Democracy Now! Wednesday, March 18, 2026

0:00From New York, this is Democracy Now. Our warfighters are leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools. These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react. As the U.S. and Israeli war in Iran enters its 19th day. We look at how the U.S. is using artificial intelligence to identify and prioritize targets using a system created by Palantir. This possibly includes the strike on the Iranian Girl School, the girl school that killed over 170 mostly girls. It comes amidst a legal battle between the Pentagon and the AI firm Anthropic, which

1:02opposes its models being used for mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons. We'll get the latest. Then the highest Trump administration official yet. The director of the National Counterterrorism Center has resigned over the war in Iran magnifying a rift within the Magah movement over the war. Plus we look at the Trump administration's escalating attacks on the media. President Trump says some news outlets should be charged with treason. Treason is punishable by death. FCC chair Brendan Carr is threatening to revoke the licenses of broadcasters and defense secretary Pete Hegsets pushing for Trump allies to take over more of the media. CNN doesn't think we thought of that. It's a fundamentally unserious report. The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better. All that and more coming up.

2:09Welcome to Democracy Now, democracynow.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Israel says it's killed Iran's intelligence minister, Ismail Hathi, in a strike overnight in Tehran. It's the latest assassination of Iran's senior leadership. This comes as Iran is set to hold funerals today for its security chief Ali Larajani and the siege commander Golem Reza Salamani, both of whom were also killed in an Israeli strike on Tuesday. Iran vowed revenge and launched retaliatory strikes against Israel. Two people were killed near Tel Aviv by an Iranian missile strike. Israeli emergency responders said earlier today. On Tuesday, the U.S. dropped 5,000-pound bunker-buster bombs along Iran's coast near the Strait of Harmoos to target Iran's anti-ship cruise missiles. It comes as Joe Kent, the director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center resigned

3:13Tuesday over the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. In a letter to President Trump posted on X, Kent wrote, quote, Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation and it's clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby, unquote. Kent is the first senior official to openly break with the White House over the war on Iran. He's a long-time Trump supporter who unsuccessfully ran for Congress twice. During his 2022 election bid, Kent hired a member of the far-right proud boys as a consultant. Meanwhile, top intelligence officials are expected to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee later today. It comes as senior Israeli officials have told U.S. diplomats, Iranian protesters will quote, get slaughtered, unquote, if they demonstrate against their government. Even as Israel has been promoting anti-regime protests.

4:14It's according to a State Department cable reviewed by the Washington Post. Iran's Ministry of Health says at least 1,444 people have been killed nearly 19,000 injured in U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran since February 28th. This is a worker with the Iranian Red Crescent. I'm at the U.S.-Israeli Army. During the operations of the imposed war from the U.S. and Israel against my country, the Islamic State of Iran, we have seen many heartbreaking scenes. Unfortunately, we have witnessed killing and injuring many of our civilian citizens that happened during the attacks to residential places at night or during other times and created tragic scenes. Iran continues to launch retaliatory strikes against its neighbors in the region. In Iraq, Iranian rocket attacks have targeted the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and a drone sparked a fire at a luxury hotel, and Baghdad's heavily fortified green zone.

5:20In the UAE, an Iranian projectile landed near a military base that hosts Australian troops. Several Gulf nations, including Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates said they're continuing to intercept Iranian missiles and drones. On Monday, Iran launched almost 100 drones at Saudi Arabia, according to the Saudi Defense Ministry. Israel launched air strikes on Central Beirut earlier today, demolishing a residential high-rise building. The Israeli military issued an evacuation warning for the building in Central Beirut, saying it was a facility used by a Hezbollah. Meanwhile, in southern Lebanon, Israeli troops have been conducting ground operations, ordering the evacuation of several villages. According to the Lebanese public health ministry, at least 912 people, including 111 children, have been killed, and 2,221 people have been wounded in Lebanon's assault on Israel's

6:26assault on Lebanon. The Norwegian refugee council said, one million people about a six of Lebanon's population have been displaced. This is Thamin Al-Khitan, a spokesperson for the UN Commissioner for Human Rights. In many instances, Israeli air strikes have destroyed entire residential buildings and dense urban environments with multiple members of the same family, including women and children often killed together. Such attacks raise concerns under international humanitarian law. Iran's parliament speaker, Muhammad Farrah al-Abaf, issued a stark warning about the Strait of Hormuz, saying in a post on X that the Strait quote, won't return to its pre-war status. This comes as President Trump blasted NATO members. As they informed the U.S., they will not get involved in Trump's coalition to reopen the Strait. In a post on X, President Trump wrote quote, I'm not surprised by their action, however,

