In her new report for The Intercept, Naomi Klein examines the scientific detachment with which the coronavirus pandemic is viewed. Tanzia Haq reports.
Despite the pleas of environment scientists and activists alike, corporations are once again putting profits over people and the environment. Naomi Klein explains how the pandemic has exacerbated tech involvement that will benefit private tech greatly. New York mayor Andrew Cuomo recently welcomed the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt over video conference and then announced that he will be leading a blue-ribbon commission to reimagine New York’s post-COVID reality.
Klein’s theory is that the involvement of billion-dollar tech companies is a reminder of how in the past, capitalist societies have used a crisis to push neoliberal policies and agendas. Klein pointed to the recent bail-out the fuel and coal industries are announced to be getting from the federal government. Klein claims that a low-key tech-oriented shock doctrine is already underway while populations are distracted by the horrors of the pandemic.
Klein calls this tech takeover the ‘Screen New Deal’ wherein dependence on technology and the internet will skyrocket in the aftermath of the pandemic. Klein claims that Schmidt had earlier revealed that while workers and students struggled with remote learning services such as Google Classroom and Zoom, these tech companies have been building a database of new information to figure out how to conduct these practices like this permanently and profiting out of people using these services while indoors.