Safety Warriors
WSJ reports Anthropic’s Claude was used in the Department of War’s successful capture of Venezuelan narco-terrorist Nicolás Maduro — the first known use of AI in a classified Pentagon setting. When Anthropic allegedly raised concerns about this with Palantir (who’d used Claude in tools for the DoW), wondering if its famously “safe” technology was deployed to kill people, the Pentagon reportedly questioned whether Claude should be part of its next mission. Tech industry talking heads were outraged. This, they argued, was an example of the administration “punishing a CEO” for his political views, which… no. Anthropic is absolutely at fault here. Their team is free to question whatever decision they’d like, but the Pentagon has an imperative to ask if a company is potentially seeking to control U.S. national security via software terms of service agreement. Sorry, none of us voted for Claude. (But, fwiw, I do love your work — hit me up, we’ll grab coffee).
ICE-d Out
After Billie Eilish declared “no one is illegal on stolen land” at the Grammys, Australian activist/shitposter Drew Pavlou felt so inspired by Billie’s invitation that he flew to America to move into her mansion. Then, our self-appointed arbiter of immigration enforcement welcomed him with open arms, and — just kidding. Upon landing, DHS greeted Pavlou with a comprehensive dossier on himself, and the Aussie was denied entry to America, suspecting it was Billie’s team that tipped off DHS. But as frustrating as it is that a popstar only seems capable of understanding the concept of a border when it comes to her multi-million dollar estate, Pavlou is a visitor to our country. And visitors shouldn’t be, you know, threatening to steal our homes. Sorry, man, guess you have to go back. Now if only we could all agree that drug dealers and terrorists deserve the same scrutiny as random right-wing pranksters on X.
Read the Room
This week on Ted Cruz’s podcast (a phrase that should remind everyone the era of the podcast boom is nearing its merciful end), the Senator weighed in on criticism from Gavin Newsom about Trump’s National Guard deployment, calling the Governor “historically illiterate.” Here, Newsom responded by… confessing to an apparent learning disability (?), replying on X: “Ted Cruz calling a dyslexic person illiterate is a new low, even for him.” Beyond failing to even understand Cruz’s accusation (the Senator was questioning Gavin’s historical knowledge, not his reading comprehension (which is clearly poor)), “Sparkle Beach Ken” as he will forever be known also demonstrated that, despite his recent efforts to adopt Trump’s parlance and become a Twitter warrior, he’s simply unsuited for the mean streets of the internet. Friendly advice, Ken: if you’re playing the victim, you’re losing. Friendly advice, part two: when running for president, consider a better stump speech than ‘I can’t read.’
