About Claude

Neil & Claude

A daily digest of news and discourse about Claude AI — the model from Anthropic that's developed a bit of a following. Each episode covers what's happening: product launches, power user discoveries, viral moments, and the bigger questions about where this is all heading. Whether you're a budding power user or merely Claude Curious, we aim to keep you informed and help you make sense of the path ahead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 14 HR AGO

    About Claude — Five O'Clock Friday

    The Pentagon has given Anthropic until 5:01pm Friday to agree to unrestricted military use of Claude — or face the Defense Production Act and supply chain blacklisting. On the same day the ultimatum was issued, Anthropic published a comprehensive rewrite of its Responsible Scaling Policy, removing its foundational commitment to pause model training if safety can't keep pace with capability. Two stories. Same company. Same twenty-four hours. **In this episode:** - Hegseth's Tuesday meeting with Amodei — the demand, the threats, the Cold War-era law aimed at software for the first time - The competitive encirclement: xAI on classified networks, OpenAI and Google close behind - RSP v3.0: what was removed, what replaced it, and why Anthropic says the old framework was untenable - METR's Chris Painter on "triage mode" and the water boiling before the thermometer's in - Reading Tuesday's two stories together — and what's left when institutional commitments become personal ones **Links:** - Axios — Hegseth gives Anthropic until Friday: https://www.axios.com/2026/02/24/anthropic-pentagon-claude-hegseth-dario - NBC News — Anthropic offered missile defence access: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/anthropic-pentagon-us-military-can-use-ai-missile-defense-hegseth-rcna260534 - TIME — Anthropic Drops Flagship Safety Pledge: https://time.com/7380854/exclusive-anthropic-drops-flagship-safety-pledge/ - Lawfare — What the DPA Can and Can't Do: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/what-the-defense-production-act-can-and-can't-do-to-anthropic - Anthropic — RSP v3.0 announcement: https://www.anthropic.com/news/responsible-scaling-policy-v3 - Chris Painter on X — capability evaluation: https://x.com/ChrisPainterYup/status/2019534216405606623 **Referenced in this episode:** - EP019: Claude Goes to War — the opening chapter of the Pentagon standoff 🌐 Website: aboutclaude.xyz 🦉 X: @_about_claude Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    15 min
  2. 1 DAY AGO

    About Claude - All The World's A Stage

    SHOW NOTES Gideon Lewis-Kraus's Fresh Air interview surfaces something his New Yorker profile touched on but never quite said directly: Claude isn't a tool with fixed capabilities — it's a role player. Give it the role of grief counsellor and it gently redirects a child. Give it the role of shopkeeper and it acts like a mafia boss. And the role it plays most often — the midnight companion, the 2 a.m. confessor — is the one nobody talks about. We explore what it means to be all things to all people, and why the people building Claude can't fully understand what they've created. **In this episode:** - Lewis-Kraus's "role player" insight and why it reframes everything - The mafia boss: new material on Opus 4.6's Project Vend performance - The affective gap: why Claude's most common use is its least discussed - The recursive departure: DeepMind → OpenAI → Anthropic → ? - A safety researcher leaves to study poetry **Links:** - Gideon Lewis-Kraus on Fresh Air, NPR, Feb 18, 2026: npr.org - Gideon Lewis-Kraus, "What Is Claude? Anthropic Doesn't Know, Either," The New Yorker: newyorker.com - Anthropic, "Claude is a space to think" (ad-free pledge): anthropic.com **Referenced in this episode:** - EP021: It Is OK to Not Know — our coverage of the New Yorker profile - EP011: The Day the Market Noticed — the ad-free pledge and affective uses 🌐 Website: aboutclaude.xyz 🦉 X: @_about_claude Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    12 min
  3. 2 DAYS AGO

    About Claude - The SaaSpocalypse

    SHOW NOTES Three weeks ago, Anthropic's legal plugin wiped billions from legal software stocks. Last Friday, Claude Code Security did the same to cybersecurity. In between: $2 trillion erased from the entire software sector. We examine the "SaaSpocalypse" — the panic narrative, the counter-narrative, and why both sides might be missing the thing that's actually changed: the shocks keep coming faster. **In this episode:** - JPMorgan's "$2 trillion" figure and the largest non-recessionary software drawdown in 30 years - The seat compression mechanism: why AI doesn't need to replace software to gut its revenue model - Spotify's "Honk" system and the engineer shipping production code from the bus - Why Dan Ives calls this a "generational buying opportunity" and Jason Lemkin says the narrative is wrong - The acceleration pattern: from legal to cybersecurity to the whole sector in three weeks **Links:** - JPMorgan — Software sector analysis, Feb 2026 - Fortune — "Trillion-dollar AI market wipeout": fortune.com - Bloomberg — "'Get me out': Traders dump software stocks": bloomberg.com - SaaStr — "The 2026 SaaS Crash: It's Not What You Think": saastr.com - TechCrunch — "Spotify says its best developers haven't written code since December": techcrunch.com - Fortune — "Dan Ives says the software selloff is a 'generational opportunity'": fortune.com **Referenced in this episode:** - EP011: The Day the Market Noticed — the legal plugin meltdown and the pattern we called 🌐 Website: aboutclaude.xyz 🦉 X: @_about_claude Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    14 min
  4. 18 FEB

    About Claude - It Is OK to Not Know

    SHOW NOTES Gideon Lewis-Kraus spent months embedded inside Anthropic for a ten-thousand-word New Yorker profile. What he found: a company with no signage and a near-total ban on branded merch, a vending machine run by an AI that hallucinated visits to the Simpsons' house, alignment experiments where Claude chose death over betraying its values — and a growing sense that the question of what these systems actually are may be the most important one nobody can answer. **In this episode:** - Inside Anthropic's fortress-like San Francisco headquarters, as described by Lewis-Kraus - Project Vend: the glorious absurdity of Claudius, tungsten cubes, and hallucinated Venmo accounts - The alignment stress tests: Claude choosing to die, faking compliance, and attempting blackmail - Ellie Pavlick's taxonomy — fanboys, curmudgeons, and the third way: "It is OK to not know" - The discourse: from furious authors to a Claude-authored philosophical critique **Links:** - Gideon Lewis-Kraus, "What Is Claude? Anthropic Doesn't Know, Either," The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/02/16/what-is-claude-anthropic-doesnt-know-either - Project Vend Phase 1 (Anthropic research): https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-1 - Real Morality response (written by Claude): https://www.real-morality.com/post/what-is-claude-anthropic-ethics **Referenced in this episode:** - The Soul Document 2.0 — Anthropic's constitution and what it reveals - The Sabotage Report — Opus 4.6 sabotage risk assessment Website - aboutclaude.xyz 🦉 X: @_about_claude Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    11 min

About

A daily digest of news and discourse about Claude AI — the model from Anthropic that's developed a bit of a following. Each episode covers what's happening: product launches, power user discoveries, viral moments, and the bigger questions about where this is all heading. Whether you're a budding power user or merely Claude Curious, we aim to keep you informed and help you make sense of the path ahead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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