Primitive Accumulation

All comments and opinions are those of the individuals recorded; they do not reflect any official policy or position of the Department of Defense or U.S. government.Dr. Ben Zweibelson is an author, philosopher, and a retired Army Infantry Officer with multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ben lectures and publishes on military strategy, operational planning, design thinking, and war philosophy. His latest book, Reconceptualizing War, was released on April 30th. He has published two other books on the military design movement and innovation in defence applications. Ben earned the Army's Master Parachutist, Pathfinder, Air Assault, Expert and Combat Infantryman's Badges, the Ranger Tab, and was awarded four Bronze Stars in combat. He resides in Colorado Springs with his wife and children. His hobbies include getting injured doing jiu-jitsu, snowboarding, and CrossFit.A magnum opus, a tour de force—Dr. Ben Zweibelson's latest book, Reconceptualizing War, is all of these and more. I was fortunate enough to receive an advance copy, and it was a rich feast. If you've ever wondered what your favourite strategist, philosopher, or school of thought had to say about warfare, you're more than likely to find them in the pages of Reconceptualizing War. From Clausewitz to Kant, Tolstoy, Engels, Mao, the Futurists, Marcuse, or Deleuze and Guattari—and several dozen more—every time I wondered if a thinker was about to appear, there they were. I especially appreciated how Reconceptualizing War complemented the aims of my Hypervelocity podcast: going deeper to examine the philosophical underpinnings of conflict. The cover art goes hard too. Our conversation delves into the themes of reconceptualising war through various philosophical and theoretical lenses. Dr. Ben Zweibelson discusses the importance of social paradigms, the historical context of anti-fascism, and the evolution of ideological movements like Antifa. The dialogue also explores the theoretical connections between Kant, Clausewitz, and contemporary armed movements, as well as the implications of game theory and the future of warfare in the age of artificial intelligence.Chapters00:00 – Introduction to Reconceptualizing War02:44 – Theoretical Foundations: Burrell, Morgan, and Rapoport10:48 – Kant, Clausewitz, and Contemporary Movements17:01 – Antifa: Historical Context and Modern Implications26:03 – Understanding War: Paradigms and Frameworks37:48 – Radical Structuralism and Omnism in Warfare47:49 – The Marxist Vision of Utopia50:15 – The Enduring Nature of War52:04 – Game Theory and Warfare57:57 – Complexity Science and the Afghan Conflict01:06:28 – Radical Structuralism and Revolutionary Success01:14:56 – Détente and Radical Structuralism01:21:47 – Interpretivism and the Limitations of DiagramsAll comments and opinions are those of the individuals recorded; they do not reflect any official policy or position of the Department of Defense or U.S. government.

Dr Mark Lacy, a senior lecturer at Lancaster University, joins me to discuss his book "Theorizing Future Conflict: War Out to 2049." We explore the evolving nature of warfare, focusing on the impact of new technologies like AI, drones, and cyber warfare. Mark highlights the challenges of predicting future conflicts, citing the ongoing war in Ukraine as a case study. He contrasts the liberal and authoritarian ways of war, emphasizing the potential for AI to make warfare more humane and pose significant risks. Mark also discusses the concept of "protopia" and "necropolitics," and the unpredictable nature of technological advancements in warfare. Questions: 1. Upon the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 2049, what lessons will the PLA have learnt about warfare from today's conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East? 2. Is Bakhmut the 21st Centuries Guernica, with drones representing a revolution in military in military affairs without which a combatant has no hope of winning? 3. In what way do drones manifest the protopian and necropolitical aspects of the liberal way of war? 4. I was struck by your thought experiment Drones Over Aleppo 2042: Terrorism in an Age of AI, with its depictions of granular drones delivering humanitarian aid amidst the lawless liminal space of a sprawling refugee camp while searching for a terrorist leader who taunts the West with atrocity deepfakes and who may in fact be an AI. Drawing on Virilio, is it inevitable that the invention of AI entails the AI incident, where AI escapes our control and turns on us, leading to bitskrieg and cybotage?

