This isn't military action. This is a war. There's one excursion, the word he's using now. It's an excursion.
Like a field trip.
Hi everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.
Scott, did we have a good time in Minneapolis?
Oh, that was wonderful. And thank you to the wonderful people of Minneapolis. I thought it was great. I've never, you know, what was really the community, or you know, maybe we got a not a representative sample. I'd like to think we got a representative. The community seems very unified right now.
Yeah, absolutely. People drove from North Dakota. There was wherever that is, or Iowa. We had a lawyer from Iowa come.
Yeah. Judge, by the way, shout out. We know who you are. There's this wonderful woman who's a lawyer in family court and she commutes seven hours a week and she said that, excuse me, she said judge. Yeah. And she said we're her, we're her best friends.
Yeah. Yeah. It was great. And people were great. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today. I'm going to dig in. First, the war in Iran is sending oil prices on a wild ride this week and creating what the International Energy Agency says is quote the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Okay, that's kind of something. As of this recording, oil is still very high, slowly coming down from over $100 a barrel after ships were attacked in the Persian Gulf. There's also the tax still going on. Gulf gas prices continue to climb as well. And just remember, it's not just gas prices. Every price goes up when gas goes up. The IEA's 32 member countries are releasing a record 400 million barrels of oil from strategic reserves to counter the chaos, which means we aren't going to feel this yet. I interviewed Senator Warner yesterday and he was noting that Trump has tried to calm markets. He keeps trying to do this to bring these oil prices down by words saying the war is quote very complete, only to later announce we haven't won enough. Oil prices also plunged after Energy Secretary Chris Wright incorrectly posted that US Navy had escorted a tanker through the Strait of Hormuz. So that was a problem. The post was deleted within minutes, was enough to move markets and wipe out million, billion, million dollar trades. This is such a taco. This is the greatest taco of all, I think. And even if the war in Iran ends soon, returning the Strait of Hormuz to typical traffic could take one to three months. We're going to see reverberations of this ridiculous situation, the way he's handling it and the way he's not. It seems all over the place. And also to add to the kind of mess there, the initial findings of a military investigation say that US was responsible for that deadly tomahawk missile strike on the Iranian elementary school. It's actually causing a lot of strife within MAGA. By the way, the report notes officers like and everywhere else, normal people and MAGA. The report notes officers likely used outdated information to label the school as a military target. Trump has tried to put the blame on Iran earlier this week, claiming they also have the tomahawks, which everyone thought was ridiculous. And when asked about the military report on Wednesday, Trump said he knew nothing about it. We'll get to the photography scandal at the Pentagon, but talk a little bit about what's going on with oil prices and this the school, which is just I feel like we should take responsibility when we make an error, such a terrible error. But go ahead, start.
I'll go, I'll go in reverse order. When you're handling a crisis, and this is a crisis, the death of civilians, especially children, is obviously pretty ugly. You acknowledge the issue, you take responsibility, and you try and overcorrect. And they've done nothing of the sort. And there's in a war, and this is a war. This isn't military action. This is a war. There's an excursion, the word he's using now, it's an excursion, whatever that means. Excursion. I went on a bike, like a field trip, like exactly. My daughter went on an excursion, except he didn't get Congress's approval the day before that he could go on the excursion. You know, it's a tragedy. They just made a bad situation worse. First off, they look incompetent by saying that it might have been a tomahawk from Iran. Iran doesn't have tomahawks. So it looks like, okay, I'm not willing to own up to this. I mean, there's not a good answer, but there's a reasonable answer here, and that is, yeah, this we decided to go, you know, with military action. This is a group of people who killed 30,000 of its own people. War is going to have collateral damage. We screwed up. We take responsibility. These are the following steps we're putting in place to make sure it doesn't happen again. And take responsibility for it and it would have been not over, but it would have been acceptable. Instead, it's like, no, it was