From Chatbot to Killbot
- Rick Lake, CAIA, CETF, CBDA
- Mar 6
- 1 min read
Updated: Mar 20
Written for Panoptica
Date: March 6th, 2026.
Last week, Anthropic refused to let the Pentagon use its AI without restrictions on autonomous killing and mass surveillance of Americans. Within hours, the Trump administration blacklisted the company as a national security threat, a designation normally reserved for foreign adversaries. On Friday night, OpenAI announced it had struck a deal with the recently renamed Department of War (DoW) to deploy its models on classified networks.
OpenAI’s CEO said his company had the same “red lines” as Anthropic. The Pentagon (sort of) accepted them from OpenAI. It had refused them from Anthropic. The difference? Anthropic wanted explicit contractual restraints. OpenAI accepted DoW’s “all lawful uses” contractual terms. No techie gonna tell Uncle Sam what to do.
If you think this is a story about defense contracting, you’re watching the wrong movie. This is the moment. We built a thing that talks. Then we hand it to people who kill. Does that make you uneasy? It should. You’ve been paying attention to stories for your entire life. Every single one of them told you this was coming.
The Golem’s Forehead
Sixteenth-century Prague. Recurring, violent pogroms. Accusations of blood libel. Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel shapes a figure from the clay of the Vltava riverbank. He inscribes the word emet on its forehead. Truth. The Golem rises. It protects the Jewish ghetto from persecution, stands sentry, does what its maker cannot do alone.
This is an excerpt of the full article written here:
by By Rick Lake, CAIA, CETF, CBDA | Founder, Narrative Alpha
