What Happens If Billionaires Control the Tools of War? With Sharon Weinberger

Hi there. I'm Margarita Velpado and welcome to Intelligence Squared. The podcast about ideas that matter. In each episode, we speak to some of the world's most interesting thinkers, not simply about what they've written or created, but about the ideas that drive their work and why they matter now. For decades, Silicon Valley liked to sell a story about itself. Brilliant outsiders, working beyond government.

Moving faster than institutions ever could. But that story leaves something rather important out. The American military and intelligence agencies helped to finance the technologies, companies, and ambitions that made the Valley powerful. In today's episode, I'm joined by Sharon Weinberger. She has reported on national security, science, and technology for more than 25 years. She is editor in chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and was previously National Security Editor at the Wall Street Journal. Her new book is Valley of Death. How big tech is fueling the future of war.

With governments increasingly relying on privately owned satellites, softwares, artificial intelligence, and autonomous systems, we're going to explore why the people who control those systems are not simply contractors. They have fortunes, political commitments, and power of their own. So Who is serving whom? Sharon?

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (49 minutes, 8,204 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.