I found this book while doing research for my novel Radiance, which is set in a post-nuclear war world. But the topic of nuclear technology intersects in a big way with my work on the internet and vampire valley, too. The two technologies — nukes and information systems — were part of the same co-evolving meta-technology. America’s use of nukes in Japan, and the nuclear arms race that this attack helped launch, massively sped up and shaped the development of modern communication systems and surveillance technology, giving it the form that it has today. You could say that our hyper-real information society was built on the back of the nuclear bomb. And it feels that way, doesn’t it? Paranoid, constantly on edge…

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Have a great week. Pray with us that Trump does not nuke the world. Praying is all we got left. 🙏

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For this vamp valley stream, I had Peter Korotaev on to talk about drones and war. Drones, which I see as very much related to the internet, have made big leaps in battlefield adoption in the last few years: first in the Russian-Ukraine war and now in the Israeli-American war on Iran.

The United States pioneered drone technology. In fact, as I mentioned on the stream, the same ARPA program that funded the internet was at the same time funding research into drone technology for use in the Vietnam War…a small helicopter operated by a remote control so big it barely fit on an Army jeep. But even though the U.S. security state has been pumping money into drone technology for more than half a century, it hadn’t explored the use of drone technology to its fullest potential yet. It’s been up to peripheral states like Ukraine and Iran (and also Israel) to take drone warfare to the next level. And what’s happening on the periphery of the empire is going to be coming home soon…there is no doubt about it. Drone tech is just too easy to use, too effective…like smartphones. It makes me think of Philip K. Dick’s wonderful novella, Second Variety, which is about autonomous robotic weapons that were designed to kill people…until they ran out of people and started fighting each other. I’m pretty sure Second Variety inspired Terminator, even though it was never credited.

Anyway, Peter writes the great Events in Ukraine newsletter. I highly recommend reading his stuff. He’s a funny writer and covers the subject with the respect and black humor that it requires.

See you next week!

I’m doing these streams every week, broadcasting against Vampire Valley from within Vampire Valley. All live streams will be available to the public but most recorded streams will be available only to paying subscribers. Influencers are people. We need to eat, too. Reminder: If you donate $100 or more to my Vampire Valley doc, you will automatically get an annual sub. If you’re thinking of giving a larger tax-deductible donation, get in touch with us at vampires@yashalevine.com.

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With AI trying to swallow everything, it’s clearer now more than ever that we are in the middle of another industrial power grab — the attempt to centralize political and economic power in the hands of an even tinier elite. We talked to Joe to make sense of the situation. We talked about AI, the parasitic internet, industrialization’s destruction of democracy, the politics of technology, what it means to be monkeys who think they’re in control of the known universe… Joe thinks there is a tiny glimmer of hope: the AI boom we’re in potentially offers a historic opportunity to transcend our entrenched, stagnant politics: the much-promised automation and the grim reality of a computerized crapification of broad sectors of our society might make the reorganization of politics not just a possibility but a necessity — an opportunity that hasn’t been seen in many generations.

This talk took place on November 23, 2025, in Manhattan at the KGB Bar. This is the first time it is being published on this pacification platform we call the internet.

For those who don’t know, Joe Costello has been on our podcast many times, and I’ve republished his work before. He’s worked in politics all of his life, and he’s one of the most clear thinkers and writers today on politics and on the meaning of democracy in our age of terminal industrialization. Buy his book! And subscribe to his newsletter, Life in the 21st Century. It’s really funny and insightful into the politics of energy — which is really the politics of the modern world, as people are about to discover more than ever with Trump’s attack on Iran.

—Yasha

I’ll be doing these streams every Friday at noon NYC time, broadcasting against Vampire Valley from within Vampire Valley. All live streams will be available to the public but most recorded streams will be available only to paying subscribers. Influencers are people. We need to eat, too.

Reminder: If you donate $100 or more to my Vampire Valley doc, you will automatically get an annual sub. If you’re thinking of giving a larger tax-deductible donation, get in touch with us at vampires@yashalevine.com.

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For this week’s vamp valley stream, I’m joined by Daniel Bessner to talk about how our politics are in the grips of a powerful decadent rationalist illusion: the idea that information is power.

As Daniel points out, despite having all the information in the world whenever we want it, regular people have had no measurable effect on policy. In short: We know everything, but can’t change anything. It is a longstanding problem in nominally democratic US (and Europe) that has been massively exacerbated by internet technology. We’re wrapped up in the spectacle, confusing the consumption of nonstop political content with politics.

You could say that we’re whistleblowing on our own profession here, trying to make people understand that information is not a magic spell…it is not an incantation — just knowing things about the world won’t miraculously lead to change.

—Yasha

Reminder: If you donate $100 or more to my Vampire Valley doc, you will automatically get an annual sub. If you’re thinking of giving a larger tax-deductible donation, get in touch with us at vampires@yashalevine.com.

Some essays that inform our conversation:

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For this week’s vamp valley stream, I talked to C. Derick Varn about the backstory of Mark Fisher’s controversial (at the time) and influential “Exiting the Vampire Castle” essay on cancel culture and social media…and why it still matters today.

