EMERGENCY POD: Iran + Anthropic

This post originally appeared in ChinaTalk.

“This was essentially a theoretical fight about future potential use cases and who gets to decide. The government seems to think about AI tools the same way they think about missiles from Lockheed.”

To discuss America’s brand new war — plus Hegseth vs Anthropic — we are joined by Emmy Prabasco from CSET, Henry Farrell of Johns Hopkins, Penn professor Mike Horowitz, and Bryan Clark from the Hudson Institute.

Our conversation covers…

• The role of “precise mass” on both the US and Iranian sides,

• Why the IRGC can keep fighting despite leadership decapitations, and whether US operations will lead to protracted conflict,

• What China is learning by watching the US military in action,

• How Anthropic’s red lines would fit into the culture of the Pentagon,

• How China benefits from Anthropic’s blacklisting.

Listen now on your favorite podcast app.

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A Theory of Victory (?)

Jordan Schneider: Mike, let’s start with you. This is our first major American precise mass campaign, right?

Mike Horowitz: I don’t know if I’d call it a precise mass campaign. What’s notable is that the United States used a system called the LUCAS, which is America’s first precise mass system. It costs less than $100,000 and can travel a couple thousand kilometers. You can shoot it down, but you have to try.

Ironically, it’s reverse engineered from Iran’s Shahed 136 — effectively using Iran’s own technology against them. Though Iran itself copied some West German tech from the ’80s to design the Shahed, so what goes around comes around.

From a military technology perspective, it’s interesting to see the mix in the Iran operation. We’re seeing American legacy strike capabilities like Tomahawk missiles alongside emerging capabilities like the LUCAS. Claude is even in the mix — who would’ve thought after Friday’s events that Claude would enter the chat so early?