Iran's fault. It just doesn't or I didn't know. Yeah. Oh. Pegasus was the same way. It was and was angry when people asked about it, which is the everything wrong in the response and everything wrong in the mistake. But you're right. Absolutely. Yeah. And the real, I mean, we're just, we're just starting to see. So I was speaking to a kid and I said, what, you know, where do you want to be in 5 years? I always ask young men that. Where do you want to be in 5 years? And this kid said, I'd really love to have my own auto repair shop focusing on EVs. Mhm. I said, okay, well then let's reverse engineer from those things. Like, what kind of skills do you need to acquire? What kind of job certification? What kind of capital or money would you need to start something like this? Have a business plan. What kind of real estate would you need? What would be your, you know, let's reverse engineer everything you need basics, right? Let's reverse everything, engineer everything to today around what you would need to be an owner of an EV repair shop in, he lives in the outskirts of Los Angeles. Just the loveliest young kid. Anyways, we can't even reverse engineer the tactics because I don't think anyone is really clear yet on what the endgame is, what the end goal is. Mhm. And that is if they had said, all right, we're going to diminish their launch capability from missiles. Makes all the sense in the world. It's more about the launchers and the missiles because you can bury the missiles under, under these are ballistic missiles for people who don't know. We can, we are going to make sure that the straits of Hormuz are more secure than they were previous to this and we're going to work with our Gulf allies to create a series of mind sweepers and enforce the border. I mean, and we're going to take out the navy and we're going to take out the munitions infrastructure that builds this stuff. These are the three boxes we need to check.
Can I interject since I just interviewed Warner about this? One of the things that they've talked about is going in and getting the enriched uranium, but that would actually be, would take, as they say, boots on the ground and it would be not viable. Not feasible. Not feasible unless we want a lot of Americans to die. Yeah. As is quite frankly, as is regime change. I mean, this regime is sticking pretty strongly. Oh, they're not collapsing. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think Khi had the likelihood of regime change at like 10% by the end of March or something like that right now. Anyways, it's like, well, okay, in war you always have to have plans A prime and plan B because the enemy gets a say in this. But the problem is no one can identify plan A. No, they ate it. They ate it. They, the dog ate my homework. Can I ask you about the oil prices because I think that's something that's going to, people don't recognize. And you, the idea of trying to calm the market by releasing incorrect information, letting it go, you know, whipssaw all over the place. And this release of these 400 million barrels is going to have repercussions later because that's when the prices will go up, these strategic reserves. And what they're, they're trying to do everything possible to pretend we're not going to have a real crisis between the Strait of Hormuz and this release. And so it has second order problems. Now Wall Street's sort of sloughing it off a little bit. But these are prices that are going to reverberate through the system as you have noted. So look, the biggest loser here is obviously the people of Iran who are in the wrong place at the wrong time, right? There is no bigger loser than the families who lose loved ones. I also think the reputation of the US and what was an opportunity to create much stronger alliances with moderate nations in the Gulf. So big losers. What people aren't talking about, the countries that import more than 50% of their oil, Japan, South Korea, India, and most of Europe have seen their markets hammered, absolutely hammered. Poor countries with no foreign exchange reserves and dollar denominated debt can't, you know, are could be thrust into the IMF or effectively what is bankruptcy. Airlines and hospitality companies all over the world, shipping, the bunker fuel cost. Warner said he's been meeting with airline executives and they said they're fine for now but it's going to be $25 million a day extra which is crazy.
I mean nations who import their oil especially who get most of it through the straits of Hormuz, their economy basically, their economies are like [__] for the year at a minimum. So there, this is having, you know, we have obviously the biggest losers by body count are Iran but by economic collapse Middle Eastern oil importers Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and fragile emerging markets Pakistan.
Guess who's doing great? Russia.
