@erinmcel.bsky.social , co-founder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and author of Silicon Valley Imperialism, will be speaking as a part of our Data Activism in the Age of Trump webinar on April 28. Register at the link below.

Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies & Frictions in Postsocialist Times Erin McElroy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2024, 296 pp. $27.95 paper (ISBN 978-1-4780-3021-8); $104.95 cloth (ISBN 978-1-4780-2596-2); $27.95 electronic (ISBN 978-1-4780-5921-9)

Thank you so so much to @muybarra.bsky.social, @desireefields.bsky.social, @liviu-chelcea.bsky.social, Ananya Roy, and Magie Ramirez for their generous reflections on Silicon Valley Imperialism! @dukepress.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1080/2325...

UW graduate student deported through SEA as protesters demand answers A union representing University of Washington graduate student workers says Kennedy Orwa’s student visa was rescinded without explanation.

Our PhD student Kennedy Orwa, who studies applications of AI to health care, was hastily deported today to Kenya along with his 13-year-old son without opportunity to speak to legal counsel.

King 5 reports that he held a valid visa that was rescinded without explanation.

While we can’t levy sanctions as individuals, we can try to make US tech companies feel the pain a bit

The professor reportedly wrote in a March 18 newsletter, which he sent via the center’s listserv, that “Israeli actions tell us that they seek the destruction of the state, not just its ruling class.” The email, titled “More notes on the Iran war,” reportedly added that it “was always BS” that the Islamic Republic was pursuing nuclear weapons.

The U. of Washington stripped its Director of Middle East Studies of his position for writing an email that said “Israeli actions tell us that they seek the destruction of the state, not just its ruling class” and that Iran had not been pursuing nuclear weapons.

In other words, for stating facts.

University of Washington professor fired from director job after sending email criticizing Iran war Aria Fani of University of Washington’s Middle East Center is latest critic of Israel to lose position at US university

University of Washington professor fired from director job after sending email criticizing Iran war

How Thomson Reuters Powers ICE and Palantir Thomson Reuters’ data, which can include peoples’ addresses and details on their ethnicity, is linked to tools used ICE.

NEW: Thomson Reuters, the media company which is also a data broker, has long provided personal data for ICE tools, according to documents obtained by 404 Media and sources. There are also indications its data is now part of the Palantir system ICE uses to find which neighborhoods to target.

AI as a War Issue, War as a Workers’ Issue The fight against the University of Michigan–Los Alamos data center.

The fight against the University of Michigan–Los Alamos data center reveals the “political and planetary stakes” of AI and the threat of “tech-enhanced militarism,” @tisjune.bsky.social , @shreyachowdhary.bsky.social & @nathanckim.bsky.social write in #Academe:

In this response essay, I reflect upon how some of the central themes of my book Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times (Duke University Press, 2024) speak to the contemporary technofascist moment, as well as ongoing practices of attempting to de–siliconize the future. I also offer fascist transformations currently transpiring on both sides of the former Iron Curtain, as well as the landscapes of gentrification upon which they take place, a deeper and transnational genealogy–one rooted in historic technologies of racial banishment, heteromasculinism, and anticommunism. At the same time, I celebrate the ongoing freedom struggles against fascism, racial banishment, and genocidal technologies that organizers in both the United States and Romania continue to commit themselves to, all in an interconnected effort to unbecome Silicon Valley. Throughout this essay, I engage with the insightful comments made by Kavita Dattani, Michele Lancione, Manissa M. Maharawal, Nassim Parvin, Gillian Rose, and Daniela Rosner here, each of whom offer brilliant interventions and generous reflections in this forum.

"Siliconization, technofascism, and their unbecomings"
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Thanks to Kavita Dattani, Manissa Maharawal, Daniela Rosner, @nassimparvin.bsky.social, @profgillian.bsky.social and @michelelancione.bsky.social
@societyandspace.bsky.social
@dukepress.bsky.social

🌉 IJURR at AAG 2026 | San Francisco

Join us for the IJURR Lecture by Erin McElroy and explore our new Virtual Issue on San Francisco.

Check it out 👇
www.ijurr.org/ijurr-at-the...

For those at the AAG, come say hi today! @ijurresearch.bsky.social
"Technofeudal Fever Dreams: Silicon Fiefdoms, Doom Loop Dystopics, and the Emancipatory Posssibilities of Failure."

Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia was released on bond Monday after more than a year in ICE detention.

Grammarly Offering Manuscript Reviews by AI Versions of Recently Deceased Professors The Grammarly "Expert Review" feature uses AI to provide feedback on papers using the name and work of real professors, dead or alive.

Daily reminder that calling ai dead labor and stolen labor is literal.

