I’m a writer, reporter and author based in Los Angeles. I write the newsletter BLOOD IN THE MACHINE. I’m also a reporter in residence at the AI Now Institute. My work has appeared in the New York Times, WIRED, Harper’s, the Guardian, and beyond. Previously, I was the technology columnist at the Los Angeles Times and the senior editor at Motherboard (RIP). I’m the author of The One Device: the Secret History of the iPhone (2017, Little, Brown) and Blood in the Machine: the Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech (2023, Little, Brown), and a founder of VICE’s speculative fiction outlet Terraform. We published a best-of anthology, Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn, with MCD Books, in 2022.
My email is briancmerchant at gmail dot com, my Twitter is here, and my speaker’s bureau, BrightSight, can be contacted here.

Image via the New Yorker.