7:31as I always considered NATO, where we spend hundreds of billions of dollars per year protecting the same countries to be a one-way street. We'll protect them, but they will do nothing for us in particular in a time of need, Trump said. This is French President Emmanuel Macron. We're not party to the conflict, and therefore France will never take part in operations to open or liberate the Strait of Hormuz in the current context. Gas prices in the U.S. continue to increase, as Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, which sees the passage of about 20 percent of the world's oil supply. According to AAA, the national average price for gas reached $3.84 a gallon Wednesday, rising five cents a day. Overall, gas prices have jumped 29 percent since the war began. This comes as the U.N. warms 45 million people around the world or risk of acute hunger

8:36due to rising food prices sparked by the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. Here in the United States, Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, are set to testify before the House Oversight Committee on the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein files later today. Deputy Chair James Comer, subpoenaed Bondi yesterday, writing in a letter, quote, as Attorney General, you are directly responsible for overseeing the department's collection, review, and determinations regarding the release of files pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and the committee therefore believes that you possess valuable insight into these efforts. Comer wrote. Meanwhile, a New York Times review of thousands of pages of Justice Department documents found the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein spent heavily on a rotating team of search

9:37engine optimization experts, self-described hackers and content writers to reshape how Epstein appeared on Google and Wikipedia after his 2008 sex crimes conviction. Senate Democrats late Tuesday sent the White House a new counter-offer to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which has been under a partial shutdown for more than a month. The Trump administration has so far ignored demands from Democrats, such as requiring officers to obtain a judicial warrant to enter private homes and to address the excessive use of force by immigration agents. Earlier Tuesday, the administration signaled it's open to enforcing, quote, the use of visible officer identification, though Trump officials have not conceded to prohibiting officers from wearing face coverings. This comes as Trump's Homeland Security Secretary nominee, Republican Senator Mark

10:40Wayne Mullin, is set to appear before a Senate committee today, as his confirmation process begins. Trump appointed Mullin to replace Christine Nome, who is fired from the position his head of Department of Homeland Security earlier this month. Several immigrants from El Salvador, who were deported by the Trump administration last year, have been disappeared and subjected to arbitrary detention in their home country. Once according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, which said at least 11 deported Salvadorans have languished in detention for months since being deported from the United States to El Salvador. They have not been allowed to communicate with their families or provide a due process. Some of them were deported last March, along with dozens of Venezuelans and sent to the troubled CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador, where there are mounting reports of torture, including sexual violence.

11:42A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from terminating temporary protected status, that's TPS, for immigrants from Somalia. The judge's emergency order came as the relief was slated to end yesterday. The council on American-Islamic relations cares Minnesota chapter, said in a statement quote, this decision brings a critical moment of relief for Somali families across Minnesota and the country, who have been living under the weight of uncertainty. Minnesota is home to one of the largest Somali populations in the United States. The Trump administration is considering withholding HIV treatment, tuberculosis, and malaria medications from Zambia in order to force the country to open its minds to U.S. companies. That's according to a leaked State Department memo obtained by the New York Times.

12:45The memo says quote, we will only secure our priorities by demonstrating willingness to publicly take support away from Zambia on a massive scale, unquote. The proposed deal would offer Zambia $1 billion in health funding over five years, which is less than half of what the country received before President Trump took office. In return, Zambia would need to grant U.S. companies access to its copper, cobalt, and lithium reserves, and agree to restructure a nearly half billion dollar agricultural grant to require regulatory changes in its mining sector, about 1.3 million people in Zambia rely on daily HIV treatment provided through U.S. aid programs. Cuba's restored power after a 29-hour island-wide blackout left millions of people without electricity. Cuban energy officials said they'd reconnected the national power grid that had completely

13:50collapsed Monday, but blackouts are expected to continue. A U.S. energy blockade is cut off Cuba from accessing desperately needed fuel, as the Trump administration intensifies its pressure to topple the Cuban government. The Justice Department dismissed charges against an army veteran who set a U.S. flag on fire across the street from the White House last year. The protest held by John Jay Kerry came in response to a Trump executive order that mandated federal agencies to vigorously prosecute anyone who burns the U.S. flag. Kerry was not charged with flag burning, but faced two misdemeanors, including for igniting a fire in an undesignated area. A 1989 Supreme Court ruling determine the burning of the U.S. flag as protected speech under the First Amendment. A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to restore a union contract

14:50with 320,000 veterans affairs department workers. This comes after Doug Collins, the VA secretary, canceled the union agreement back in August. U.S. District Judge Melissa DeBose agreed with the American Federation of Government employees that the VA canceled its bargaining agreement as retaliation for the union's opposition to the Trump administration's labor policies. Everett Kelly, the president of the American Federation of Government employees, said the ruling quote holds this administration accountable and makes clear no one can retaliate against workers for standing up for their rights, unquote. And in Illinois, Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton won Tuesday's Democratic Senate primary in a race to succeed Senator Dick Durbin, who is retiring. Al Jazeera and the Intercept reported dozens of donor groups aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as APEC, gave money to Stratton's campaign.