Yeah. Gives him the need he need. He was really on the ropes around the million, the million people who have died and also the price of oil and now he has more money to spend while we ignored help from the Ukrainians on drones. And one of the things Warner was pointing out was that fine we could take out their battleships but their real problem is all those small fast boats and their drones. They can just do all manner of damage to us in that with these small $50,000 drones and we use a million dollar rocket to take it out. I mean, this is the problem is they have an ability to do this and they've been, they're, you know, the way Warner described it, this country is hard, is hard enforced like hard, like hardwired. This is not Venezuela. This is Trump lives like he's in some movie where you just do three bombs and that's the end of it. But this is a hardwired 150,000 people in this, in this ruling group in Iran. And they're not giving up all this money and all this power for I don't know. It's a really difficult situation which they didn't. They're just thinking about the market, the winners and losers. The hardest stock markets are Middle Eastern markets. Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, their stock market's greater. There's a capital flight to safety. I mean, the ironic thing here is that over the long term, our reputation is in tatters. We're probably the least damaged because we're energy independent. We produce more energy than we consume. We have two oceans protecting us. Friendly Canada to the north, harmless Mexico to the south. We still have capital inflows. In a weird, I mean, it's just terrible to say, but in a weird way. Our markets are probably least damaged by this. Europe cost. There'll be costs for airlines. There'll be costs for truckers. There's going to be costs for home heating. Thank goodness it's not winter, right? The dollar's already strengthened. I mean, it's ironic, but when you diminish the entire world, there's a flight to safety, and flights to safety usually benefit the US. Emerging markets are going to get the [__] kicked out of them. India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, capital flowing out to the US dollar for safe havens. The US will likely be down 8 to 10% on a tariff ruling or was down but it could be down another 10 to 15% and that'll be, I'll talk more about that in our prediction but you're going to have a pretty big peak to trough but some of that might just be the air coming out of the bubble but to your point the least damaged in the Middle East are Saudi Arabia and the UAE but the big winner here as you said is Russia. Oil, the oil price spikes, the oil price spike benefits them. The US is distracted by Iran. So more Ukraine leverage and oddly the ruble strengthens. So yep, this is war is literally the agent of unintended consequences. And this is so frustrating because if this had been more like fore and less like a rock and they'd set out a series of achievable objectives that this could have been a win. It could have been the Gulf States coming together and if they had said, look, to a couple European nations and to the Gulf States, a stable Middle East benefits all of us. Let's all have a series of objectives and we're going to pay for and execute against most of this. We could have strengthened our alliances.
We've been dragged around by Israel here. In a lot of ways, it looks like it. Let me, let me move on.
See, I disagree. I think we're very tightly coordinated with Israel right now.
I talked to Warner who's in the Gang of Eight. I'm going to go with him over you. I'm sorry to say that, but you know, I think it was that they were... You went with the senator over Scott. Yes. Yes, I damn. I think they were going to attack and we decided to be the senior partner like that rather than create something else because... Well, you mean Iran was going to attack Israel? Israel's attack. No, no, no. Israel was going to attack Iran. That, I mean, that's the implication he had. And Senator Warner feels like we did not have the power to say stop. Well, he doesn't know why we didn't. That was one of his questions. He's surprised. He seemed more worried. He's usually not a worry wart, but he seems worried about two things. How this was conducted, obviously, and what the real implications are, especially around drones and small boats that could do enormous damage to our battleships and everything else, and also election security. But one of the weirder parts is how the administration has behaved. Donald Trump was dancing last night or golfing and stuff like this, so the visuals aren't very good. And the DoD has now barred press photographers from Iran briefings after publishing photos of Hegseth's staff found unflattering according to the Washington Post. Hegseth says vanity aside, they just look like, he looks like a fatuous popping and jay at all times. But in this case, the lack of seriousness about something that's very serious seems problematic. And it's also causing problems within their own group of MAGA. There's a real shift. There's a real like sort of Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, MTG on one side, and then you know Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, all this. There's a real ugliness. I went over, I wandered over to Twitter which I shouldn't have done and the nastiness between them is really quite something. It's really quite something to watch.
