Anthropic is Wrong

Speaker 3

Hello, everybody.

Speaker 2

It is Saturday, February the 28th, 2026. Last day in February. And...

Speaker 2

Saturday's show, our summary of tech news from Silicon Valley. There's only really one story this week. It's the statement from Dario Amadai of Anthropic in terms of his quote-unquote discussions with the Department of War. They weren't very successful discussions. Amadai has decided not to allow the Department of War to use some of his... uh best technology a lot of people in silicon valley very sympathetic to anthropic in this clash with not just the department of war but donald trump of course uh silicon valley rallies behind anthropic according to the new york times lots of people that Big tech companies like Google and Meta are supportive. Not everyone, though, is supportive of what Amadai, the position he's taken. Vino Kostler says that he's sympathetic in a way with what Amadai is doing, but disagree with the principle itself. And Keith Tear of That Was The Week, I think, agrees with Kostler, although his editorial this week came out before the Kostler X's. Keith leads this week with Anthropic Is Wrong. Keith, why is Dario Amidai wrong? What's your position on this?

Speaker 1

Well, he clearly hasn't read The Art of War. How do you win?

Speaker 1

He's blundered here. He's trying to set policy for the government on use of AI through a sales contract. And firstly, it's not his job to do that. Vendors don't determine the use of the thing you buy from them. And by doing it, he's obviously alienated the entire US administration, which means a huge customer base. And the reality is that the likelihood of the government misusing his AI due to the rule of law, firstly, it's out of his control, and secondly, it's very unlikely they would anyway. So he's created a fake battle that can only damage his company.

Speaker 2

But these aren't normal political times, Keith. If it was anthropic challenging the Biden government or the Bush government or the Obama one, You may have a point, but at what point, then, in your view, should or would Anthropic not allow the government to use his technology? You have to assume that there's a political dimension here. I mean, he doesn't mention in his statement Trump and Hegg said, but it's clearly there. I mean, it's self-evident in his challenge to the administration.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Look, the better option would be to just decide we don't sell to governments. You can't sell to a government and then when the government says any lawful use, which is an important sentence, say, well, no, we wanna carve out these things you can't do and expect that a government is gonna allow a private company or even a public company, to determine government policy. It's just unrealistic. And so he's naive. And I'm with Vinod. I'm not in favor of mass surveillance. And I'm not in favor of even narrow surveillance. And I'm certainly not in favor of autonomous weapons making kill decisions at a time when the software itself is not reliably deterministic. So I don't disagree with Amadei's, you know, let's call them his concerns. I'm giving him some business advice here. The best way to pursue his concerns isn't to do what he did.

Speaker 2

That's all very well. He doesn't need business advice from you. He's quite... enough of a grown-up i think um and this is not a business decision i mean it's obviously not a business decision he's he's taking a position against the trump administration for better or worse so if you want to argue on business terms you're obviously right if you want to make money you sell as much of your technology as you can but that's not the position he's taking well it isn't money my main point

Speaker 1

isn't about money it's about who controls uh policy And that's more of a point about democracy. None of us want private companies to make policy. They're allowed to be lobbyists. They're allowed to have opinions. They're not policymakers. So policy belongs with the legislature and the people who elect them. And there is no current fear

Speaker 1

that the legal system doesn't protect us against mass surveillance of the US population, because as we've seen in recent history, there are laws against that, but the government does it anyway. The guy who had to go to Moscow, what's his name?

Speaker 2

Wyckoff.

Speaker 1

No, no, the guy who was a Secret Service guy who leaked that there was mass surveillance going on with the British government in cahoots. Very famous guy.

Speaker 2

So famous we can't remember his name.

Speaker 1

Anyway, that guy. So there's a long history of mass surveillance. We know it happens. You know, Anthropic isn't going to have any impact at all on the reality of that. So it's a fake misfire by Amadai. I'd be fine if he just said we're not selling to governments. That's our policy. I don't have a problem with that. It's trying to set policy that's a problem.

