Professor, Political Science, Brock University Knowledge governance, IPE, Sydney Swans tragic Co-author, with Natasha Tusikov, The New Knowledge: Information, Data and the Remaking of Global Power (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023).
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Despairing at the Canadian govt's inaction on digital sovereignty in the face of a fascist US? I signed an open letter calling on PM Carney to take direct steps to ensure real digital sovereignty, not just AI fantasies of "innovation." Canada needs to get serious. www.cbc.ca/news/politic...
White House reminds press pool that lots of presidents smell like they’ve been decomposing for 5 days
ixmaps.ca/learn/issues...
So basically the dependency theorists were right.
Evergreen
At least 25 per cent of Canada’s domestic internet traffic “unnecessarily routed through the U.S., where it loses Canadian control and protections and is subject to U.S. surveillance and other forms of interference.” www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/art...
Congratulations, Arn!
At #52, Ottawa hometown indie pop heroes fanclubwallet (2022). Also the first band I saw live (opening for Chvrches) after things started to reopen in 2022. They have a new album out in October, which you should definitely buy. fanclubwallet.bandcamp.com/album/living... #best100 #MusicSky
1/2 FT: "Developing countries are moving out of dollar debts and turning to currencies with rock bottom interest rates such as the Chinese renminbi and Swiss franc." www.ft.com/content/36f8...
Canadians don't need, as Ling argues, "someone to point out that the house next door is on fire." Experts have been doing that for months. We need the government to understand the crisis. We need them to build a firebreak, at any cost. We need a complete change in strategy, before it's too late.
Carney's policies -- slash-and-burn government, tepid international outreach, AI-driven economic development, the bizarre pursuit of continued security cooperation and a trade deal with the US -- are taking us in exactly the wrong direction, toward subjugation and vassalization.
It also makes little sense to pursue new trade agreements when what Canada's always been terrible at isn't signing agreements, but support for Canadian businesses in moving abroad. Of course, that takes money and expertise, the two things Carney's slashing from government.
Reducing internal trade barriers, creating a national housing strategy are fine policies, but they don't come anywhere near making up for the US market. How to address that? And European defence outreach? Does anyone think that Europe would intervene militarily to defend Canada under any conditions?
(Which, c'mon. Canadians understand that the US is the most relevant source of instability for Canada & the world. Patriotic Canadians will enlist to defend the country vs the US. But why should Canadians support greater defence spending if we're just going to side with the country threatening us?)
(An example: Carney is justifying throwing all the money at defence while cutting the rest of government b/c he says the world is more dangerous now. The CF is clearly counting on huge recruitment numbers. But both Carney and the CF claim that the US is still an ally, and not a threat.
There's a paradox at the heart of Carneyworld: Carney's appeasement in pursuit of a US deal only makes sense if the US/Trump can be trusted. But if we can trust the US enough to sign a deal, then there's really no crisis. In which case, what are we doing here?
Meanwhile, he's passed up easy, sovereignty-reinforcing policies, e.g., strengthening Canada's regulatory regime and significantly increasing research/ed spending (prov role, but there are ways), that suggest a rigid adherence to conservative economic orthodoxy and/or a misreading of the US threat.
There's a degree of bamboozlement in Carney's policies, from the focus on lower internal trade barriers to increased defence spending to reaching out to Europe. They may look good, but they don't hold together as a strategy to offset the loss of the US security guarantee and stable market access.
His sole concession to the 21st century is an AI policy that reads like a Silicon Valley fever dream, entrusted to a huckster who happens to be a close friend of the PM. Carney's policies haven't just been bad; in almost all cases, they're the exact opposite of what Canada needs right now.
Carney's actions reflect an ideological rigidity, lifting policies straight from the 1990s (a new US trade deal! Tax cuts! Spending cuts!) and 1890s (resource export-driven development!), with no regard for how the world's changed. Specifically, how US authoritarianism directly threatens Canada.
Not sure it's exactly right or the whole story that Carney's appeasing Trump b/c he thinks Canadians don't have the stomach for hardship. Looking at his government as a whole, what stands out are the ideological consistency and policies that suggest a misreading of the nature of the US threat.
Why yes, the answer is co-ops! They’re not just for hippies selling muesli anymore…
An excellent essay on the rejection of experts, ignorance, RFK Jr., and "not-knowing, as a way of claiming the authority of ignorance." www.the-reframe.com/your-ignoran... Reminds me of this adage: "Everything looks like a conspiracy when you don't know how anything works."
And that AI position just happens to be the foundation of Carney's economic development and government reform plans. Swell. Under Carney, the Canadian digital-policy debate has regressed into mindless cheerleading (see: Solomon, Evan). It's as if the last 30 years never happened.