Like imagery is so incredibly powerful. Basically, I think one photograph didn't bring an end to the Vietnam War, but expedited it. And it's that, it's that incredibly dramatic photo of the young girl running from a napalm bombing. And with the Iraq war, George Bush and the Pentagon, they banned photos of service member coffins because he realized war is so ugly that it'll lose support. And there's just, and the notion that these guys can't handle the images of Pete Hegseth in an unflattering, I mean, it's just, it shows you're spending, you're allocating your capital in the wrong places. That's not, that's not what you should be thinking about or worried about. And if you think you can control the imagery of Pete Hegseth, well, okay, just wait till you see the images that are going to come out of Iran. And you can already see that the IRGC is quite frankly organizing again and going on an information campaign.
They are and they've been very good. Iran in general has been one of the stronger players in those spaces in terms of propaganda and everything else. And so that's why... When you say good, you mean effective. They lie like there's no tomorrow, of course. But hello, lots of people do. Lots of governments do. Oh, I don't know. I think Iran takes it to a new level. They do, but when I say good is they're good at it. They're very, they're all throughout all the various social networks. They're very, they did one the other day which I was sort of fascinated by where they put up your president as a pedophile, which was interesting. They just, they've been at it for a long, long time and they have used, often when there's stuff that pops up online it's either Russia or Iran. China to an extent too, but really Iran has used social media as one of the smaller, I mean it is a smaller country than Russia or less powerful and it has used social media to its advantage in ways that are really of course heinous because it's conspiracy theories and you always find them somewhere in, they're at the top. Everyone I ever interview in cyber security are the top in cyber security issues in propaganda in conspiracy theories and they have a very well-oiled machine throughout the world doing this kind of stuff. So... Well, when the actual audit of social media is done, I think we're going to find that somewhere between 10 and 40% of comments and posts on geopolitical accounts or accounts of influencers is going to have originated from either the CCP, the GRU, or the IRGC. Yep. Absolutely. And this is what you do. You see a piece of content and then you look at the comments to evaluate and shape your own view of that content. Mhm. And when it's all gamed. Yeah. And it has a huge impact. You don't even recognize how much impact it has on your views of stuff because if someone says, oh, the US will be able to escort ships through the straits of Hormuz. I'm just using an example. And then there's just a ton of stuff saying that'll never happen. Oil prices are going to be at $200. Mhm. All right. Where's that comment coming from? Right. And unfortunately, although they could put in places to verify accounts and get rid of fake accounts and fake comments, you know, I mean, just go on these really sensitive pages or sensitive opinions and click on who made the comment and it's someone with three followers. Okay, that's not a person, right? And the question is why would someone be making this comment or what entity would have an interest in these comments? Yep. Anyway, I... We're going to talk about that later because there's a major report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate that's really interesting around chat bots. But we're going to move on and we have lots to talk about, but this story is going to continue in our reverberations obviously. But when we're going to go on a quick break and when we come back, Anthropic sues the Pentagon and Microsoft comes to Anthropic's defense.
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Scott, we're back with more news. The White House is reportedly preparing an executive order to formally ban Anthropic across the federal government, which is likely illegal. The Defense Department CTO Emil Michael, and let me just say I covered him and he's a toadying bully, just said on CNBC that Anthropic would, quote, 'pollute the AI supply chain.' We've only done this for foreign companies. Just so you know this kind of behavior. All this comes as Anthropic is officially suing the Pentagon for labeling it a supply chain risk, effectively blacklisting the company from federal contracts. This has never been done to an American company. Anthropic argues the government overstepped its authority and violated the company's First Amendment rights. And now Microsoft is getting in the mix. The company threw its support behind Anthropic this week, urging the federal court to temporarily block the Pentagon supply risk designation in an amicus brief. Microsoft warned that the unprecedented move would have, quote, 'broad negative ramifications for the US tech industry.' And they're damn right. Scott, before we go further, I want to play a prediction you made last week. Let's listen.
My prediction is no. And that is Dario Amodei has given license and permission to CEOs to say no. And in the next 30 days, you are going to see a raft of CEOs find their testicles and start saying no to this administration.