Speaker 2

So I wonder, you know, I take your point. But this was a week when... OpenAI Anthropics competitor raised $110 billion, the largest private funding round in history. Altman apparently reached a deal with the government, the kind of deal that Amadai rejected. But I wonder in retrospect, Keith, whether this might speak to the the change in power between corporations and the state. I mean, you keep on talking about, well, government and private companies. But these private companies are increasingly powerful, increasingly wealthy. And the government, for all Trump or Heg says bluster, seems increasingly marginalized. So I wonder whether in the long term, Anthropic's challenge to the US government might speak of the shift in power between private companies and the state.

Speaker 1

The word power might be too big a word, but I think you're right that the, let's call it influence, the influence of technology companies in particular on government has increased certainly during this administration. I think in the last administration was the opposite due to the regulatory zeal. They went apart. But I think the influence has increased. I wouldn't characterize it as power because I think we all know that Trump is not somebody to exceed power to a third party. So he clearly is using them for his own ends as opposed to giving them authority. And personally, I think it's a good thing if the main drivers of GDP growth have a seat at the table in the conversation, that's fine. when they step over the line of thinking they are the ones who set policy, that is not fine. And I say that despite the fact that this is the Trump administration, and many people would say, well, it's better if anyone else is making policy. I don't agree with that. Democracy is founded on elected officials making policy through legislation, and you can't subvert that just because you don't like the current administration.

Speaker 2

But again, I wonder whether technology is so powerful and is so privatized now that this is almost unavoidable. I mean, back in the nuclear age, Oppenheimer, for all his ambivalence about the nuclear bomb, couldn't say, well, I'm not going to give my bomb or my technology to the government because he was employed by the government, because he worked for them. Now what Amidai has at his fingertips within Anthropic. It's not something that the government has. Maybe Sam Altman has it at OpenAI and he's done this deal with the government, but who knows in future what kind of relations will exist between OpenAI and the government. So something's changed, hasn't it?

Speaker 1

Well, there's an enduring theme that goes back maybe as long as 15, 20 years, which is the globalization of tech leads to a separation of interest from domestic corporations, which are more and more global, and national governments. And all over the world, national governments have reacted with regulatory zeal, fines, sometimes huge fines, especially in Europe, And we are living at a time in history when the nation state is too small an institution for a corporation that has a reach much greater than a nation state. And that tension is real and always arises in any globalizing setting. At the same time, it's intensified because nations are de-globalizing. and shrinking back into their regional zones. And corporations are not.

Speaker 2

Right. And so you have someone like Trump, who's a sort of a wannabe 19th century tin pot dictator invading countries at his will or his whim and then forgetting about them the next week and invading somewhere else. And then you have the real powers of Anthropic or OpenAI or Google. So

Speaker 1

We have a couple of viewers, one on LinkedIn, Robert Mowry, who reminds us it was Edward Snowden we were trying to think about earlier.

Speaker 2

It shows how significant he was.

Speaker 1

And then the second one is from Scrap Metal Husband on YouTube saying he thinks the reliance of the government on tech companies has increased. It isn't so much the tech companies' influence, it's the government relying on them.

Speaker 2

Well, I think he's wrong. That shows the value of democratic input, Keith. I'd switch these things off. Kostler argues that... we need these you know he's critical of amadai i'm quoting from an x he posted and putin will appear will adhere to it and china didn't do gain of function research and cause covid probably accidentally do you trust putin and xi that's all very well but on a day where donald trump has invaded uh or is at least uh declared war on iran I mean, one could argue, Amidai might, certainly a lot of people in Silicon Valley, there's not a great deal of difference between Putin and Xi and Trump.

Speaker 1

Well, the biggest difference is the belief in, you know, ultimately in democracy.

Speaker 2

If you keep on using this D word, you don't sound very convinced, Keith.

Speaker 1

Well, it's certainly the case that the gains we've made in political organizations since feudalism are something to be defended and protected. That's definitely true. It is true that Putin... That's another very vague response.