Paul Rogers⁠ is Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University and an Honorary Fellow of the Joint Service Command and Staff College (JSCSC). Paul lectures on changing drivers of international conflict with particular interests in the Middle East and paramilitary violence, and also has a long-term research interest in the interaction between socioeconomic marginalisation, climate disruption and security. Paul has written/edited 30 books and over 150 papers and book chapters. Paul is a regular broadcaster on radio and TV networks worldwide. He also writes a weekly column on international affairs for ⁠Open Democracy.⁠ In this conversation, I speak with Professor Rogers about his latest book, ⁠The Insecurity Trap⁠, which explores the intersection of ecological, economic, and military issues and their collective impact on global security. The discussion spans topics including climate breakdown, military-industrial complexes, socio-economic inequalities, and practical actions individuals can take to foster positive change. Questions covered: 1. How do ecological, economic and security issues combine to create the insecurity trap? 2. What is 'liddism', and why do Western governments prefer it to dealing with the root causes of insecurity? 3. Why is it so hard for conventional military commanders to see ecological collapse as a spur to conflict, and what do those that do suggest to address it? 4. What impact do you think the new Trump administration could have on ecological issues as a source of insecurity? 5. Could you envisage a perfect storm, so to speak, of ecological, economic and security issues coming together to create a new conflict; such as rising sea levels causing mass migration from Bangladesh into India, destabilizing the whole subcontinent and leading to a regional war with Pakistan? 6. What would be your most optimistic hope for how the intertwining threads of the insecurity trap might play out as we move past the first quarter of the 21st Century?

Owain Leyshon⁠ (Raymond K Hessel) is a philosopher and writer based in Ireland. He focuses primarily on the phenomenology of technology and political philosophy, with a special interest in the ancient Greeks. Owain blogs regularly on Substack and a number of his essays have been published in the collection called Notes from the Pod. ⁠Joshua Hansen⁠ is a US-based cultural theorist focused on hypermodernity and the rise of digital religion. His work aims to demystify contemporary technoculture and operates at the intersection of Academia, Science & the Internet. Hansen published his first book, Tractatus Anti-Academicus, in 2023. It's been a while in coming but it was great to finally discuss French philosopher Paul Virilio's Pure War with Joshua and Owain. I'd been introduced to Virilio by their excellent recent course on his work in general. Virilio is perhaps best known as a theorist of speed and the speeding up of society through the appearance of ever faster technology, and of the inevitability of the accident bound up in the arrival of this new technology. His most famous quote is probably "when you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash". Indeed, Virilio singles out military technology in particular as a leading vector in the acceleration of society. Or, to paraphrase Virilio, society accelerates at the speed of warfare, and this was the theoretical meeting point where I wanted to converge with Owain and Joshua for our discussion. The main theme emerging from our discussion in this episode was the position of nuclear weapons in Virilio's theorising. For Virilio, the ever increasing speed of military technology means that the four minute warning is all that's left of human agency. With the arrival of laser weapons - weapons that literally operate at the speed of light - and autonomous drones, the time frame for human decision making will will shrink to nothing and Pure War will finally be achieved: war which can carry on indefinitely without any human input. Pure War is also prefigured in nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), since a war that never begins never ends. We also discussed whether nuclear weapons have prevented world war III since their inception, moving to critique the so-called Realist school of MAD from a Virilian perspective, in that it just isn't realistic enough to believe that the continued existence of nuclear weapons over the longue durée won't at some point entail accidental nuclear war. Episode Questions: 1. Pure war = Infinite preparation for war. “The invention of the airplane was the invention of the air crash”. Q. Does the invention of nuclear weapons entail the inevitability of nuclear war in Virilio's schema?  2. Endo-colonisation: an a-national military class opposed to its own civilian population colonises its own territory, leading to the non-development of civilian economies. Q. How are the militaries of the great powers a greater threat to their own populations than their supposed enemies 3. Nuclear Monarchy: nuclear weapons gives us a new humanism founded on destruction. The weapon present by "divine right" at the heart of our society. Yet the military man is not an intersessionist priest, he is an executioner because he does not care about death, only killing. Can Virilio's thought be used to counter nuclear annihilation? 4. Holy War: Nuclear war is Just War with technological characteristics, encouraging the complete release of apocalypse level violence. As Christians, can Virilio's fear that belief in an afterlife encourages war and Girard's notion that war arises from a mimetic spiral of violence due to lack of a belief in the Christ scapegoat, be reconciled? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hypervelocity/message

