Rykov grins. “Fuck yeah. Trash Team America”
Dugin grimaces and strokes his long beard….

“I don’t like this language, Vladik, and I loathe
The technology here on show. But while I fear
It is capitulation even to use these terms,
Unless ironically. All you say is true. We must
Learn from our great enemy - the West. And in
The final battle we must use every tool,
No matter how crude and repulsive they are”

Rykov smiles and pours out another vodka,
Unaware of how quickly the historian,
Can go from philosophy to anger.
Surkov knows and sees the danger. For Dugin
There is no intermediary between
Dissatisfaction with someone and despair.
He moves straight through annoyance to 
Animosity without missing a beat.
Rykov warms to his vodka and his theme. 

“Some say that data has become the new oil,
Or diamonds, gold, or some other mineral,
Extracted from the earth, cooked underground.
But information is never quite like this.
Data is free. It rides on a beam of light, 
Fast as electrons but with even less weight.
Data is the Word, the Truth, the Logos.
It can unleash wisdom beyond reckoning
Riches more than any computer can count.
Data is the elixir of humanity:
Distilled, it can predict whatever happens next. 
Every search we make, every purchase we complete,
That becomes part of our psychometric profile:
Billions of data points - your favourite songs,
Photos of kids, dating online, travel plans,
We know more and more about you every day. 
After ten likes on social media 
We know you better than most of your friends,
After fifty likes, better than your partner. 
A hundred, we know you better than yourself. 
This data technology is so powerful 
It knows women are pregnant before they do:
That men are going to commit violence
Against themselves or others, the dark triad
Of narcissism, psychopathy, and hate.
In silica, we can model humankind, 
And the data reveals the repeating patterns
Of repeatable and predictable people.”

Unpredictable Dugin is chafing now,
Jingling his car keys in his pocket. Surkov tries 
To shoot a glance  -  warn this isn’t working,
Rykov is oblivious. “You know The Matrix.
Sci-fi movie. It stars Keanu Reeves,” 
Dugin shakes his head and taps his keys on the desk.
“Don’t watch the sequels, they retrospectively
Ruin the first one. But in the first one Reeves
Lives in a computer program hardwired to his brain 
Which looks, tastes and feels like everyday life.
In reality, he is suspended in a pod,
With millions of other humans harvested
By robots for their calorific reserves. 
(That’s the one big flaw in the scenario. 
The fourth law of thermodynamics makes this
Absurd). The story would make more sense if
The machines were milking Keanu for his 
Data. It’s already happening. Think of this:
The industrial age turned us into workers,
We became just hands assembled on a line,
Machine-driven robots day in and day out,
And all that came with it - armies of Labour,
Socialism, robotiye, revolution.
Then, with the crisis of overproduction,
Capitalism survived by turning workers
Into consumers. The post-industrial age was born,
TV sets, mass media, and advertising.
And resistance to it averted by turning 
Us inside out, industrialising our inner lives.
Communism failed. The Soviet Union fell.
But Capitalism was still not satisfied.
It’s greed knows no bounds — accepts no limits,
So it came to its own final solution:
Turn the worker and consumer into the product itself.
That’s what it’s done. Like Keanu Reeve’s pod
We are being milked and harvested online,
Because when the product is free you are
The product. From mechanising our habits to
Exploiting our desires, Capital now 
Automates our reality and our beliefs.
It’s invisible. Like the water we swim in. Until
We see through the code. Then we can rewrite it. 
Then we can become, as Stalin once foretold,
Engineers of human souls.”

The half-rhyme irritates. Stalin even more.
Dugin stands up as if ready to walk out. 
Only Rykov’s smug grin stops him….