After two-plus years of pandemic hell, it is beyond understandable that so many desperately want to forget the horror and havoc of COVID-19 and move on with their lives, but it’s imperative that we learn from catastrophic pandemic policy mistakes and hold accountable the powerful forces that took advantage of this crisis for their own gain. Aided by governments and public-private partnerships, Big Tech has been one of the biggest offenders in this regard. As Kevin Klyman notes in his recent extensive essay for Jacobin, republished here by TRNN, governments partnering with tech companies to battle the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t save lives, but it did put lots of money in the hands of Big Tech and provided a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity for powerful companies to take and control our sensitive data. In this interview for the TRNN podcast, Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Klyman about his essay and about the jaw-dropping grift that Big Tech has been running while the rest of us have struggled to survive over the past two years.

Kevin Klyman is a policy researcher and a data scientist who advocates for responsible uses of technology to reduce poverty and advance peace. He is currently a researcher at Harvard’s Kennedy School, where he publishes research on how technology can help prevent war between the United States and China. Before that, Klyman worked at the United Nations Foundation and the UN Secretary General’s artificial intelligence lab, where he wrote data protection policies that were adopted by the World Health Organization. His freelance writing has been published by a range of outlets, including South China Morning Post, TechCrunch, and Jacobin.

Pre-Production/Studio: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

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Maximillian Alvarez is an Izzy-Award-winning journalist and the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Executive Director of The Real News Network. He is the founder and host of Working People, "a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today," which he started after his family lost their home and life savings during the Financial Crash of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession. Alvarez is the author of The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke, a collection of interviews with US workers recorded during Year One of of the Covid-19 pandemic. His forthcoming book—tentatively titled “American Sacrifice: Working People Fight for The Lives (and Our Future) in America’s ‘Sacrifice Zones’”—is under contract with Haymarket Books. From April 2022 to March 2024, Alvarez hosted and produced The Art of Class War series on Breaking Points. From September 2016 to January 2019, he was a regular contributor and then a columnist for The Baffler magazine. Prior to joining TRNN, Alvarez was an Associate Editor at the Chronicle Review at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Prior to that, he was a graduate student-worker and rank-and-file member of the Graduate Employees’ Organization (AFT Local 3550) at the University of Michigan, where he earned a dual-PhD in History and Comparative Literature, taught undergraduates, and published academic articles in Media Theory and La Deleuziana: An Online Journal of Philosophy. Prior to that, he worked a litany of low-wage jobs in different restaurants, warehouses, factories, retail stores, etc. Alvarez’s writing has been featured in outlets like The Nation, Poynter, In These Times, Boston Review, The Baffler, Current Affairs, Dissent, Protean Magazine, The New Republic, Truthout, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. As an analyst and commentator, he has appeared on programs like PBS NewsHour, Breaking Points, Democracy Now!, The Laura Flanders Show, NPR’s 1A, The Hill’s Rising, This Is Hell!, Krystal Kyle & Friends, The Michael Brooks Show, The Jacobin Show, CounterPunch Radio, Citations Needed, Bad Faith with Briahna Joy Gray, Know Your Enemy, Srsly Wrong, Left Anchor, Revolutionary Left Radio, The End of Sport Podcast, Pod Damn America, The David Pakman Show, The Megyn Kelly Show, The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent, The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow, The David Feldman Show, and The Marianne Williamson Podcast.