Antoine Bousquet is Associate Professor at the Swedish Defence University, Stockholm. He is the author of The Eye of War: Military Perception from the Telescope to the Drone (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) and The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity (Hurst, 2009). He has contributed an array of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on subjects that include nuclear war, the revolution in military affairs, jihadist networks, complexity theory, violent aesthetics, nihilism, and the conceptualisation of war. In today's episode we interview Antoine Bousquet, an associate professor at the Swedish Defense University, on his book 'The Eye of War.' The book offers a unique historical account of military perception, from the invention of the telescope to the modern-day drone. Bousquet talks about the evolution of military strategies and technologies such as the use of linear perspective, geographic information systems (GIS), and lasers. He also discusses the concept of global surveillance and the challenges posed by operations that blend into civilian society, such as suicide bombings. Additionally, Bousquet delves into the implications of autonomous drones and the complex issue of agency in war, as well as the possible legal recourse for the use of autonomous weapons. 00:02 Introduction to the Eye of War 01:11 Understanding the Concept of the Eye of War 03:22 The Evolution of Military Perception 04:39 The Role of Linear Perspective in Modern Military Technologies 14:11 The Impact of Laser Technology on Military Perception 26:37 The Influence of Digitized Mapping and GIS on Military Strategy 41:05 The Emergence of Hyper Camouflaged Warfare 50:16 The Future of Autonomous Drones in Warfare 58:38 Conclusion: The Changing Landscape of Military Perception Questions: 1. What does the Eye of War refer to within the context of your book? 2. How did the development of linear perspective during the Renaissance give rise to the modern military technologies of sensing, targeting and mapping? 3. By "marshalling photons into a lethal beam", does the laser represent the fulfilment of the "martial gaze"; the Gorgon's stare that at once completes the "alignment of perspective with annihilation" while threatening to blind the very eye that gave rise to it? 4. Contra Borges, with the emergence of digitised mapping and geographic information systems (GIS), can the map now exceed the territory? 5. Has the success of global surveillance given rise to the "hyper-camouflaged" suicide bomber, whose "fluid military concealment" in plain clothes right at the heart of civil society leads to the "endo-militarisation of peace", dissolving any delineation between military and civilian space? 6. With the rise of autonomous drones, do we face the total alienation of all human agency from military perception? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hypervelocity/message

