The White House Declares War On Effective Altruism (Right After Our Episode on It ... Curious)

The Trump administration is taking direct action against effective altruists and anti-AI activists, including potential terrorist watch list designations and restrictions on groups like Anthropic. Key figures such as Emil Michael, Pete Hegseth, and David Sachs are driving policy that prioritizes American AI dominance and frames EA influence as a national security concern.

This episode examines the cultural and political shifts within the administration, connections to media manipulation and congressional staffing, and real-world incidents of anti-AI extremism. It also covers broader implications for tech policy and the ongoing fight over AI development.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be talking about two interconnected issues. One is the Trump administration looking to put people who are against AI on terrorist watch list Oh, yes. In order to put against AI on terrorist watch list, which I am a 100% Appropriate. Appropriate. And we’ll get into this. And where they’ve already made action against terrorist groups like Antifa. And the second thing that we are going to be going into is a very much an I called it thing, a look who’s winning the culture war now, buddy thing. It is that the Trump administration’s department of war has repeatedly made very specific attacks against a group that you may never have heard about in your regular day to day life, except if you’re a fan of this show and you hear us talking about it all the time, our mortal enemies, the effect of altruists. And to give you an example of how direct some of these have been, okay, I will do two here. One is Trump putting up his fist and saying Americanism not effective altruism. And then this why the Department of War CTO, by the way. Okay? And then the second from the Department of War CTO, love that they changed it from the Department of Defense. We’re not pussies. We kill people when they annoy us. Okay? Is the they they said Americanism not affect their altruism. United States will be AI dominant, and then it’s a picture of Trump saluting saying AI first war department in cool font, very, very edgy font, which I like. And I want to note that this isn’t just something that we are seeing with the Twitter account. We are also seeing this from a number of levels within the administration. And one of the things I decided to hunt down before filming this episode was, where is this coming from? Like, do do we have someone here in the administration? Is our regular screens

Simone Collins:I think they’re just getting the truth. You know what? That’s Well, I’ll to side with us. They just have to be right.

Malcolm Collins:I’ll give you the the well, and and aware of, like, where the actual cultural battles are and everything like that. so the actual out of the can is, it’s been a few figures that have really made this happen, The biggest is Emil Michael, who is the CTO. And can you guess what he did before this?

Simone Collins:He was one of the lead people TX?

Malcolm Collins:No. He was one of the lead people at Uber for a long time, grew most of his career in

Simone Collins:San Francisco. Knew his name was familiar. Okay.

Malcolm Collins:Led a bunch of investing. Okay. And so he became a very, very big figure. and if you have lived in San Francisco running a company in the tech sector, you would be very, very aware and likely annoyed by the effect of altruists. The second faction that really got pissed off with the effect of Alterus was Pete Hegsef. specifically, the effect of Alterus when he was trying to do the deal was Anthropic. Oh. Apparently Of course. She was very aware of who Anthropic was signaling to when they refused to do that deal. And he got pissed. And so he now sees effective altruists as one of the key enemies of The United States. And then a final big person, the AI czar, was David Sachs. And David Sachs, again, not a big fan of effective altruists because he’s very much in our tech nerd circle. So what we are seeing is that this tech nerd type of republicanism that we represent, whether you wanna say it’s infiltrated the White House or it’s what’s led the White House to greatness in this administration because, like, they’ve done some pretty awesome stuff. That is a faction that we are increasingly seeing gain dominance in our faction’s fights, which matter. Like, I’m pointing out, when when Brian Chow goes out there and he finds out that, like, at a bunch of major news websites, they have entire editorial boards and, the things articles written, by people who have gotten millions of dollars from, shady organizations. All of those organizations are part of this effective altruist network. right? Like, this is, they are controlling things behind the scenes.

Simone Collins:Well, yeah. And he also recently did coverage showing how effective altruist associated organizations were funding the salaries of congressional staffers staffers for senators as well as people working even in the Trump administration. So it’s not as though they’re not trying to infiltrate it, which is interesting.

Malcolm Collins:Yeah. Let’s get started. Okay. So Emil secretary Emil Michael, he has said EA ideology is pretty dystopian and a brave new worldview in which machines decide, quote, the perfectly rational and best thing for everyone on earth, end quote, which isn’t a a bad description of them, honestly . He said it involves a coordinated campaign and psychological operation by people in nonprofits to scare the public about AI capabilities that those same people control. Some EA linked voices want, quote, transitional governments, end quote, on AI that puts companies, quote, on par with the president, end quote. And and he’s right about that. They do. That, like, Elijah Gorkowski has said, essentially, he wants to be the king of the world. He’s like, that’s the only way we can stop everyone from dying. AI is gonna kill everyone, and you can only stop it by making me in charge of everything or my organization. You know? He he adds a few steps there, but it’s make me king of the world with extra steps. To continue here, from Pete Hegsess, we saw one tweet where he said of Anthropic, cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of effective altruism, was trying to strong-arm the United States military into submission. He designated Anthropic as a, quote, supply chain risk to national security and directed no military contractor, supplier, or partnership do commercial business with them, which is probably not smart. They’re significantly above the other things in coding right now.

Simone Collins:That’s the problem. Yeah. People have

Malcolm Collins:told me Codex is up. I tried pi pining some Codex to see. I don’t I haven’t even used all my subscription. It’s so bad.

Simone Collins:Oh gosh. Ouch. Okay. No. I don’t

Malcolm Collins:I don’t know who thinks Codex is up to Anthropic right now. Fables just destroys it. in fact, I Codex, I have found is worse than the next one down, like the Anthropic sort of budget one for when you’re doing lots of

Simone Collins:That’s so bad. Ouch. And the other

Malcolm Collins:thing I’ve been finding about Fable recently is Fable while it crumbs out on me, I built a feature recently that allows you to turn any mawa or comic book you have access to into or manga into a a video where it gives different voices to all the characters, and it shows what’s happening as it’s playing, and it could also translate for you. So when you watch one, it’s a pretty solid feature, actually.

Speaker 3:Lishian sat at the edge of a gr