## Notes from 22 April 2026 [[2026-04-21|← Previous note]] ┃ [[2026-04-23|Next note →]] [[Henry Farrell]]'s piece on the Anthropic–DoD confrontation ("[Who loses from the Anthropic fight?](https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/who-loses-from-the-anthropic-fight)", _Programmable Mutter_) weaves together work by Marion Fourcade, Alondra Nelson, and Nikhil Kalyanpur to surface contradictions in the Trump coalition. Nelson's framing is key: what the administration is doing with AI isn't deregulation, it's [[Hostile State Capacity|regulation by arbitrary executive discretion]]. And Farrell shows how that sits in direct tension with the government's growing dependence on private contractors for core functions. [[Unitary Executive|Unitary executive]] theory and aggressive privatization don't cohere — the more the state outsources, the less it can credibly claim top-down control. The problem gets worse when that reliance is monopolistic: a single irreplaceable provider creates a power dynamic neither side can manage cleanly. The piece also highlights how Silicon Valley is fractured in its relationship to the administration. Drawing on Kalyanpur, Farrell argues that the same access to state power that benefits tech magnates today is the mechanism through which they'll eventually be disciplined. Oligarchs who help build authoritarian capacity trade the predictable risks of democracy for the volatile logic of court politics. The Russian comparison is apt: some oligarchs thrived under Putin, but only while they stayed in favor. This all connects to the classic problem of [[Executive Decisiveness|executive decisiveness]] in democratic setups. The discretionary power granted (or simply tolerated) today is inherited by the next government. Trump is largely using authorities that existed before but were restrained by norm and tradition, and the checking mechanisms (courts, Congress) are either too slow or too aligned to push back. One open question is why Republicans seem unconcerned about reciprocal escalation — possibly because they don't see Democrats as capable of making a credible threat to use the same tools. The underlying tension remains unresolved: concentration of power enables decisive action but creates the conditions for abuse, while separation of powers buys stability at the cost of paralysis. That's the old dilemma of political science, and the Anthropic case sharpens it.