Dr Becky Alexis-Martin is a pacifist academic at the University of Bradford. Her work explores nuclear warfare, social justice, humanitarian and environmental issues, and human rights. Her expertise is focused on nuclear geographies and decolonising disarmament policy in the Pacific. She has authored over sixty-five news articles, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles. Her first book, “Disarming Doomsday: The Human Impact of Nuclear Weapons Since Hiroshima”, critically considers the social, cultural, ​and spatial harms perpetuated by nuclear warfare and was the recipient of the 2020 L.H.M. Ling Outstanding Dr. Becky Alexis Martin explains how geographers identified isolated spaces for nuclear testing, often disregarding the presence of indigenous communities. Dr. Martin also delves into the geotechnologies used in nuclear warfare, highlighting the military origins of technologies like GPS and satellite imaging. She discusses the use of cartography in public safety nuclear preparedness initiatives, pointing out how it was used to downplay the destructiveness of nuclear weapons. The conversation also touches on the connection between Cold War nuclear strategy, game theory, and modern post-apocalyptic computer games, highlighting the tendency to abstract war to a game. Dr. Martin emphasizes the importance of geography in understanding and addressing the impacts of nuclear weapons and the role of geographers in contributing to a nuclear-free world. She also shares her experience as a delegate and speaker at the United Nations for the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, underscoring the significance of the treaty in promoting nuclear disarmament and supporting affected communities. 00:00 Introduction to Dr. Becky Alexis Martin 00:14 Exploring Nuclear Geographies and Decolonizing Disarmament Policy 00:27 Discussion on Dr. Martin's Book 'Disarming Doomsday' 01:07 The Role of Geography in Nuclear Warfare 03:08 Impact of Nuclear Tests on Indigenous Communities 04:23 The Role of Geotechnologies in Nuclear Warfare 05:11 The Dehumanization in Nuclear Test Locations 06:12 The Class Character of Nuclear Testing 07:32 The 2021 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons 09:47 The Role of Geotechnologies in Modern Warfare 12:01 The Use of Cartography in Masking the Destructiveness of Nuclear Weapons 18:47 The Connection Between Cold War Nuclear Strategists and Modern Computer Games 32:53 The Role of Geography in a Nuclear Free World 34:51 Dr. Martin's Experience at the United Nations 39:55 The Importance of Geography in Understanding and Resolving Conflict 46:40 Conclusion: The Future of Geography in a Nuclear Free World Questions You quote the geographer Yves Lacoste: 'Geography serves, first and foremost, to wage war', and mention the work of Halford Mackinder. How has the academic discipline of geography been used to assist in the development of nuclear weapons, particularly in relation to indigenous peoples upon whose land many nuclear tests were carried out? Nuclear Geotechnologies: Geographical Information Systems (GIS), GPS, Remote Sensing, spatial modeling, laser range finding, digital mapping, satellite imaging; are the geotechnologies of nuclear warfare simply geography under another name? Mythologies of Risk: How has cartography, such as public safety nuclear preparedness initiatives under the guise of 'Protect and Survive', been used to mask the destructiveness of nuclear weapons? Apocotainment: You draw a connection between Cold War nuclear strategist Hermann Kahn, Game Theory, War Gaming, geotechnologies such as topographic modelling and environment generation, and the eventual production of computer games such as 'Missile Command' and modern post-apocalyptic computer games such as 'Fallout'. Would you agree with the claim that the common thread linking each of these elements together is 'Apocotainment': a tendency to abstract war to a game? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hypervelocity/message

In this episode, my guest Italo Brandimarte discussed his journal article 'Breathless war: martial bodies, aerial experiences and the atmosphere of empire.' Italo's article covers the use of poison gas by the Italian air force in the Abyssinian War. We covered the following questions: Why do you think that the usual discussions of aerial warfare tend to split between the strategic, technical and the ontological plane on one hand, and the intimate, embodied and phenomenological on the other, and how does your use of concepts such as the 'envelope', the 'weather', and 'warfare beyond the human' in your analysis overcome this split? Why was it that imperial Italy had come to frame its desire for imperial dominance so strongly through the frame of the weaponisation of the air in the Abyssinian war? If the Futurist conception of aerial warfare resisted the full fusion of human subject and machine in the 'dissolution of the body as a locus of elemental sensing', what is different about modern drone warfare in which this seems to be the goal? What is the relationship between Mussolini's use of poison gas in Ethiopia and the use of gas chambers by the Nazis? When Italy is bombing Ethiopia, Italy sees aerial bombardment as the act of an advanced civilisation, yet when Nazi Germany bombs Europe, aerial bombardment is seen as a barbarian tactic. How are hierarchies of imperial dominance inscribed in the logic of: civilised=bomber, uncivilised=bombed? Italo Brandimarte is a PhD Candidate in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. His research is broadly concerned with the relations between the techno-scientific and the bodily dimensions of war and security, particularly with reference to racial and colonial violence. In his current project – provisionally titled ‘The Technology of Empire: War Experience and the Embodied Production of the International' - Italo develops a theory of war experience that takes seriously the role of technology in the imperial history of world politics. Some of the findings from this research have been published in the European Journal of International Relations. His previous work on the politics of measurement in global counterterrorist surveillance has appeared in International Political Sociology. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hypervelocity/message