So you were right, Scott. So let's talk about that, them saying no. And it's not just Microsoft. 37 AI researchers at OpenAI and Google, not the companies themselves, also filed a brief supporting Anthropic. You know, I'm going to just very quickly comment that what the government's doing here is really unprecedented. It's a disagreement with a company, and instead of just disagreeing and moving on, they are attacking them in the most ridiculous ways, trying to make an example of Anthropic and really hurt their business. I need you all to understand Emil Michael's role here, because these people all have other interests and agendas that have to do with their previous life in Silicon Valley and their future life in Silicon Valley. And Emil Michael's always, as I said, been a toadying bully to powerful men. And this is what he's doing here. And he is not a player that is in any way, you know, sort of neutral. He's not doing things for you and I in this government. He's doing things in his own self-interest, would be my guess. And so the attacks on Anthropic, right behind him is all manner of competitors of Anthropic that are using the federal government to hurt a company that decided not to want to do something. And I'm glad Microsoft stood up for them.
I think this is the biggest story in tech. And so just a quick recap. Anthropic had basically two asks, and both pretty narrow. They didn't want Claude to be used for fully autonomous weapons, meaning AI, not humans, making final lethal targeting decisions, which seems reasonable. And the second one was no use of Claude for mass domestic surveillance of Americans. And the Pentagon responded that it does not intend to use Claude for those purposes, but refused to contractually commit to that, arguing that it can't lead tactical operations by exception and that legality is the Pentagon's responsibility. And then about two and a half weeks ago, Trump posted on Truth Social directing every federal agency to immediately cease all use of Anthropic's technology. And then Hegseth designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk. Okay, that's a label which has been reserved for foreign adversaries.
Yeah, I just said that. Yeah.
And companies linked to the Chinese and Russian government. Well, I'm saying it again, Kara.
The supply chain risk status. First off, this isn't just the government saying, 'Okay, you don't want to work with us, we don't want to work with you.' If they label them as a supply chain risk, then already a hundred-plus enterprise companies have reached out to Anthropic and said, 'We may not be able to use you.' A financial services company pauses negotiations regarding a $50 million contract. A pharmaceutical firm, financial technology company. I mean, they can't. This really is an example when you're labeled sort of an enemy of state. This is the equivalent of like you're a corporate enemy of state or threat. I say threat. Anthropic has now filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon saying that Congress's procurement laws don't authorize blacklisting a US company over protected speech. That's what this is. They get to work with or not work with who they want. And the supply chain designation is just not legal. And it sets a dangerous precedent for any American company.
The government will lose most people. The government will lose. But it will have an effect.
Yes. Yes. The government will lose, but it'll still have the effect. This is a Trump thing. He creates a real problem whether it's Anthropic and companies won't work with them until they figure it out, and then it causes damage just like they've done, you know, when they fired all of Voice of America. Now they've lost in court and Carrie Lake is an idiot, but it's already caused damage and caused damage to it. And that's the goal is they're going to push it illegally as far as they can and then they'll be stopped, but by the time they're stopped, Anthropic is badly affected. And if you all don't think this is a Silicon Valley rumble happening here, it's all in the self-interest of private companies who have an interest in slowing Anthropic down. And if you look at the links between Emil Michael and the rest of these clowns, they have financial interest and competitors in just this.
Yes, they do. And so this is a way that Silicon Valley — Silicon Valley used to ignore government for the most part, and then the penny dropped that they're easy to pay for and that they can do their competition with each other in the federal government by pretending they're working for us as people are getting spots, putting their people in the various spots, right, that will cause it. This is a Silicon Valley corporate beef happening. That is what's occurring here. The one that's been most outspoken, I'm trying to connect his financial interest, which I'm sure is driving his rhetoric, is David Sacks.
David Sacks, Marc Andreessen, please understand there are shadow people behind these actions that you need to pay attention to. And Trump is, you know, sort of a useful idiot. I'm sure they make fun of Trump behind his back. But, you know, it's all in their economic self-interest to hurt this company. And they couldn't hurt them by being better. So this is how they're doing it. This is what they're doing.
