Angry Planet

AI enthusiasts love to say that the technology is as revolutionary and important as nuclear weapons. Even the Trump administration has adopted the metaphor. The President and the Department of Energy have repeatedly referred to the development of AI in the US as “Manhattan Project 2.0.”

But is the buildout of LLMs and machine learning systems really as important as the development of the atom bomb? And what are the lessons from the atomic age that AI scientists should then learn? Do we need an AI Non Proliferation Treaty? An AI International Atomic Energy Agency?

On this episode of Angry Planet, Ankit Panda comes on to talk about the uses and limitations of the “AI as nuclear weapons” metaphor. Panda is an expert in nukes and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He’s been sharing his extended thoughts on the AI-nuclear connection at his Nukesletter Substack.

Stanislav Petrov
AI as nuclear weapons
Why nuclear weapons resonate with people in the AI field
The Strategic Air Command story
That time we spilled nuclear material all over Greenland and Spain
NNSA and Anthropic
AI as the next Manhattan Project
A massive infrastructure project
Fissile material as silicon
What’s the AI version of an NPT and IAEA?
AI and nuclear are both dual use
On AI winters
What AI is actually being used for, what it might be used for
The socialization around AI will change.

AI Arms and Influence: Frontier Models Exhibit Sophisticated Reasoning in Simulated Nuclear Crisis
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Things have gotten very surreal in the dark corners of the internet. AI-generated prophets are preaching jihad in Facebook groups, Minecraft servers host digital caliphates, and school shooting fandoms gather to study their heroes and plot how to up beat their score. It’s a double bill on this episode of Angry Planet as two experts from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a nonprofit that studies and works to mitigate violent extremists, discuss the brave new world of online-born violence.

First up is Milo Comerford, the co-author of a study about nihilistic violence. Then we’ve got Moustafa Ayad to talk about how the Islamic State is circumventing bans and pushing its message on social media.

Staying sane on the internet
Violence without ideology
The Comm
764
True Crime Community
Saints Culture
When fandom becomes a killing
An aesthetics driven movement
Online and offline have merged
Moderation is impossible
You don’t have to hand it to ISIS
Broken text posting
Copyright strikes and the Islamic State
Facebook professional as the gold standard
AI resurrects dead influencers
Jihad influencers
Even IS is obsessed with the Epstein files
Virtual caliphates in Roblox and Minecraft
“We must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
Once again, it all comes back to 4chan
Saying nice things about twitter dot com

Beyond Extremism

‘The Comm’: The Group Linked to a Nationwide Swatting Rampage

How the True Crime Community generates its own killers
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America spent most of the 19th century at war with itself. It conquered its western expanse then collapsed into civil war. Once the North beat the South, partisan politics consumed the country for a generation. A string of assassinations, progressive firebrands, and civil service reforms burned people out on domestic politics and a bored and febrile nation began to search for meaning beyond its borders. It noticed the Spanish Empire was awfully close.

In Splendid Liberators, award winning journalist Joe Jackson chronicles the beginning of the American myth of the “good war.” He’s on the show today to talk to us about Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and a general who lay in state at the Alamo.

Recurring patterns in American history
Roscoe Conkling jumpscare
Remnants of the Spanish-American War in South Carolina
What did liberty mean in the 19th century?
Clara Barton, Leonard Wood and the dual American personality
The first modern concentration camps
The Battleship of Maine
When Congress used to fight, physically
Drones won’t win a war
The US in the Philippines
‘The water cure’
American historians facing reality in the Philippines
Teddy, finally
Laying in state at the Alamo

Buy Splendid Liberators

A Defense of General Funston
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Greenland fever has faded for now but it will return. The world’s polar region, you see, is pretty damn important. As the planet heats and the ice melts, what was once an impassible warren of ice and snow has become a geopolitical opportunity.

On today’s Angry Planet, we host journalist Kenneth R. Rosen who just published the book Polar War. He’s spent the past few years among the ice and snow, embedding with troops, yearning for snus, and smoking cigarettes with morticians in the long dark.

Rosen knows what makes the Arctic so important and can see the truths that undergird the obsession with Greenland.

Getting bombastic and angry about Greenland
“We already have Greenland”
How is Turkey “near Arctic?”
The Greenland obsession as proof of climate change
What makes a good Arctic force
Accession to NATO
Servicing subs in the Arctic
Trying to embed on a nuclear submarine
Mispronouncing place names
The most powerful navy in the world doesn’t have an icebreaker
Spies in the polar regions
“It should have been an article.”
Smoking under a tree in the dark
Snus vs Zyn
The death drive of the penguin

Buy Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic

US Army Poorly Prepared for Arctic Operations: Finnish Troops Forced Them to Surrender During Exercises in Norway

Can we just appreciate the fact State secrets were just leaked on this sub?

Life Aboard a Nuclear Submarine as the US Responds to Threats Around the Globe
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There was a time, just before the pandemic, when folks would say “Twitter isn’t real life” as a means of dismissing the horrors of social media. This was a cope, a way to ignore the worst political and cultural actors who now dominate our psychic landscape. Now those people are in charge and they’ve manifested Twitter into real life in a way previously thought impossible.

The White House is posting Stardew Valley memes about whole milk. A Customs and Border Patrol official is asking people if they’re triggered when they respond with empathy to the murder of a woman. Laura Loomer, one of the most online gargoyles to ever live, is a serious policy player in administration. The Secretary of War has a video game tattoo.

How did we get here? Michael Senters, a PhD candidate at Virginia Tech, is here to explain how online culture became the culture.

It’s all for the posts
A YouTuber comes to town
What, exactly, does it mean to be terminally online?
The right goes all in on identity politics
The pandemic drove us all crazy
Turns out the post-modernists were correct
Posting yourself into a different form or reality
Survival tips for the extremely online
Depraved art and Hearts of Iron IV
Deus Vult?
Video games as propaganda
We should have been harder on the online Nazis
John Romero will make you his bitch
A brief history of Something Awful
Fighting the performance regime

How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch

Six Prosecutors Quit Over Push to Investigate ICE Shooting Victim’s Widow

Do you have stairs in your house?

Fuck You And Die: An Oral History of Something Awful
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