Complicit Chips Reader

NVIDIA COMPLICIT CHIPS : A READER IN PROGRESS FOR THE INFRA-RESISTANCE

Accompanying a deep dive into the nebulous world of software-operated hardware, starting from high density chips produced by NVIDIA, this reader compiles a number of texts aimed to be thought provoking.

NvidiaComplicitChipsReader

Reader in low res

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: 1. 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

COLOPHON

This (ever in progress) reader was put together at the occasion of the Nvidia Complicit Chips worksession, during which an international group of researchers, activists, and artists dived into the nebulous world of software-operated hardware. Starting from the high density chips produced by NVIDIA, we attempted to get our heads around the much needed divestment from a computer industry complicit in organized violence at borders and in occupied territories, while being so pervasive in running our most mundane daily activities.

Hosted by TITiPI (The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest) in October 2024, this worksession was part of wider series of gatherings bringing together members of the INFRA-RESISTANCE, a constellation of activists, scholars, artists and researchers formed as a response to the Big Tech industry’s central role in providing infrastructural support to, and benefiting from, genocide, ecocide and apartheid. Other gatherings have notably focused on proposals for moving networks and political engagement away from toxic cloud environments or archiving and looking back at archives while adopting methods and tools in line with the aforementioned proposals.

This 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 was conceived with the aim of provoking thoughts, triggering conversations and supporting our collective attempt to articulate interdependencies between global financing, AI, hardware development, and computer graphics. Together, we aimed to understand better the depth of the complicity of these industries in extreme violence, inflicted on occupied territories, migrating bodies, on sites of extraction and ultimately on fellow humans.

Through our time together, we initiated a proposal for collaboration in a divestment campaign, extension of preexisting mapping of genocidal infrastructures, hands on work to understand how these chips operate and some analysis of the aesthetisation of military technology. We hope that, beyond the context of this 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 and might keep evolving. If you have any remarks, suggestions, or work your would like to share, please reach out to us at : infraresistance@emailaddress.com

And if you would consider adopting software that is not complicit in supporting the genocide in Palestine, you can consult the following booklet:

https://titipi.org/pub/infraresistance.pdf