Professor Andrew Futter specialises in contemporary nuclear weapons issues, specifically emerging technologies and their impact on nuclear strategy, stability and arms control. His work is centred on raising international awareness of nuclear risks, and shaping the climate of ideas that ensures governments and policymakers can make the best decisions possible.  In this interview we discussed Andrew's book, Hacking the Bomb: Cyber Threats and Nuclear Weapons, which covers how "the increasing sophistication of hacking and cyber weapons, information warfare capabilities, and other dynamics of the cyber age are challenging the management, safeguards, and warning systems for nuclear weapons." 1. One of the most counter-intuitive differences you point out between nuclear weapons and cyber operations is that whereas nuclear weapons need to be openly declared in order to exhibit their coercive power, cyber capabilities must be kept secret in order to maintain the enemies wariness of how they might be used. Instead of cyber warfare being seen as a separate field to nuclear warfare, to what extent could cyber operations be used a precursor to kinetic conflict in order to electronically degrade the enemy's nuclear weapons before a shot has been fired? 2. Why is the human being still the weakest link in nuclear cyber security? 3. You mention Peggy Morse, the Director of ICBM systems at Boeing, saying that the age of some nuclear command and control systems, such as 8-inch floppy discs, could actually protect the US nuclear deterrent from cyber threats. Do you think archaic computer systems could actually be being used by nuclear proliferators such as North Korea to prevent cyber infiltration by the US and others? 4. By using commercial Windows operating systems rather than more secure Linux based systems on its Vanguard class submarines, is the UK's nuclear deterrent at risk of cyber disablement? 5. How might the ever increasing sophistication of ballistic missile defences and cyber operations constitute a serious threat to assured retaliation or even be viewed as facilitating a nonnuclear first-strike capability, thereby ushering in a third nuclear age? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hypervelocity/message

Dr Michael Mulvihill is a Research Associate at the University of Newcastle's. His recent project, 'Turning Fylingdales Inside Out: making practice visible at the UK's ballistic missile early warning and space monitoring station' was a multimedia art project intending to demystify nuclear weapons through showing that they are made of everyday materials: the original panel sections of the geodesic domes covering RAF Fylingdales were made of laminated cardboard, for example. In our discussion, Michael explained that the pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear sides often mirror each other in their rhetoric by showing powerful images of nuclear weapons. Whereas by revealing the mundanity of nuclear construction through his audio-visual and very tactile artwork, Michael's work helps to break this spell and remind us that nuclear weapons are human created things that we control, not some godlike structure that rules over us. We built them, so we can take them apart too. We also talked about the BBC Arena documentary, A British Guide to the End of the World, based on Michael's PhD thesis, which covered British nuclear testing at Christmas Island and the effects it had on British forces participants who were there at the time. Questions I very much connected with your story of trying to run home from school within the four minute warning. Similarly, I think seeing RAF Fylingdales and RAF Menwith Hill on childhood trips to Scarborough planted subconscious questions around nuclear war that emerged years later in my PhD thesis. To what extent do you feel your work is an attempt to gain some kind of control over that fear of nuclear war that concerned you so much as a child? Do you feel that your sculptures and artwork are an attempt to gain close-at-hand control over global forces of nuclear deterrence? To what extent do you feel that your work is an attempt to create a nomadic war machine to disrupt the assemblages of nuclear war? Something akin to Deleuze and Guittari's Warrior-Animal-Weapon as Artist-Hair-Paintbrush? Can we overcome what Gunter Anders calls the ‘Promethean gap' between the embodied limits of human imagination and the enormous powers that nuclear weapons bestow, whereby ‘We can bomb to shreds hundreds of thousands, but we cannot mourn or regret them'? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hypervelocity/message

