Angry Planet

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Human Decisions Are Behind Every ‘Rogue’ AI Oct 02, 2026

Show notes

A lot of people are afraid right now. I’ve lost track of the times OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta have announced they lost control of their AI. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wants to “pace the frontier” and Bill Gates is warning there’s a non-zero chance that AI will kill billions. The US military has embraced AI and it’s leading to grave mistakes. In Ukraine, an AI-controlled drone has killed three people.

Something is bothering me about all these stories and it’s not the thought that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity. It’s the distance AI has given human designers from the consequences of their actions.

This week on the show Eryk Salvaggio stops by to talk about intentionality, design, AI doom, and the messy way we’re all talking about this new technology. Salvaggio is a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University.

A bad frame from the jump
Defining AI
What the Hugging Face attack was and wasn’t
Who’s accountable?
Our anthropomorphic media narrative
Design vs intentionality
Language loses its magic
Spin not marketing
Geopolitical stakes
Prompts and outputs
The future of regulation

Rogue AI didn’t breach Hugging Face, human decisions did

US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say

Inside the US ‘Kill Chain’ that Destroyed an Iranian School

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The Cult of the American Military Academy Aug 10, 2026

Show notes

Journalist Jasper Craven joins the show today to talk about his new book God Forgives, Brothers Don’t. The book is a deep dive into the history of the American military academy and how it has shaped the country’s conception of manhood. Craven’s investigation led him from Valley Forge to West Point, uncovered a strange 20th century Joe Rogan who changed his name so it sounded like a lion’s roar, and landed him multiple interviews with Graham Platner.

A brief history of Jasper Craven
Where lost boys fly
The Nancy Mace skeleton key
From West Point to the Citadel
“The gentleman soldier”
Army engineers as public relations campaign
Bernarr Macfadden
Masculinity, American style
The Scabbard and the Blade
Officers versus enlisted
“Send me”
“What the military does is create powerful bonds between men.”

God Forgives, Brothers Don’t

The Complications of Graham Platner’s Veteran Identity

Battle of the Sexes

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If You Must Fight a Trade War, Fight to Win Jul 03, 2026

Show notes

The world I grew up in no longer exists. The decades after World War II were boom times for free trade lovers. During the Pax Americana it seemed that most diplomatic problems could be solved by exporting blue jeans and lowering the cost of consumer goods for everyone. But in 2026 trade is a serious weapon and economic policy seems less a path to prosperity and more a weapon for waging war.

On this episode of Angry Planet, Chad P Bown is here to talk about his new book How to Win a Trade War. Bown is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and co-authored the book with journalist Soumaya Keynes. The book is a brisk walk through a history of economic conflict full of humor and history.

The world according to nerd trade economists
If we must fight, fight this way
“It’s a China story”
Rare earth minerals, magnets, and the weaponization of trade
What’s the goal of our trade war?
The Hormuz of it all
The trade war against China isn’t going great
China’s delicate dance
Trade war as precursor to kinetic war
Some thoughts on robotics and AI

Buy How to Win a Trade War

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Iran Won Because America Is Stuck in the ‘Smart Bomb Trap’ Jun 19, 2026

Show notes

Recorded in May. Join angryplanetpod.com to hear episodes early and commercial free.

America’s war against Iran has gone on for more than two months and the United States has achieved none of its political objectives. American power has diminished, its munitions stockpile is low, and Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz.

Tehran has all the cards.

To hear Robert Pape tell it, this was all predictable. Pape is a political scientist who teaches at the University of Chicago and specializes in the use of violence to achieve political goals. He’s the author of Bombing to Win and a scholar of air power failures. On this episode of Angry Planet, Pape walks us through the uses of air power, why it never achieves victory on its own, and why the Pentagon keeps promising it will.

How you become an air power expert
Losing Vietnam after such perfect precision
Man as meme
“You don’t learn this by real estate deals.”
There has not been a single case in history where air power alone has succeeded.
“Our power is declining as a result of this.”
The persistent myth of winning through air power
Dumb bombs to precision weapons
“It’s a dismal record of failure.”
NATO in Kosovo
What are America’s definable political goals?
Iran’s political goals
Iran says seized tanker in Gulf of Oman, as US ‘disables’ two ships
Punishment, denial, and decapitation
The fragmenting GCC
Pape as Casandra
Breaking Trump in the Strait of Hormuz
“This will end up being America’s worst defeat since Vietnam.”
A grim prediction

The Escalation Trap

The Gulf States Just Voted on American Power

From Kosovo to Iran: The Smart Bomb Trap and the Risk of Catastrophic Escalation

Buy Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War

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Navigating Reality and War During the Age of AI Propaganda Jun 05, 2026

Show notes

On the morning of April 21, Trump posted an image of eight women on Truth Social, claimed they were Iranian dissidents set to be executed, and demanded that Tehran release them. Detractors, and several Iranian sources, claimed the women were AI-generated. A day later Trump claimed the women would no longer be executed and that he’d saved them.

The truth is that the women are real and many are still in danger. Trump’s post made real Iranian women who protested the Iranian regime appear fake. The story speaks to a moment we’re in where it’s become impossible to parse truth from lies online. This was already difficult before AI-generated pictures and video. Now it feels impossible.