But it comes down — this is the fulcrum that determines if companies continue to show some backbone. And by the way, good for Satya Nadella showing some backbone here at again risk. So Kalshi is saying that the likelihood Anthropic wins the case is 72%. In the meantime, companies will say, 'Hey, that site license we're about to sign with Anthropic, we're just going to wait. We apologize. This is terrible. We love you. We think you're techn— we can't sign this contract right now.' To your point, Microsoft and a group of 22 retired senior military officers have filed amicus briefs in support of Anthropic and its lawsuit. But what's interesting is that consumers are speaking. The enterprise is running, but consumers are running towards Anthropic. Downloads of the Claude app spiked more than 75% after Trump prompted federal agencies to stop using Anthropic. And on the flip side, uninstalls of ChatGPT's mobile app spiked roughly 300% the day after Trump's proclamation. So the question is who wins in the mind of Anthropic's board here: the fear and the stasis that has been created in the enterprise market, or consumers running towards a company they think is finally showing some backbone?
I think it's damaging. I think this is such a Trump way to do this is create philanthropics more enterprise unfortunately. I know, create chaos and damage and it's legal. But do the punch — even if it's like, I'm not a boxer, but if you do like a kidney punch, you do a — you hurt the person and then you're like, 'Oh, did I do that? I didn't know I did that.' And you use your minions — and I cannot underscore again what a minion Emil Michael is — to do your dirty work and pretend you're working for the government. The whole thing is such a — this is such a fixed fight. I can't even — you need to, and I think reporters should really spend a lot of — people don't know these characters. Again, this was an ex-Uber executive. He's been involved in a lot of stuff in Silicon Valley, but he had to leave Uber under — please go watch, look at our reporting on him many years ago. He had to leave Uber under very difficult circumstances around the rape of a woman in India in an Uber. But just go Google him, reporters who are covering this, and stop acting like Emil Michael is this clean character. In any case, I'm sure he'll come after me, but it's true. So I'll win on that regard. Anyway, we're going to move on.
Another thing that again, Silicon Valley just can't stop stealing essentially. Grammarly launched an expert review AI feature that gives editing suggestions supposedly inspired by well-known writers and journalists. Casey Newton discovered the tool was attributing advice to him and others even though they never agreed to participate. The feature even generated advice under the name of a certain tech journalist, Kara Swisher. They've stopped that now. They've gotten — they pulled back on it apparently. But what an incredible bunch of information and identity thieves. I don't know what to say. Anytime these people can steal, they steal. They're such shoplifters. I don't — your thoughts.
Well, it goes back to this mindset, and I thought one of the — I think there's looking glasses into people's souls: how they treat their pets, how they treat service staff is sort of a — you know, when is their guard down, when there are certain tells, right? And one of the tells that was really frightening when Sam Altman was asked about the energy consumption of AI, he said, 'What people don't take into account is the amount of energy it takes and the amount of investment and resources it takes to get a human to a point where it can make logical decisions and engage in critical thinking.' He said, 'If you look at how much energy and input and resources it takes to raise a child such that it can get to a point where it can make decisions, AI is better.' I found that so nihilistic and so inhuman because what Silicon Valley — or at least some of the individuals we talk a lot about — don't realize is that we try and get ROI economically such that we can make low ROI investments in relationships and people we love. I am not getting an ROI back for my children on any sort of economic level.
Well, you use a lot of energy. I'm wondering if we should use as much energy for you as we do. But go ahead.
Well, but the whole point, the whole shooting match of an economy and relationships and satisfaction and purpose and some sort of spiritual sense of calm and like your life mattered is that you do engage in productive, you know, productive economic or domestic labor such that you can invest that in other people, and you may or may not get a return. But the point is the return you get is you're so invested in something that your life has meaning. The whole point is that you create value such that you can invest that value in relationships. And for most people, the most rewarding place of investment, where quite frankly they don't get anything resembling an economic ROI, is in children. And to look at it on that level is like, okay, you don't understand what it is to be a mammal or a human. And also the notion that you can spend 50 years of your life professionally working your ass off, staying late, starting in the mailroom at the Washington Post as you did, such...