I wrote about Fisher’s essay last summer as part of my attempt to understand the way hyper-connected communication technology is affecting our world — and how structural forces built into internet technology have worked to pacify people and have foreclosed on the possibility of any sort of politics by turning everything into a entertainment…a virtual cage match of endless culture wars where everyone is constantly pitted against each other in an endless fight that involves constantly evolving identity politics, fringe causes, peripheral issues, and perceived slights.

Derick was one of the editors who worked with Mark Fisher to publish the essay in the now-defunct The North Star online magazine. He’s also a sharp critic of the influencer economy and the effect of technology on culture and politics. Check out Derick’s show on YouTube or the podcast version of the show.

Thanks…and see you next week!

Yasha

Want to know more? Read:

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Thank you to Rich Farell and everyone at Carsey-Wolf Center for having us out and being such gracious hosts. Sorry for being such a doomer. But desperate times and all that… Of course watch Pistachio Wars if you haven’t already.

—Yasha

Rowan and I were at UC Santa Barbara last month presenting Pistachio Wars. We had a wonderful Q&A after the screening, which you can see below. Subscribers can listen to it on our usual podcast feed and read a cleaned up transcript below.

Thank you to Rich Farell and everyone at Carsey-Wolf Center for having us out and being such gracious hosts. Sorry for being such a doomer. But desperate times and all that… Of course watch Pistachio Wars if you haven’t already.

—Yasha

RICH FARRELL: Okay. My name is Rich Farrell. I’m a graduate student in the Film and Media Studies Department, and I’m pleased to be joined by the filmmakers of Pistachio Wars, Yasha Levine and Rowan WERNHAM. So a round of applause for you.

YASHA LEVINE: Thank you.

RICH FARRELL: So I just wanted to start the Q&A with some background and beginnings. First to you, Yasha. At the beginning of the film, you say that the story started with a piece that you wrote, “A Journey Through Oligarch Valley,” in 2013, which was published in Not Safe for Work magazine online. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, how you came to work on that story, and then how you decided to adapt this into a documentary?

YASHA LEVINE: Well, I’ll try to keep it brief. Thank you. Thank you everyone for coming.

I had been out of the country and started my journalism career reporting out in Russia, and I kind of missed the whole real estate bubble, the speculative boom that happened here, and the collapse that happened in 2007, 2008. I had been abroad watching it from afar. And when I came back to America, I was really curious about what it was all about. So I moved to LA and I was casting about for the best example of a speculative city that embodied the speculative boom.

I kind of toured California and chose Victorville -- a little suburb in the Mojave Desert, halfway between L.A. and Las Vegas -- because I really wanted to understand the kind of society, the kind of civilization that this boom created. Like what remained when Wall Street crashed and had to be bailed out…

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Mike opens his book by talking about an Apple ad that came out a few years ago that illustrates this Borg-like monopolize/destroy drive. I’m embedding it below because Apple had scrubbed this ad from the internet, following a backlash.

Compare this Apple ad…

…to the Borg. Who is more honest?

Buy Mike’s book today!

As Evgenia explains, he was a true poet — and a total artist. With his music and videos, he did something that no one else had done yet. He captured on a pure emotional level the feeling of Russia with its failed utopian past and its violent present and all the ideals and the people that got ground up and spit in the two revolutions — the Bolshevik one and the Market Bolshevik one it had in less than a century. Ironically, the last big thing Shortparis made was the soundtrack to Limonov’s biopic, Limonov: The Ballad.

—IBWR

PS: Evgenia recently wrote about Limonov’s prophetic view of Russian politics.

PPS: The song in the intro/outro is Apple Orchard (Яблонный сад).

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For this anti-vamp stream from my newly established basement studio, I’m joined by Brian Merchant, author of the wonderful book Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. It’s about the rise and fall of the Luddites, a decentralized 19th-century movement of English textile workers against factories and the centralization of power. We talk about the history and politics of the movement and how the conditions it faced were not that different from what we’re all facing today. In fact, it’s a lot worse now.

Eventually, the Luddite insurgency was crushed by a military force larger than the one England sent to fight Napoleon, which was happening at the same time. The history of this rebellion was erased, the state and its factory owners won, and the term “luddite” became synonymous with ignorance and laziness — any opposition to tech was branded as crazy and stupid. At the same time, the Luddites were a huge cultural power, inspiring the Romantic movement and launching the sci-fi genre with works like Frankenstein. Of course, in the end, the Luddites were right. We’re all Luddites now, whether we realize it or not. And Brian and I both agree that this actually gives us hope.

Watch and/or listen…and buy Brian’s book!

Yasha

And here are my show outline about the topics I wanted to cover. We got through most of them and more:

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Sam Kriss, slop merchant to the overly educated, makes an appearance in our talk. We also discuss how America’s ruling class hasn’t just psyoped the masses with this feedback loop tech — they’ve pysoped themselves, too. They’re just as confused and powerless as the rest of us. Everyone is looking for a strong leader type that hasn’t fallen victim to this feedback loop psyop — which is maybe why Xi has so many fans out there.

