How Is AI Being Used In The Iran War?

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Natural Sciences, Wnyc, Science, Friday, Life Sciences

4.4 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2026

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

The Pentagon has given AI a powerful role in the Iran war. We dig into the DOD conflict with Anthropic, and the state of autonomous weapons.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, I'm Flora Lichtenen, and you're listening to Science Friday.
0:07.0	The military use of AI is capturing headlines this month.
0:11.1	The dust up at the Pentagon with AI company Anthropic Out and Open AI In.
0:16.9	Meanwhile, a new war where AI is in use.
0:20.8	What do we make of all of it?
0:22.2	We knew just who to call.
0:23.9	Karen Howe is a journalist covering AI.
0:26.3	She's written for the Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal.
0:28.8	And she's the author of the book, Empire of AI, Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's Open AI, which takes you behind the scenes on the rise of one of the most powerful startups ever.
0:40.4	Karen, thank you so much for being here.
0:42.1	Thank you so much for having me.
0:44.1	You are deep in this world.
0:46.5	I have this feeling in this moment of AI's power and reach sort of snowballing.
0:52.7	But what is your impression of this time?
0:56.5	Oh, my gosh.
0:57.2	Yeah.
0:57.6	I mean, when I was working on my book and using the metaphor of empire to try and
1:03.2	contextualize the sheer power consolidation that's happened within these companies, I was not
1:10.4	envisioning, you know, the fusion of this
1:13.6	technology with the military and the alliance between Silicon Valley and Washington. And it just,
1:21.1	it feels startling that that metaphor has come to be the only metaphor that we can really use to understand this moment.
1:32.3	Well, it's not a metaphor anymore. It's literal. It's literal, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I did not
	...

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