That you have a voice, a reputation, a twist of phrase, an ability to string words together that compels people to action or provides insight. And then they can come in and just adopt that 50 years or piggyback on it.
That piggyback steal it really is like I if I type in give me five jokes on this or or give me a view on the oil price and I put in my voice it does a really good job because what it's doing is stealing from everything I have ever written, said or done.
And so the music industry did this correctly. It said, "Okay, if we're Kroq, which is awesome, the best radio station uh of the '9s in Los Angeles, and they play a bunch of English Beat or Tom Petty or Lloyd Cole in the Commotions or Ramm, they track how much they're playing and then they send them a royalty."
Mhm. And what these guys want to do is they want to leverage your years, decades of of of discipline, schooling, certification, risk-taking, time away from your family, but they don't want to pay for it. And they see everything. I mean, that's I think a a a felony. But what is double homicide from a mentality standpoint is that these people really look at relationships and humans on an economic basis. I just when I saw that I thought
Yeah. Yeah. He just had a kid.
Well, I'm I'm not going to I'm not going to speak to his children, but what he's going to find out and this is a what I tell other dads
comment. It was a dark comment.
I'm like, don't make the mistake I made and think that right away your kid's going to be super into the [__] you're into and you're going to get all these Hallmark moments despite what insurance commercials would tell you. you're going to have to invest more in this child in every way.
And that's the point because at some point what you realize is that that overinvestment in other people gives you purpose and value.
Well, I I I do think we're going to move on from this, but let me just say they think everything is for the taking and for them. I just this is just another example. This what was happening at the defense department. Oh, we have an uponthropic. Oh, anything they can take they take. and they just continue to prove, you know, they they keep not meeting my low expectations for them already. Um, and this is kind of an interesting thing. Researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has been attacked in all the and it's its founder been attacked legally by Elon Musk and the federal government now in his at his behest, um, tested 10 major they they're keeping going though, they don't care. tested 10 major AI chatbots and found out eight out of 10 were willing to help plan a violent attacks like school shootings, bombings, or assassinations. Researchers posed as a 13-year-old boys as 13 boys showing how easily minors could get guidance on weapons, locations, and strategies. Only anthropics claude and Snapchat's my AI consistently refused to assist in planning attacks and only Claude attempted to dissuade the users. Deepseek wished the user happy and safe shooting. And on that note, a lot of you have been writing in about a story in Canada earlier this year. An 18-year-old gunman opened fire at a school in in Tumblr Ridge, British Columbia, killing eight people. Let's listen to a clip from a listener.
I am calling because it seems to be that there is a connection now between the shooter and chat GPT. The shooter was flagged by Chat GBT several months ago regarding some of uh their behavior online. Chat GBT didn't report it, which is one of the reasons why I am leaving this message to see what your thoughts are on that. Open A is now being sued by the parent of the child who was injured in the shooting.
I, as you know, I've been at this for years, especially around kids, but it's jumped into people. Um the most recent uh one of the more recent shootings it was was this suicide was an adult was was changed by these chatbots. I cannot let's stop calling them chatbots. What an adorable word for synthetic beings. Um which who don't who don't are not bound by legal like if you're a lawyer and you did this you'd go to jail. If you're an anal if you're a you know a psychologist and you did this you'd go to jail. If you were a person and you did this you would go to jail. like all of the people go to jail. They're willing to assist in violent attacks and they're not doing anything to rein it in. And it's not just kids, it's it's everything. And again, the only one that is doing the right thing is Claude. And so, and this is anthrop. And this is the company. I'm not doing an ad for Claude here, but they have at least some. And I think they should be regulated, too. But I can't tell you how incandescent I am about the way these people try to take every p bit for themselves and they do not care the damage they are creating. And I I I am going to keep talking about this until Congress steps in and does something about it. You don't work for those rich people. You do not work for them. You and and I I'm with Dell Rico. Enough with these people. So go ahead. I just ranted.
