Integrity and Hegemony
Things are happening, and we can't trust the American government
I’m not sure how to feel about the recent strikes on Iran.
On the one hand, I believe that the people of Iran have the right to self-determination. The protests of January were just the latest reminder that the Islamist regime has oppressed Iranians for decades, forcing a largely secular population to abide by Sharia law and suppressing dissent by imprisoning and killing their own population en masse. They killed perhaps 32,000 protestors in January. Because the Islamic Republic has had so long to centralize their power, there is no meaningful armed resistance or prospect for change without western intervention. The people of Iran can take to the streets, they can agitate, but they have no ability to install a democratic regime without help.
And it would take significant help. This is not an “emperor has no clothes” situation where a paper tiger government falls apart as soon as a band of opposition forces walks through the capital with authority, like we saw in Syria. This is not a Venezuela situation, where killing one leader reminds the government that America is much stronger than they can hope to be and so the ruling forces fall in line with American interests, ceding much of their effective authority. In Iran, the Islamists are the military and the military is the government and the government is the economy. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose stated role is to ensure the integrity of the Islamic Republic, fills all of these roles. CIA analysis in the run-up to today’s strikes indicated that there was a real chance that, in the event of Khamenei’s demise, hardline IRGC elements would replace him. Recent reports indicate that Khamenei is now dead, and I worry that without significant American effort his replacement will be no better.
Perhaps I am wrong about this, and the combined military might of Israel and America will allow for the complete neutralization of organized Islamist forces. Perhaps the “whack-a-mole” approach that Israel took with Hezbollah will work here: any person who seeks to fill leadership voids among the Islamists will know that they would be killed in short order, and so other contingents within Iranian politics will emerge and create a new regime, democratically elected and supported by the people, that is able to bring the Iranian economy out from under the thumb of sanctions so that they are able to participate in and benefit from the global economy.
But that seems like no sure thing. If that theory of the case fails, then enacting meaningful change in Iran will require a protracted war. The American government would need to shepherd change with intentionality and care, working hard to elevate the forces that will be able to create stable rule. Our track record in similar projects is not great, but this is a noble aim, and done right it would give the Iranian people the rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that they have been denied ever since the 1953 Iranian coup d’etat. That’s when the UK’s MI6 and our CIA instigated the overthrow of a democratically elected government in order to regain access to Iranian oil. They installed a western-aligned monarchy that repressed its people, creating a well of resistance from every corner of society, from Marxist students to fundamentalist clerics. The Islamic Revolution that brought us to today’s quagmire was a direct consequence of short-sighted western imperialism.
Except, wait. I don’t trust the current American government to work with intentionality and care in any area, much less the complicated task of nation-building half a world away. Why should we believe that they act with high-minded ideals in any arena at all? When we removed Venezuela, Trump’s rhetoric was all about how this would benefit us, and how much we would take from a poor nation that has already been much abused by their previous regime. He spoke about how Venezuela “took our oil away from us,” and how we would “run” that country and control their oil sales. During the State of the Union he announced that we had just received over 80 million barrels of oil from “our new friend and partner, Venezuela.”
This sounds like an American executive who wants to extract as much as possible, a president obsessed with getting the best deals. I don’t want that executive right now. I want someone who cares about freedom for all the peoples of the world, who will make the right decisions not because they are profitable or because they boost his ego but because they are right.
I would, however, be a fool to believe that we currently have that president. Not that the president is the only problem. Consider the other big story of the day: Defense Secretary Hegseth just blacklisted Anthropic, the AI company whose model Claude is the only one currently deployed in the military’s classified systems.
In brief: Anthropic signed a $200 million contract with the Pentagon last July that included two red lines. First, no domestic mass surveillance. The idea here is that with enough compute you could rig government cameras across America and have an AI analyze all of it, which Anthropic’s CEO argues would violate the spirit of the Fourth Amendment. Second, no fully autonomous weapons: no drones where AI, rather than a human, makes the decision about who to kill, as these models are not yet advanced enough to decide what constitutes a legitimate military target with complete certainty. Both of these seem obviously reasonable. I’d bet large majorities of Americans, if polled, would agree that no company should be doing either. The Pentagon agreed to these terms when it signed the contract.
But after reports that Anthropic inquired with its partner Palantir about whether Claude was used in the Maduro raid, Hegseth gave Anthropic an ultimatum: remove those red lines (which had, to the best of my knowledge, never limited an American military operation) by 5:01 PM Friday, or face consequences. When the deadline passed, Hegseth designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk to national security,” a label normally reserved for foreign adversaries, and declared that “no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.” That means companies like Nvidia, Amazon, and Palantir would need to choose between their Pentagon contracts and their relationship with one of America’s leading AI companies.
An American company said “we’d prefer that humans decide who to kill” and “please don’t use our technology to surveil all Americans,” and the government’s response was to cut them off from the companies they work most closely with. Anthropic’s models are powered by Nvidia chips and run on Amazon servers. Both of those companies own significant chunks of Anthropic. Will they need to divest? Is there any way for Anthropic to survive without access to Nvidia’s technology? (There is not.)
Forced to choose between the government and Anthropic, companies like Nvidia and Amazon may side with Anthropic. But it isn’t so simple. This government picks and chooses its favorites, and being spurned can have existential consequences. To work with the government at all risks drawing its wrath; to refuse may make that wrath inevitable. The result is a catch-22 that chills investment and makes it harder for any company to hold principles at all.
When MI6 and the CIA overthrew Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, the consequences took decades to unfold. The stakes now are larger and the consequences come faster. The government just told every AI company in America that safety concerns will get you blacklisted and loyalty will be rewarded. The company that got punished is, by wide consensus, the one most serious about understanding and controlling what it’s building. The labs that fell in line get the classified contracts. OpenAI, despite signaling that they share Anthropic’s concerns about those two red lines, agreed to a contract last night that allows for “any lawful use” of their models, even mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons if those are deemed lawful.
The real problem is what happens down the line. Within some number of years (three? five? ten?) these models won’t just be tools that soldiers use. They may be the most powerful instruments of governance, warfare, and intelligence ever created. The question of who builds them, and under what constraints, may matter more than any single military campaign, including the one unfolding today in Iran.
I want America to win the AI race. 48 hours ago, I would have said that without hesitation. I prefer our values to China’s. I believe in liberty, self-determination, the idea that technology should serve people rather than control them. I want those values embedded in the most powerful technology ever built.
If America is righteous, it can bring self-determination to Iran. It can, if AI development continues apace, perhaps bring prosperity and freedom to the whole world. But only if it acts like a country that believes in those things. A government that blacklists companies for asking that humans stay in the loop on kill decisions is not that government. A government that treats the oil of other nations as war spoils is not that government. To win the race that matters, we need more than power. We need a government worthy of it.