Inside the Iran War and the Pentagon's Feud with Anthropic with Under Secretary of War Emil Michael

with Emil Michael, Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering

6 Mar 2026 12 min read 1h 36m

TL;DR

The Trump administration executed a precision military operation against Iran disabling 90% of their munitions without sustained boots on the ground, using advanced drone technology and relaxed rules of engagement. The operation is positioned as leverage for China negotiations rather than regime change, though the Iranian leadership was killed. Emil Michael reveals a fundamental Pentagon feud with Anthropic over whether advanced AI models should be restricted from military applications, arguing that US restraint only hands capability to adversaries like China.

Key Moments

Jason Calacanis

“The US and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran on Saturday. Today is day six of Operation Epic Fury. Iran Supreme Leader Ali Hameni was killed within hours of the operation. 40 senior officials have also been killed. Death toll so far. About a thousand people according to reports.”

Opening summary of the military operation's scale and immediate outcomes

▶ 2:30

Emil Michael

“I think the the president talked about this is a weeks not months kind of operation and it's aimed at essentially disarming the the regime uh or the country from uh in such a way that they can't supply Hezbollah, Hamas, um Muslim Brotherhood, all the kind of terror groups that get sponsored by weapons and money from Iran, not to mention the nuclear bit.”

Explaining the official military objective and timeframe for Operation Epic Fury

▶ 4:38

Chamath Palihapitiya

“If your goal is to prevent war with China, which is a massive global conflict, which could be nuclear, which could be cataclysmic, how would you do it? And this chart paints one way to do it. If you look at the conditions inside of the Chinese economy, the most interesting takeaway is that they are enormously dependent on imported oil.”

Arguing that the Iran operation is really about constraining China's oil supply ahead of April trade negotiations

▶ 10:46

Emil Michael

“I mean, it's a good question and um I don't know when that moment hits that FSD moment where it get kind of gets better certainly not there and you wouldn't want to take huge risk with that in like you know there there's a gradation of when you would use that and what kind of risk you were trying to take or not. If you were trying to take out a drone using AI using a like a laser or something you'd be pretty like okay making mistakes because you just missed the drone”

Discussing the safety threshold for deploying AI in military targeting and when autonomous systems will be ready

▶ 23:16

Emil Michael

“I was like, you know, or I'd tell any company, your models are getting stolen by the Chinese. They're going to unguard rail them and use them against us. And then you want our models to be less capable against your models. It's sort of they're not going to be thoughtful.”

Revealing the Pentagon's dispute with Anthropic over restricting AI capabilities for military applications

▶ 27:27

About the show

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All-In is a weekly podcast featuring venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs discussing major news and trends in politics, business, and technology. This emergency episode focuses on Operation Epic Fury—the joint US-Israel military operation against Iran—and the Pentagon's emerging AI-driven drone warfare strategy, including a significant conflict with Anthropic over AI safety guidelines.

Takeaways

Drone swarms replace traditional ground warfare The US deployed more drones in one week than in its entire military history, marking a fundamental shift from boots-on-ground operations to autonomous systems. These range from $35k consumer drones to $50-80k one-way attack drones capable of 700-mile ranges. AI integration enables swarm coordination, automatic target recognition, and reduced civilian casualties compared to historical interventions.

Rules of engagement directly enable mission success The Pentagon relaxed restrictive ROEs from the Afghanistan era that required force parity matching—soldiers couldn't return fire with superior firepower. Emil Michael credits Venezuela and Iran successes to tactical freedom and modern military experience, using overwhelming force with clear objectives rather than legal micro-management of battlefield decisions.

Pentagon pressuring AI labs to enable military autonomy A critical rift emerged between the Department of Defense and Anthropic: DoD argues that refusing to deploy capable AI models in military contexts only benefits China, which will steal and unguard-rail the same models anyway. The debate centers on graduated autonomy (drones vs. population centers) rather than full Skynet scenarios, with applications like hypersonic missile defense creating obvious use cases.