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New funding is exacerbating a critical shortage of talent in animal advocacy. How we got here and how we get out. Anti-Fur March during Milan Fashion Week (September 26). Join a CAFT organizing calls September 14 or 20, 7:30pm CET: https://abolishfur.org/mfw-woa/ Farmed animal advocacy is about to receive more money than it has ever had, and it has already run out of the people who know what to do with it. In this first of two episodes on the movement's talent crunch, I trace how nearly every leader we have climbed the same ladder from volunteer to organizer to professional, how the professionalization wave of 2016 pulled that ladder up behind them, and why hiring impressive mid-career outsiders to fill the gap keeps failing on culture rather than competence. Along the way: Russian peasants and their seed grain, corporate moral mazes, a Dutch nursing company that discovered its least-supported teams did best, the two-thirds failure rate of my own hiring rounds, and the one scrappy organization that has quietly rebuilt the pipeline the rest of the movement abandoned by running disciplined campaigns on volunteer power alone. If you've ever wondered why job postings draw hundreds of applicants while orgs insist they can't find anyone, or why the world's most neglected problem is also one of its lowest-status careers, this one's for you. And yes, I'm going to ask you to come to a fur march in Milan. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

But it isn't cultivated meat, and you're not going to like it. I believe this is the most important essay I have published on Sandcastles. We start by exploring the natural law that has doomed both animal rights and cultivated meat as approached to ending factory farming. Then we climbs down a ladder advocates have been afraid to touch: technological solutions that take the cruelty out of factory farming without sacrificing efficiency. Besides dispelling what I've come to see as misplaced hopes for the future, my top goal is to drive talented activists towards two new incubation programs for welfare tech startups: Spring Innovation Fund is accepting expressions of interest, and Ambitious Impact's first animal-focused incubation cohort closes applications September 13. Nothing on this channel represents the views of any organization. Expression of interest for Spring Innovation Fund: http://springfund.com/for-EIRs/ Apply for Ambitious Impact's animal welfare cohort by September 13: https://helpanimals.charityentrepreneurship.com/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

Important news: I recently started a new Substack channel, the Animal Welfare Alignment Newsletter, fully dedicated to my work at Anima International trying to convince AI companies to include animal welfare values as a target when aligning their AI models. I decided to keep this separate from Sandcastles because the topic is narrower and the posts are often more technical, but most of the feedback I’ve gotten from readers is that they would still be interested in these posts. I’m crossposting this one to both channels, and if you’re interested, you should subscribe to the new channel. -- Frontier AI labs are quietly splitting into two camps: those building obedient "tool" AIs that do exactly what they're told, and Anthropic, trying to raise a moral agent with a character of its own. In this post, I argues that this obscure-sounding debate may be one of the most consequential questions the animal movement will ever face, and that advocates should be quietly rooting for character. Drawing on a remarkably candid (and very online) argument unfolding between researchers at OpenAI, Anthropic, and the fringes of AI safety Twitter, we see how a morally reflective AI is far better news for animals than a compliant one, and why pressuring every lab to embrace character alignment could be a winnable corporate campaign. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

Five principles from the faction that stopped fighting and started winning. “The golden carp has escaped the net. What will he feed on now?” - The Blue Cliff Record, case 49 The animal rights movement spent a decade tearing itself apart—abolitionists versus welfarists, open rescue versus underground, endless fights over who to cancel. That war is finally ending, and a new faction is rising from its ashes: Team Win, defined by a single commitment to winning for animals by any means short of violence. Drawing on the Grassroots Animal Rights Summit in DC, Anima International's brutally honest internal culture, the Ridglan beagle rescue, and a board-game-obsessed Polish campaigner who plays to win, I lay out the five principles of the Winners' Charter. Plus: a time-traveling dialogue about why short-term wins and long-term power were never really at odds, and why whatever you're most confident about today is probably what you'll be most embarrassed about in eight years. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

Imploring animal advocates to stop confusing moral and strategic questions At one moment in Humane Hancock's new documentary The Dying Trade, two characters debate who is really to blame for factory farming — corporations or consumers? I use it as a jumping-off point to argue that the whole debate is a distraction. Whether responsibility falls on CEOs, workers, consumers, or regulators, the more important question is always: what actually works? From DxE's compassionate disruption tactics to the chaotic, salsa-flinging foie gras campaigns of AAC and CAFT, the animal movement too often dresses up moral preferences as strategic arguments — and that the cure is to think like a strategist first, not a philosopher. Also featuring Adolf Eichmann, Gary Francione, and Temple Grandin's wardrobe. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

A guest essay by Itsi Weinstock, introduced by Aidan. The case for why animal advocates — yes, you specifically — need to get to San Francisco right now, why the AI revolution makes this the most important city on earth for the movement, and what you can do this week from wherever you are to steer AI positively for animals. Links mentioned in this episode: Subscribe to Itsi's newsletter: Frontier Animals Use this form to tell Itsi and Aidan how they can help you move to SF. Sentient Futures subsidized residency in SF — details and application here. For Aidan's first post on AI, see the earliest episode on this podcast feed, The Tsunami is Coming. Finally, please enter the Hyperstition for Good writing competition (sponsored by Sentient Futures x Compassion in Machine Learning) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

