Punching Upwards 43: The Vehicle Kill Switch Law
Dissecting Biden’s 2021 law that will require cars in the US to monitor drivers and to turn themselves off if the AI thinks the driver is impaired. Is it coming in 2027? Is it even feasible at all?
PUNCHING UPWARDS is the weekly news and politics podcast from FAB INDUSTRIES. On the show, I dig at the nitty-gritty facts behind the week’s loudest headlines and discover stories legacy media neglected to cover. New episodes are released every Sunday. You can find all of these episodes right here. You can also subscribe on Substack to support the show financially.
Please feel free to email me with any comments you have on the show. I value listener feedback greatly, and will generally answer any messages personally. Should the content warrant it, I will also feature it on an episode — if you consent to that.
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Podcast Episodes
Punching Upwards 42: Why Podcasts Matter
In this somewhat different episode, I explain my passion for podcasting, try to give an overview of what constitutes a podcast (technically and in spirit) and argue why the medium is worth protecting.
Punching Upwards 41: The Iran Peace Deal
An analysis of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Iran. What does it mean for the future of world politics and how has it been reported on in the media?
Punching Upwards 40: The First Trillionaire
The company pulling off the most successful IPO in the history of stock exchanges, SpaceX, is losing money hand over fist. And its promised future money-maker, data centres in space, is a pipe dream.
Punching Upwards 39: The Dead Internet Theory Was Right
Are humans on the internet being pushed out by bots? Is this a lunatic fringe conspiracy theory or does Cory Doctorow's thesis of enshittification accurately describe what is happening?
Punching Upwards 38: Is Chat Control Finally Dead?
The EU's attempt to assume that all of its citizens are guilty of crimes and to then scan all of their communications is finally dead. But the dangerous ideas that spawned this insanity live on.
Punching Upwards 37: How Not to Report an Aviation Accident
China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 crashed into a hill near Wuzhou in 2022, killing 132 people. What do we know about this Boeing 737 crash and what secret is the Chinese government keeping?
Punching Upwards 36: Dire Straits of Hormuz
The Straits of Hormuz are closed, blocking about 20% of oil shipments from reaching the global economy. But what does closed actually mean?
Punching Upwards 35: The Horror of Computerised War
How the Pentagon switched decision making from humans to machines. And what it means for the future that computers now decide who lives and dies.
Punching Upwards 34: Scam Altman
A deep dive on investigative journalist Ronan Farrow's profile of Sam Altman's leadership at OpenAI. The piece lays bare many of the enduring issues that make Silicon Valley so problematic.
Punching Upwards 33: The Stop Nick Shirley Act
YouTuber Nick Shirley says California's proposed AB2624 law was made to stop him and other independent journalists from reporting on fraud. How much of that is true?
Punching Upwards 32: Germany's Digital Strategy Is Absolutely Bonkers
Driven by a national delusion that Germans are somehow naturally very bad at digital technology, the country's government is rushing headfirst into a disastrous implementation of AI in government.
Punching Upwards 31: NASA’s Artemis II Mission
Depending who you ask, NASA's new mission to the moon was either the scientific breakthrough of the century or an utterly boring waste of money. Which is it?
Punching Upwards 30: Aviation and the War in Iran
The war in Iran is having a tremendous impact on the aviation industry. An underreported detail is what happens when your flight deviates around the closed airspace over Iran via Afghanistan.
Punching Upwards 29: The State of Star Trek
With the cancellation of Starfleet Academy, there is no Star Trek series in active production for the first time in a decade. Why is that and what does it reflect about the state of our culture?
Punching Upwards 28: What is Antifa?
Even though it has been in the US news a lot recently, almost everybody over there seems to be getting wrong what Antifa actually is. This is an overview from someone who grew up around this movement.
Punching Upwards 27: LLMs Are a Dead-End
Why current AI technology can't get us what its proponents are promising. Why the media keeps getting the AI story wrong. Why AI layoffs are just an excuse to re-hire workers for cheaper.
Punching Upwards 26: Trump Falls Into the Smart Bomb Trap
Trump’s war on Iran is a huge blunder, both militarily and politically. The US can’t possibly win this war and Trump is tanking his presidency, and the whole Republican Party, along with it.
Punching Upwards 25: The Problem with the Epstein Files
I’ve been digging through the Epstein files for weeks now and I’m finding that there are a lot of issues with the coverage in the press. This is an attempt to explain some of them.
Punching Upwards 24: The ELIZA Effect
An MIT professor developed the first chatbot in 1964 and discovered that we tend to ascribe human traits to even the simplest computer programs. This would foreshadow today’s widespread AI delusion.