15:52A elected in November, Stratton could become the sixth black woman to serve in the Senate in U.S. history. Meanwhile, Evanston Mayor, Daniel Biss won the Democratic primary in a closely-watch race for a U.S. House seat that's not been vacant for nearly three decades. More than a dozen Democrats ran to succeed the retiring Congress member, Jen Shakowski, who's been in office since 1999. Progressive candidate, Kat Ube Ghazala, finished second. APEC spent millions of dollars attacking both her and Biss. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warren Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. As the U.S. and Israeli war extends into its 19th day, we turn now to look at how the U.S. is using artificial intelligence to identify and prioritize targets. The system, known as Project Maven, was created by Palantir, and it incorporates the

16:57AI model Claude built by Anthropic. The Pentagon's investigating if the AI system played a role in the U.S. strike on the Iranian girls' school that killed over 170 people, mostly girls. This has sent come commander Admiral Brad Cooper talking about the use of AI in Iran. Our war fighters are leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools. These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds, so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react. Humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot, but advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours and sometimes even days into seconds. Animals use similar AI targeting programs in Iran, as well as in Gaza and Lebanon. The Pentagon also reportedly used the AI tools during the recent military attack on Venezuela

18:01when U.S. Special Forces abducted the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Sylia Flores. This comes as a major rift has emerged between Anthropic and the Pentagon. Here in Anthropic move to restrict the use of its technology for mass surveillance of Americans and for fully autonomous weapons. In late February, President Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic products. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared the firm a supply chain risk, effectively cutting it off from government contracts and related work. But Mark, the first time the Pentagon's designated a U.S. company as a supply chain risk prompting Anthropic to sue. On Tuesday, CNN reported that nearly 150 retired federal and state judges have filed an amicus brief supporting Anthropic and its lawsuit against the Trump administration.

19:06We're joined now by Craig Jones, senior lecturer in political geography at Newcastle University author of The War Lawyers, the United States Israel and Jerritical Warfare. He's the co-author of a new article in the conversation headlined, Iran War shows how AI speeds up military kill chains. Why don't we start there, Professor Jones? Thank you, yeah. I mean, the U.S. military, the Israeli military, as you headlined, said using AI. The kill chain is a bureaucratic mechanism whereby militaries go from trying to designate targets to identify enemies and military targets to the process of actually killing them. They're in the process across the 20th century, early 21st century, of speeding that process up. Military drones have helped greatly with that, and the latest front of that is AI. As Bradley Cooper talked about, you're reducing a massive human workload of tens of thousands

20:09of hours into seconds and minutes, you're reducing workflows, and you're automating human-made targeting decisions in ways in which I think, you know, open up all kinds of problematic legal, ethical, and political questions. The U.S. Israel war in Iran is being described as the first AI war. Explain what that means, Craig. Yeah, I would say it's not quite the first AI war. As you mentioned, Israel has used AI and Gaza. I think this was the first major use of AI and warfare. I think, actually, the history goes back a little longer with computer programs, with partially enabled with AI have been used in the background of military systems for several years now. They were used in a major way in Gaza in the first few months where we saw tens of thousands of targets put in a target bank, opted by military intelligence, up to 35,000 suspected Hamas, combatants found themselves on this list as Israel worked through that to assassinate

21:15them, as well as tens of thousands of targets that are ultimately part of the civilian infrastructure. As you said, the U.S. has used it with Maduro, and now Israel and the U.S. also using these systems in Iran. The key innovation here is twofold. It is the use of AI for intelligence analysis. Intelligence, military intelligence is multi-format. There is so much of it that hovers up what they call signals intelligence, mobile phones, internet traffic, SMS, mobile phone tracking, all kinds of things. The AI systems are being used to spot what militaries call patterns of life. Who meets with who, who talks with who, what are the nature of the message is, how are the interacting in ways which are deemed suspicious. AI systems look for those patterns and make recommendations, which is the second innovation for targets. They nominate targets to this bank of targets, which we can talk about, some technical

22:17human oversight. That's problematic, I think, it's problematic because that's a really persuasive technology. It's nominating hundreds, thousands of targets, potentially a day, and it's working at speed, which are just beyond the evolution of human cognition in, again, ways that are problematic. Can you explain? I mean, this is being investigated by everyone including the U.S. government and the Pentagon. How volunteer was used, it's believed, in the first strikes, the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, may have been involved in the targeting of a girl's school in southern Iran, using the tools of volunteer and Claude, which is a property of anthropic. Yeah, so this strike on the girls school is, at the moment, the leading kind of civilian casualty incident in which around, as you've said, 170 mainly girls were killed, innocent

