In the aftermath of the decision, Ball published an essay on his Substack casting the conflict in civilizational terms; the Pentagon’s ultimatum, in his reckoning, is “a kind of death rattle of the old republic, the outward expression of a body that has thrown in the towel.” The action, he wrote, is a repudiation of private property and freedom of speech, two of the most fundamental principles of the United States. Thompson wrote yesterday in his widely read newsletter that “it simply isn’t tolerable for the U.S. to allow for the development of an independent power structure—which is exactly what AI has the potential to undergird—that is expressly seeking to assert independence from U.S. control.” Thompson likened the necessity of destroying Anthropic to that of bombing Iran. Once that’s the case, you have this boomerang—I only know that I’m going to be in power for four years in the White House, so what I need to do is use as much executive power as I can to cram through as much of my agenda as possible.
Author: Matteo Wong
Published at: 2026-03-03 23:16:20
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