‘Uncanny Valley’: Anthropic’s DOD Lawsuit, War Memes, and AI Coming for VC Jobs

This week on Uncanny Valley, our hosts look at what’s at stake for Anthropic after the company sued the Department of Defense. They also take a look at the strategy behind the Trump administration sharing action-filled war memes on social media, and share a scoop about how a controversial company is taking in millions in government contracts by helping organize America250 celebrations. Plus: Could AI come for the jobs of venture capitalists? Articles mentioned in this episode: - Anthropic Claims Pentagon Feud Could Cost It Billions - A Trumpworld Events Company Is Raking In Millions in Federal Contracts - OpenAI and Google Workers File Amicus Brief in Support of Anthropic Against the US Government - Can AI Kill the Venture Capitalist? You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett, Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer, and Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger. Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com. How to Listen You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for “uncanny valley.” We’re on Spotify too. Transcript Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. Brian Barrett: Hey, it's Brian. Zoë, Leah and I have really enjoyed being your new hosts these past few weeks, and we want to hear from you. If you like the show and have a minute, please leave us a review in the podcast or app of your choice. It really helps us reach more people, and for any questions and comments, you can always reach us at uncannyvalley@WIRED.com. Thank you for listening. On to the show. Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoë Schiffer, director of business and industry. Brian Barrett: I'm Brian Barrett, executive editor. Leah Feiger: And I'm Leah Feiger, senior politics editor. Zoë Schiffer: This week, we're diving into Anthropic's lawsuit against the Department of Defense after the company was labeled as a supply chain risk. We're also discussing why on earth the Trump administration is sharing action film memes about the war in Iran and how a little known events company formed by some of the organizers of the January 6th rally is making bank in Trump's second term in office. Also, we'll talk about whether venture capitalists should be worried about AI taking their jobs. OK. We have a ton to get into, so let's just dive right in. The saga between Anthropic and the Department of Defense is far from over. I actually think we're going to be hearing about this for many, many months to come. On Monday, Anthropic filed a lawsuit against the DOD pushing back against the agency's decision to label the company as a supply chain risk, which is pretty detrimental to Anthropic's business. Anthropic is basically arguing that the government is infringing upon its free speech rights, saying, quote, "The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech." Now, that's the lawsuit that Anthropic filed in San Francisco, but there's another accompanying lawsuit that it filed in DC, which accuses the DOD of unfairly discriminating and retaliating against Anthropic. In the meantime, the company is also seeking a temporary restraining order to continue working with its military partners. Brian Barrett: This continues to be just a fascinating face-off and I think really unprecedented. What's interesting about the lawsuit to me too is I think it was our first look at Anthropic acknowledging, "Yeah, this is actually going to potentially cost us hundreds of millions, maybe billion dollars because you're making it so that nobody wants to work with us." It's been a look at just how actual the impact has been in the week or two since this started. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. The government actually doesn't need to win the lawsuit, I don't think, for this to really impact Anthropic's business, because the company is claiming that already a bunch of its contracts that were about to close, very, very lucrative contracts, are falling apart as potential partners are saying, "Wow, we have other options and it's frankly way too risky to work with you." Leah Feiger: No, they've made them a lightning rod. And I don't know that even in a year from now, I'm not sure that they're going to be able to get the stink of this off them. No matter how the lawsuit resolves, no matter if these contracts end up coming their way back, just because Claude happens to be better, X, Y, and Z. It doesn't matter if there are two competitive bids, Anthropic is one of them, you might as well go with the people who aren't pissing off the president right now. Brian Barrett: And on the other end of it, you've got consumers rallying around Anthropic and saying, "This is the good one." And so their usage in terms of they're selling a lot of monthly subscriptions to your average Joe, but I don't see a world in which those make up the gap. