Chris Hayes, a prominent voice in contemporary media, has built a career on dissecting the intricate dynamics of attention. His work, most notably his recent book, "The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource," argues that in the digital age, human attention has transformed into the paramount commodity, influencing everything from global conflicts to political campaigns. Hayes, who hosts MSNBC’s "All In With Chris Hayes" and the podcast "Why Is This Happening?", offers a unique perspective, not only as an intellectual observer of the attention economy but also as an active participant. This interview, part of "The Big Interview" podcast’s second season, delves into the escalating challenges of capturing and directing public attention in an increasingly saturated information landscape.
The Escalation of Conflict and the Attention Black Hole
The conversation, conducted in early March, occurred amidst a rapidly escalating conflict between the United States and Iran. This burgeoning crisis, marked by relentless news alerts, presidential pronouncements, and even AI-generated propaganda, quickly became an "all-consuming" focal point, a "black hole for our attention." Hayes noted the performative aspect of modern warfare, describing how aggression and foreign policy are increasingly packaged as "content," reminiscent of "Tom Clancy" thrillers or "80s movies," a style he associates with former President Donald Trump.
"There’s a way in which they perform imperialism as content," Hayes observed. "These are not military boats. They say they’re drug traffickers… Our forces have killed over a hundred people this way. What’s been so striking about it… is that from the beginning it has been produced as content."
However, Hayes cautioned against reducing the phenomenon solely to spectacle. "But then underneath that, there’s also the fact that this is real bombs and real guns and real missiles and real people die," he emphasized. The direct human cost, including the reported deaths of children in Iran due to missile strikes, underscores the gravity beneath the attention-grabbing surface. Hayes posited that this dual nature—the performance for attention and the grim reality of conflict—has always been intertwined, referencing the propagandistic use of the Spanish-American War by the "Yellow Press" as an historical parallel.
Navigating the Attention Economy as a Journalist
The challenge for journalists, Hayes explained, lies in reporting on significant events without succumbing to sensationalism or inadvertently amplifying the agendas of those seeking attention. "The thing we can’t do is ignore him or what he’s doing," he stated, referring to the necessity of covering political leaders. However, the approach must be strategic. "So the way that I think we do it is to try to not do war porn," Hayes elaborated. "There is a subtle but unmistakable ideological substrate to certain forms of depictions of war. Also don’t let him set the terms of things, which means we’re not gonna play huge chunks of whatever his nonsense is. Except to set them up to show why they’re lacking."
Hayes used an example from Minnesota involving allegations of fraud in daycares run by Somali immigrants. The Trump administration sought to amplify this story, deploying ICE and CBP, which resulted in violence and the deaths of two Americans. Hayes highlighted how the focus shifted from the alleged fraud to the administration’s heavy-handed actions, forcing a retreat from Trump’s initial framing. "That was a great example to me of, were we paying attention to Donald Trump? Yes, at some level. Was it on his terms? No. That’s basically the question we ask ourselves," he concluded.
The Historical Commodification of Attention
Hayes traces the commodification of attention back to the mid-19th century with the advent of the "penny press," exemplified by The New York Sun. This era saw newspapers priced below their production cost, with the revenue model shifting to advertising. Similarly, early commercial billboards employed individuals with clickers to estimate audience reach for advertisers.
"The idea was that you were selling an audience, and you had to come up with metrics that you could use to measure that audience and then sell that audience to advertisers," Hayes explained.
Over time, this model evolved through magazines, radio, television, and ultimately the internet and social media. What distinguishes the current era, according to Hayes, is the "global scale" at which attention can be monetized and the unprecedented "amount of data" collected about individuals. This allows for microsecond auctions for advertising space and algorithmic curation that can bypass human editorial judgment, creating a perpetual "auction for eyeballs."
An Attention Merchant’s Navigation
Hayes candidly acknowledges his own role as an "attention merchant." He navigates this landscape by recognizing where attention is flowing—a "necessary but never sufficient" condition for his work on television. "Like, if no one watches my show, then I haven’t done my job," he admitted. However, the imperative extends beyond mere viewership. "I have to get people’s attention, and then I have to do something worthwhile with it."
For his podcast, "Why Is This Happening?", Hayes prioritizes topics that genuinely interest him, letting the audience reception follow. Social media presents a different challenge. The increasing prevalence of vertical video formats, which Hayes describes as having a "weird slot-machine effect," requires adaptation. He shared an anecdote about a seemingly minor video on House votes on tariffs that unexpectedly gained significant traction, illustrating the unpredictability of algorithmic engagement.
"Every piece of content is at every moment pitted against every other piece of content ever created," Hayes stated, underscoring the fierce competition for audience focus. This reality necessitates participation in new formats, even if the underlying mechanisms remain opaque.