23:23civilians. At the start, we should remember that some of the history of this, it was, it was denied by the U.S. military, Trump insinuated in one point that it was an Iranian missile, it was later verified that it was, indeed, a U.S. series of Tomahawk missiles that struck this area. And a U.S. preliminary investigation has now found and confirmed, indeed, what many people thought, which is that U.S. is responsible. It looks, we're not yet clear the role of AI in that particular strike, whether that becomes clear in the coming days and weeks, we'll have to see. What we do know is that Claude, an anthropic model by Palantir, had been extensively used to do several things, including the intelligence analysis. So we can deduce that that AI system is not yet capable of detecting, or is at least, you know, open to making system-wide errors. It did not identify the school as a school in an extremely problematic way in which, you

24:29know, within a couple of days, organizations such as the New York Times are able to verify via satellite imagery that there is a wall that's been put up around 13 years ago between the school and IRGC compound that was nearby. If you'd have been watching drone footage from above as militaries have the capability of do just for half an hour before or a few hours before, you would have seen, you know, that morning, 170 girls dropped off by their parents, and that would have been identified as a non-military target with clearly civilian usage. But let's drill down into this because, yes, there was this military facility right next to it. As you described years ago, a wall was built between the two. So you've got the school very clearly identified. But how does AI work, where you have this old, what, 10-year-old, perhaps, information about it being a military base that's fed in, and then it is never updated.

25:32Where do human beings come into this? Yeah, this is a really important question where it gets tricky, but we know a lot already. So it looks like it's just an intelligence failure. That an area marked on a map, this is, you know, the whole entire area has been marked as a military compound. There is obligations, you know, legal obligations and ethical obligations, and just political obligations within defense intelligence agencies to check this. So what happens is some of these targets are nominated from US military bases back in the United States. Some of those people I've worked with over the last several years on what they call target nomination, what it looks like. They hand that over to Sencom, who I know you cover, and they have bases in the Middle East. There's a central one based in Qatar, where these targeting decisions are executed. There is an obligation for Sencom to check and double check that intelligence that it's up to date, that everything's kosher on the target. It's clear that that was not done, whether that was, you know, there should be a human oversight

26:32of that, even if it's AI, you know, recommended, or even if it's human recommended, there should be some human intelligence checking. It looks like for whatever reason, and we don't yet know why. So what happens also is a really interesting technicality is everything in a society that the US military is targeting, de facto is labeled on a no-strike list, because everything is assumed to be civilian. And in order to strike it, you need to put it, get it off the no-strike list, to be able to target it. So the question here is, why was this school taken off a no-strike list, deemed a legitimate military target? It looks like a combination of AI and human intelligence failure to produce something that you truly feel. And talk about how Palantir interacts with Claude, which is owned by Anthropic, especially for the Luddites who are listening all over, for people don't quite understand how this all works.

27:34So yeah, from what we know, you know, Palantir is a system, much like a deep software system that, you know, like a video game that has all kinds of inputs that you can look at targets. You have all kind of variable, like, you know, what size missile should we drop? What is the compound that we're looking at? What's it made out of? All these human, these variables with intelligence overlays. And then, in the same way that software works on a computer, is the Claude is that thing, which is in the background, which is kind of, you know, doing the processing of that data, making those recommendations. And then it provides the human, some parameters that the human or operator or target here can then kind of play with. Obviously it's highly sensitive and secretive, and beyond the very few people using it, you know, the designers, even with anthropic, would be a very small amount of people who have intelligence clearance, and who've seen this stuff working with sensitive military data.

28:34We know from some of the things they've released, like the demos that they've released, we can see some of what that looks like, and one of the most worrying developments that I've seen in from what's publicly available, is the lack of attention and ability to track civilian casualties within those programs, that's something which we've seen, you know, this war on lawyers, and war on civilian casualty harm, you know, that the administration has built for several years in the U.S. Department of Defense has been eroded by the Trump administration, and you actually see that now, programs into the software. This is Palantir CEO Alex Karp, interviewed on CNBC last week. These technologies are dangerous societally. The only justification could possibly have would be that if we don't do it, our adversaries and we'll do it, and we will be subject to their rule of law. So if you decouple this from the support of the military, you're going to have an enormous problem explaining to the American people, why is it that we're absorbing the risk of

29:39disrupting the very fabric of our society, including the most powerful parts of our society, if it's not because it's about maintaining our ability to be American in the near term and long term. Greg Jones, if you can respond to the CEO of Palantir. Palantir has a long history of making serious tens of millions, billions of profit from what ultimately I see as killing people in far away lands that are too easy not to care about. I think this latest endeavor, as we've kind of started this AI arms race, it's been good to see at least anthropic, throw the hands up and say we want some ethical parameters put on that. But even that, which seems to be, and meanwhile, as that whole controversy has been praying out, as you covered with the Trump administration, we see Sam Altman from Open AI rush in and take the contract that anthropic has ultimately dropped.

