What a weekend. Two new wars in Asia don’t qualify as top news.

My first reaction to Hegseth’s conflict with Anthropic was along the lines of: I expected an attempt at quasi-nationalization of AI, but not this soon. And I expected it to look like it was managed by national security professionals. Hegseth doesn’t look like he’s trying to avoid the role of cartoon villain.

On closer inspection, it doesn’t look very much like nationalization. A significant part of what’s going on is bribery. OpenAI’s president donated $25 million to a Trump PAC. Dario supported Harris in 2024, and hasn’t shown signs of shifting his support. The speed with which the Department of War started negotiating with OpenAI suggests that rewarding OpenAI was one of their motivations. If Hegseth wanted to avoid the appearance of corruption, he’d have waited a bit, and pretended to shop around. But bribery seems to be currently legal, and advertising the benefits is likely to be good for business.

On the other hand, his attempts to look like he’s punishing Anthropic look sufficiently clumsy that I’m confused as to whether he wants them to be effective. He advertised Anthropic as both having the best AI and as having the most integrity. I’m pretty sure that’s good for Anthropic’s business.

The breadth of Hegseth’s proposed supply chain risk order is well in excess of what he can plausibly enforce. Polymarket predicts almost no net harm to Anthropic. I’m confused as to what Hegseth expects, and what will happen when his expectations bump up against reality.