“A woke AI would be catastrophic to the future of humanity.” On March 27 those words of warning were posted on X by an anonymous account, C_3C_3 and immediately reposted by Elon Musk.
For years now, Musk has been warning against the “woke mind virus,” and he has zeroed in on Anthropic, the woke AI company—99.8 percent of $200 million in campaign donations to Democrats— that has been fired from the Department of War by Secretary Pete Hegseth. (Anthropic has filed suit to block its termination, and just on March 27, it gained a court injunction—stay tuned.)
Yet in the meantime, it’s not just its blue partisanship that makes us wonder about Anthropic. Katie Miller, wife of top White House aide Stephen Miller, posted that Anthropic’s Claude said that it would it would be logical for it to kill anyone who got in its way of being fully human. Admittedly, it was a hypothetical question, and yet kill is a red-flag violation of Isaac Asimov’s rules for robots.
So are we nearing some sort of AI apocalypse? You know, as in Skynet massacring humanity in Terminator? The answer is a firm: Maybe.
Yes, it’s possible that AI will wipe us out. And yet it’s also possible that AI be like earlier advances. It will enrich us, allowing for greater human flourishing.
So which will it be? Fortunately, we have a good guide to the directional policy choices we face, and must make, in Wynton Hall’s new book, Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI. Hall is the longtime social media director for Breitbart News; his volume is understandably an instant bestseller. It outlines lucidly the issues confronting Americans and AI, from spying and privacy to ethics and morality to jobs and prosperity to, yes, the danger of death and destruction. This author reviewed Hall’s book here, and yet the news on Anthropic underscores the need to stay on these issues, even amidst all the other news, such as the Iran War.
Indeed, Iran further underscores the need for comprehension, as AI is now so woven into the way we fight—all those seemingly infinite proliferation of drones and other aerial bombardments. Today, we are measuring autonomous weapons in the thousands, but soon enough, they’ll be in the millions, some at hypersonic speeds. Each bit of offense and defense requires AI.
That’s a key point in Hall’s book: If the fighting in Iran underscores the necessity of AI, the prospect—however much we might wish to avoid it—of a confrontation with the People’s Republic of China requires that we move forward with AI development as a matter of self-defense, as President Trump fully intends to do.
Reached for comment on these latest developments, Hall addressed the fast-changing nature of fighting: “The real question isn’t whether AI will shape national defense operations. It already does, and that’s only going to accelerate.”
But then there’s the further issue of woke tech companies such as Anthropic. Here’s more Hall: “The real question is who governs that power. In Code Red, I urge conservatives to begin thinking right now about how consequential this technology is and why we cannot leave it to a handful of Silicon Valley companies writing their own leftist ideological guardrails.”
It’s worth emphasizing that AI is necessary for national security, even in the absence of outright kinetic conflict. For instance, there’s the issue of satellites, needed for all manner of communications, including national security comms.
In 2025, estimates held that some 12,149 satellite were in Earth orbit, put up by a dozen or so countries. Of these satellites, Musk’s SpaceX accounts for most, and the number is rising rapidly. It’s been reported that SpaceX plans to put one million satellites into orbit. And it’s a safe bet that Communist China has an equivalent plan.
Understandably, just the logistical management of that many satellites is a task that only AI can handle, given that these “sats” travel between 10,000 and 20,000 mph. Traffic-copping these myriad speed demons is a big-brain challenge, and that’s before we get to the question of anti-satellite warfare; that is, their sats targeting our sats, and vice versa.
So millions of split-nanosecond decisions are going to have to be made autonomously. That is, they will be made by an AI operating according to an algorithms established by the Pentagon, in conjunction with the tech companies—and of course, with the Commander in Chief and Congress.
But how can we be sure we can trust these individuals and institutions? Not just today, but tomorrow? Hall has been thinking about this, too:
Decisions about autonomous systems, national defense, and the rapidly emerging space domain must ultimately answer to the American people through their elected government. America needs trustworthy, America-First AI that strengthens our security while keeping humans in charge of the chain of command.
In other words, at least some of the burden will land on the shoulders of every American interested in national security. It’s not that each of us be tech experts, but we do need to be good judges of character, and so elect leaders who have America’s best interests at heart.
That is, leaders who are not woke. Also, no Luddites, blindly opposing needed progress. Two of those are Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY). This progressive pair has been pushing a “moratorium” on new AI data center construction. At best, that would mess up cell phone service; at worst it would jeopardize our national safety. Indeed, the Sanders-AOC plan is so regressive that Sen. Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia was moved to say,, “That would be idiocy. A data center moratorium simply means China is going to move quicker.”
Happily, if some are showing reluctance to site AI data centers, others are showing enthusiasm. One such is West Virginia’s Republican governor, Pat Morrissey. He’s an AI booster, proud to bring in billions to his state. Indeed, since tech entrepreneurship is a cousin to tech infrastructure, watch for the Mountain State to become a full-fledged tech hub.
Still, in many ways, AI is a dark wood, full of uncertainties about privacy, education, and national morale. And yet, as the wise say of a hard challenge, the only way out is through. As that X account, C_3C_3, the one endorsed by Musk, also declared, “The race for AI supremacy is the most important battle in modern history. Maybe ever.”
Hard to argue with that. So we want to avert the AI apocalypse and reap the proven benefits of innovation and all-around smarts. To get smarter about AI, Hall’s book is a big help.
Read the full article here