30:40Huge profits. There are huge, the DOD department was a huge customer for many Silicon Valley firms. We've seen Microsoft use their platforms for the Israeli targeting, apparently Microsoft are looking into that. We've seen Google AI analytics also used for Palantir and for USDOD contracts. This is huge money and I think, you know, should the Silicon Valley community wake up to ultimately the consequences of the technologies which they're working on and see their effects on the ground, which is where I work with the people who have lost entire families, who've had their homes destroyed, who've been displaced, who have, you know, had their legs blown off. There's this real disconnect between those tens of billions being made for profits of war and those people who suffer its consequences. This is Open AI CEO, Sam Altman, who you mentioned, speaking at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on February. We don't yet know how to think about some superintelligence being aligned with dictators in totalitarian countries.

31:45We don't know how to think about countries using AI to fight new kinds of war with each other. We don't know how to think about when and whether countries are going to have to think about new forms of social contracts. But we think it's important to have more understanding and society-wide debate before we're all surprised. So that's Sam Altman of Open AI, and just quoting the Pentagon Secretary, Trump calls on the war secretary, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, at a briefing in the last days, unlike so many of our traditional allies who ring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force, America, regardless of what international institutions say is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history, B2s, fighters, drones, missiles, and of course, classified effects, all on our terms with maximum authorities, no stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy

32:46building exercise, no politically correct wars, Craig Jones. There's two jarring statements, Sam Altman's ideas, I think, in what he said, he's right. We don't know about this, we don't know about that, what the future holds. My view would be that because we don't know that potential dangers, risks, and damages that these technologies brings, we should pause as societies, as companies, as nations, as leaders to have a serious conversation about what kind of AI future we want, whether this is a world that we want to build. Meanwhile, Hesketh, the Department of War, in January, released a statement, a whole program actually called the AI Warfare Fighter Strategy, which some of the quote that you've just read comes from, and it talks about maximum lethality, as you say, out with the rules of engagement. This is a deliberate sideline of the checks and balances, accountability for war, the firing of military lawyers, who are the community that I've worked with, who give legal advice,

33:48two militaries, and just going ahead with it, and saying, Hesketh, saying explicitly, just because we don't know how these technologies work, we need to first move advantage, and it's that classic move fast and break things, and we don't care about the consequences. These are really worrying times and developments. You've referred to the war lawyer several times since the title of your book, explain what you mean and how they've been fired and sidelineed. So these military lawyers have been, you know, are fighting alongside militaries for centuries. In fact, the US corpse is the oldest law firm in America, and they do all kinds of things, but the thing that I've been interested in is they're giving advice to military commanders and decision makers for operations. Any time a single target is struck in the last couple of decades, you would have a military lawyer present looking at things, doing what's called a proportionality calculation. Okay, here's the military target, what's the risk of civilians? Should we go ahead?

34:51Should we pause? Are there certain measures we can take to avoid civilian casualties? And a host of other considerations, you know, one would be the girl school. Is this a legitimate target, or is this indeed a girl school? So that's that's military necessity. And, you know, they've had a long history, and, you know, I work with them. These are professional, serious people, educated at the best law school throughout America, they're also soldiers. Israel has its own version of them. And they've done credible work with militaries, and the Trump administration, one of the first acts that he does after he's sworn in in his second term, is to fire the heads of those legal units. So, you know, the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, each have their own heads. He fired them, and then further down the ranks, he fired and replaced them with yes men, and beyond the firing and replacing, we are hearing from reporting and from some of my own contacts, that the military lawyers are either just not being listened to when they raise objections, or, you know, they're becoming silent in these war rooms where these decisions are made,

35:55because much like in the Trump administration, where his, you know, civilian and his advisors are around him, unless you say yes and go along with it, you're simply not welcome there, and you'll either be fired or not listened to. And so, again, you know, seriously worrying, especially when you put that alongside this simultaneous war on all the civilian casualty initiatives. So, there was something called the Center of Excellence, which was to do with civilian protection. It's been a decade in the making, lots of senior people in the U.S. administrations from Obama to Biden through Trump term one. I've been involved in that, and Trump, you know, presses control or delete on day one and gets rid of the civilian center, because they're not interested in avoiding civilian casualties, which feels like we're harkening back to Vietnam or something. Finally, Craig Jones, we just have a minute, but if you can explain this rift between Anthropic and the Pentagon, Anthropic saying its company could not be used for mass surveillance of Americans and for fully autonomous weapons,

