Drilling Deep: Karen Hao on How Big AI Is Gambling with the Planet’s Chips

Drilling Deep: Karen Hao on How Big AI Is Gambling with the Planet’s Chips

Author: Pushkin Industries March 17, 2026 Duration: 52:31

What is “artificial intelligence”? Is it a fancy technology? A management consulting buzzword? A PR effort to inflate corporate share prices? A political project designed to shape the world more to the liking of the billionaire class? A way to replace needy human workers with machines?

Perhaps it’s all of that—and more. In her groundbreaking book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, award-winning journalist Karen Hao argues that AI—and the profit-driven infrastructure that surrounds it—is a colonial project. What OpenAI boss Altman and his fellow ideologues in Silicon Valley are pursuing, Hao says, is not just corporate power but imperial power. They are building empires. And as history shows, empires are built on resource extraction, particularly the old-fashioned kind: of labor, energy, minerals, land, water.

Seemingly overnight, tech elites’ feel-good climate promises have evaporated, having been seamlessly swapped for slippery promises that so-called “artificial general intelligence” will save the planet for us. Never mind that AGI is a fantastical concept that has no agreed-upon definition, or that, more fundamentally, it appears nowhere close to existing. In Big Tech’s frenzied pursuit of the “hyperscale” AI dominance that evangelists claim will unlock AGI, as well as its expanding alliances with fossil fuel-backed petrostates and authoritarian political movements, the industry has become an increasingly central contributor to the climate crisis.

In an October conversation with Drilled, Hao discussed how Silicon Valley giants appear to be following the oil and gas industry’s playbook of disinformation and deceit; how Altman and OpenAI’s secrecy and disingenuous rhetoric transformed the field of AI research into corporate PR; and why the destructive trajectory of AI scale and commercialization is not inevitable—no matter what its power-hungry proponents would have you believe.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.


There’s a story behind the stalled progress on climate change that goes beyond melting ice and rising seas-it’s a story of deliberate deception. Drilled, from Pushkin Industries, approaches the climate crisis through the lens of investigative true crime. Led by veteran reporter Amy Westervelt and a team of award-winning climate journalists, this podcast meticulously traces how networks of corporate interests and political operatives constructed a decades-long campaign of denial and delay. Each season is a deep forensic examination, pulling on threads of new evidence to unravel systems of disinformation and hidden power. What you’ll hear isn’t just a recap of scientific reports, but a gripping narrative that follows the paper trail, the leaked memos, and the orchestrated efforts that have held meaningful action just out of reach. The result is a compelling and often unsettling listen that reframes our understanding of the past half-century. By treating climate inaction as a crime story, this podcast reveals the human architects and the calculated strategies that brought us here, making complex collusion startlingly clear. Tune in for a masterclass in accountability journalism.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Drilled
Podcast Episodes
Coming Soon: SLAPP'D—Corporate Power vs. Indigenous Rights [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:38
Investigative reporter Alleen Brown follows the story of an Indigenous nation fighting for its water rights, an international environmental movement finding its voice, and an industry attempting to crush its political op…
How the U.S. Helped the World Label Environmentalists as "Terrorists" [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:14
In the finale of our Real Free Speech Threat season, we examine how the United States military and its national security agencies have stoked a global crackdown on environmental protest, and bring you the inspiring story…
Coming Soon: The Man-o-Sphere [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 25:50
Later this year we’ll be bringing you a season in collaboration with the podcast Non-Toxic, hosted by journalist and culture critic Daniel Penny, about the intersection between masculinity and climate. Meet Daniel and le…
How Climate Language Shapes Climate Politics with Genevieve Guenther [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:33
In her new book, The Language of Climate Politics, Genevieve Guenther digs into six key rhetorical devices that are being used to slow or block climate action. For an academic book, it's made some folks on the Internet a…
Climate Week 2024: Taking on the Mad Men of Big Oil [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 17:22
Long before outright climate denial, the fossil fuel industry relied on sophisticated PR and advertising campaigns to shape how the public understood the economy, the environment, and energy itself. In this Climate Week…