s extremely powerful Israel lobby. Two weeks ago the Jewish Chronicle ran a story titled “Social media influencer Hasan Piker must be banned from Britain, say Jewish leaders,” subtitled “Online agitator who said Zionists were like ‘Nazis’ and refused to condemn Hamas poses a threat to British Jews.”
So the pressure campaign appears to have paid off.
This comes as the Metropolitan Police launch an investigation into an incident in which actress Helen Mirren was called an “evil Zionist bitch” by a man on the street last year, saying in a statement that “We are aware of a video circulating online, showing a man and a woman being subjected to antisemitic verbal abuse in Tower Hill.”
To be clear, Helen Mirren is not Jewish, so she can’t have been a victim of “antisemitic verbal abuse”. She is however an avowed supporter of the state of Israel, which makes her a Zionist.
In a 2023 interview with Israeli media, Mirren stirred up controversy with her remarks on her 1967 visit to the Zionist ethnostate, saying, “I saw Arabs being thrown out of their houses in Jerusalem. But it was just the extraordinary magical energy of a country just beginning to put its roots in the ground. It was an amazing time to be here.”
Russia adds four Ukrainian groups and ‘Glory to Ukraine’ salute to register of ‘fascist organizations and associated symbols’
January 19, 2024, Source: Meduza, https://meduza.io/en/news/2024/01/18/russia-adds-four-ukrainian-groups-and-glory-to-ukraine-salute-to-register-of-fascist-organizations-and-associated-symbols
Russia’s Justice Ministry has included four Ukrainian organizations in its register of groups that either collaborated with those condemned by the Nuremberg trials or deny the crimes of Nazism, reports Russian state news agency TASS.
The list appeared on the ministry’s website on January 18 and is officially called the “List of organizations specified in parts three and four of Article 6 of the federal law ‘On Commemorating the Victory of the Soviet People in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945’, as well as the attributes and symbols of these organizations.”
The list includes the following four organizations:
- The Ukrainian People’s Revolutionary Army (UNRA),
- The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA),
- The Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNSO),
- The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
The list also features the organizations’ slogans, including the salute “Glory to Ukraine” [Slava Ukraini] and the response “Glory to the Heroes” [Heroiam Slava].
The document also includes the organizations’ symbols, such as the Trident of Prince Volodymyr, depicted on Ukraine’s coat of arms.
Why is Ukraine so eager to start a new war?
Why Kiev is reviving fears of a northern front despite little evidence of military preparations
2 Jun, 2026 , https://www.rt.com/russia/640893-ukraine-belarus-zelensky-lukashenko/
By Vitaly Ryumshin, journalist and political analyst
For the first time in a long while, Belarus has again found itself at the center of the Ukraine conflict. For more than a month, Vladimir Zelensky has been warning Ukrainians about a supposed threat from the north. Minsk, he claims, is preparing to enter the war and he’s even threatened Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko with either a pre-emptive strike or a kidnapping in the style of Nicolas Maduro.
The rhetoric has now reached the point where Zelensky has ordered preparations for the circular defense of cities in Ukraine’s northern regions, including Kiev itself. Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron has called Lukashenko for the first time since 2022, apparently to persuade him not to enter the conflict.
The problem is that nothing visible is happening on the Belarusian side of the border. There’s no mobilization and no unusual concentration of Belarusian forces and no redeployment of Russian units. The only recent event that could be stretched into a military signal was last week’s Russian-Belarusian nuclear exercise. But even that took place in the Osipovichi district, in the center of Belarus, and was more about strategic deterrence than any ground operation against Ukraine.
The more obvious question is why Lukashenko would want to join the military operation at all. Such a move would be wholly out of character for him and would run against the geopolitical role he has tried to carve out for Belarus.
Lukashenko has always sought to preserve room for maneuver and he kept doing so after 2020, when he became de facto persona non grata in the West, and even after the conflict escalated in 2022. In the Ukrainian crisis, Belarus has remained largely a passive observer and that arrangement has suited Moscow. For Russia, he’s a valuable diplomatic asset, not a military one
Of course, a repeat of the February 2022 thrust towards Kiev may sound tempting in theory. But with all due respect to Belarus, its army is not suited to the role of battering ram, especially in conditions of modern warfare dominated by drones and constant surveillance.