UT to consolidate gender and ethnic studies programs into one new department Affected departments include those that focus on African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American Studies, Women and Gender Studies and American Studies.

This is a travesty. African and African Diaspora Studies at UT Austin has been one of the best programs in the country. And for historical context, this is explicitly about reversing the gains of student movements in the 60s and 70s.

www.statesman.com/news/educati...

ICE to begin detaining immigrants inside Social Circle warehouse in April Homeland Security plans to build warehouse detention facilities in other cities being met with opposition.

ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps.

If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they'll be the largest prisons in the country, with little real oversight. www.ajc.com/politics/202...

Screenshot of ESTS webpages and all the content listed as PDF and HTML content.

📢Issue 11.3 out now!

2 Engagements, 2 ORAs + the Final Editorial of the 2020-25 ESTS Collective on the difference & promise of leading and running a diamond open access journal

#ClimateChange #TransnationalSTS #Retooling #Openness #HousingJustice

#OpenScience

👀https://bit.ly/3LoiLxT

Props to the developers behind ICE Map, cataloguing all known ICE incidents www.icemap.dev

New issue of ESTS out, including an interesting article by Luis Felipe R. Murillo and Erin McElroy @erinmcel.bsky.social on possibilities for creating “'political software' aligned with the goals of housing action research" estsjournal.org/index.php/es...

Conflicting info about whether Pretti was murdered by ICE or CBP makes it clear that ICE is not single "rogue agency"

ICE, CBP and ALL policing & borders must be abolished. This isn't just one agency; its an entire infrastructure of carceral control, illegalization & criminalization, and fascism.

There is no "immigration problem"

There is no migrant problem

There is no problem with illegals

There is no border crisis

Only a problem of the border and the machinery of death that upholds it.

DHS Shooting Victim in Minneapolis Was a ‘Sweet’ and ‘Principled Person’ Zeteo spoke with two doctors who worked with Alex Pretti, a nurse who is the latest victim of Trump’s violent invasion of Minnesota.

New: Alex Pretti, the man killed by the Trump-Vance mob of agents was an outdoorsmen, a mountain biker, an ICU nurse who "would go out of his way to help," say Veterans Affairs colleagues.

Cheerful. Funny. Gentle.

And still, per sources, Trump officials are urging staff to call him a "terrorist."

ICE Agents Fatally Shoot Observer in Minneapolis - UNICORN RIOT ICE fatally shot a woman acting as an observer to their immigration actions in Minneapolis.

NEW: ICE Agents Fatally Shoot Observer in Minneapolis

unicornriot.ninja/2026/ice-age...

Disciplining Through Landlord Technologies: Why the Carceral Logics of Tenant Surveillance Require Abolition Facial recognition and other surveillance systems are increasingly being deployed in low-income housing across the United States, adding new scopic regimes into an already carceral propertied landsca...

Excited to have this out in the world

“Disciplining Through Landlord Technologies: Why the Carceral Logics of Tenant Surveillance Require Abolition”

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

@antipodeonline.bsky.social

‘They’re trying to get rich off it’: US contractors vie to rebuild Gaza, with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ team in the lead Exclusive: group behind notorious Florida immigration detention center created bid for reconstruction deal Trump administration insiders and well-connected Republican businesses have been jostling to dominate pending humanitarian aid and reconstruction logistics in the shattered Gaza Strip, according to sources and documents reviewed by the Guardian. With three-quarters of Gaza’s structures damaged or destroyed by two years of Israeli strikes, the rebuilding effort to come – estimated at $70bn by the United Nations – could be a rich prize for companies that specialize in construction, demolition, transportation and logistics. Continue reading...

‘They’re trying to get rich off it’: US contractors vie to rebuild Gaza, with ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ team in the lead

Thanks so much for having me on! If was such a fun and rich conversation! @dukepress.bsky.social

Join us as we “reflect on what bringing abolitionist and ant- imperial geographies together in post-socialist contexts can do. Just as global capital connections mapped the Siliconizing moment, other connections scaffold the very possibilities of unbecoming Silicon Valley.”

Tech elites are starting their own for-profit cities They want to escape from regulation and ‘failing’ democracy — but are they more opportunistic than libertarian?

I would say this because I edited it but @mshannahmurphy.bsky.social's piece on tech bros founding their own for-profit cities really is unmissable reading www.ft.com/content/b127...

Launching the Genesis Mission By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose.

Advancing techno-fascism, the EO edition.

Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Let’s be inspired together on December 7!

This Is What Genocide Looks Like When Silicon Valley Writes the Brochure Corporate, tech oligarchs are providing the infrastructure for and profiting off genocide in Gaza. But accountability is closer than you think.

inthesetimes.com/article/gaza...