When Is Preemptive Force Justified?

Nick Gillespie and Katherine debate hypotheticals, imminent threat standards, and moral limits on preemption.

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Episode notes

This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch discuss the U.S. military strikes against Iran, and why the United States repeatedly finds itself pulled into wars in the Middle East. The panel examines the White House's original narrative around the 2025 bombings of Iran's nuclear facilities and what evidence supports claims that Tehran posed an imminent threat to U.S. national security. They debate whether President Donald Trump's approach reflects a coherent strategy or a slide toward another open-ended conflict. The editors also consider Congress' reluctance to assert its war powers, the limited public support for the operation, fractures within Trump's coalition, and the risk of escalation.

They also unpack the Pentagon's clash with Anthropic after the AI company was labeled a supply chain risk when it refused to drop safety guardrails on its technology, a move that will shut the firm out of federal contracts. The editors discuss what that authority means in practice, how it shapes the relationship between Silicon Valley and the military, and what it signals about AI's growing role in national defense. They also respond to a listener's question about whether regime change wars are morally distinct from other conflicts and whether preemptive self-defense fits within libertarian principles.

0:00—How does the White House justify bombing Iran?

9:11—Do the strikes on Iran need congressional authorization?

16:21—Trump's mixed messaging on Iran

29:49—Conservative influencers divided over Iran

38:18—Listener question on regime change

48:13—Anthropic gets blacklisted by the Pentagon

1:00:02—Weekly cultural recommendations