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. Enterprise sales are the vast majority of Anthropic's business. And I want to say one other thing, Brian, and sorry to cut you off, but it's driving me insane because we've been talking a lot about branding and perception as this fight has gone on and how the Anthropic has come out looking really good. But I have to bring your attention to that blog post that Dario Amodei, the CEO, published that was basically where things stand with the Department of War. And he did say Department of War. He used that language all throughout. I don't think the average person looked at that and thought he's grappling, but I looked at it and was like, "Oh, no, he can't even use the proper name for the agency because he is so desperate to get back in their good graces." And I actually think he's doing a lot more of that than people think right now. Leah Feiger: The Anthropic Chief Commercial Officer, Paul Smith, specifically said the commercial partners are concerned in backing out or hesitant to make deals. This quote stayed with me. He said, "A financial services customer paused negotiations over a $15 million deal because of the supply chain label, and two leading financial services companies have refused to close deals valued together at $80 million unless they gain the right to unilaterally cancel their contracts for any reason." I think that it's lovely that consumers might be rallying around them, but I'm not sure that any sort of subscription push is going to make up for this. Zoë Schiffer: No. Katy Perry signing up for Claude Pro, or whatever that tier is called, is not going to save Anthropic's business. Leah Feiger: I'm sorry. That was an unbelievable moment on social media. I love when celebrities get involved. I love when it's Katy Perry that gets involved. There's just so many different parts of that. It scratched every single itch for me. Brian Barrett: Yeah. Of all the things that take a stand over in this moment, it is a fun, "You know what? Anthropic." I will say in terms of taking a stand too, we've seen a lot of other companies in Silicon Valley come to Anthropic's defense here. I think maybe less out of a sense of buddy-buddiedom than a sense of, "Oh, if it can happen to them, it can definitely happen to us." So we had more than 30 employees from OpenAI and Google, including Google DeepMind's Chief Scientist, Jeff Dean, filed a brief on Monday in support of Anthropic. Microsoft followed up, filed their own brief in support of Anthropic. I don't know that that's going to actually do anything in the long run, but it does signal at least that this is a fight that more than just Anthropic is willing to have. Leah Feiger: What are the chances here that they get the Trump administration to back down, that they get DOD to back down? Brian Barrett: I think very, very small. I think just because the way that this is structured, and when you go to designating the company as a supply chain risk, the mechanisms that do that, there's not a clear, at least as far as I'm aware, way to legally challenge that. Emil Michael, who has been at the center of this for the Pentagon, has said, "We don't see a way in which this shakes out where Anthropic has a case," which of course he's going to say that, but I do think DOD seems very confident. Leah Feiger: That label is so serious to me. It really feels like the people that get the XXX on their airplane tickets. And even if it ended up being some clerical error, you can't get those taken off for a long time. You're a supply chain risk, that doesn't just get expunged if you're able to prove otherwise. Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, that's the stuff that I think is beyond the outcome of the lawsuit. It's already damaging Anthropic's relationship with potential partners, like we said. And I think because the product is so close, even if you're talking about coding models where Anthropic seems to have the lead, the best Codex model is actually quite close to Claude Code at this point. And so I do think partners have a very real alternative to turn to if they don't want to take on the risk of working with Anthropic in this moment. Brian Barrett: And a bunch of government agencies have already made the switch or are making the switch and in some ways just showing that it's possible to do. They're providing case studies that it's maybe not that bad. Zoë Schiffer: No, no, it's not that bad. And there's not a huge lock-in effect to switch everything over to OpenAI. I'm sure some, there's been custom tooling that's built, but for the most part, if you as a business want to switch from Anthropic to OpenAI, 30 minutes. It's not a huge technical task. Brian Barrett: All right. Well, we're going to keep an eye on what happens with the lawsuits and any future anthropic DOD developments. But the DOD has more on its mind than AI companies. Obviously, the war on Iran continues to unfold with increasing uncertainty