On this episode of Angry Planet, Mahsa Alimardani is here to tell us the story. Alimardani is the Associate Director of Technology Threats and Opportunities at WITNESS.

Eight real women turned into AI propaganda
Real crimes bastardized into regime propaganda
“We need to come to terms with the fact that our information environment is structurally different.”
Content Credentials as a partial solution
How AI is supercharging our chosen reality tunnels
The cycle of uprising and repression in Iran
The structure of Iran’s internet and how its blackouts work
Domestic intranet as an alternative form of communication
AI-generated Lego propaganda videos
Iran Reframed
Explosive Media’s deep connections to the Islamic Republic
Politics as fandom, fandom as politics
“Everything is becoming flattened.”
“The onus on the person scrolling is a bit unfair.”

Mahsa Alimardani’s LinkedIn

The Real Iranian Women Protesters Trump Made Look Synthetic

In the Room With Iran’s Social Media Savants

How AI Content Detection is Being Weaponized in the Iran War

Iran Is Winning the AI Slop Propaganda War

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Christianity Shaped North Korea’s Cult of Personality May 08, 2026

Show notes

Kim Song Ju, the man who would become Kim Il Sung, was born to devout Presbyterian parents. Billy Graham’s wife was born to christian missionaries in China and went to high school in Pyongyang. American protestants once spread the gospel in northwest Korea and found fertile ground for their gospel message. Kim listened, learned, and used those teachings to shape a cult of personality that rules North Korea to this day.

On this episode of Angry Planet I’m joined by Wall Street Journal China bureau chief Jonathan Cheng to talk about his new book Korean Messiah. Cheng’s work is an exploration of the origins of North Korea and Kim’s deep ties to American Christianity.

Angry Planet as dress rehearsal
Billy Graham in the Hermit Kingdom
19th century Protestant missionaries in Korea
Presbyterians in the untamed northwest
Untangling the history of a self-made godking
The Kim Song Ju nativity
Women without names
Attending church during the Fire and Fury period
The Soviet era
Leading from beyond the grave
Kim bombs his first public appearance

Buy Korean Messiah

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Making the Case America Was Winning in Iran Apr 10, 2026

Show notes

Recorded March 24, 2026. Subscribe at angryplanetpod.com to hear episodes first and commercial free.

Last week an article published in Al Jazeera by an academic at the University of Doha in Qatar proposed something that felt crazy to some western war watchers: America and Israel’s strategy in Iran is working.

On this episode of Angry Planet, author Muhanad Seloom is here to explain his position. Seloom is an assistant professor of international politics and security at the University of Doha. He’s also an Iraqi who lived through the Iran-Iraq war and both US invasions. From his perspective, the US has degraded Iran’s ability to hurt its neighbors in the long term and changed the regime.

What comes next is a more complicated question.

Why did this war even start?
Setting aside morality and legality to look at ground truths
“Iran is much weaker”
Missile production, missile range
The highly enriched uranium is in one place
“The regime has changed. Whether we like it or not, the regime has changed.”
The case against the new Khamenei
What is it like to live nextdoor to Iran?
There’s a reason no one is standing up for Iran
Why isn’t the GCC doing more?
What happens if we pick up and leave?
What’s the plan for what happens next?
“It’s not easy to rise up.”
Charging tolls on Hormuz
“I have to say this: I am against the war in any way.”
What about the JCPOA?
A great unanswered question of history
Air campaigns don’t win wars
…did America really lose in Afghanistan and Iraq?
“War is hell.”

Labelling Ethno-Political Groups as Terrorists

The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working. Here is why

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Neutralizing Iran’s Nuclear Material During a War Is ‘Nearly Mission Impossible’ Mar 27, 2026

Show notes

America went to war in Iran, we’re told, because the idea of the country developing nuclear weapons was intolerable. Nukes are complicated and technical weapons that require scientists and experts to build, maintain, and manage. Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is core to the design and unless all of Iran’s HEU is accounted for the threat of it becoming a nuclear power will linger.

So what would it take to get rid of Iran’s stockpile HEU?

François Diaz-Maurin is on Angry Planet today to answer that question. Diaz-Maurin is editor for nuclear affairs at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists where he recently published an article outlining what it would take for US troops to neutralize Iran’s highly enriched uranium.

How a civil engineer becomes a nuclear journalist
“You can’t bomb away nuclear material.”
“Technically, it’s nearly Mission Impossible.”
How much highly enriched uranium (HEU) was left after last year’s strikes?
Moving HEU around Iran
What we can learn from satellite photos and the International Atomic Energy Agency
Why 60%?
Managing scuba tanks full of gaseous toxins in a war zone
Why blowing up the cylinders won’t work
“Let me throw something weird at you.”
Downblending versus exporting
We’re living in the third nuclear age
Deterrence works and that’s, maybe, not great?

Trump may send US troops to neutralize Iran’s highly enriched uranium. There are no good options

Netanyahu says Iran no longer has uranium enrichment capacity

Iran willing to dilute uranium stockpile as fresh protests erupt

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The ‘AI as Nuclear Weapons’ Obsession Mar 13, 2026

Show notes

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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A Killer True Crime Fandom & Islamic State’s Digital Caliphate Mar 04, 2026

Show notes

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.