Dean Ball: belief

Transcript context

…The broad way I would describe the American presidency, really since Obama's second term, is, um, you know, Obama famously said, you know, he was faced with an intransigent Congress, to put it, to, to put it generously for him. Faced with a Congress that wouldn't do any, wouldn't pass any laws, and so he said, "Fine. I have a p-" He said famously, "I have a pen and a phone." And so what he meant was, "I'm gonna do executive actions. I'm gonna push the limits of executive actions." That began a kind of autocatalytic process in which every president pushes the bounds of executive authority in various ways, um, that get tested in the courts. And so what will happen very frequently is that you'll see a headline where it's like, "X president did this thing that is unprecedented with executive power, and it's being litigated." And then it goes through a very long litigation process, and most people lose track of it. The walks don't. It's still going on, right? Anthropic had their trial, you know, in front of the DC Circuit last month, and I think we're expecting a ruling in that trial at some point soon. And then after that, Anthropic, if they lose, Anthropic will appeal. That I'm quite certain. And if... It's interesting. If the government-- The Trump administration is actually very, very, very savvy about when to appeal things, uh, and when not to, when to, when to, you know. They're actually, they're pretty good reading between the lines of, "Okay, yeah, that one was probably illegal. Uh, we're not gonna appeal that all the way up to the Supreme Court 'cause we're gonna lose there." They're actually pretty good at that. So, but I think they, I think the Trump administration actually thinks they will win this case. I think so. The litigation is ongoing, is my point. And if it keeps... It would not surprise me if in the summer of 2027, we have a Supreme Court ruling of some, by the summer of 2027, there's a Supreme Court ruling of some sort on this issue, even if that ruling is them denying to hear the case, which is the most common thing the Supreme Court does, is deny to hear the case. That's also going on. In terms of government use, it seems as though basically after Mythos, I think the message that, uh, was, that Anthropic received was you, the supply chain risk thing applies to your contracts with the Department of War proper. And so I think within the Department of War, they really are winding down Anthropic, and have been considerably, and I think they probably, wouldn't surprise me if they're 100% off of Anthropic by the end of the year, or a year from now or something. But throughout the rest of the government, I think the message was like the supply chain risk thing doesn't apply to any other government agencies. So if there's other government agencies that wanna use Anthropic, that's fine. There's also, technically speaking, the National Security Agency is a part of the Department of War. government agencies. So if there's other government agencies that wanna use Anthropic, that's fine. There's also, technically speaking, the National Security Agency is a part of the Department of War. But it seems as though not only does the National Security Agency have a contract with Anthropic, but if reporting is to b- be believed, Anthropic's red lines around domestic mass surveillance and autonomously lethal weapons were honored by the National Security Agency. And that's, to me, that's a good... I think Americans are not that good at tolerating ambiguity. Um, but, like, a little bit of ambiguity is, is, or maybe even a healthy amount of it, is just, I think, an intrinsic part of this whole process. So yeah, it's still happening. The supply chain risk thing, it's still being litigated. I think Anthropic contracts are indeed being canceled at the Department of War. Um, and at the same time, I think other use of Anthropic in the government is going fine. The US government contains multitudes.…

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