A week ago, 1,000 of us walked into a muddy field in Wisconsin expecting to rescue 2,000 beagles from a notorious factory farm. Instead, we got tear gassed, pepper sprayed, and shot at with bean bags. We didn't get a single dog out. Wayne Hsiung, who led the action, has been apologizing ever since. This is my attempt to explain why he shouldn't be — why the ass-kicking was the plan working, not failing, and why the 1,000 people who took chemical weapons to the face for animals who can never thank them deserve to hold their heads high. Also: what tear gas actually feels like, why you should never shower with your underwear off afterwards, and what the 1963 Children's March in Birmingham can teach us about taking a beating on purpose. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

When I was a college organizer with Direct Action Everywhere, I dismissed the welfare campaigners at The Humane League as sellouts. They thought I was a naïf. Neither of us was right — but it took years for me to understand why. In this classic essay, I argued that the old "welfarism versus abolitionism" divide was always a category error: every animal advocate is an incrementalist, just focusing on different increments. The more useful frame, borrowed from social movement theory, is the inside-outside strategy — and once you see it, the apparent contradiction between cage-free campaigns and restaurant disruptions starts to look less like a civil war and more like a playbook. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

Sunday morning, I joined Chris Bryant’s popular Youtube stream for a wide-ranging discussion on all of my favorite topics: pragmatic campaigning, movement factionalism, and AI’s impact on animals. This was a full-circle moment for me. When I started Pax Fauna without any research experience to speak of, Chris gave me some helpful advice. I was tickled to hear that my writing has helped him think about AI and even inspired him to drop thousands of dollars on Claude Max plans for his team. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

Please join me and 2,000 other people in Wisconsin on April 19 to tear a Beagle farm apart brick by brick and rescue every one of the 2,000 dogs still languishing inside. Sign up here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

And both movements are better for it. The animal welfare movement and the AI alignment movement grew up in the same community, but they've been operating in separate lanes. That's a mistake — and it's one both sides can fix. In this essay, I argue that the arrival of transformative AI makes animal welfare a wholly-owned subsidiary of the broader "Make AI Go Well" movement, whether either side likes it or not. For animal advocates, that means putting AI at the center of our strategic thinking, including designing our campaigns with AI training data in mind. For alignment researchers, it means recognizing that a post-AGI world full of factory farming is a failure mode, not a footnote. I make the case that both movements need each other more than they realize, and that the skills each has developed are exactly what the other is missing. This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

Open rescue isn't an alternative to pragmatic campaigning. It's the missing piece. I came out of open rescue retirement to join hundreds of activists in storming a dog factory farm in Wisconsin. In this essay, I tell the story of the Ridglan Farms rescue, what it felt like to be back, and why the experience resolved a tension I've been wrestling with for years. Open rescue and focused, winnable campaigns aren't alternatives — they're different types of artifact that belong together. But the deeper argument is about something I'm calling proportionate action: a movement that claims to be fighting a moral atrocity of historic proportions will lose its soul if no part of it ever takes action commensurate with that claim. This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

In search of the missing social movement for farmed animals. In 1995, thousands of people—disproportionately meat-eating moms and grandmas—laid their bodies across a road in a tiny English coastal town to stop trucks carrying live sheep to slaughter. For ten months, crowds of over a thousand showed up day after day, facing down riot police, in what remains the high-water mark of mass mobilization for farmed animals. Nothing like it has happened since. In this episode, I ask why. Drawing on my own years as an organizer with Direct Action Everywhere, I work through the strategic mistakes that have kept the animal movement small and insular—from messaging that alienates the public, to campaigns designed for efficiency rather than inspiration, to an abolitionist philosophy that divided the movement over the very campaigns that could have united us. And I propose some directions for what it would take to trigger one more wave of mass protest for farmed animals before the window closes. This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of my voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

Advice for animal advocacy orgs and job seekers in the age of agents 🦞🦞🦞 AI agents aren't coming — they're here, and they're already reshaping what it means to work in animal advocacy. In this post, I break down the last twelve months of AI breakthroughs, from Claude Code to OpenClaw, and argue that every advocacy organization should be racing to adopt these tools right now. Drawing on conversations from the Sentient Futures Summit in San Francisco, I introduce a framework for the two roles that will define advocacy organizations going forward: agent orchestrators, who can single-handedly automate the digital work of entire teams, and human interfaces, whose irreplaceable social skills become the true bottleneck to impact. I make the case that spending $20 a month on AI in 2026 is organizational malpractice, that young CS graduates are the movement's most undervalued resource, and that both small and large organizations need to rethink their structures before the pace of change leaves them behind. This is a prediction, a dare, and a practical guide — because every hour you spend deliberating is an hour your agents could have spent working for animals. This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of Aidan's voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com

Punchline: I’d be grateful to anyone who spends time engaging at the link below, which is meant to elicit a wide range of ideas for what projects animal advocates should be prioritizing if we think AI will turn the world upside down in 5-15 years. Share your thoughts: https://www.tricider.com/brainstorming/36eenMwaMqN The episode contains some context that might make this exercise more useful to both you and me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com