447. The Shinji Problem

We get into the love/hate triangle between Anthropic, OpenAI, and the Pentagon and discuss the details of these contracts for AI weapon and surveillance systems, what’s actually at stake here with debates over the terms of “guardrails”, “red lines” and “lawful uses,” and how the competing (a)moral visions for AI and war that are represented in this debate really come down to a difference of opinion about technical capabilities at this current moment, not about the fundamental ethics and politics at play in weaponized AI. Plus, why this lovers spat between Anthropic and Pentagon must not trick you into labelling Dario Amodei as a righteous purveyor of resistance tech. Get real! ••• How Talks Between Anthropic and the Defense Dept. Fell Apart ••• Inside Anthropic’s Killer-Robot Dispute With the Pentagon ••• The Adolescence of Technology ••• A Few Observations on AI Companies and Their Military Usage Policies ••• "All Lawful Use": Much More Than You Wanted To Know ••• Who loses from the Anthropic fight? Maybe Elon Musk and Alex Karp. ••• AI vs. the pentagon ••• What Rights Do AI Companies Have in Government Contracts? Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s book: •••

You can listen to 447. The Shinji Problem online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

447. The Shinji Problem is an episode from This Machine Kills by This Machine Kills.

This episode is 01:30:07 long.

This episode was published on Mar 3, 2026.

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