In this first episode of Hypervelocity I was delighted to speak with Dr Matthew Ford and Professor Andrew Hoskins about their new book, Radical War: Data, Attention and Control in the Twenty-First Century. In Radical War, Matthew and Andrew recount how the smartphone, social media and big data are revolutionising the conduct and experience of war to the point that the battlefield is now everywhere. We began our discussion by defining the concept of 'radical war', finding it to differ from earlier definitions of war due to the interpenetrated nature of conflict in the modern era where everyone with a smartphone can view and participate in real time combat. Next, we explored whether Baudrillard's claim that 'the Gulf War did not take place' is only amplified in an era of Radical War, finding that whereas Baudrillard pointed to hyperreal warfare as a highly polished and sanitised spectacle by legacy media, instead 'radical war' represents a splintering of realities with as many different interpretations of a conflict as there are subscribers to social media platforms. We then clarified how the concepts of data, attention and control in Radical War stand in contention with Clausewitz's trinity of warfare consisting of state, people and armed forces, particularly through the way in which the smartphone disintermediates combatants and citizens. Finally, we discussed whether the European wars of religion caused by the invention of the printing press prefigure potential future conflicts brought about by the retreat of opposing groups into social media echo-chambers (the audio for this last question can be accessed by subscribing to tier three of the Hypervelocity Patreon). Radical War is available from: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/radical-war/ Dr Matthew Ford is Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Sussex; founding editor of the British Journal for Military History; and author of Weapons of Choice. His research interests focus on military innovation, socio-technical change, the epistemology of battle and strategy. Matthew has written extensively about military-technical change, especially as it relates to the infantry and their experience of battle. Publications: https://sussex.academia.edu/MatthewFord Twitter: https://twitter.com/warmatters Professor Andrew Hoskins is Professor of Global Security, University of Glasgow; and founding editor of the journals Digital War; Memory, Mind & Media; and Memory Studies. His research and teaching furthers interdisciplinary understanding of how and why human society is being transformed by digital tech and media, and the consequences for forgetting, memory, privacy, security, and the nature, experience and effects of contemporary warfare. Publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andrew-Hoskins Blog: https://www.andrewhoskins.net/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/andrewhoskins Thank you kindly for listening to the Hypervelocity podcast. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing below so that the impact of military technology on strategy can be explored further Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hypervelocity Blog: https://www.microliberations.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/microliberation Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8d_gG_2lTBIFK7Xl1ism5A --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/hypervelocity/message

Hypervelocity: a podcast about the impact of military technology on strategy. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/hypervelocity/message

Lovely to have Timothy on the show. Quite fittingly, there was a really nice narrative thread running through our chat linking British Romanticism, cognitive dissonance and negative capability, favourite books, the impact of the internet on narrative in works of fiction, and Timothy's upcoming literature study course built around the theme of the sea. I had never heard of the concept of negative capability before and so I was fascinated to learn about it. Likewise, I also enjoyed learning about British Romanticism, even though I'm English I didn't know that much about the movement. Timothy Wilcox has a Ph.D. in English from Stony Brook University, where he taught literature for five years. He studies British Romanticism, digital literature, and imagination. Timothy's new course 'Literature at Sea: A Brief History of Existence' is available here. Registration closes on 9 November 2020 in advance of the first reading and discussion on 14th November: https://hyperlink.academy/discount?discount=9f6cd281-f93a-402b-b0bc-f5e3fc497651 Timothy's Twitter: https://twitter.com/PreCursorPoets Timothy's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0qk9W4w-6hLBiY18g4dElQ Timothy's webpage: https://www.precursorpoets.com/ Get Primitive! If you'd like to join my mailing list to receive Primitive Accumulation content updates please fill out this form: https://fantastic-crafter-4544.ck.page/0305a6cdc8 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-simpkin/message

A quick little audio chapter for you all. A recording of an article I wrote some months ago. You can check the written article out on https://medium.com/@jsimpkin/novacene-for-the-soul-a-review-of-james-lovelocks-novacene-the-coming-age-of-hyperintelligence-56e398c0c1e6 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-simpkin/message

