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On January 28, 2025, I sat down with Aram Shabanian to talk about how we thought the first year of the Trump administration would go. I put the audio in a vault and didn’t listen to it until now.

We focused on geopolitics and the American military and our hit rate for predictions was about fifty percent. Domestically, it’s been much worse than I expected. Abroad it’s been much weirder than I expected. The bit about America seeking violence though? Right now that feels spot on.

• Hegseth’s reforms got worse for women (vindicated)
• Conscription is not back (wrong)
• The yearning for violence when the gloves come off (vindicated)
• All the episodes that weren’t produced
• Sicarioifciation continues apace
• The bigger problem was that people felt bad
• The dangers of boredom
• “Drugs won the war on drugs and then looted the armories.”
• Against burning it all down
• Greenland is still on the table
• The ceasefire didn’t last and war did not spread to Europe (wrong)
• Elon Musk is out (vindicated)
• X is still around, but it IS producing on-demand CSAM (wrong?)
• WWIII and mass riots didn’t happen (wrong)
• Martin O’Malley 2028?

The Cult of Sicario

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On the last Angry Planet of 2025, novelist and Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay returns to reflect on a year of spectacle and cruelty.

Between the Pentagon’s boat strikes and the administration’s constant barrage of grotesque memes, it feels like America is a crueler and cruder place. For better and worse, the Presidency sets a moral standard for the country and Trump has lowered that standard. Klay wrote about all this in a piece at The New York Times and he’s here with us today to talk through it.

• “It’s too easy to condemn.”
• The project is spectacles of cruelty
• “You’re not supposed to be joining a gang of thugs.”
• What is this doing to us as a nation?
• The lust for cruelty and domination
• Klay’s review of Hegseth’s first year
• War vs. Defense
• “Read long things.”
• Living in the Hell of opinions
• Ending on a high note

What Trump Is Really Doing With His Boat Strikes

Trump Admin’s Racist Halo Memes Are ‘A New Level of Dehumanization of Immigrants’

Trump has accused boat crews of being narco-terrorists. The truth, AP found, is more nuanced

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Earlier this year journalist Ben Makuch caught a glimpse of Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, dancing at a club in Kyiv. It was a surreal moment, a snapshot of a tragic war that the West thinks is defining the future of conflict. Tech executives have flocked to Ukraine, courting the country in an attempt to get at a resource more precious than gold: data. Makuch was just there and has written about what he saw for The New Republic and he’s on the show today to talk about it.

• Some light smoking banter
• Ben’s timeline
• Google’s CEO dancing in a bar in Kyiv
• Ukraine as laboratory for war tech
• The JSOC era is over
• In defense of the majestic American turkey
• The great America vs China speculation
• War, cheaper
• On the actual frontline
• Wheat fields of fiber optic line
• The buzz of the drone
• Life in the bloodlands
• The human suffering of living in Ukraine
• FPV-made propaganda
• “Never underestimate human innovation when it comes to killing other humans.”
• What’s Erik Prince doing in Ukraine?

New York Times on Military Reform

The Medieval—and Highly Effective—Tactics of the Ukrainian Protests

Who Is St. Javelin and Why Is She a Symbol of the War in Ukraine?

‘Cope Cages’ on Busted Tanks Are a Symbol of Russia’s Military Failures

‘Unauthorized’ Edit to Ukraine’s Frontline Maps Point to Polymarket’s War Betting

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Another week and another Angry Planet about the horrifying systems that rule our lives.

Is there a depressive theme running through the work right now? Possibly. I promise we’ll soon replace it with rage.

This week on the show we have Sven Beckert to talk about his new book Capitalism: A Global History. Beckert is a professor of history at Harvard and his tome is an attempt to capture the entire history of an economic system in one book. It’s a doorstop, but it’s also readable and clear-eyed. Some come with me on a journey that runs through the plantations of South Carolina to the tech markets of Shenzhen.

• Cotton as an entry point to the history of capitalism
• The economic big bang
• Industrial Revolution as mutation
• “It’s still being born.”
• Human data is oil to be fracked
• The Quaker Oats metaphor
• “The market is God.”
• Ascribing morality to economics
• When Gary Hart ushered in Neoliberalism
• “Capitalism is a series of regime changes.”
• Moments of great change offer opportunities

Capitalism: A Global History

The Old Order Is Dead. Do Not Resuscitate.

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The White House is portraying the race to adopt AI as an existential crisis. It’s the next Manhattan Project, they say, a technology so important it will require an unprecedented build out of energy infrastructure and massive data centers. But the Manhattan Project was a government-led technological drive whereas AI is led by salesmen and corporations.