Mark Carney celebrates Labour Day by ordering labourers back to work
This is chilling & sinister. There is no place for antisemitic hate & violence anywhere. No one should ever feel fearful of going to the grocery store. Now more than ever we must all hold the universality of human rights tight.
"The world's leading genocide scholars' association has passed a resolution saying that the legal criteria have been met to establish Israel is committing genocide in Gaza" www.reuters.com/world/middle...
Hmmm - odd that there are no fines for the grocery retail chains found 'maple-washing' food by claiming it was made in Canada to dupe buyers into thinking they were buying local. www.cbc.ca/news/busines...
A global push Canada’s border agency plans to use AI to screen everyone entering the country — and single out ‘higher risk’ people www.thestar.com/news/canada/...
Remember, kids: A real big goal of "AI" is to entirely sever capital from labor, and no, there will be no universal basic income, you can all just starve and die, thanks www.axios.com/2025/08/26/a...
Even in the EU. What I find so telling about the "OMG China" stuff is that while it reflects deep fears, it also operates on the assumption that if the US impales itself on its own internal contradictions there will inevitably see some other actor (AKA China) that will step in to create order..but..
Imagination is definitely in short supply in policy circles these days.
Sorry to the PetSmart clerk, I did not mean to give a hysterical laugh and say “why the fuck not, who knows how long we all have” when you asked if I wanted to use my $4 in PetPoints today
President Trump’s tariff push is hurting American consumers, disrupting global trade, and straining U.S. alliances—including with Canada. Quoted for LRT, I argue these tariffs are less about economics and more about political leverage. The costs are already adding up. www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-e...
Some of the brightest lights I’ve known have been forced to eat shit repeatedly in their careers. And they were the “lucky” ones—in that they were able to stay in the game. Many more just got completely pushed out and we never know about them except as faceless statistics.
The utter collapse of the mainstream right’s cordon sanitaire was a far bigger cause of the far right surge than anything the left ever did
Happy to share this new piece in @foodtank.bsky.social co-authored with my grad student Anastasia Papadopoulos on the need for a new approach to food policies in the face of the current trade wars - highlighting possibilities of cooperative self-reliance @ipes-food.org foodtank.com/news/2025/08...
The tl;dr: Greater military spending without acknowledging that the US is the main threat to Canada, and without transforming governance in this country, will be for naught. We need actually ambitious plans, not recycled conservative ideology.
Carney’s policies are conservative, incremental and biased toward preserving a status quo that no longer exists. If Canada doesn’t course correct, we will drift toward vassalization and subjugation. What’s needed is a fundamental rethink of how Canada works, starting with the role of the state.
And we’ve had no real talk about *how and to what extent* Carney’s domestic policies will actually strengthen the Canadian economy. For a former economist, he’s been shockingly reluctant to talk in econometric specifics.
In other words, what is our military buildup going to buy us? Does Carney really think Europe would intervene militarily in Canada should the US invade if we help Ukraine or buy more Euro arms? Of course they won’t. Meanwhile, Carney has made *no* moves to reduce our integration w/ the US military.
In short, Carney is acting as if things haven’t changed enough to warrant rethinking fundamental governance questions. He keeps mentioning how geopolitics has made the world more dangerous, but IDs China and Russia, not the US, as our main threats. Which has been the status quo for a decade now.
As the comparison with Poland highlights, the one thing that’s off the table is a reconsideration of the balance between state and market forces in Canada. This is a problem because our current laissez faire-ish system is based on deeper US integration. It *can’t* deliver greater independence.
Carney’s vaunted nation-building infrastructure plans are also on the conservative side of industrial policy, as defined in this important recent article. They’re designed to maintain an extinct status quo, not to deal with a fundamentally changed world. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Same with seeking new trade agreements, a decades-old Canadian fetish, instead of greater support for business to take advantage of the agreements we already have (including the WTO, which covers the planet).
All of Carney’s purported transformative activities, even the increased defence spending, amount to more of the same things Canada’s been doing for 40 years. Smaller government, lower taxes, preference for security spending (when was the last time a police budget was cut in this country?).
Indeed. “it's been easier for Poland to build up that country's defence industry because, unlike Canada, much of its defence industry is state-owned or operated.” This statement is the key to understanding Carney’s overall strategy, and why it won’t meet the moment. Brief 🧵
🧵 Authoritarianism, Democratization, and Coalition Politics. The consensus around here is, more or less, that the United States is currently a consolidating authoritarian regime controlled by a mix of reactionary populists and fascists.
This consensus is correct. But I don't think enough people have actually internalized the implications. That is, they're perfectly happy to point out that too many Dem officials don't understand this, but they haven't updated their own understanding of what this means for taking the country back.
It's definitely an opportune time to rediscover theorists like Robert W. Cox and Susan Strange, whose work is tailor-made for this moment.
