Episode
What everyone is missing about Anthropic vs the Pentagon. And: The Meta leaks are worse than you think.
- Podcast
- 80,000 Hours Podcast
- Published
- Apr 3, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1237
- Processing state
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Summary
When the Pentagon tried to strong-arm Anthropic into dropping its ban on AI-only kill decisions and mass domestic surveillance, the company refused. Its critics went on the attack: Anthropic and its supporters are some combination of 'hypocritical', 'naive', and 'anti-democratic'. Rob Wiblin dissects each claim finding that all three are mediocre arguments dressed up as hard truths. (Though the 'naive' one is at least interesting.) Watch on YouTube: What Everyone is Missing about Anthropic vs The Pentagon Plus, from 13:43: Leaked documents from Meta revealed that 10% of the company's total revenue — around $16 billion a year — came from ads for scams and goods Meta had itself banned. These likely enabled the theft of around $50 billion dollars a year from Americans alone. But when an internal anti-fraud team developed a screening method that halved the rate of scams coming from China... well, it wasn't well received. Watch on YouTube: The Meta Leaks Are Worse Than You Think Chapters: Introduction (00:00:00) What Everyone is Missing about Anthropic vs The Pentagon (00:00:26) Charge 1: Hypocrisy (00:01:21) Charge 2: Naivety (00:04:55) Charge 3: Undemocratic (00:09:38) You don't have to debate on their terms (00:12:32) The Meta Leaks Are Worse Than You Think (00:13:43) Three fixes for social media's scam problem (00:16:48) We should regulate AI companies as strictly as banks (00:18:46) Video and audio editing: Dominic Armstrong and Simon Monsour Transcripts and web: Elizabeth Cox and Katy Moore