Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery!
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On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week.
- Anthropic and the Military. This week’s Stratechery Interview with Gregory Allen of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and was one of my favorite conversations of the year so far. After a week of overheated rhetoric in every direction, Ben and Greg talk through the parallels and differences between AI and nuclear weapons, how the military uses autonomous weapons and the state of the art in 2026, and Allen provides some great insight into the process of contracting with the U.S. military and Anthropic’s process, specifically. I’d recommend this to anyone who’s been reading about the Anthropic standoff all week, as it was the best treatment of the issues that I’ve seen anywhere. — Andrew Sharp
- U.S. History and Our Political Present. On Sharp Text this week, I offered my own thoughts on the Anthropic mess, including a tour of American history that makes clear the government leaning on private businesses is not new, legal challenges have been common, and particularly given the security implications of AI, the tension here is not particularly surprising. More importantly, I find myself exhausted by the way everyone processes political controversies these days, including warnings about a dire American future that are now a daily occurrence online. Come for Anthropic, then, and stay for my one great hope for the future. — AS
- Apple Goes Downmarket. Apple released an entirely new Mac, and, for the first time in a long time (maybe ever?), the overriding motivation was to be cheap. We discuss John’s hands-on experience with the MacBook Neo on Dithering; it is both a Tim Cook special — no iPhone chip will go to waste! — and also the exact opposite of the super thin MacBook that I wanted a sequel to. — Ben Thompson
Stratechery Articles and Updates
- Anthropic and Alignment — Anthropic is in a standoff with the Department of War; while the company’s concerns are legitimate, it position is intolerable and misaligned with reality.
- Technological Scale and Government Control, Paramount Outbids Netflix for Warner Bros. — Why government is not the primary customer for tech companies, and is Netflix relieved that they were outbid for Warner Bros.?
- Anthropic’s Skyrocketing Revenue, A Contract Compromise?, Nvidia Earnings — Anthropic’s enterprise business is reaching escape velocity, which increases the importance of finding a compromise with the government. Then, agents dramatically increase demand for Nvidia chips, even if they threaten software.
- An Interview with Gregory Allen About Anthropic and the U.S. Government — An interview with Gregory Allen about Anthropic’s dispute with the U.S. government.
Sharp Text by Andrew Sharp
- The End of the World As We Know It — On Anthropic’s standoff with the U.S. government and the exhausting nature of modern news commentary.
Dithering with Ben Thompson and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber
Asianometry with Jon Yu
- Thyristors Did to Power What Transistors Did to Logic
- Vancomycin: The Iconic Antibiotic of Last Resort
Sharp China with Andrew Sharp and Sinocism’s Bill Bishop
Greatest of All Talk with Andrew Sharp and Ben Golliver
Sharp Tech with Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson
This week’s Sharp Tech video is on why Amazon is ramping AI spending.