Palo Alto: Break Things, Exploit and Extract | Malcolm Harris | TMR

Emma hosts writer Malcolm Harris to discuss his recent book Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World. Malcolm Harris then dives right into the story of Palo Alto as a paragon for American Capitalism, from the gold rush through the Silicon Valley revolution, beginning with an era of grassroots vigilantism legitimized by the federal government allowing the US to slowly seize California from Native groups and Spanish colonies. Walking through the goldrush and the following era, Harris discusses early Palo Alto through analogs of overseas colonies – detached from the rest of the US until the construction of the transcontinental railroad, yet a hotbed of exploitation, immigration, and globalization – before looking at how this era defined the disruptive and destructive nature of American settler-colonialism and its capitalist emphases. Next, Malcolm and Emma explore the story of Leland Stanford and his university as a further stage in the development of the disruptive and hyper-capitalist ideology of Palo Alto, before taking on the shift in technological innovation in the 20th century as the region turned towards the radio age, and began to cultivate the private-government relationship that grew in tandem with the Military Industrial Complex. After working through the post-Cold War developments, as Palo Alto saw a mass influx in Military tech funding, juxtaposed with a simultaneous militant movement exemplified by the Black Panthers, Malcolm, and Emma wrap up the interview by taking on the modern history of Big Tech and the clear parallels between its neoliberal and libertarian reactionary ideology and that created the system that helps it thrive.

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And we are joined now by Malcolm Harris a journalist and author of Palo Alto a history of California capitalism and the world. Malcolm thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me Emma. I know I like a lot of the books that we feature here on the majority report. Highly highly recommended. I mean after having read some of your books I would imagine Malcolm you're in agreement that AI is going to be transformational right? Transformation for some people's bank accounts I guess. exactly. So in your book I mean people might be surprised that it is not just a recent history of Silicon Valley kind of tech entrepreneurship. It makes this really compelling case well by going through the history of California and that region of California for why Palo Alto and Northern California in particular is like this Paragon for American capitalism. And I think a lot of people would think of East Coast money centers first when they would think of areas of the country that epitomize United States money or monetary systems like Wall Street or something like that. But as you write California really has been a laboratory for American extraction. What was your thought process behind that being so Central to your analysis? Yeah, when I started this project I thought I would run into a lot of that when I was releasing the book of people questioning you know is Palo Alto really this important? Is it sure you know the tech industry is there but is it a world Historical Center of capitalism in America. Surely you mean San Francisco. You know maybe you mean Los Angeles but not Palo Alto. Now only a few years later after that, I don't get that question nearly as much. The role of Palo Alto has been so self-explanatory not just in this country but in the world economy. And so this project allowed me to go back and find the origins of that and really to see how people forgot that experience over and over again.