Maybe - finally - a good time to also consider more carefully what political economists have to say about the big picture questions? "Economists are also at their best when addressing short-term cyclical matters. Yet today the global economic system is encountering significant structural change."
Recalling the (mostly US) pundits and academics who treated the fentanyl czar and related policies as a joke, arguing that Trudeau (and then Carney) were getting one over on Trump. But bad policy is always bad policy, and these are all bad policies in their own right. And appeasement never works.
A powerful, honest moment. The best of sports. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...
@ntusikov.bsky.social and I have an entire book that explains everything that’s wrong with initiatives like this. We even provide policy recommendations. The tl;dr: do the exact opposite of what the CBSA is doing. www.bloomsbury.com/us/new-knowl...
The worst, most ignorant, least responsible use of predictive algorithms. It’s the opposite of what a government that cared about sound policymaking would do. The Carney government’s terrible record on digital policy remains intact. www.thestar.com/news/canada/...
Let’s start with the fact that dude is doing Digital Blackface and calling it his “sidekick”
AI is a continuation of slavery in that, it is the desire for free labor and in the white imagination free labor is always Black. Always.
Odds are that this won’t be the last time the US does this. If Canada and Quebec were smart, they’d be preparing a bid to move the UN’s NY operations to Montreal.
This decision isn’t ‘unusual’. It’s a gross violation of the US’s agreement to host the United Nations HQ www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Senior white male AI researcher "designs" a computer program to simulate a young Black woman. That will answer student's questions and debate with students (all TA roles) but won't be a TA. Right. Tell me you don't understand the social implications of this tech without etc etc
I increasingly struggle to separate the AI productivity debate from the computer productivity debate of the 1990s. Actually, I think it's all still the same debate. Some initial thoughts on what I think will become something more substantial: siu2lh.com/articles/are...
That’s very poorly said on my part, but you’ve definitely given me something to think about.
That’s super-interesting. Thanks for sharing. It reminds me of how deeply the assumption of progress is engrained into our thinking about tech. Not all change, tech or otherwise, is progressive or will lead us to a brighter future.
Would Evan Solomon even be in cabinet if he wasn’t a personal friend of the prime minister?
What kills me about this story is that Library of Parliament experts wrote a legislative summary and analysis of C-27 for parliamentarians three years ago, and it’s publicly available. Here you go. Ignorance and laziness: a wonderful combination in a cabinet minister. lop.parl.ca/sites/Public...
Paul Pierson 2015, Power and path dependence (in Mahoney/Thelen (eds.)): “Power begets power…Victory over core institutional arrangements or a critical policy outcome tilts the playing field for future rounds of contestation, increasing the probability for victory”.
Or… hear me out … instead of dramatically cutting carbon emissions in order not to bequeath countless future generations a misery that will cause them to curse our names, the Liberal government of noted environmentalist Mark Carney could build a pipeline. Tough call.
Political realism + defiance = politics. Carney’s problem (and ours) is that he’s a lifelong bureaucrat facing a political problem with no technocratic solution. As Salutin notes, to take on Trump you need Canadian workers behind you. Carney doesn’t seem to understand that basic political reality.
Yes: “Carney has hit a defiant chord, sometimes stridently, since he entered politics: Trump “wants to break us so American can own us,” etc. That has perceptibly diminished over time. He doesn’t seem to know how to combine defiance and political realism. It’s not an easy task, but that’s the job.”
If Canadians and our leaders see this as a political battle for Canada’s existence, our threshold for resistance will remain high, and likely go higher. But if pundits and leaders keep treating this as an economic exercise, the pressure to accept US subjugation will become a real problem.
That’s why Carney’s pre-emptive and foolish cave on the DST was so disturbing. It suggested that he still thinks he’s just negotiating a trade deal, and not setting the long-term parameters for how independent (or not) the US will allow Canada to be.
Canada’s location and deep, deep integration with the US economy (thanks, Mulroney!) mean that the cost of Canada caving to US demands, as even Europe has done, are exponentially higher for us than anyone else, except maybe Mexico. Europe faces inconvenient tradeoffs. Canada, subjugation.
Trump’s tariffs, especially in the unique Canadian context, are designed not just to restore US manufacturing, but to eliminate Canadian political autonomy. The goal is to make Canada pliant to all US economic, social and security demands.
This column on whether Canadians have the stomach to keep resisting the US if we’re hit with the full force of US tariffs makes the common mistake of treating the crisis as an economic-only problem. In reality, it’s primarily political. That changes everything.
“This goes far beyond, and is far worse, than bad monetary policy or harmful vaccine policy. It is the beginning of the transformation of the United States into something unrecognizable.” Oh, it’s very recognizable. Reporters, editors and pundits just have to develop the courage to name it: fascism.