Cool to have Nick White with me on today's podcast. Nick is a genetic engineer with an interest, amongst many things, in nootropics. I'm an average guy and I often question my right and ability to study at PhD level, and so with Nick's interest in brain science I wanted to discuss the idea of IQ with him. First up we discussed and critiqued the idea of IQ, before touching on techniques for raising one's self-esteem when experiencing imposter syndrome. We then segued into a more general discussion and about potential gene therapy developments in cancer care, Chinese CRISPR babies, and the legacy of the legendary self-proclaimed "dumbass genius", Rick Rosner. Ultimately, Nick and I concluded that what counts in a person is character and heart, not how smart they are. Hope you enjoy the show. Nicholas White is a genetic engineer at Ginkgo Bioworks and the founder of Flux Odyssey. At 18 he was diagnosed with ADD and cyclothymia, a form of bipolar disorder, and told he’d never be able to graduate college without taking medication like Ritalin and Lithium. Despite dropping out of college twice (while taking those fancy medications the psychiatrists were so fond of), he eventually graduated with a BS in Chemistry and a minor in Neuroscience without taking prescription stimulants. On the side, he co-founded the Fencing Club of Asheville, completed undergraduate research on the signaling protein Gα13 and its role in cancer, and co-founded UNCA’s first iGEM team to compete in a genetic engineering competition. Nick discovered how to solve his own health complications with supplements, nootropics and natural products. He now works as a genetic engineer at a synthetic biology company on the cutting edge of science and has 4+ years experience as a molecular biologist. One of his current projects at work is helping with the strain engineering and process development of a covid19 RNA vaccine, a collaboration between Ginkgo Bioworks and Moderna Therapeutics. Nick's Twitter account https://twitter.com/nicholasfwhite Nick's podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/7pG6iNPsdNoNANvmH2Vaym?si=p9OvPpcNSz2ZiTKNA1Uj8A Nick's nootropics company https://flux-odyssey.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-simpkin/message

I was delighted to have had David Gornoski with me for this episode of Primitive Accumulation, particularly as David was my first guest whom I did not know beforehand. I just emailed David out of the blue and he said yes. David was also very generous with his time, talking with me for nearly two hours. As a libertarian Christian, David draws on his Christian faith to advocate for non-violent solutions to social problems. For David, this means that just as Jesus did not use violence to convince people of the correct moral course of action, so too, modern society and political institutions should not resort to coercion to address social problems, no matter how worthy such courses of action might be. David is very much in favour of collective efforts to address inequality and other social issues, it's just that he believes they should be addressed through the actions of free individuals coming together themselves, rather than through the state apparatus, which he believes to be coercive. To this end, David is also very passionate about the abolition of prison sentences for victimless crimes. David's worldview is also underpinned by his reading of French Philosopher Rene Girard's concept of Mimesis, which is where society bonds itself together by casting out a scapegoat. David takes Girard's mimesis and argues that the modern state is also a manifestation of this scapegoating tendency in human society. Drawing on Girard, with the coming of Christ, David argues, this cycle of scapegoating can end, and true respect for the individual can begin. In general, David favours solutions to social problems developed by the plucky individual and sees states and giant corporations as crowding these opportunities out. As a democratic socialist, I tend to believe that redistributive progressive taxation coupled with large-scale state-sponsored projects are an important tool for reducing poverty and maximising opportunity in society. I also went to a Christian primary school and the two main messages I take from Christianity are a concern for the disadvantaged and the importance of forgiveness. I was therefore intrigued to learn about how David articulated his Christian concern for the disadvantaged outside of states and corporations. David and I had a very cordial chat and it was interesting to learn more about his worldview. David Gornoski is an entrepreneur, speaker, and writer. He is also the founder of a project called A Neighbor's Choice which seeks to introduce Jesus’ culture of nonviolence to both Christians and the broader public. A Neighbor's Choice is also the name of his weekly show on state violence and alternative solutions to it. David's website, A Neighbor's Choice https://aneighborschoice.com/ David's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJueQt-WKvL9CYDy2U7tfbQ David's podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/david-gornoski/id1481399105 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-simpkin/message

