We cover a lot of ground in this week's episode of To Save Us From Hell! There are two new entrants to the race to succeed António Guterres as the next UN Secretary-General; Cindy McCain announced she is stepping down as head of the World Food Programme, meaning there will soon be a vacancy at the top of one of the largest UN agencies—one typically led by an American; and we dissect a bizarre Security Council meeting earlier this week chaired by…Melania Trump. But we begin with an extended discussion of how the new war in Iran is impacting diplomacy at the United Nations—and what role the UN may play as this conflict evolves.

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Things are obviously moving very fast in the Middle East. When I caught up with my guest today, Dalia Dassa Kaye, the war was in its second day. Bombings in Iran and throughout the region continued at a rapid clip, and there was little sense of when, if, or how it might end.

Regular listeners of the show are no doubt familiar with Dalia Dassa Kaye. She is a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and the author of a new book on U.S.–Iran relations, Enduring Hostility: The Making of America's Iran Policy. She has researched and written extensively about escalatory dynamics in the region—how Iran, Israel, the United States, and Gulf countries may respond to being attacked. Now that this dynamic is clearly underway, I thought it would be useful to get her perspective on what we are seeing unfold.

We kick off by discussing why the United States and Israel launched this war, given that Trump has never really articulated his motivations as the U.S. moved massive military assets to the region. We then discuss where this may head—and what might inspire de-escalation in the near future.

This conversation will give you useful context as this crisis continues to develop.

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Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a high-stakes meeting with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and, according to several news reports, delivered an ultimatum: either Anthropic drops the safety guardrails built into its AI model, Claude, or it faces potentially punishing consequences—including invoking the Defense Production Act to effectively seize Claude, or banning Anthropic outright by declaring the company a "supply chain risk."

At issue are Anthropic's terms of service for Claude, which prohibit the model from being used to develop or deploy lethal autonomous weapons systems—so-called "killer robots" that can identify and strike targets without meaningful human oversight. The Pentagon wants a free hand to potentially use Claude to develop these systems; Anthropic wants to prevent Claude from doing so.

The outcome of this dispute is highly consequential—potentially even for the future of humanity. So-called swarms of drones and other military hardware could operate autonomously, coordinating among themselves to kill with impunity. The Pentagon worries that if it doesn't develop these systems, China might. Anthropic considers these systems an ethically abhorrent line it does not want to cross.

Joining me to discuss the details of this clash between a leading AI company and the Pentagon is Anna Hehir, head of Military AI Governance at the Future of Life Institute. We kick off with a discussion of how AI systems are already integrated into the U.S. military, before turning to a longer conversation about the vast implications of whether Anthropic complies with the Pentagon's ultimatum. We also discuss how this incident illustrates the need for international agreements on lethal autonomous weapons systems, including a potential treaty now being hashed out at the United Nations.