Maybe Jawbox and Jawbreaker circa 94-95? Interviewed Blake from Jawbreaker before the show for my student paper. Very nice guy. Or Nomeansno in 1991. Or the Siren music festival, July 2001. Crazy-good lineup: JSBX, Superchunk, Peaches, Guided By Voices, Enon, Quasi, Man or Astro Man?, Rainer Maria.
A big #53 from Sydney hiphop crew/supergroup Savour the Rations (2018). Holy hell. This song goes hard. Haven't heard Thank the Lord before? Time to fix that. #best100 #MusicSky youtu.be/uIEjCAU2dmU?...
A big #53 from Sydney hiphop crew/supergroup Savour the Rations (2018). Holy hell. This song goes hard. Haven't heard Thank the Lord before? Time to fix that. #best100 #MusicSky youtu.be/uIEjCAU2dmU?...
ping @ntusikov.bsky.social
Canadian leaders have been conspicuously silent on the vulnerabilities created by governance links between Canada and the US. Regulatory cooperation, as @ntusikov.bsky.social highlights, is a big part of the problem. We need to start taking it seriously. blaynehaggart.com/2025/08/28/g...
Canadian leaders have been conspicuously silent on the vulnerabilities created by governance links between Canada and the US. Regulatory cooperation, as Natasha highlights, is a big part of the problem. We need to start taking it seriously.
Canadian leaders need to internalize the reality that Trump views our independence the same way he views the Fed’s. And that he can’t be appeased. Appeasement won’t buy time because there’s no time to buy. The crisis is now.
“Howard is frustrated to see the fossil fuel industry continue being subsidized by the government while people battle the consequences, such as wildfire smoke.” Anyone who approves a new oil pipeline in 2025 should be forced to breathe wildfire smoke as they sign the order.
If increasing defence spending is such an important national priority, why isn’t the federal government either increasing borrowing or raising taxes? None of this, including the use of defence $ for economic development, feels particularly well thought-out. www.theglobeandmail.com/business/art...
Regulation of AI for therapeutic purposes can't come soon enough. More regulation of ALL AI can't come soon enough. (Canada's witless Minister of AI be damned.)
“They didn’t have autism in my day,” claims man with thorough knowledge of the history of the Caledonian Railway
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who remembers ELIZA, because exactly this has been a misconception for well over half a century now en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_e...
Listen back here: bombshellradio.com/the-british-... Thanks for spinning 'Pale Horse', @britdjmatt.bsky.social!! 🌱❤️🎧💫 #newmusic #ukmusic #emergingartist #ukhiphop
Don’t threaten me with a good time
Scientists Make Breakthrough in Solving the Mystery of Life’s Origin 🔗 www.404media.co/scientists-m...
“Being a journalist in Gaza is not just a job. There are no safe areas. For many, it is a balance between professional duty and the need to protect their families, knowing that each report is vital for the world to understand the reality on the ground.” The latest from my friend Hasan Jaber in Gaza
When I organized a public event on Trump v Canada last November, I got some pushback for referring to Trump as an “authoritarian” even though, as a colleague noted at the time, the only debate among political scientists was over whether he was actually a fascist. That debate‘s now been resolved.
This isn’t “corporate socialism.” It’s the dictionary definition of fascism. www.cbc.ca/news/busines...
Bannerman and Orasch’s chapter should also remind us that some people got the big tech calls right. And that maybe it might be a good idea to turn to those voices for guidance, not just the usual suspects.
Shirky’s fatalistically treats genAI as an inevitable force of nature, not something that could be outlawed or severely restricted if we cared about education. A lack of regard for power & political economy helps explain why. With some analysts, what they don’t say is often what’s most interesting.
(Spoilers: Good: Castells, Srnicek. Not so good: Bell, Benkler. I’d add Shirky’s to the latter category of those who focused on the tech in isolation, relatively neglecting how tech intersects with financial, security and production power.)
As Sara Bannerman and Angela Orasch point out in this chapter (2nd edition coming in 2026!), analysts who situated their tech analysis in its wider political economic context were more realistic in their assessments than those who just focused on the tech. (Paywalled. DM me for a pdf.)
Getting things wrong isn’t a bad thing. Analysis is hard. But we have to own our work, even when we get things wrong. Generally speaking, what the OG tech boosters missed was political economy, matched with an inattention to power, especially corporate power, and the context in which tech is used.
Written by one of the OG digital tech boosters, who played no small role in setting the stage for technological solutionism and the mindless acceptance of genAI. Shirky’s piece reminds me that we’ve seen very few self-reflective pieces from first-gen tech boosters, about what they got wrong and why.
How unqualified is Solomon to be minister of anything, let alone of AI and digital innovation? He'd rather his staff read an LLM-created summary of Bill C-27 than the publicly available and easily accessible Library of Parliament-prepared legislative summary and analysis on the bill.