Chris Hedges interviews Professor Noam Chomsky about the state of the American Empire. The failures and inherent cruelties spawned by global capitalism, the rampant endless wars, the unchecked militarism these conflicts spawn, along with raging ecocide, and unparalleled levels of global wealth and income inequality, are fueling system breakdown and the rise of repressive and authoritarian regimes that revoke basic liberties rule through fear and coercion and speak in the toxic rhetoric of hate and violence, threatening the human species and most other species with extinction. A situation that will only be halted by radically reorganizing human societies politically, economically, and culturally. Professor Noam Chomsky is one of the world's most relevant intellectuals and a prolific author of numerous seminal political works. Including, The Fateful Triangle, Manufacturing Consent, Failed States, Requiem for the American Dream, and his last book, *The Consequences of Capitalism, Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance*, written along with Marv Waterstone, professor emeritus at the University of Arizona. *On Contact*. RT America, January 24, 2021.

“Tech giants use our data not only to predict our behavior but to change it.” Shoshana Zuboff. The Guardian, July 2, 2019. Shoshana Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School and a former Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. She is the author of three books, each of which signaled the start of a new epoch in a technological society. • In the late 1980s, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power became an instant classic that foresaw how computers would revolutionize the modern workplace. • At the dawn of the twenty-first century, The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism (with James Maxmin), written before the invention of the iPod or Uber, predicted the rise of digitally mediated products and services tailored to the individual. It warned of the individual and societal risks if companies failed to alter their approach to capitalism. • Now, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, synthesizes years of research and thinking in order to reveal a world in which technology users are neither customers, employees, nor products. Instead, they are the raw material for new procedures of manufacturing and sales that define an entirely new economic order: a surveillance economy. Surveillance Capitalism is a new economic logic that is fundamentally anti-democratic where our digital future has been hijacked. In her words, “We deserve a digital future that amplifies human rights, individual sovereignty, and other requirements of a free and flourishing democracy. […] Let there be a digital future, let it be a human future first.” You can find out more on her webpage: https://shoshanazuboff.com/