If we’re serious about meaningful governance, we need mechanisms that don’t just consult affected communities but give them the authority to refuse, contest, and shape AI deployment. AI governance shouldn't be an ornamental exercise in transparency; it must be a structural intervention in power.

I’m deeply grateful and appreciative of all the hard, brave work you put into this!

For now, for anyone invested in justice and human rights, I encourage you to sit with Jake’s essential reading. [thanks for recommendation @anabrandusescu.bsky.social]

On a personal note, I’ve sat with Edward Said’s works for several months, I’ll share my reflections soon (enough). Said wrote, “Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate.”

This is perhaps an uncomfortable read. It demands we reflect on how systems of power and narratives of victimhood are weaponized to perpetuate oppression. In the shadow of events in Syria, the alignment between ideological constructs and military praxis shows the enduring relevance of his critique

"The centrality of race and origin in Zionist thinking mirrors, in uncanny resonance, the centrality of race and volk in antisemitic thought." He makes us see how dehumanization is inseparable from Zionism's self-perception: a collective psyche that oscillates between victimhood and domination

"Once the moral and political question is resolved decisively in favor of death, the only questions remaining are those of cost and logistics: a vision of the 21st century as abattoir."

By adopting the same racial logic it purports to reject, Zionism reproduces the hierarchies it sought to escape:

"The Zionist is at once victorious and simultaneously incapable of letting go of their victimhood: the more land they take, the more they see themselves as under assault." This contradiction, between domination and self-perceived victimhood, fuels cycles of violence and dehumanization.

global markets, underscores how deeply economic mechanisms are embedded in settler-colonial projects.

Another compelling thread is Jake’s discussion of the psychic structures underpinning Zionism, which he links to a form of persecution mania:

about the economic and structural dimensions of violence. The goal is, first and foremost, land grab, but also the erasure of Palestinian existence, economically, culturally, and physically. The systemic destruction of Palestinian livelihoods, from uprooted olive groves to controlled access to …

Jake dissects Zionism, revealing its troubling continuity with the racial ideologies of European antisemitism. This piece is not just an indictment of Zionism but an invitation to critically examine how oppression reshapes itself through systems of power.

One of the most striking points he makes is

👋 deal?!