Punching Upwards 23: The Minnesota Welfare Fraud Scandal
A several-billion-dollar welfare scam hit national news shortly before the riots erupted in Minneapolis. And the people egging on the protesters seem to be directly involved in this fraud.
Punching Upwards 22: Moltbook Madness
The AI tech bros are going crazy: They are convinced their chatbots are gaining consciousness, which is why they made a chatbot-only social network for them, where the bots have gotten religion now.
Punching Upwards 21: The Death of Alex Pretti
Another protestor was shot dead by ICE in Minneapolis. Why are these agents so bad at their job? Who would take a gun to a protest? Where is the local police? And did Pretti's P320 fire on its own?
Punching Upwards 20: Does NATO Have a Future?
What does Donald Trump's power play over Greenland and the ensuing confrontation with European allies mean for the future of the military alliance? Does NATO without the US even make sense?
Punching Upwards 19: The Death of Renee Good
An entitled Karen meets a hot-headed, dumb cop, gets killed and all hell breaks loose. How ideology is wiping out common sense and endangering democracy in the United States?
Punching Upwards 18: Trump's South American Adventure
How did the Trump government manage to capture the Venezuelan head of state in Caracas? And where they allowed to do so? Your won't hear the correct answer to that question from the legacy media?
Punching Upwards 17: Vlad vs. Vlad
An overview of the background and the history of the War in Ukraine. Plus some analysis of what will happen next. Does peace between Russia and Ukraine have a chance at all?
Punching Upwards 16: Met Police to Stop Non-Crime Arrests
After the Graham Linehan debacle, London's Metropolitan Police is now set to stop arresting people for non-crime hate incidents. This policy obviously was a bad idea in the first place.
Punching Upwards 15: State Secret or Vibe Physics?
A recent patent application that made the news in Germany looks suspiciously like someone with chatbot delusion tried to vibe code a threat to NATO's nuclear deterrence strategy.
Punching Upwards 14: Chat Control is Back
The EU still wants to read through every digital message every one of its citizens ever sends. After some pushback, the newest idea is that platforms should now do the dirty work for the police.
Punching Upwards 13: The Cosmic Ray That Broke the A320
How a programming mistake in an avionics software update combined with a stray neutron from outer space to take down the best-selling passenger jet in the world. And no, it wasn't a solar flare!
Punching Upwards 12: No Such Thing as Free Speech in Germany
There is a big difference between the German freedom to have an opinion and actual freedom of speech in the American sense, as a new report on the German state's speech crackdown clearly illuminates.
Punching Upwards 11: What Happened to UPS Flight 2976?
On 4 November, an MD-11 cargo plane operated by UPS crashed in Louisville, Kentucky, killing fourteen people. We know that the airplane lost its left engine on take-off. But why did that happen?
Punching Upwards 10: The Great Canadian Ostrich Massacre
Canadian officials killed over 300 ostriches, a full year after they recovered from the avian flu they had suffered from. Out of pure bureaucratic spite. And the media did its best to cover it up.
Punching Upwards 9: Your Bus is Controlled by China
Norwegian public transport authority Ruter has discovered undocumented cell modems in electric buses built by Chinese company Yutong, which enable the manufacturer to turn the buses off remotely.
Punching Upwards 8: Robotics Slop
According to the Wall Street Journal, the 1X NEO is a $20,000 robot that does your chores. The problem is that NEO is really bad at it. And the thing actually isn’t a robot, either.
Punching Upwards 7: Von der Leyen's Paper Maps
The story of how European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's plane was allegedly attacked by GPS jamming is a particularly egregious example of journalists not doing their job properly.
Punching Upwards 6: Chat Control Denied
For now, the EU's Chat Control legislation has been halted by German opposition. What is this new law? And why is it so dangerous?
Punching Upwards 5: The Modern Solution Case
The story of an IT consultant turned unwitting security researcher, who found a security vulnerability, reported it to the software vendor and instead of getting a reward got prosecuted for hacking.
Punching Upwards 4: Drones over Denmark
Drones have been sighted over several Danish airports and the country is in turmoil, coincidentally days before an EU summit to discuss drone defence spending. And nobody is asking questions.
Punching Upwards 3: An Ethical Approach to the War in Gaza
Israel's War in Gaza has escalated the Middle Eastern conflict after the Hamas terrorist attacks of 7 October 2023 and has hardened political fronts — what side should you take in this conflict?
Punching Upwards 2: The Assassination of Charlie Kirk
Conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was murdered in Utah last week while debating his political opponents on a university campus – what the reactions to his death mean for our society at large.
Punching Upwards 1: The Arrest of Graham Linehan
IT Crowd creator Graham Linehan was arrested in the UK on charges of inciting violence – a look at his run-ins with British law and transgender activism and the free speech implications of his arrest.