Greetings from Read Max HQ! Today’s post is a Read Max audiovisual product featuring cohost Sam Biddle, senior technology reporter at The Intercept.A quick interstitial reminder: Read Max is a subscription business! In order to devote the time I do every week to reading, writing, reporting, thinking, procrastinating, and all other activities essential to the production of this twice-and-sometimes-thrice-weekly newsletter, I need to “convert” readers into “paid subscribers,” a task I attempt to accomplish with these touts. If you find what I do valuable to you--if you think you learn something, or are entertained, or get mad in a productive way--please consider compensating me for that value for the unbelievably low price of $5 a month. Think of it like buying me a beer once a month in exchange for something like 20,000 almost entirely properly spelled and punctuated words of insight, argument, criticism, good sci-fi recommendations, and sometimes even humor. Yesterday Sam and I “went live” to talk about a set of new stories on tech’s ever-increasing ties to the defense industry:* A recent white paper from OpenAI outlining the company’s vision of A.I.’s geopolitical future, about which Sam wrote more here;* Mark Zuckerberg and Palmer Luckey burying the hatchet and partnering on a V.R. headset for the military; and* Palantir's controversial new role counting human beings for the U.S. government.What do these partnerships tell us about the present and future of the tech industry, A.I., and geopolitics?Also up for discussion: What’s going on at Apple? And two distinctly unsettling photographs, the first of Luckey and Zuckerberg breaking bread……and the second, a sort of wedding-announcement pic of former Apple designer Jony Ive and OpenAI C.E.O. Sam Altman:Please enjoy, here on Substack, or, without video, on any of your preferred podcast platforms! Get full access to Read Max at maxread.substack.com/subscribe

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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