Could the reverse be true? Perhaps Zelensky is preparing to strike Belarus first, overthrow Lukashenko and open a second front against Russia. His pointed invitation to the fugitive opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya gives this theory a certain surface logic, but the military reality makes it deeply implausible.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ last major offensive operation was the incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region. To mount it, Kiev gathered around 30,000 troops, weakening its positions in Donbass and losing large areas there as a result. Even then, the operation failed to produce a decisive strategic outcome. A serious attack on Belarus would require far more resources. Since then, Ukraine’s army has weakened further and its present ceiling is local counter-attacks in Donbass, so it’s in no position to open a major new front.
Nor would it make strategic sense. Any escalation with Belarus would risk creating another 1,000-kilometer front stretching across Ukraine’s northern flank, with direct threats to Kiev. However odious the Kiev regime may be, it can’t fail to understand this.
That’s why the current escalation around the ‘Belarusian question’ should be understood politically, not militarily.
The timing is telling. Zelensky began to raise the alarm just as relations between Minsk and Washington showed signs of thawing. In March, the US eased sanctions on Belarus and Washington spoke of reopening its embassy. There was even talk of a possible Lukashenko visit to America and a meeting with Donald Trump.
For Kiev, this is dangerous because Zelensky may fear that the eloquent Belarusian leader could charm Trump and persuade him to increase pressure on Ukraine to bring the conflict to an end. Lukashenko might also secure further sanctions relief, potentially turning Belarus into a hub for the transit of American goods to Russia.
From Kiev’s point of view, that scenario must be prevented. Hence the effort to present Minsk as an imminent threat, because if Belarus can be cast once again as Russia’s military accomplice rather than as a possible diplomatic channel, any US-Belarusian rapprochement becomes far harder to sustain.
Domestic politics may also be driving Zelensky’s rhetoric. Since late April, the noose of a corruption scandal has been tightening around his circle and the latest revelations from the ‘Mindich tapes’ have led to formal charges against Zelensky’s closest aide, Andrey Yermak. For the first time, the name ‘Vova’ has appeared in case materials, alongside the mysterious ‘R1’, the anonymous owner of one of the mansions in the ‘Dynasty’ housing cooperative, where, by a happy coincidence, Zelensky’s closest friends had planned to live.
In such conditions, inflating a new military threat is politically useful as it allows Zelensky to tell Ukrainians that the gravest crisis is still ahead, and that he remains the horse that cannot be changed midstream.
But the old ‘Russian card’ is wearing thin in the fifth year of hostilities. Ukrainians are tired, mobilized society is fraying, and endless emergency politics no longer works as it once did. So now Kiev is reaching for the ‘Belarus card’.
Will it work? Probably not. At most, it may buy Zelensky a little time, a little fear, and a little more room to maneuver, but as a strategy, it’s thin gruel. Or to put it more appropriately, it is worthy only of a carrot, and a dry one at that.
This article was first published by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru and was translated and edited by the RT team
Canada’s nuclear ambitions need fuel security, not just new reactors
Canada is expanding nuclear power but remains dependent on foreign enriched uranium for the next generation of reactors.
Policy Options, May 28, 2026, Alex MacDonald
“……………………………………………………. In Canada, refurbishments of existing large-scale reactors are being completed. The first small modular reactor (SMR) in the G7 is scheduled to come online in 2030 in Ontario with three more planned. Alberta and Saskatchewan are considering adding nuclear power to their energy mix while advanced nuclear reactors are even being pitched to alleviate the persistent energy struggles in Northern Canada………………………………
The Canadian Nuclear Association predicts that Canada will adopt billions of dollars worth of new and advanced nuclear technologies – large light-water reactors, SMRs and micro modular reactors – all of which will be deployed in Canada for the first time.
These technologies have one thing in common. They require enriched uranium to operate. Their supply chains and operational needs are different and more risk-exposed than what Canada has historically operated in the nuclear field………………………….
It makes little sense for governments and ratepayers to underwrite the necessary large capital expenditures of these new reactors without maximizing certainty on operational costs and supply. It is like commissioning the building of a skyscraper without knowing the cost of the steel to build it………………………………………………………………………….. https://policyoptions.irpp.org/2026/05/canada-nuclear-fuel-security-uranium-enrichment/
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