🎙️I'm glad to announce that I'll be a speaker at the AI+ Expo in DC!
I'm speaking about my forthcoming book, Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Big Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare
It's free to attend, please join me! invt.io/1txb6b2477t
“He is just five years out of college, and he has repeatedly advocated an approach that overturns three generations of American diplomatic orthodoxy.”
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/w...
Bytes & Bullets is available September 8 wherever books are sold. Pre-order yours now!
👇👇
www.amazon.com/Bytes-Bullet...
Such an infuriating commentary by @drkatemarvel.bsky.social about how Trump's team is destroying America's science and tech edge while categorically ignoring early catastrophic effects of climate change. Future generations will pay a heavy price
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/o...
(breaking from me) The Pentagon is discussing plans for generative AI companies to train military-specific versions of their models on classified data. It's a new development compared to models just answering classified questions. Details here: www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/17/1...
Was very pleased to give a book talk at the @carnegieendowment.org in Washington DC this afternoon.
Many thanks to @stevenfeldstein.bsky.social for hosting me. Great crowd. Seriously good questions.
Pleased to see @usamakhilji.bsky.social new piece out about Gen-Z protests and new elections in Bangladesh and Nepal! @carnegieendowment.org
carnegieendowment.org/research/202...
Today on the show, I talked to @stevenfeldstein.bsky.social about AI warfare. slate.com/podcasts/wha...
1/ As the US continues AI-enabled strikes on Iran, new @brennancenter.org research from @emileayoub.bsky.social and me examines how the military’s investments in the technology have been building to this moment.
Congress must step up and reckon with AI’s dangers to life, liberty, and democracy 🧵:
In the coming days, I will be looking at the following issues: How accurate are the Iran target lists especially after high priority targets have been expended? Do second and third-tier targets represent legitimate military objectives and is due attention being paid to preventing collateral civilian harm? As the data analyzed by Claude becomes noisier and susceptible to distortion (the AI slop problem), how is the model compensating for potentially lower accuracy or limited verifiability? What type of oversight is the US military exercising over AI-generated target lists? Given the unprecedented speed in which targets are being produced and then struck, are target verification procedures holding up sufficiently? How does the Pentagon’s legal review process to ensure compliance with the laws of armed conflict interface with the model? When it comes to after action reviews of strikes, how are these being conducted? Reporting indicates that AI models are also evaluating strikes after they have been carried out; is it appropriate for these tools to conduct self-assessments regarding lethal strikes?
Steven Feldstein: Senior Fellow, Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (@stevenfeldstein.bsky.social):
Musk criticizes Anthropic for taking a stand against Pentagon. Meanwhile Starlink continues to set terms for Ukraine war - shaping how effectively Russian forces can fight.
▶️Should a private individual have this much power?
www.politico.com/news/2026/02...
My thoughts in @foreignpolicy.com abt escalating feud btwn Anthropic & Pentagon
👉Hegseth claims fight is abt who gets final say--private firms or gov
👉But that's a distraction
👉Bigger Q: can Trump be trusted to responsibly oversee military AI tech?
👉My view: no
foreignpolicy.com/2026/02/25/a...
2/ Anthropic signed a $200 million contract last year to develop “frontier AI capabilities” for DOD. Its AI model, Claude, has now been integrated into classified systems developed by Palantir and Amazon for the military.
www.semafor.com/article/02/1...
Symbols matter
I'm so sorry to hear about this. If you're interested in doing some writing for our team, please ping me
Bloodletting this morning @washingtonpost.com. Massive layoffs and gutting of media institution. What a shame www.cnn.com/2026/02/04/m...
On the latest What Next TBD: Iran’s government shut off the country’s internet for three weeks. How do we still know what’s going on? slate.trib.al/VaeK5FT
News of Ubiquiti’s technology in Russian drones made waves this week, not least because the company’s CEO owns the Memphis Grizzlies.
But Ubiquiti isn’t the only U.S. company whose products are showing up in Russian weapons. @stevenfeldstein.bsky.social explains: youtube.com/shorts/KQMC9...
Imagine all the ways you could spend $35M that didn’t involve promoting a sham documentary. 🤔
Maybe use the $$ to stop laying off Amazon + @washingtonpost.com staff??
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/b...
✊
youtube.com/watch?v=wWKS...
And what are they learning? Experts on the formation of internal security services in authoritarian regimes point to a sense of impunity as a warning sign. Regime officials abuse their power when they know they will be protected, and even praised, for doing so. Over the course of weeks and months, we have seen images of DHS officials abusing American citizens and immigrants alike, including killing them. What we do not hear is regime officials calling for credible investigations into such abuses, or even expressing any concerns. Renee Good’s killer was announced innocent, and both Good and her wife was instead the subject of an investigation, a perversion of justice so obvious that an FBI agent and half-dozen career Department of Justice prosecutors assigned to Minnesota resigned.
What we are watching is a paramilitary force learning that they can kill with impunity, that the regime will smear the victim and defend them. Unless politicians and the legal system exerts accountability, it will not stop. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/past-the-b...
