Derek Thompson

We are also, and you mentioned this at the end of your last answer, actively promoting the sale of AI chips in other countries, including, in some cases, China, in a way that the Biden administration wasn't because, to your point, there was a little bit more forward-looking fear about what would happen if we sold these chips all over the world.

In a strange way,

Is it too cheeky of me to suggest that Trump's AI policy is slightly more globalist and neoliberal than the Biden administration's, given how much they care about the diffusion of the sale of AI chips all over the world, including into China, which is something the Biden administration was specifically worried about and trying to block?

Right.

This is why I wanted to start here before we get into the showdown between Anthropic and the Department of War, because it presents, I think, a really ironic grounding for this showdown.

You have this Trump administration come in that is more business friendly, that is more capitalist, that is more interested in the globalization of this technology.

more of like a direct pipeline of Silicon Valley straight to D.C.

I mean, David Sachs, who's in charge fully of AI policy in the White House, is a co-host of the podcast of Silicon Valley.

And that brings us to the doorstep of this showdown between Anthropic and the Department of War, which I described in the open and you know all too well.

Why do you think this showdown and the announcement of supply chain restrictions, why do you think this was such a remarkable and important move from the White House?

I mean, you said in a great essay, Claude, C-L-A-W-E-D, on Substack, that this was akin to an almost Chinese Maoist move to remove private property rights on behalf of a company.

I mean, it's that significant.

It's that clear an attack on freedom.

I've spoken to folks from the Trump administration, and the case that they would make, the reason that they think they're on solid ground with this attempt to essentially nuke Anthropic from orbit, is that they'll say, look, if Lockheed Martin sells the U.S.

government a fighter jet

They do not have the right to say, and oh, by the way, don't use this jet to bomb Iran, right?

Don't fly in the Middle East.

Anthropic does not have the right to request case-by-case permission to use a technology that is in the employ of our military and national security systems.

And to take the dramatic example that I heard over and over again, this is what I kept hearing.

If China fires a hypersonic missile at the US and we need AI-directed autonomous technology that uses Claude, Anthropic, to disrupt that missile,