Derek Thompson

We cannot call or have to call Dario Amadei's office and get put on hold while this hypersonic missile is speeding toward an aircraft in the Pacific to get permission from Anthropic to use their technology to defend America.

We're currently in the very, very strange situation where I am representing the Trump administration, arguing against a former member of the Trump administration, but continuing this play act.

How do you respond to that defense of the Pentagon?

Just stepping out of the play act here, I have the same feeling.

That the gotta call Dario Amadei's executive assistant and get put on hold when the hypersonic missile is passing toward the U.S.

felt a little bit to me like a hypothetical that had slowly gained the weight of fact, if that makes sense.

That it started as a hypothetical in terms of arguing for the Department of War's position.

And then as it kept getting repeated, it was like, oh, wait, did this actually happen?

Was this actually like a point of contention or are we talking a little bit in the abstract here?

They kill missiles.

Another defense in the administration.

And I think it's useful to test your position here against some of the more popular defenses.

Ben Thompson, the famous tech columnist, author of Chatechory, I think someone we're both a huge fan of, has said, look...

The AI frontier labs have gone around claiming that their technology is akin to the nuclear weapon of the future, a digital atomic bomb.

You cannot possibly be surprised if you go around saying you're building atomic bomb for the government to want extraordinary amounts of control over your technology.

After all, the Manhattan Project was not some...

project we farmed out to GM and Ford and said, can you please both work on the project to build an atomic weapon?

And once you've refined enough uranium and have blasted this thing in the middle of the desert in America, let us know and then we'll buy the bomb from you.

No, we did not do that.

We had the Manhattan Project.