Complicit Chips Reader

Complicit Chips: A Reader in Progress for Infra-Resistance

A yellow reader held together with a black binder, on top of an Infrastructural Resistance booklet, on top of a piece of paper reading: "DO (NOT) TAKE FORWARD"

This (ever in progress) reader was put together at the occasion of the Complicit Chips worksession, in which we tried to approach the involvement of the computer industry in organised violence at borders and in occupied territories.

The collection of texts wasn’t assembled with the goal of covering all aspects surrounding the complex conflations of software, hardware, global finance, digital aesthetics, securitisation and militarisation. Rather, it aims to provoke thoughts, trigger conversations and support our collective attempt to articulate and resist interdependencies between global financing, AI, hardware development, and computer graphics. How to resist the deep complicity of these industries in extreme violence, inflicted on sites of extraction, on occupied territories and on migrating bodies?

We hope that, beyond the context of the worksession, the circulation of this reader can support fellow comrades sharing the desire to pursue divestment from an industry which provides the material means to both our most mundane activities and human rights violations all at once and fully intertwined.

This reader was put together by Femke Snelting, Helen Pritchard and Sofia Boschat Thorez in October 2024. If you have any remarks, suggestions, or work you would like to share for a next version, please reach out to us at: titipi@titipi.org

And if you would consider adopting software attempts at not being complicit in supporting the genocide in Palestine, you can consult the following booklet: https://titipi.org/pub/infraresistance.pdf

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Index

1. September 11 Was Good for Business [extract] in: The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein – 2023
2. Imperialism, climate crisis and Palestine liberation by Hamza Hamouchene – 2024
3. In Clover, Laleh Khalili – 2022
4. The Elasticity of Logistics in: The Politics of Operations by Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson – 2019
5. Tracking and Tracing: Geographies of Logistical Governance and Labouring Bodies by AM Kanngieser – 2013
6. Colonial Authoritarian Origins and Authoritarian capitalism or the whole thing in: At the Razor’s Edge of Democracy Authoritarian Capitalism and Decolonial International Feminisms by Macarena Gómez-Barris – 2021
7. Bush I, Semi Chips, Potato Chips in: AI and Tech Industrial Policy: From Post-Cold War Post-Industrialism to Post-Neoliberal Re-Industrialization by Susannah Glickman (in AI Nationalism(s): Global Industrial Policy Approaches to AI) – 2024
8. Declaration of withdrawal by Shinjoung Yeo – 2023
9. Not Without us by Joseph Weizenbaum – 1986
10. Google Employees testimonials from No Tech for Apartheid – 2023
11. Deadly algorithms: Can legal codes hold software accountable for code that kills? by Susan Schuppli – 2014
12. The algorithmically accelerated killing machine by Lucy Suchman – 2024
13. A conversation with Iván Chaar López by Sareeta Amrute and Iván López – 2022
14. Borders Are Obsolete Part II Reflections on Central American Caravans and Mediterranean Crossings [extract] by Jennifer Mogannam and Leslie Quintanilla – 2021
15. Refusing Control Abolish Frontex: a decentralised campaign fighting the EU Border Regime by Sanne Stevens – ?
16. The First Step Is Finding Each Other by Timmy Châu in Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence – 2024
17. Submitting a consultation on the White Paper: 'On options for enhancing support for research and development involving technologies with dual use potential' by Various Irish Scholars – 2024
18. Voluptuous Disintegration: A Future History of Black Computational Thought by Romi Morrisson – 2022
19. There is no software [extract from introduction] by Irina Kaldrack and Martina Leeker – 2015
20. Introduction: Spoilers Ahead [extract] in: Spoiler Alert A Critical Guide by Aaron Jaffe – 2019
21. The decline of computers as general purpose technology by Neil C. Thompson and Svenha Spanuth – 2019
22. In the mouth of a polar bear: The undead feeling of the world in: The Anti-Menagerie by Helen V. Pritchard and Cassandra Troyan – 2021
23. The “Just in Time” Explosion of Pagers and the New Technologies of Death By Deivison Faustino and Walter Lippold – 2024
24. For opacity in: Poetics of Relation by Édouard Glissant – 1990
25. A Reverse-Engineered Insurrection by Miriyam Aouragh – 2020