Unreal Bird #7: Investigative Agenda

Thanks for reading Unreal Birds, a newsletter about how tech, media, and capital undermine democratic accountability. Today's newsletter is on the shorter side; I've been travelling. More on that below.

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In this issue:

• Reflections on a week in DC.
• The "Investigative Agenda for Technology Journalism," brought to you by the Global Investigative Journalism Network.
• Field notes:
  • An incredibly well-titled theory of attention theater as policy coordination in the Trump administration;
  • Tracking the international rise of Project 2025 copycats;
  • Elon Musk's crowded business and litigation calendar.
• Scroll to the bottom to see dogs!

What I'm up to

I'm typing this week's newsletter from the MLK Jr. Memorial Library in DC, outside of which I used to stand for NED fire drills.

I love coming back to DC; I lived here for a decade, I still have many friends here, and it gets more sunshine than Cleveland (though also much more humidity).

These trips are also incredibly generative (and not in the AI sense). On Monday I attended an event co-hosted by TechFreedom and Georgetown on the FTC and the weaponization of administrative power; I took away a list of practical, deeply wonkish suggestions for protecting free expression from vicious, partisan bureaucrats.

On Tuesday, I joined the Kettering Foundation for a briefing on the Democracy for All Project, a polling collaboration between the Foundation and Gallup on the civic habits and beliefs of Americans. That conversation left me more convinced than ever we need to start conversations about US democracy with big ideas for bold reform rather than working up to them. Let's cut to the chase—instead of asking voters to use their limited time and attention to participate in a system they think is broken, let's socialize ideas for fixing it.

Last night, I joined a small gathering of professionals from the field formerly known as information integrity to discuss the concept of a healthy media ecosystem: what's gone wrong, and can we fix it? The conversation revolved around the need to challenge the power of the tech oligarchy shaping our information space for its own ends. For more on that, see the feature below.

Next week, I will join a one-day conference on the future of free expression, which promises to be similarly rich. Expect more on all these themes from me soon, but give me a chance to unpack my bags (and my inbox) first.

All of that said: I miss my wife and our two weird lanky horse dogs. I return to Cleveland Tuesday.

Investigative Agenda

Last month, the Global Investigative Journalism Network published a guide, the "Tech Focus Project," coming out of its 14th annual conference. Broken up in to short essays and a few videos, it describes "the Investigative Agenda for Tech and AI Journalism."

At a high level, it calls on journalists to scrutinize big tech as an actor, not technology itself as an independent force. In doing so, they invoke Karen Hao's (excellent) book, Empire of AI.

To ask hard questions of powerful people is evergreen advice; technology does not develop, promote, or use itself. Who benefits from new technologies and their adoption? As importantly, who suffers?

Taking this as a starting point, the guide provides a few priorities for the field. Narratives around the tech must be interrogated relentlessly: it is not inevitable, neutral, all-capable, or immaterial. Most AI systems come from contexts that are not at all representative of humanity writ large; their impact in Global South countries may be as distinct as it is under-scrutinized. Their development often relies on underpaid, extractive labor arrangements in which workers expose themselves to psychological harm. The process of mining critical minerals and building new data centers comes with steep environmental costs. And when the AI systems themselves are deployed, they can enable widespread harm from cybercrime to mass surveillance.

All of these observations are places where journalists can introduce scrutiny and promote accountability. Paradoxically, the report says, they can do so using AI tools—for example by examining large datasets on government procurement, import-export records, or documents from legal discovery, leaks, and whistleblowers.

This work also introduces new targets of scrutiny. In addition to major technology companies and government agencies, data center entrepreneurs in utilities, construction, and real estate are a potential investigative focus. So are the growing number of tech sector lobbyists, who play an important role in paving the way for big tech's preferred policies (and who in some jurisdictions outnumber actual legislators).

The guide is chock-full of examples of real stories and advice for investigating new ones. Dive deeper here.

Field notes

• "'Gooning Towards the Führer' as policy coordination," Henry Farrell. Every political administration faces the challenge of identifying, communicating, and influencing the policy priorities of its principal executives. This process affects how agendas are set and pursued. The Trump administration's extremely online approach has serious policy consequences.
• "Project 2025 Goes Global: The American Export of Authoritarianism and Christian Nationalism Worldwide," Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. A project led by two former Southern Poverty Law Center leaders details how the architects of Project 2025 are sharing their playbook with far-right populists overseas. The report is quite detailed; time-pressed readers can find key takeaways here.
• "Elon Musk is about to be a very busy boy!" Elizabeth Lopatto. When will SpaceX have its IPO? What is Tesla up to? How is Musk's plan for robot workers coming along? Oh, and Musk v. Altman, the lawsuit over OpenAI's nonprofit status, is set to begin trial on April 27.

Snoot watch

Humble plea

This newsletter is mostly powered by caffeine. If you've made it this far, consider buying me a coffee at the link below: