“Build the AI Wall” with Steve Bannon

The Last Invention

Longview

Documentary, Society & Culture, Technology

4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2026

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, Andy interviews Steve Bannon and his War Room tech editor, Joe Allen. They make the populist right-wing case for breaking up Big Tech, forcing transparency on frontier AI labs, and blocking “AI amnesty” efforts that would preempt state oversight. Bannon frames AI as a species-level inflection point driven by what he calls “broligarch” elites pushing “techno-feudalism,” warning that the public is underwriting opaque labs while losing jobs, leverage and eventually autonomy. LINKS: War Room Podcast Dark Aeon by Joe Allen CREDITS: This episode of The Last Invention was reported and produced by Andy Mills, Megan Phelps-Roper, Matthew Boll, Seth Temple Andrews, Carmen Hilbert and Ethan Mannello. Music for this episode was composed by ⁠⁠Scott Devendorf⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Ben Lanz⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Cobey Bienert⁠⁠, and Matthew Boll The Last Invention artwork by ⁠⁠Jacob Boll⁠⁠ To become a Longview subscriber you can visit us ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thank you to our sponsors Ground News ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GROUND NEWS⁠:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠groundnews.com/invent⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get 40% off unlimited access to global coverage of the stories shaping our world. This is a paid sponsorship link Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Gregory Warner. And before we get to today's show, I just wanted to tell you all about a
0:06.9	podcast that you might not have heard of. It's called The Middle. This is The Middle. I'm Jeremy
0:13.2	Hobson. If you're just tuning in, the Middle is a national call-in show. We're focused on elevating
0:17.0	voices from the Middle, geographically, politically, or maybe you just want to meet in the
0:21.9	middle. Each week, longtime journalist Jeremy Hobson and his guests take live calls from all over
0:28.3	the country. Hi, my name is Susan. I'm in Sarasota, Florida. Yeah, live calls, the podcast.
0:34.2	Crazy, huh? Hey, this is Mickey from St. Louis. Josh from Columbia, South Carolina.
0:38.6	And they deal with issues like immigration, restoring civility and politics, and of course, AI.
0:44.7	I've worried about my grandchildren who are graduating from college in the next three years,
0:49.2	finding jobs because the entry-level jobs will go to AI and they won't never get that experience.
0:55.0	I love a good calling show. I love hearing from folks around the country and especially on the middle, you hear from this wide swath of people, from the young and the old, the urban, the rural, the right and the left. And you often get a sense for not just what divides Americans, but also
1:12.4	what we have in common. If that sounds like a show for you, just search for The Middle with
1:18.3	Jeremy Hobson, wherever you get your podcast. Now on to the show. Hi again, this is Andy Mills,
1:26.1	and as promised, we are following up our series, The Last Invention, with continued coverage about the state of the race towards our unknown AI future.
1:35.9	And before we get to today's episode, I just wanted to say a quick thank you to everybody out there who has been sharing the series.
1:41.2	Thanks to those of you who have been writing in with your AI questions
1:44.7	and your suggestions for future reporting. And one of those suggestions, after our last
1:51.0	episode on the politics of AI with Ezra Klein, was for us to talk to somebody on the other
1:57.4	side of the political divide. And that is exactly what we've got in store today.
2:04.2	And when we went to look for exactly who we could speak to on the other side,
2:09.3	what we found surprised us.
2:11.6	We ended up talking to somebody who wants to break up the big tech companies,
	...

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