On this edition of Your Call’s Media Roundtable, we discuss the tech industry’s embrace of total war under Trump.
In his new Business Insider piece, “Keyboard warriors: Alex Karp, Palantirianism, and the tech industry's embrace of total war” journalist Jacob Silverman writes: “The tech industry, which once prided itself on its libertarian- and counterculture-inflected antiwar ideals, has emphatically re-enlisted in the American military project. Drawn by patriotism and lucrative government contracts, numerous tech companies – from established giants like Google and SpaceX to military-minded startups in Southern California – have started working for the defense establishment, from supplying the Department of Homeland Security to building AI-powered drones and autonomous weapons to be used in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran.”
Since the war in Iran began, The Washington Post reported that Claude was used to generate thousands of targets for the ongoing US-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran. And, the US military is investigating whether AI was used to target the bombing of a school that killed at least 175 people, most of them children.
What does the future hold as the tech industry lines up to work with the Pentagon?
Guest:
Jacob Silverman, independent journalist, ,co-author of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, and author of Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection and Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley
Resources:
The Washington Post: Anthropic’s AI tool Claude central to U.S. campaign in Iran, amid a bitter feud
The New York Times: Silicon Valley Bet on War. The Bets Are Paying Off.
The Guardian: AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying
NPR: America’s first AI-fueled war is unfolding. How’d we get here?
