Surveillance Capitalism meets the Coronavirus Shock Doctrine

Governments and tech giants around the world are using the Covid-19 crisis to advance a vision of a future in which “our every move, our every word, our every relationship is trackable, traceable, and data-mineable,” writes “The Shock Doctrine” author Naomi Klein, “a future in which, for the privileged, almost everything is home delivered, either virtually via streaming and cloud technology, or physically via driverless vehicle or drone.”

But this future isn’t inevitable.

“We’re not necessarily locked into this deterministic narrative that too many pundits are hawking and the tech companies are salivating over — that post-Covid we’re going to have comprehensive biosurveillance of all of society,” says Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.” “People are worried. People are asking questions.”

In this live conversation hosted by The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan, Klein and Zuboff discuss the dangers of surveillance capitalism in the post-coronavirus world — and how we might be able to use this moment of crisis to inspire change for the better.