It’s great to have back with me Johannes Neiderhauser, PhD. In yet another engaging and eclectic discussion, Johannes and I ranged over a wide but interconnected landscape of ideas including Dasein and the tragic death of the very young, the necessity of Amor Fati in the face of a world by turns joyous and painful, the pitfalls of happy-go-lucky nihilism, before finally turning to an examination of whether the subject has been eliminated or amplified in drone warfare. Johannes is a philosopher, currently teaching at Birkbeck College, he will soon publish his first book on Heidegger’s phenomenology of death. Johannes has also made recent forays into online education through his collaborative course with Justin Murphy on the subject of Deleuze Vs Heidegger; a thought-provoking course which very much felt like Johnny Cash jamming with the Sex Pistols. In the last few weeks, Johannes has also launched his own solo course on Idleness with Dignity, surely to be followed by many more to come. As well as being the impresario of the Dead Philosophers Club, Johannes is also the founder of the Halkyon Thinkers Guild, ‘a gathering of thinkers, artists, writers, forecasters, and sense-makers.’ Johannes has been on fire recently with a plethora of fascinating YouTube videos on the challenges of our age. Please check out his fascinating lectures and interviews at Classical Philosophy on Youtube, Instagram and Patreon. Links can be found below. Classical Philosophy on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDsQqlrzoc-K32DE-Wh-roA Classical Philosophy on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/classical.philosophy/ Classical Philosophy Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/classicalphilosophy/posts Halkyon, The Thinkers Guild Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halkyonthinkersguild/posts --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-simpkin/message

This time around, it was great to have with me Robin Amos to discuss the idea of Utopia. I’d met Robin through the indiethinkers.org forum and was intrigued to learn more about his conceptualisation of the future as an idea in itself. To begin, I asked Robin what I hope going forward will become “the Primitive Accumulation question”, which is: which two thoughts do you hold that contradict themselves the most? This kicked off an interesting discussion of the tension between liberty and security. We then moved on to the topic of utopia proper, including a contemplation of Oscar Wilde’s classic dictum that, “A map of the world without utopia is not worth looking at”; to past hopes and horrors brought about by the utopian ideologies of the 20th century; the immanent emancipatory potential of the US Constitution; Brexit as a Conservative utopian vision, and the failure of the Left to articulate a similarly compelling vision of the future. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-simpkin/message

I’ve been reading Donald D. Hoffman’s The Case Against Reality: How evolution hid the truth from our eyes. At one point Hoffman uses a Wittgenstein quote to raise a point about how our senses can deceive us, and this got me thinking about distortions in our moral perceptions, too. Hoffman makes the point that from the basis of our everyday perceptions of the world it is very natural to experience the earth as the unmoving centre of the universe; to believe that the sun goes around the earth. This quandary was once put to Wittgenstein, whom replied, ‘what would it have looked liked if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?’. This gap between perception and reality then made me think that something like this can occur with our moral sense. How best to treat addiction, for example, is just such a case in point. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-simpkin/message

For my debut podcast I’m delighted to have with me Johannes Niederhauser PhD. Johannes is a Heidegger scholar, currently teaches philosophy at Birkbeck College and will soon publish his first book on Heidegger’s phenomenology of death. Johannes is also the impresario of the Dead Philsophers Club, which he hosts at the Library Members club in London. Please check out his fascinating lectures and interviews at Classical Philosophy on youtube, Instagram and Patreon. In today’s discussion, Johannes and I explore Heidegger’s statement in The Thing that in the modern age, ‘the frantic abolition of distance brings no nearness’. We explore Heidegger’s notion from the personal realm of online interactions before expanding it out to encompass the global nature of drone warfare, ballistic missile defence and nuclear war. How do these Techniks, as Heidegger would put it, stem from a pathological spatial abstraction and what can be done to counter this? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-simpkin/message

Podcasts coming soon. Let's Get Primitive! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/james-simpkin/message