What could possibly go wrong?

On this episode of Angry Planet, Ben Buchanan is here to tell us about the government’s role in fostering AI. Buchanan was an AI advisor during the Biden administration where he helped write the policy that paved the way for private-public partnerships between DC and AI companies. Now he’s a professor at John Hopkins and, though he’s still an AI advocate, he’s got concerns. Slop, public land use, and autonomous weapons. We get into it all on this episode of Angry Planet.

• AI as an arm’s race
• Nukes are cheaper than AI
• Government’s role in the construction of AI infrastructure
• What are the stakes of the AI competition between the United States and China?
• “More powerful AI systems will enable more powerful cyber operations.”
• “It’s the hardest thing we do as a species.”
• Turning over federal lands to data centers
• How Trump is shooting himself in the foot regarding AI
• “We’re just chasing power all across the country.”
• “We’re going to be building data centers for a very long time.”
• How the AI expert uses AI
• “There’s a long list of concerns.”
• Accident reports and autonomous weapons

The AI Grand Bargain

Ben Buchanan

DOE on federal lands for data centers

Anthropic Has a Plan to Keep Its AI From Building a Nuclear Weapon. Will It Work?

DoD Direction 3000.09 Autonomy in Weapons Systems

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This week on Angry Planet we’re taking a break from the horrors of the present to explore horrors of a past distant enough now that they’re entertaining. But then, America found those horrors pretty entertaining at the time, too. Even when it was still a thriving community and a going concern, the town of Deadwood, South Dakota, was the subject of dimestore novels and tall tales.

Peter Cozzens is here with us to talk about his new book Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West. Cozzens is a historian who has written 17 books that focus on the U.S. Civil War, the Wild West, and the American Indian Wars. His latest work is all about Deadwood and the wild cast of characters who inhabited it. Come sit with us a spell and learn about the real Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, and Al Swearengen.

• “Power comes to any man who has the color.”
• Black Elk and how the West Was Lost
• Conflicting perceptions of Wild Bill Hickock
• Professional gamblers
• Creating Calamity Jane
• Softening George Hearst
• “In the West, women didn’t wear underwear.”
• Deadwood burns
• How history becomes a dime store novel
• “The most diabolical town on the face of the earth.”

Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West

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Is your Empire feeling less than fresh? Does it feel like the modern world’s best days are behind it? Do conquest and global power politics not hit as good as they used to? Welcome to the Age of Stagnation, a time when the fruits of the Industrial Revolution can be enjoyed but not replicated.

It’s making us all a little crazy, especially world leaders. With us today on the show is Michael Beckley, a political science professor at Tufts University and his career includes stretches at the Pentagon, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the RAND Corporation. To hear Beckley tell it, stagnation might not be such a bad thing. If we can avoid repeating the worst mistakes of the 20th century and let go of a “number go up” mind set, then maybe we can all learn to enjoy a long age of stabilization.

• The diminishing returns of the Industrial Revolution
• Winners and losers in the Age of Ascent
• Moore’s Law sputters out
• Stabilization isn’t so bad. “We’re some of the luckiest people who’ve ever lived.”
• Shenanigans and shithousery
• AI isn’t “ready” yet
• Why conquest doesn’t work anymore
• China as a paper tiger in the age of stabilization
• America’s unique advantages
• “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” - Mike Tyson

The Stagnant Order

I Tried the Robot That’s Coming to Live With You. It’s Still Part Human.

Michael Beckley

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We’re obsessed with apocalypses, big and small. We fantasize about what the future might look like after the fall of society and fear the coming tribulation. Rome fretted about decline until its end. Stories of the Sea Peoples terrified the monarchs of the Late Bronze Age. During the 30 Years’ War, Europeans imagined Armageddon had finally begun.

But a funny thing happens after the collapse: things tend to get a little better for everyone.

Luke Kemp is here to hold our hands through the end of the world as we know it. Kemp is a researcher at Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and the author of the book Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.

• Beauty in collapse
• Matthew’s AI test
• The Doctor Doom mask
• “Collapse was good for most people.”
• Sea People’s mentioned
• Why a Goliath and not a Leviathan?
• Down with Thomas Hobbes
• Fear of a mass panic driving collapse
• “Emergency powers have a very funny tendency to stick around”
• The problem with guns, germs, and steel
• The Tree of Evil
• On the purpose of human sacrifice
• Doctor Doom is the belle of the ball
• Are we ending on a high note?

Buy Goliath’s Curse

Centre for the Study of Existential Risk

The rewards of ruin

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