If one happens to be looking for a neat example of public absurdity exposing deeper issues, one need look no further than the saga between the AI firm Anthropic and the Trump administration.

Anthropic, as most of us know by now, supplied artificial intelligence products to the U.S. government, including the War Department, which in due course summoned up a strategy document indicating its desire to deploy AI for “any lawful use.” This excited the social-justice enzymes of Anthropic’s CEO, a left-leaning fellow by the name of Dario Amodei, sufficiently to bring on a bout of squeamishness, resulting in a statement saying he doesn’t want his company’s product used for “mass domestic surveillance” or autonomous weapons systems.