Gazans Return + DeepSeek Strikes

Click here for the full interview with Mosab Abu Toha and Ramesh Srinivasan: https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/extended-episode-gazans-return-deepseek?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Watch this week's Thursday Throwdown: Trump Exposes Hamas Condom Bombs https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/trump-exposes-hamas-condom-bombs?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

For $6 a month, become a Useful Idiot! Get extended interviews, Thursday Throwdowns, and bonus content at http://usefulidiotspodcast.com

Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.

Support local jobs and get variety of high-quality clothing and activewear at https://www.american-giant.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code USEFUL. Thanks to American Giant for sponsoring the show!

This week we are joined by two guests, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha and tech Professor Ramesh Srinivasan. First is Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha, who recently won an Overseas Press Club Award for his “Letter from Gaza” columns for The New Yorker, and authored the new poetry book is Forest of Noise. He is also the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza, which was destroyed by Israel.

Over the course of Israel’s mass assault on Gaza, Mosab has lost 31 members of his family. He has expressed his catastrophic loss through poetry:

“All of Gaza has become a funeral home,” Mosab explains to us, “because the mourners themselves are killed. Who is going to mourn the death of someone when their father, their mother, their siblings were killed? And sometimes we do the funeral on the phone. We call someone and say, ‘I'm so sorry to hear about your loss.’ And then a few minutes later, that person, the caller or the recipient of this condolence, would be killed.”

Mosab also explains why he doesn’t consider this pause in Israel’s attacks on Gaza to be a ceasefire.

“The whole area is a pile of rubble, so where do you place your tent? People are deciding to go back. Going back for what and for how long? No one knows. This is why it's not a ceasefire.”

Share

We also talk to Ramesh Srinivasan, professor of information studies at UCLA and author of Beyond the Valley: How Innovators around the World are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow.

The big news out of the tech world this week is that Chinese AI company DeepSeek has surpassed the abilities of ChatGPT. In response, the Trump administration imposed new tariffs against China, a move that exposes a fear of falling behind.

We ask Ramesh: why does the US government see DeepSeek as a threat, and should regular Americans see this new AI as a potential for human progre