Nonzero Newsletter

On Thursday the White House issued a social media post that said simply, “American strength back on the world stage.” You might expect such a post to be accompanied by military imagery—maybe an impressive-looking array of soldiers. And this one was. But the soldiers weren’t American.

Foreground (L–R): Greg Brockman, Nathan Leamer, and Marc Andreessen; background: Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Nathan Leamer’s Twitter bio is only ten words long: “Suburban Dad. Work at intersection of tech and public policy.” He’s being too modest.

The Earthling Spunk alone isn't enough. Plus: Graphs of the week. It’s been an eventful week for Dario Amodei. As of Monday, he was known as CEO of the increasingly famous AI company Anthropic, which makes the chatbot Claude and the wildly successful programming agent Claude Code.

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and staunchly pro-Israel New York Times columnist Bret Stephens agree on the cause of last week’s massacre of Australian Jews by ISIS-branded terrorists: the Gaza War. Granted, that’s not exactly how Netanyahu and Stephens put it. In fact, that’s not how they’d ever put it. But there’s a sense in which the Gaza War is implicated by their explanations for the massacre.

Notes: 1) The first meeting of the NonZero Reading Club will take place on Zoom on Saturday, November 15 at 1 pm US Eastern Time. See below (just beyond the lead item on MAGA and AI) for details and for the Zoom link. 2) Twenty years ago this week, Mickey Kaus and I launched the bloggingheads.tv platform (with critical tech support from Greg Dingle).

This week, right before his summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, President Trump issued two social media posts. One was classic Trump—ignorant and incendiary—and got tons of publicity. The other was also classic Trump—streetwise and pragmatic in a way that actually held promise—and got virtually no publicity. In keeping with mainstream media tradition, Trump had gotten positive reinforcement—which is to say, he got to see his name in the headlines—for his least constructive behavior.

Note: This week’s Earthling is slightly shorter than average, but I have an excuse: A week ago I finally turned in the last chunk of manuscript for my book on AI, and then my editor set a new world record for feedback rapidity, so the ball is back in my court, and if I don’t get all revisions in by early next week there could be unwelcome consequences (like the book coming out much later than I’d like rather than just later than I’d like).

Save the date: Just another reminder that next Saturday, Sept 20, at 1 pm US Eastern Time, I’ll have a Zoom discussion with paid subscribers about future plans for the NonZero Newsletter—a discussion that will include an issue that became even more pressing this week: how to fight national polarization, international polarization, and the “psychology of tribalism” that underlies both. Joining me will be two (fairly) recent additions to the NZN team: Nikita Petrov and Danny Fenster.

Save the date: I’ll be doing a Q&A Zoom call with NonZero members (sometimes crassly referred to as “paid subscribers”) on Thursday February 6 at 8 pm US Eastern Time. The main topic will be the first three weeks of Trump II, but questions on other topics are welcome, too. The Zoom link can be found at the bottom of this newsletter, behind the paywall.

Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -45:37 Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade. 0:00 Intro 1:35 Natasha's new book, Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe Recorded January 14, 2025. https://twitter.com/NonzeroNews https://twitter.com/NonzeroPods Discussion about this podcast Conversations with a series of people who have nothing in common except that program host Robert Wright is curious about what they’re thinking.