Among topics addressed: how Epstein is not some demonic force but a function of a massively unequal society with extremely bored and overfed elites, how social context creates sociopathy and breeds objectification, Alexei Yurchak and Hypernormalization, Mark Ames’s “The Life and Murder of Anna Loginova”, Fellini’s Satyricon, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut…and more.

Want to know more? Without realizing it, we did two Christmas Special episodes on Jeffrey Epstein — one in 2021 and in 2025. Christmas Special: Ghost of Epstein and Epstein Christmas Special ft. Vampire Valley… See how our views changed over the years.

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Among the topics discussed: influencerism, Olivia Nuzzi and Yasha’s stories about briefly working with her at the start of her career, the cultural emptiness of artificial intelligence, Luddites, the growing importance of controlling distribution channels as filmmaking technology gets cheaper and cheaper, August Lamm and the limitations of the anti-tech flip phone movement…and a lot more. You also get to enjoy authentic sounds of the banya: moans and grunts, water hissing at it hits hot rocks, complaints and bickering.

Have a great 2026! С лёгким паром!

We dial in on Christmas Day from sleeping-gassed San Francisco to talk about the two-day power outage (caused by Yasha psi powers), CIA mind control, the Luddites, Trump’s holiday Epstein file dump, Eyes Wide Shut and Kubrick, Russia, Marquis de Sade…

Happy Holidays!

DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST. SPEND TIME WITH YOUR FAMILY AND LOVED ONES INSTEAD.

PS: We’ll be holding a live event in SF on Jan 4 to talk about Vampire Valley, the internet as a pacification project, and the spectacle that’s grinding us all down. More info coming soon! And, as always, contribute to Yasha’s film. He can’t make it without your help!

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HELP FIGHT THE VAMPIRES!

As we discuss, looking back on it now, there was pretty much no way that the internet would not have turned into the parasitic technology that it is today. On the one hand, it was a tech that had been built by the Pentagon for technocratic control — to surveil, predict, and manage populations. On the other, it was commercialized inside a hyper-consumerist society in the grips of neoliberalism and deregulation, a society that was already full of manipulative marketing techniques and propaganda, managed through an increasingly centralized mass media. So it’s no wonder that when these two systems collided in America in the 1990s, the worst of all possible worlds emerged — the internet that we all inhabit today.

—Yasha

PS: We’re also planning a surprise event in San Francisco in a few weeks. We’ll have more info on that soon.

And now a few words from our sponsor…

There are a lot of problems with the film — overproduced yet clunky, boring, superficial, intellectually not there at all, very Wikipedia-like, and with an outdated pre-Trump America feel to it. But perhaps its main crime is that it wasted an opportunity to talk to Hersh about the mythology of journalism in America and journalism’s ultimate lack of power. He spent his entire life exposing secrets — the My Lai Massacre, the CIA’s Operation CHAOS, torture at Abu Ghraib — and yet in that same span of time, America kept getting worse and more corrupt and unequal and more violent and more unaccountable. We’re at point where journalism doesn’t matter at all. And so what good was all his journalism? Was it just a game? Entertainment? A way to pass the time and make a living? A path to fame? A relief valve for society?

None of the problems with the film are Sy Hersh’s fault. It seems like he actually gets it. The problem is that Laura Poitras is just not that bright.

I guess you could say there is an unintended message in this film and it’s this: Information by itself is not power. You need organization to turn information into power, and journalism by itself does not provide that.

At the end of the ep we discuss a Laura Poitras scandal that few know about. It includes her, Jacob Appelbaum, Julian Assange, a very expensive mattress in Berlin, and her documentary Risk.

—Yasha

PS: We discussed the mattress scandal in detail in a previous episode: Triple Threat: Julian Assange.

PPS: We also previously reviewed The Beauty And The Bloodshed, a Laura Poitras doc about Nan Goldin and her fight against the highly respected Sackler family, which is actually quite good.

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Watch Pistachio Wars first and then listen to our discussion. Film’s streaming now on your favorite oligarchic platform!

—Yasha

If you’re in New York this weekend, make sure you come out to our talk/book discussion on AI and the politics of technology. Music by Michelle Shocked!

This Sunday at the KGB BAR in NYC. 7pm!

PS: We also talk about dumb AI, influencers doing MMA cage fights, and more…

PPS: If you are in Oakland, LA, or NYC come out to Yasha’s Pistachio War screenings.

Want to know more? Read Evgenia’s essay about art and senility.

Kriss is one of the last erudite men of letters and blesses us all with his uber long Substack pieces that weave medieval history and current politics and go for tens of thousands words. Brevity is soul of the wit, as some dead British guy said. But to Kriss verbosity is essential — he needs to make his readers so confused and overwhelmed and so stuffed with facts and obscure tangents that they end up being convinced this is the work of inexplicable genius rather than a product of an insecure over-educated empty vessel.

Enjoy the episode.

If you missed part one, you can listen to it here: Sovereign Art.

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