Susannah Glickman

Bio:

My research and teaching focus on the history and political economy of computation and information through the transformations in global American science that occurred at the end of the Cold War. I also write about risk and uncertainty in other fields (for example, in the history of economics). My current book project examines the infrastructures which make ever-improving semiconductors and quantum technologies possible historically, with particular attention to how ideology and other kinds of narratives get translated into policy and granular practices, and how reciprocally those material practices get translated back into ideology. I have a background in mathematics and anthropology and work between the fields of science and technology studies and history, mixing archival and oral history methods. Specifically, I am broadly interested in how institutions deal with the category of the future and the origins of the category “tech.”

Select Works:

"Chips on the Table," The American Prospect (January 2025). 

"Runaway Short-termism: a conversation with Susannah Glickman and Nic Johnson," The New York Review of Books (November 21, 2024).

"The War Over Defense Tech," The New York Review of Books (October 4, 2025). 

"AI and Tech Industrial Policy: From Post-Cold War Post-Industrialism to Post-Neoliberal Re-Industrialization," AI Now (March 2024). 

"Corporate Capture in California," The American Prospect (September 2023). 

"Semi-Politics: Intel and the future of US chipmaking," Phenomenal World (June 2023). 

"The History of Technoscientific Promises and the Promises of Technoscientific History," European Association for the Study of Science & Technology, 41:2 (October 2022). 

"The Gulf States' Tech Play," The American Prospect (March 2022). 

In Conversation with Doug Pugliese, Novembermag.com (January 28, 2026). 

Behind the News: Best of 2025, Jacobin Radio podcast (January 2, 2026). 

Behind the News: Trump's Militaristic Master Plan with Antol Lieven, Jacobin Radio podcast (December 15, 2025). 

Lawfare Daily: The Defense Tech Paradox with Susannah Glickman, The Lawfare Podcast (December 10, 2025). 

Behind the News: Big-Tech War Profiteers with Susannah Glickman, Jacobin Radio podcast (October 27, 2025). 

“Philosophy is too Important to be Left to the Philosophers": On Cold War Crises and Quantum Technologies, Institute for Advanced Study youtube channel (October 2024).