The Pentagon Wants an Obedient A.I. Soldier. Will It Get One?
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
The New Yorker staff writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss the escalating standoff between the A.I. company Anthropic and the Department of War. They consider recent reporting on the use of Claude—Anthropic’s family of large language models—in military operations in Venezuela and Iran, and how that news has pushed the company’s relationship with the Pentagon to a breaking point. They also explore how the tech industry is responding to the conflict between the Trump Administration and Anthropic, and the thorny question of whether A.I. should be subject to greater safeguards and more oversight than previous technological innovations.
This week’s reading:
- “The Pentagon Went to War with Anthropic. What’s Really at Stake?,” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus
- “Israel’s Gulf-State Gamble in the Iran War,” by Ruth Margalit
- “The Iran War Is Another Reason to Quit Oil,” by Bill McKibben
- “Trump’s Mass-Detention Campaign,” by Jonathan Blitzer
- “How Should We Remember the Hippies?,” by Jay Caspian Kang
The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week.
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Gideon. |
| 0:07.9 | Hey, Tyler. |
| 0:08.9 | Thanks for coming back so quickly. |
| 0:10.6 | Thank you for having me. |
| 0:12.0 | Would you say that your reporting on AI has made you more freaked out about AI potentially being used in military operations, or are you less freaked out? |
| 0:22.6 | Oh, significantly more freaked out. |
| 0:24.6 | Part of it is just that, yes, it seems to allow us to unleash |
| 0:28.6 | the forces of destruction on a much greater scale. |
| 0:31.6 | Then, of course, there's the question of, like, the game theory of this, |
| 0:36.6 | which is, like, if we are doing this then |
| 0:38.1 | certainly our adversaries are going to be working on doing this kind of thing and then finally |
| 0:42.7 | there's the much more ticklish question of to what extent can we like once we have trained it |
| 0:49.5 | to produce this amount of devastation to what extent are we really ultimately able to control? |
| 0:57.7 | That's Gideon Lewis Krause, a staff writer at The New Yorker. |
| 1:01.8 | Last month, Gideon came on the podcast to talk about Anthropic, a company that has committed |
| 1:06.7 | to developing an AI that's grounded into principles of ethics and safety. But just days after Gideon came on the show, reports began to emerge that the Department of Defense had allegedly used Claude, |
| 1:17.6 | Anthropic series of large language models, in military actions in Venezuela, and later Iran, potentially without the company's knowledge. |
| 1:25.6 | Recently, when Anthropic tried to put guardrails around the way that the Pentagon is using their technology, |
| 1:32.0 | Pete Hagseth and other DOD officials bristled, leading to a wild escalation in which the Pentagon |
| 1:37.5 | labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk, essentially blacklisting the company. |
| 1:42.5 | Anthropic is now suing in response. |
| 1:45.3 | I wanted to talk with Gideon about what we actually know |
... |
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