Derek Thompson

That question is, who should control AI?

It's what happened next, however, that was most shocking and infamous.

Soon after negotiations broke down, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth took the extraordinary step of labeling Anthropic a supply chain risk, implying that the company could not do business with any firm that holds Pentagon contracts, including Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.

Without access to cloud services provided by these companies, or without the ability to sell services to those companies, Anthropic will struggle mightily.

This designation was broadly seen as the equivalent of the Pentagon trying to murder a successful American business for the sin of saying no.

It's not just liberals like me that found this announcement jarring.

The technology writer Dean Ball said the decision amounted to an announcement from the Trump administration that there is no such thing as private property.

After all, if the government can walk up to your company, make you a deal, and destroy your company if you say no to that deal, that certainly sounds a lot like a world in which the state can destroy whatever it trains its eyes on.

What gives Dean's commentary special force is that he was the senior policy advisor for AI at this White House as recently as last summer.

He was the primary drafter of Trump's AI action plan.

Something very strange is happening in our politics when the administration's AI policy is written by the same person who is now suggesting that the White House's actions are teetering on the verge of Maoism.

So I wanted to talk to Dean about what he sees and why he thinks this episode is so important and potentially so terrifying.

Today's guest is Dean Ball.

We talk about the difference between Biden and Trump's approach to AI before diving into this anthropic mess and pulling out of it the bigger story, according to Dean.

But Trump's scattershot AI policy is just the latest sign that artificial intelligence's capabilities are growing faster than many people want to see or admit.

This technology is going somewhere fast, and the American government might not be prepared for where it's taking us.

I'm Derek Thompson.

This is Plain English.

This episode of Plain English is presented by Audi.

We all know that feeling, a change of plans, a new opportunity.