The Attention Deficit in Politics
Hayes applied his theories to the political arena, particularly concerning the Democratic Party’s struggles to connect with voters. He cited data from the 2024 election, indicating that voters who paid the most attention to the news were more inclined to support Harris, while those who consumed less media gravitated towards Trump. This suggests that traditional media consumption, while seemingly high, is not a guaranteed path to electoral success in the current environment.
"For a very long period of time, from the 1980s until recently, there was a very straightforward theory of attention and campaigns, which was you raised money and then you spent it on TV ads. That’s clearly broken down," Hayes observed. He highlighted the need for a "theory of how you reach the people that don’t consume media," moving beyond traditional "earned media" (like interviews) and "paid media" (advertising).
Hayes pointed to Donald Trump’s effective use of diverse platforms and content creation, including seemingly trivial acts like serving McDonald’s from a truck, as an example of reaching a broad audience beyond traditional news consumers. He also lauded innovators like Zohran Mamdani for their pioneering use of vertical video in political campaigns. The core challenge, he reiterated, is for political campaigns to develop a coherent strategy for gaining visibility in a fragmented media ecosystem.
The Merging of Silicon Valley and State Power
The increasing proximity between Silicon Valley elites and political power, particularly evident during the Trump administration, is a significant concern for Hayes. He noted the shift in WIRED‘s initial countercultural stance to its current position, now observing the industry it once critiqued as having become part of the establishment.
"I think as the industry matured from an insurgent industry to incumbent one, its politics got more right-wing," Hayes remarked. He also attributed this shift to the industry’s immersion in online discourse and a desire to align with governmental power, especially in the context of the burgeoning AI race.
"The big part of it is the AI bet," he stated, highlighting the existential importance of artificial intelligence for these corporations. Hayes expressed concern about the potential for ideological alignment driven by business imperatives, noting that individual leaders like Jeff Bezos have become more conservative, while others like Elon Musk exhibit more extreme political leanings.
The collaboration between tech companies and government entities, particularly in the defense sector, raises further alarms. Hayes recounted a tense negotiation between Anthropic and the Pentagon over the use of its AI model, Claude, expressing dismay at the Pentagon’s reaction and the implications for national security and ethical AI development.
"These companies, particularly those two, OpenAI and Anthropic, they’re startups, right?… They’re on a treadmill, they gotta run fast. They gotta raise money," Hayes explained, pointing to the financial pressures that can influence decision-making. "It’s people with very powerful technology who are banking on making a world-changing fortune. But they also have Pac-Man ghosts of financial burden trailing behind them."
AI and the Future of Labor
Hayes identifies job replacement as the most pressing concern regarding AI. He believes that professions ranging from coders to administrative staff are at risk of automation in the near future, leading to "profound dislocation." He criticized what he perceives as a tendency on the left to dismiss the potential of AI, sometimes as a reaction against the "propaganda" of tech elites.
"I think there’s an idea that if you take that seriously, you’re ceding to their own propaganda about how useful their product is," Hayes noted. He personally uses AI tools like NotebookLM to understand their capabilities and limitations, particularly in research. "AI is just manifestly getting better. This idea that it’s not is insane. The idea that it’s not gonna start to touch jobs people do also seems insane."
Hayes advocates for a more proactive approach from the left, urging serious consideration of job protections and AI regulation. He suggests that society needs to re-evaluate fundamental questions about the purpose of work and human contribution in an increasingly automated world. "What should a person have a shot at in a wealthy society like ours? How do we order society fairly to do that? That’s real first-principle stuff," he urged.
He sees grassroots resistance, such as local activism against data center construction, as a tangible way to operationalize concerns about AI’s impact on employment and resource consumption.
Control, Alt, Delete: A Technological Reckoning
In a concluding segment, Hayes participated in a rapid-fire "Control, Alt, Delete" game, offering his thoughts on technology:
- Control: He would wish to control AI, believing that a more humane and responsible approach is possible with careful oversight.
- Alt (Alter): Hayes desires to "alter internet search so that it works again," lamenting the decline in the quality of search results due to AI integration and overwhelming advertisements. He yearns for a return to a search engine that effectively surfaces relevant information.
- Delete: His target for deletion is "cell phone calls," citing their unreliability, poor audio quality, and lack of "side tone" (the ability to hear one’s own voice, which aids in volume calibration and conversational flow). He advocates for a return to landline-quality audio for mobile communication, suggesting that the current state of cell phone call technology is a level of failure that would be unacceptable in other technological domains.
Hayes’s reflections underscore the pervasive influence of the attention economy and the critical need for thoughtful engagement with emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, and their profound implications for society, labor, and the very fabric of human interaction.