{"id":246354,"date":"2026-11-02T10:07:54","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T16:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/chris-hables-gray-on-pandemics-cyborgs-politics-and-trump"},"modified":"2026-11-02T10:07:54","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T16:07:54","slug":"chris-hables-gray-on-pandemics-cyborgs-politics-and-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/chris-hables-gray-on-pandemics-cyborgs-politics-and-trump","title":{"rendered":"Chris Hables Gray on Pandemics, Cyborgs, Politics and Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe title=\"Chris Hables Gray on Pandemics, Cyborgs, Politics and Trump\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AavoxsQkw0M?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>2013, Chris Hables Gray sat down with me and described, in uncomfortably specific terms, the kind of global pandemic the world would be living through seven years later. Almost nobody paid attention. It\u2019s still one of the most undervalued conversations in my entire archive.<\/p>\n<p>So in October 2020, with the virus raging and the US election weeks away, I brought him back.<\/p>\n<p>Two hours. Pandemics and cyborgs. Surveillance capitalism, including where he lands in the Cory Doctorow vs. Shoshana Zuboff debate. Existential risk, the singularity, and the gap between #ArtificialIntelligence and what he calls artificial stupidity.<\/p>\n<p>Then we got to populism, democracy, and Trump. Listening back six years later, with Trump back in the White House, some of it lands very differently than it did then. I\u2019ll let you judge which parts.<\/p>\n<p>Chris is hard to put in a box: anarchist-feminist activist, union organizer, UC Santa Cruz and NYU lecturer, editor of The Cyborg Handbook and Modified: Living as a Cyborg (a book I was glad to contribute to). He calls himself a pessimist of the intellect and an optimist of the will. That combination is rare in #futurism, and it\u2019s exactly why both the #transhumanism crowd and the #BigTech skeptics should hear him out.<\/p>\n<p>His parting line has stayed with me ever since: make the news you want to see.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/chris-hables-gray-on-pandemics-cyborgs-politics-and-trump\">Continue reading \u201cChris Hables Gray on Pandemics, Cyborgs, Politics and Trump\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2013, Chris Hables Gray sat down with me and described, in uncomfortably specific terms, the kind of global pandemic the world would be living through seven years later. Almost nobody paid attention. It\u2019s still one of the most undervalued conversations in my entire archive. So in October 2020, with the virus raging and the US [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":737,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1499,12,64,1511,1501],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-cyborgs","category-existential-risks","category-singularity","category-surveillance","category-transhumanism-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/737"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}