of how long it will last. It seems as though even the Trump administration is surprised that it has gone even this long—which, how is that possible? Trump administration being criticized for more than 1,000 casualties inflicted so far in this conflict—many of them civilians—seven US service members as of this recording. Markets are falling, oil prices spiking. Through it all, the administration has been posting. They've been posting like there's no tomorrow, which I say that almost literally. Archival Audio: Welcome home, sir. Strength and honor. Strength and honor. What will you do without freedom? Maverick's inbound. Brian Barrett: The official White House X account has been posting memes incorporating clips from action movies, TV shows, video games. You've got Dragon Ball Z, you've got Top Gun, you've got Yu-Gi-Oh. There's just a lot going on here. Here's a little example of the kind of stuff that's hitting their feed. Archival Audio: ... to find out. Maximum effort. Here it comes. Now, take this. Flawless Victory. Brian Barrett: That's just one example. They're all kind of like that, and they are being rightly criticized. I think what to say other than that, quite a statement on where we are at societally. Can you imagine Winston Churchill posting memes? Leah Feiger: Brian, you're being so casual about it. This is horrific. Brian Barrett: Oh, yeah. Leah Feiger: This is really, really horrific. Brian Barrett: I wouldn't say casual. I would say I am—what is it? Inured, just broken down. Leah Feiger: Used to it. Brian Barrett: Used to it. Yeah. Leah Feiger: Broken. I did like the, "Would Winston Churchill be posting these memes?" It's really the question of the day for me. The Trump administration—between different federal X accounts—the White House accounts have been pushing really unhinged stuff for a very long time now. Since Trump returned to office, the amount of things during DHS and ICE's takeover of Minneapolis and Chicago, their response to that was very much meme-y, it was very much trying to hit the zeitgeist in very creepy ways. It was all of these like, "The Jetstar holiday," but about immigrants. It was horrible—about immigrants! This is a new one for me though. Even I am inundated with this content on a daily basis and I've been shocked. Zoë Schiffer: I have a question though, because war propaganda is not new. Leah Feiger: For sure. Zoë Schiffer: I hope this isn't the dumbest take ever, but what is a podcast for, if not sharing your dumb takes? I loved the book In Memoriam—gay historical romance from 2023. It was one of my top books. And one, my takeaway from that book was, wow, young men during World War I were inundated with information about how glorious and amazing the war was. And then they went out to fight and they were in trench warfare, which is literally hell. And they were just completely emotionally, physically, spiritually brutalized by that experience. They had no idea what they were getting into. And that's obviously a very extreme example, but I'm just saying, a government saying, "Look how amazing this is"—what is the difference here? I know there is one, but I want you to articulate what it is. Brian Barrett: No, I hear that. I think that's a really smart point that it's the evolution of propaganda. I would say, if I'm going to draw a distinction in real time, which is always dangerous, I think there's a difference between recruiting efforts, which maybe those were, where this feels more directionally toward just to get reposts and likes for their own sake. It feels a little bit nihilistic in that sense. And if anything, they use a lot of clips without permission, and that's intentional too, to generate outrage from the libs so you can own them. It just feels like it is caught in the cycle less about saying, "Come join the war effort and support this," and more about, "Look how mad we can make people." Leah Feiger: And I think that's exactly it. This isn't just a World War II, "Women, it's time for you to get to the factories. This is your patriotic duty while the men are off fighting." This is not League of Their Own, split screen, everyone's doing their part. And that's not even what they're asking for. They're asking for that outrage. They're asking for that anger that perhaps distracts from the fact that seven service members have died thus far, distracts from the fact that this doesn't appear to have an end in sight, that Trump actually changes his mind with every other press conference, as does Pete Hegseth. To me, it's a very strong man approach. I'll give you that, Zoë. Absolutely. This is wartime propaganda. And so perhaps then the conversation is like, "To what end?" Zoë Schiffer: Yeah. I think that that's the difference that makes sense to me as you guys are talking. If the purpose of World War I propaganda was support for the war effort, they're saying the purpose of this propaganda is also—they're not calling it that—but is als