About

Value Added is a newsletter about the political economy of innovation. I focus primarily on the United States and China with a focus on cloud and AI. A related strand of work focused on labor and its impact on innovation.

A little about me: I’m JS Tan, a PhD student in the International Development Group at MIT DUSP, and a member of Collective Action in Tech, a non-profit that seeks to advance labor organizing in the tech industry. In the past, I’ve written on topics such as bullshit tech work, Big Tech’s collaboration with Big Oil, and industrial relations in China’s tech sector for venues like Dissent Magazine, Foreign Policy, The Baffler, The Guardian Opinion, Logic(s), and Jacobin. Some of my writing is archived here. Previously, I worked as a software engineer in the cloud and AI industry.