36:56and then the Trump administration retaliating after they sued President Trump ordering federal agencies to stop using Anthropic products, Pete Hegseth declaring the firm a supply chain risk. But then we hear that Claude owned by Anthropic is possibly used by Palantir in targeting this girl school that killed well over 100 girls. There's lots to say here. One is that that seems like a disproportionate act when a military, when a company just exercises its right to disagree with what the government is doing, and I think the CEO at the time said disagreeing with the government is American as American pie. But the other thing is that this is infrastructure. I think some people think AI is just a tool. It's something on your desk or it's something in the background you just press delete. It's infrastructure that's embedded in the entire intelligence apparatus. And so therefore you can't just delete it. So hence why it's still used,

37:58hence why it might take up to six months to try and get some of Claude products out of the software. The other thing is it was good to see that ethical objection. It seems like the only moral stance which has been taken on these conversations in the AI war is certainly in Silicon Valley. I would just object to their objection on two principles. There are against mass surveillance of U.S. citizens only. They say nothing about citizens around the world. And partly their objection to its youth for lethality is a technical rather than moral objection. It's to say right now the algorithms are not quite good enough because they have this error rate. But they're not necessarily saying that they wouldn't go along with that's used later on. So it's not that they're against lethality and killing per se. But that just technically the algorithms are not quite ready. And so they wanted to press pause. So there's lots to say about that. But it is a disproportionate act and response by the Trump administration I think. Fred Jones want to thank you for being with us senior lecturer in political

38:59geography at Newcastle University joining us from the UK, the author of The War Lawyers, United States Israel and Jerritical Warfare, expert on modern warfare and aerial targeting, currently leading a research project on civilian casualties and war-related injury in Gaza and Iraq. We'll link to your piece in the conversation. Iran war shows how AI speeds up military kill chains. Coming up, the director of the National Counterterrorism Centers resigned over the war in Iran, magnifying a rift within the magma movement over the war. Stay with us. The world is changing to see the angiornia, the life of chaos and an age of fear. Is this the price we pay? Is this the price we pay?

40:01Say not sin our truth or lie where we stand and the people decide. Will you give up where you stand and fight? It's when it takes so long and only this struggle Survive Welcome to the New World Welcome to the New World This is Democracy Now, DemocracyNow.org The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman I cannot in good conscience Support the ongoing war in Iran Iran pose no imminent threat to our nation And it's clear we started this war due to pressure from Israel And it's powerful American lobby

41:01Unquote Those are the words of Joe Kent Who resigned Tuesday as the director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center Kent's the highest-ranking Trump official to resign over the Iran war His resignation exposes a growing rift within the MAGA movement Over Trump's foreign policy Kent served in the Army special forces and as a CIA paramilitary officer twice ran for Congress and lost As a candidate, Kent faced widespread scrutiny First ties to the far right, including Nick Fuentes, who once said Hitler was awesome Hitler was right, unquote Kent had acknowledged Fuentes took part in a call to help him broaden his campaign's social media outreach During his 2022 election bid for Congress, Kent hired a member of the far right proud boys as a consultant Kent is also accused of FBI of orchestrating the January 6th insurrection Last year, President Trump selected Kent to head the National Counterterrorism Center

42:06The Senate confirmed him last July The Southern Poverty Law Center had urged senators to reject Kent citing what they called his associations with white nationalist violent groups and anti-democracy actors, unquote Unto his day, President Trump was questioned about Joe Kent's resignation Director of National Counterterrorism, Joe Kent, he just resigned today He said he can't support your conflict with Iran What's your reaction to that? Well, I read his statement I always thought it was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security Very weak on security I didn't know him well, but I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy But when I read a statement, I realized that it's a good thing that he's out Because he said that Iran was not a threat Iran was a threat every country realized what a threat Iran was The question is whether or not they wanted to do something about it To talk more about Joe Kent's resignation from his position as Director of National Counterterrorism Center

43:10would join by another former government official who resigned over another war Josh Paul, former State Department official who worked on arms deals He resigned in 2023 to protest the push to increase arms sales to Israel amidst its assault on Gaza Now, Josh Paul is Director at a new policy, the lobbying organization he co-founded with Fellow Resignate Tara Kabash to press for a change in U.S. policy on Palestine and Israel Josh, welcome back to Democracy Now, talk about the significant of Joe Kent's resignation The highest Trump administration official to quit so far Thank you Amy, good to join you So I think it is a significant resignation in several ways First of all, of course, on its face you have here a very senior U.S. intelligence official Who is resigning and saying essentially that the United States is at war But we are not at war to support our own national interests We are at war because we have been pushed to do so by a partner country, specifically by Israel

