The US Government’s AI Grand Bargain

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The White House is portraying the race to adopt AI as an existential crisis. It’s the next Manhattan Project, they say, a technology so important it will require an unprecedented build out of energy infrastructure and massive data centers. But the Manhattan Project was a government-led technological drive whereas AI is led by salesmen and corporations.

What could possibly go wrong?

On this episode of Angry Planet, Ben Buchanan is here to tell us about the government’s role in fostering AI. Buchanan was an AI advisor during the Biden administration where he helped write the policy that paved the way for private-public partnerships between DC and AI companies. Now he’s a professor at John Hopkins and, though he’s still an AI advocate, he’s got concerns. Slop, public land use, and autonomous weapons. We get into it all on this episode of Angry Planet.

AI as an arm’s race
Nukes are cheaper than AI
Government’s role in the construction of AI infrastructure
What are the stakes of the AI competition between the United States and China?
“More powerful AI systems will enable more powerful cyber operations.”
“It’s the hardest thing we do as a species.”
Turning over federal lands to data centers
How Trump is shooting himself in the foot regarding AI
“We’re just chasing power all across the country.”
“We’re going to be building data centers for a very long time.”
How the AI expert uses AI
“There’s a long list of concerns.”
Accident reports and autonomous weapons

The AI Grand Bargain

Ben Buchanan

DOE on federal lands for data centers

Anthropic Has a Plan to Keep Its AI From Building a Nuclear Weapon. Will It Work?

DoD Direction 3000.09 Autonomy in Weapons Systems

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature.
0:05.4	It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment.
0:09.1	Just click the link in the show description to support now.
0:17.7	Hello and welcome to another conversation about conflict on an angry planet.
0:21.7	I am Matthew Galt.
0:23.6	And today we're going to talk about AI and the grand bargain that I would say all of us
0:32.3	in the country are being asked to make about AI.
0:36.6	And to do that we'd have with us, Ben Buchanan.
0:39.3	Sir, can you introduce yourself?
0:40.9	Thanks so much for having me.
0:42.1	I am Ben Buchanan.
0:43.0	I'm currently the Dmitri Alperibich assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University School
0:48.6	of Advanced International Studies.
0:50.2	And prior to that, I was in the Biden White House for all four years, including as President
0:55.5	Biden's special advisor for AI.
0:58.1	How does one become an AI expert at that level?
1:03.8	Well, the field is so new, at least in its national security applications, that there's no set path.
1:09.1	My path was through the world of cyber operations. My
1:13.1	PhD was on the way in which nations hack one another and the national security and
1:18.9	geopolitical implications of that. I was a professor at Georgetown University, and it was during my
1:24.6	postdoc and PhD that I started also getting into AI.
1:27.7	He wrote a book on AI National Security and then was asked to join the Biden administration in 2021 and served in a number of roles at the White House.
	...

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