In this episode, Jacob and Igor break down the DoD vs. Anthropic standoff, tracing how Claude's use in military operations led to Anthropic being designated a supply chain security risk. Perhaps more importantly, why did Anthropic choose to take a stand now, and what can that tell us about the corporations behavior moving forward. The investigation is used as a case study in how to read the real motivations behind big institutions: intrinsic values, rational self-interest, and realpolitik.

Chapters

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (00:44) - DoD-Anthropic Standoff
• (15:08) - 3 Buckets of Motivation
• (35:39) - How to Read What They're Actually Doing
• (44:04) - Is This Designation Even Real?
• (53:39) - Recap (Pragmatist's Playbook)

• Ed Zitron subtack article - The AI Bubble Is An Information War
• TechPolicy.Press article - A Timeline of the Anthropic-Pentagon Dispute
• TechPolicy.Press podcast episode - How to Think About the Anthropic-Pentagon Dispute
• BBC news article - Anthropic vows to sue Pentagon over supply chain risk label
• The Guardian article - AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying
• Palantir YouTube video - Multi-Domain AI: The Future of Command and Control
• Into AI Safety podcast episode - Drawing Red Lines w/ Su Cizem

This week, Jacob and Igor dissect the "mythical AI bear," the strawman version of AI criticism that gets thrown around in tech discourse. Working through a viral blog post that typifies the genre, they examine how legitimate concerns about code quality, labor displacement, intellectual property, and the erosion of craft get flattened into caricature. Plus: Sam Altman writes ten paragraphs about how unbothered he is by an ad.

Chapters

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (00:30) - Altman's Super Bowl Meltdown
• (03:11) - What is "The Bear"?
• (06:41) - But You Have No Idea What The Code Is
• (15:44) - But The Craft, But The Mediocrity, But It'll Never Be AGI
• (24:43) - But They Take Our Jobs & But The Plagiarism
• (31:21) - Stochastic Parrots & Mythical Bears
• (42:34) - Outro

• Big Think article - The rise of AI denialism
• Fly.io blogpost - My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts
• antirez blogpost - Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
• Emily Bender blogpost - Resistance Isn't Denialism
• Cory Doctorow blogpost - Reverse centaurs are the answer to the AI paradox
• Washington Post article - The AI boom is so huge it's causing shortages everywhere else
• Business Insider article - Veteran investor Jeremy Grantham says AI is 'obviously a bubble'
• Ipsos survey - Google / Ipsos Multi-Country AI Survey 2026
• Understanding AI Substack post - AI skeptics and AI boosters are both wrong

We're talking about developments in AI while those in power have unapologetically revealed their true fascist intensions; are we spending our time in the right way? Igor and I discuss the importance of shining a light on the techno-authoritarians who have played a very significant role in current state-of-the-world.

While we discuss the murders of Nicole Good and Alex Pretti during this episode, it's important that we also acknowledge the many marginalized people who have died as a result of ICE's behavior, and they same level of outcry didn't happen. Six additional individuals died in ICE custody under suspicious circumstances between January 1st and 25th of 2026: Victor Manuel Díaz, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, Luis Beltrán Yáñez-Cruz, Parady La, and Heber Sánchez Domínguez.

Chapters

• (00:00) - | Introduction
• (03:57) - | The Authoritarian Stack
• (08:33) - | Palantir & Theil-Government Consolidation
• (13:44) - | Move Fast & Break Everything
• (23:14) - | Fascism in the US & Starving the Beast
• (39:48) - | Finding Local Opportunities for Action

• The Authoritarian Stack website
• Project 2025 Observer website
• EFF report - ICE Using Palantir Tool Feeds on Medicaid Data
• The Guardian article - Eight people have died in dealings with ICE so far in 2026. These are their stories
• Indivisible website
• Distributed AI Research Institute projects
• EAAMO website - Mechanism Design for Social Good
• Carlos Maza video - How To Be Hopeless