44:13Of course, in saying that he is not saying anything that Secretary Marco Rubio, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, did not himself say just days into this conflict The differences that Kent and here perhaps his background as a military operator on the ground and special forces for covert operations, you know, coming into the DC political scene I think, you know, probably pretty strongly object to given his own experience And of course the loss of his own wife in a terrorist attack in 2018 The second important thing here is that Kent is, by my count, the 16th U.S. official in the last three years to resign over the U.S.-Israel relationship That is a trend that now spans both the Biden and Trump administrations Of course, Kent is the first to resign from the Trump administration and the most senior to resign from either administration I think a third important factor here is the insight this gives us into the debate that is happening within the MAGA movement

45:16When it comes to the U.S.-Israel relationship We know that there is a very visible, very vocal debate happening in the Democratic Party on that topic It is clear that there is also a very vocal debate happening within the right way of American politics It is just less visible and that is due to a number of factors including, of course, President Trump's management of the political party that is the Republican party But I think what we see here is this really coming to the fore and perhaps a leading indicator of further breaks and shifts within the party on this issue to follow This is Joe Kent speaking in 2024 about U.S. policy towards Iran We have to stop making ourselves easy targets in the region Our presence in the region actually makes us much, much more unsafe condition And it gives Iran the ability to access us in a very, very easy way Deprive Iran of targets, deprive Iran of funding, strengthen the Abraham Accords Let Israel take care of their own business

46:17Your response, Josh Paul So Joe Kent certainly knows the threat that Iran posed to U.S. forces when they are in the Middle East Having been awarded the Bronze Star several times including for actions in Iraq I think his point here is that this is again, you know, whatever threat Iran may pose within the region It is not a threat to the United States And the reason that we are currently engaged in this is in great part because of our presence in the region That is there to protect Israel in many cases from the consequences of its own actions And we see that most vividly here I think it is very clear that we would not be in this conflict if it were not for that presence If it were not for that relationship And I think at the end of the day U.S. national security officials, intelligence officials Are there to put America's interests first? It's interesting how the MAGA movement, the House Speaker Has just changed the rationale for attacking Iran saying that this attack on Iran avoided a mass casualty event

47:18And the question of whether this could provoke attacks on U.S. soil It's interesting that Kent, this is in Mother Jones magazine, Trump's pick for counterterrorism Called for arresting BLM leaders as terrorists Who they were focusing on, people like Kent He said we need to treat Antifa and BLM like terrorist organizations We need to use the tools of the federal government, the FBI, the U.S. marshals Go after them like organized criminals and terrorists This is how he spoke when Trump was supporting him And of course you have Tulsi Gabbard, who is head of national intelligence And instead she is spending her time looking at how Trump actually won the election Courying favor with Trump and she was down in Georgia when they were taking something like 700 boxes from the Georgia election office Yeah and I mean let's be clear, Joe Kent is very much within the core sort of of the MAGA movement

48:18At the same time as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center And prior to that as chief of staff for the director of national intelligence He and the NCTC have provided core support to the FBI's so-called 10-7 or post-October 7th task force Of course engaged regularly in two-way intelligence sharing with Israel And you heard his previous comments when it comes to advancing Israel's interest in the region And enabling Israel to take that leadership on its own behalf rather than the U.S. exercising that leadership for it At cost to our own equities So I think that there are a number of factors here At the end of the day, I think what's clear is that Kent is someone who has, you know, I think was at the top of his career here Was only in the job for a year, I don't think went into that job with an intention of leaving it But at the end of the day saw the dreadful impact that we see now on the global economy, on the U.S. economy, on U.S. interests Of this war that Prime Minister Nusniyahu has dragged us into and felt he had to stand up and speak

49:21You're the former director at the Bureau of Political Military Affairs in the State Department where you worked for 11 years Josh Paul, as we wrap up, what do you think Congress can do at this point? There is a lot of criticism, of course, of Congress members and senators of what Trump is doing with Iran right now Dropping these bunker buster bombs, for example, today But what actually can they do? So what they can do, of course, is much more than what they will do. What they can do is, of course, exercise their oversight At some point in the coming weeks there is going to be a very important vote when the administration comes forward with a funding request for the Iran War If members of Congress mean what they say about not wanting to support this war and not believing we should be part of it They should vote against that funding So I think there are a number of steps Congress can take There also, I should note, emergency arms sales that the administration has put through in the last couple of weeks for Israel