Speaker 2

I mean, we're not talking about advances since feudalism. We're talking about America in 2026.

Speaker 1

Well, America in 2026 is dangerous because America is a relatively declining as a global power, is having to rely more and more on shrinking back into its borders, hence the discussions around NATO and the EU spending more money on the military. It's a bunch of bilateral relationships, increasing diplomacy with China becomes important, and Putin for that matter. And so a shrinking or declining power which happens to be the world's biggest military power, clearly would be of a concern to everyone who isn't the United States. And so that's the reality. Putting into the United States government therefore, needs to be controlled by its people in terms of what policies...

Speaker 2

Again, you sound like some civics. That's not the way things are working in America. I mean, the vast majority of Americans are not supportive of what Trump did in... They're certainly not supportive of him invading and declaring war on Iran or Venezuela or Cuba or wherever else. So he won a narrow victory, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone supports what he does. Well, I mean, Amadai might ask, I'm not putting words into his mouth, but what's the difference between giving these weapons of mass destruction to, well, maybe not Putin, but certainly Xi versus Trump. Xi hasn't used them yet, certainly in Taiwan. It's not clear, really. I mean, you keep on mentioning democracy, but it's not convincing.

Speaker 1

Well, I want to hear from you. how you frame it. I'm trying to give you my world view at this moment in time. I mean, I do think, historically at least, rising powers rarely resort to war. It's almost always declining powers or powers that are struggling to pay to a previous big power that's declined, like say Germany was doing in the middle of last century,

Speaker 2

um you know actually it's interesting i've got a an interview coming up i did it yesterday and i assumed i was going to run it on tuesday but events have intervened with a yale historian arne west that has just written a book called the coming storm which he compares the current world with uh the the period before the first world war and he compares uh

Speaker 2

pre-World War I Britain with America in terms of decline and pre-World War Germany with China. So it's an interesting comparison.

Speaker 1

I think that is an appropriate comparison at an abstract level. I mean, obviously not taking into account any of the specifics about today, but at the big picture level, China is already dominating many industries globally and is a rising power. America is very similar to Britain, as in the pound was being questioned as a currency of world trade. Now the dollar is being questioned. And by the way, my PhD thesis was about why this happens. It happens because of economics. You know, the old get old and the new... Right,

Speaker 2

so I'll run that interview actually probably tomorrow. But let's get back to tech. I mean, again, it comes back to... I mean, if I have... I'm not saying anything... You know, I'm much more sympathetic to Amadi because I see it as a political response. I mean, clearly... I mean, I don't... necessarily disagree with certainly with you or Khosla in theory but in practice we live in late February or early March 2026 and Amadai is taking position for better or worse on the current state of the US government which he clearly doesn't trust in my view quite rightly whether it's Trump or Hexer I don't think he would probably do it in a different administration but my bigger point is that I think it does reflect the fact that these companies now, again, for better or worse, are so powerful, have so much technology and financial independence, that the fact that Amidai is willing to take the government on publicly is astonishing. And that he's kept his job. There's no rebellion. The investors in Anthropic are clearly okay with it. Sam Altman came out publicly to support him, although clearly he's using it as an opportunity to build... better bridges with the current administration. But I think it speaks of the change in power between governments and corporations in the long term. That's my sense. And I don't think you've got the same imbalance, let's say, between the First World War. No one knows who supplied the British government, for example, with weapons. There were steel manufacturers and armor manufacturers, people who made tanks, but they don't come to mind. I think when historians look back at this period, Anthropic and OpenAI and Google and Microsoft will be major players, in some ways equally powerful to the US government.

Speaker 1

Well, Palmer Luckey's company that produces autonomous weapons is obviously a big part of the... Right, yeah. Andrew, I know you well enough, and your reputation on being pro-democracy is huge. I suspect you would agree with me that corporations shouldn't set policy. You might agree with, and I do too, the individual beliefs against mass surveillance and against unreliable autonomous weapons.