Front Burner

For decades we have been hearing about the possibility of AI-driven warfare, and now it’s here.

Anthropic's AI platform Claude has been reportedly central to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. It was used during the attack that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which involved strikes on nearly 900 targets dropped within the first 12 hours, including on a girls’ elementary school that killed at least 165 people – mostly students.

Today we’re talking about AI military capabilities: how companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are working with the military, and what happens when these companies and governments start building systems that help decide who lives and who dies in a war.

Heidy Khlaaf, the Chief AI Scientist at the AI Now Institute and an expert on AI safety within defense and national security, joins the show.

Today on the show, we wanted to bring on Robert Pape. He is a political scientist with the University of Chicago. And we’ve been following his work on his substack “The Escalation Trap” with a lot of interest since the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.

Pape is going to argue that the U.S. has walked into an enormous, military escalation trap. He takes a hard look at things like missile supplies, and air defense systems, and models them out. His predictions for the future of this conflict, based on present information, and history aren’t great.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney reaffirmed his support for the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Carney spoke about the need to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and threatening international peace and security. But Carney also said his government supports the goals of the attack with “regret” and that Israel and the United States acted without engaging the United Nations.

Is Canada trying to have it both ways by professing support for international law, while also backing what Canada’s former Liberal foreign affairs minister, Lloyd Axworthy, has called an act of aggression by Israel and the U.S. carried out in defiance of the U.N. charter?

Dennis Horak joins Front Burner to navigate those questions. He served as the last head of mission for Canada in Iran. He also served as Canada’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In 1953, the United States helped stage a coup to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, largely a response to the Iranian leader’s nationalization of the oil industry. Twenty-six years later, revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran just months after having deposed the U.S. installed King.

Since then, the relationship between these two nations has been defined by sanctions, proxy battles, covert operations, nuclear diplomacy, political assassinations, deep mutual mistrust, and now a war.
How did we get here?

Our guest is Nader Hashemi, Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian understanding and an associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

This weekend after weeks of threats and tense negotiations, the U.S. and Israel began a war with Iran. The developments have been incredibly consequential, from the assasination of Iran’s Supreme Leader to Iran’s retaliatory attacks on neighbouring Gulf states.

To unpack this moment, what led to it, and go through what the future of the Middle East could look like in the aftermath, we are joined by Vali Nasr, Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is also the author of Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History.