50:23Some of which are coming out of U.S. stockpiles again If members of Congress are serious about protecting U.S. military global leadership Then they should be voting against those sales that are coming out of critically needed U.S. stocks So there are a number of things Congress can do I think the question remains to be seen of whether they will do those things Josh Paul veteran state department official resigned in 2023 to protest the push to increase arms sales to Israel amidst its assault on Gaza Now directorate a new policy lobbying group he co-founded with a fellow resident to press for a change in U.S. policy on Palestine, Israel Coming up, we look at the Trump administration's escalating attacks on the press As President Trump threatens to charge journalists news outlets with treason Treason is punishable by death stay with us

52:06What still remains by Sebastian Watsky This is democracy now democracynow.org I'm Amy Goodman The Trump administration's escalating threats against media outlets In a post Sunday President Trump said News organization should face treason charges for disseminating false information C.C. Chair Brendan Carr has also threatened to revoke broadcasters licenses over their coverage of the U.S. Israeli war in Iran Carr wrote online Quote broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions Also known as the fake news Have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut blasted Carr saying This is the federal government telling new stations to provide favorable coverage of the war or their licenses will be pulled

53:07A truly extraordinary moment We aren't on the verge of a totalitarian takeover We're in the middle of it, Senator Murphy said This all comes as allies of President Trump Consolidate their control over several major media outlets Paramount's guidance poised to acquire Warner Brothers' discovery which includes CNN and HBO Paramount's CEO is David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, a close Trump ally Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made this comment about CNN Or more fake news from CNN Reports that the Trump administration underestimated the Iran war's impact on the state of Hormuz Patently ridiculous, of course, for decades Iran has threatened shipping in the street of Hormuz This is always what they do, hold the straight hostage CNN doesn't think we thought of that

54:07It's a fundamentally unserious report The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better At the Oscars Sunday, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made this remark about CBS which is now owned by Paramount We hear a lot about Courage Act shows like this, but telling a story that could get you killed for telling it is real courage As you know, there are some countries whose leaders don't support free speech I'm not a liberty to say which Let's just leave it at North Korea and CBS We're joined now by Craig Aaron, co-CEO of Free Press and Free Press Action Not to be confused with Barry Weiss' The Free Press, which is now owned by Paramount and she's head of CBS News His news article, his news article, is headlined War Mongers Come for the Media Craig, talk about the significance of this moment Senator Murphy says this we're not on the precipice or the edge of totalitarianism, we're in the midst of it

55:13Thank you, Amy. Yeah, this is a very clear abuse of power The idea that the chairman of the FCC would be threatening broadcasters with losing licenses for not echoing Trump administration propaganda The idea that the defense secretary is out there cheering on a mega merger so that Trump cronies can be put in charge of the media to get more favorable coverage We really haven't seen anything like this in recent memory and it has been going on throughout the Trump administration Just a complete abuse of power by FCC Chairman Carr, performing really for an audience of one that is Donald Trump Jumping on his every utterance to saber-rattle to threaten broadcasters and really the threat is the point They want these companies to be afraid, they want them to change and they are sadly too often willing to do it In order to push through mergers in order to get special favors in order to guarantee their other divisions, big fat government contracts

56:20They've shown a willingness from CBS on down to warp an alter coverage to make it more favorable to the Trump administration And as we've seen whether it's lawyers, universities, media companies, when the bullying works, you just get more and more bullying Craig Aaron, he's talking about threatening news organizations with treason Presumably this also means the journalists within them is extremely serious because if you were convicted of treason, you face death You have, for example, headsets responding to journalists covering the death of the service members in the U.S. Israeli attack on Iran Saying that this is unfair to cover this, you have when a reporter asked President Trump on Air Force One to talk about the deaths for example of the six service members He goes next, he doesn't want to answer this question, Craig

57:22Yeah, this is really unbelievable, you're talking about basic coverage of the most important and serious issues And you have an administration that wants to hide and warp coverage of their own incompetence, of their own failings, of their own crimes Like these, that you covered earlier in the program and the deaths of hundreds of school children They don't want the U.S. media covering this story and they are showing that they are willing to threaten the use of regulations, of government policy, of changing owners in order to push those media companies into silence In order to have journalists question what stories are they going to cover, wonder if their bosses are going to back them up when they do serious reporting on the crimes of this administration, whether that's kidnapping people and sending them to other countries, whether that's launching a war The most serious stories that we need the newsrooms with the biggest resources covering, the Trump administration is signaling you better think twice

58:28And unfortunately, the billionaire owners of these companies are signaling back if you'll give us favors, if you'll give us mergers, we're willing to do your bidding This works because the CEOs have backed off and they're going to keep doing it until these media companies start standing up Craig Iron, co-CEO, a free press and free press action will link to your new article, Warmongers, come for the media We'll be live during our 30th anniversary event at democracynow.org, next March, next Monday I'm Amy Goodman, thanks for joining us