404 Media x The Intercept Live: How AI Is Used to Surveil and Kill
404 Media Jason Koebler
404 Media and The Intercept did a live podcast on AI, surveillance, and war. The scary part: private companies are already helping filter data for governments.
Based on reporting by 404 Media, Jason Koebler — read the original for the full story.
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404 Media teamed up with The Intercept for a live conversation about a bleak corner of AI: how it’s being used to help governments watch people, and how it’s showing up in war.
Jason Koebler of 404 Media joined The Intercept’s Sam Biddle and Akela Lacy for the discussion. The focus wasn’t abstract futurism. It was the machinery already in motion — private surveillance companies filtering data for government use, and AI’s role in warfare.
The event was recorded live in Los Angeles at The Loved One on September 12. That detail matters because it grounds the whole thing in the present tense. This isn’t a panel about what might happen after some distant breakthrough. It’s about systems that are already in use.
The conversation also reached for the larger nightmare: the prospect of an AI apocalypse. But the most concrete thread in the source is the one about power flowing through private companies, then back into state surveillance. That’s the part that feels less like science fiction and more like business as usual.
Listeners can find The Intercept Briefing podcast wherever they get podcasts, and there’s a full transcript available from the collaboration.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the real AI story, not the chatbot circus. The loudest hype keeps selling software as magic while the duller, uglier work is happening in surveillance and war, which is exactly where the incentives are strongest and the scrutiny is weakest. Very on-brand for Silicon Valley, sadly.
Read more about this at: 404 Media