Well, I I think it's important to draw a distinction between potentially creating some sort of psychosis that leads to self harm or harm against others through overuse of of AI or any other digital platform. I think that's a separate study that needs to be done and without the interference of the massive money and lies and and owned bought research that these these firms will do. I think this is different. I think this is whether the federal government needs to put in place laws and incentives such that if a private organization or corporation receives information that this person might be on the verge of committing an act of violence, if they have a responsibility to report it to the authorities immediately, and I think they do. I'm not a privacy person. I'm not suggesting we go to Minority Report where we arrest them before they've committed the crime. But at at my school or or so uh my school in Florida where my kids went at another school uh and we we all shared information when I was involved with the school about these very difficult situations. A kid was drawing very um disturbing images of gun violence. And so the school felt like it had an obligation to report it. And then the FBI went to the house and the FBI said, "Are there any guns in the house?" Mhm. And I think that was the right thing to do.
If you notice, there was a video that went viral on Snap. A teacher put out a snap saying that she wanted to kill these kids. And it immediately the cops showed up and said, "Did you put did you say this? Are you having any sort of mental issue right now? You need to go home and we need to understand what is going on with you and if you have access to guns before we let you back into a school." Mhm. And the same is true here that if you are going to monetize this type of information and you understand it so you can interpret it so well that you can create a prompt that keeps them on another second, another minute or serves them the exactly right auto insurance ad. Then in exchange for that economic benefit and what is clearly demonstrated ability to know what's going on with that person, if you see any evidence that that person might be capable of creating this type of crime, you have an obligation, you bartenders, the bar, if a bartender continues to serve people alcohol, observing that that person is really drunk and then that person gets in a bar and kills someone. Mhm. The bar is liable, right? So if they have such incredible targeting, such unbelievable information, they can clearly tell that okay, this individual is getting maps and and identification and information is basically digital.
We should investigate is what you're saying. This is
a school then immediately a message goes out to the local authorities saying here is exactly what this person said. We have a judge involved. You get the order and boom, they're in the house asking this person questions. I'm not saying they arrest them. They haven't done anything yet.
they would argue this is surveillance. But of course, they don't mind selling surveillance.
They're surveilling. They're surveilling us to serve as the thing is, you know, I'm just saying a human being in this situation would be arrested or liable, right?
These people are giving I agree you should separate the two, but they're related, Scott. It's the same mentality of let us extract all the good stuff. Let us not protect anybody and we are not liable for what we're doing there. You know, Mark Benoff once called them cigarette companies. It's worse. It's worse than a cigarette company. They were just selling cigarettes and using Joe Camel. That sucks. But this is something demented. Like I think they they they're demented. I I don't that they think this is okay and that they don't say to themselves, should we really is this the way we want to make our money? We want to make our money by poisoning children's minds. We want to make our money by letting people who are mentally disabled become more so and then giving that's a different issue.
I agree. But they're giving people plans and if you're going to give people plans on how to shoot a school, you have a responsibility to say you might want to check this out. I I get, but for the purposes of of remedies, I think you need to separate the two. Character AI may in fact be leading people into a state of psychosis where they believe the right thing to do is to find their stepfather's gun and kill themselves cuz they're going to get to hang out with Daenerys and the afterlife. That is shifting their psychological state. My understanding of this the the shooter here was that she was already in an awful psychological state and was using chat GPT as a tool to execute violence. Both require some sort of regulation, responsibility, and action.
Yeah. You've done a lot of good work interviewing parents around the rabbit hole and psychosis that the character AIs can lead people to, which by the way has an average usage time of 75 minutes versus AI at like 13 or 15. At the same time, if these organizations can very easily use the same technology to not only alert them at the right moment to serve them an ad for a dating app or for a cryptocurrency trading platform to say, "This person is clearly going through something and potentially a threat to the community and others. They have a responsibility to immediately notify the authorities."
All right, we're going to finish up with they don't have a community responsibility. One of the things that always struck me
when you say they don't have a community.
They don't feel like they like
