Robert Wright's Nonzero

Nikita Petrov, commentator and writer on geopolitics and psychopolitics, joins to analyze Iran, Israel, and U.S. foreign policy. They compare rhetoric to Russian narratives. They debate shifting U.S. rationales for strikes, Iran’s measured responses, who is steering escalation, and how media and political incentives push conflict.

Joshua Landis, Middle East scholar and co-director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, outlines the strategic logic and political pressures shaping threats to Iran. He discusses regional deterrence, Iran's possible responses, risks of regime-change, oil disruptions, and how limited strikes can trap decision makers into escalation.

Holly Elmore, executive director of PauseAI US and AI policy advocate who pushes for slowing rapid AI deployment. She critiques Anthropic's persona-focused fixes versus true base-model alignment. Conversations cover naming-and-shaming tactics, Dario Amodei's role in accelerating the race, and how winner-takes-all narratives and geopolitical frames justify risky rushes.

Paul Bloom, psychologist and writer known for sharp takes on empathy and human behavior. He discusses how AI shapes loneliness and social life. They debate rapid AI acceleration and whether recent model leaps justify doomsday bets. Topics include measuring AI's real-world impact, policy coordination, emergent autonomous agents, and where AI has already altered work.

Nikita Petrov, writer of the Psychopolitica newsletter who experiments with AI tools like Claude Code. He frames MAGA as a response to a felt loss of agency. They discuss AI transferring agency to machines, AIs as decision-makers, how Claude Code reshapes creativity, risks of idleness versus meaningful ritual, and visions of an internet split between bot-driven noise and human-run ‘parlors.’

Timothy B. Lee, technology journalist and AI analyst behind the Understanding AI newsletter. He discusses Claude Code and agent behaviors, debate over whether AGI has arrived, limits of vibe coding and continuous learning, how AI boosts developer productivity and could accelerate progress, and the plausibility of a rapid singularity versus gradual change.

Curt Mills, columnist and American Conservative executive director who covers national security and politics. They debate whether conflict with Iran is likely and how Israeli and domestic politics shape U.S. choices. The conversation then shifts to AI and China: chip controls, an AI arms-race, risks of superintelligence, and how technology and geopolitics could redraw Taiwan and global power dynamics.

Paul Bloom, psychologist and author known for work on moral psychology, offers sharp takes on cognition and moral judgment. They unpack how names ended up in the Epstein files and discuss Epstein’s networking tactics. They trace the rise of Moldbook: A Reddit-like world of agent AIs, lobster-themed cults, secret languages, autonomous agents acting online, and the safety questions that follow.

Nikita Petrov, publisher of Psychopolitica and analyst of geopolitics and political psychology, offers a Russian and European lens on global populism. He frames MAGA as an international project reclaiming national agency. They explore alliances that weaken transnational institutions, admiration for strong sovereign leaders, and tensions between conservative traditions and tech-driven libertarianism.

Alex Hanna, sociologist focused on AI’s social effects, and Emily Bender, linguist known for work on language models, discuss skepticism of booster and doomer narratives. They probe who truly benefits from AI, whether it boosts productivity, how LLMs do or do not “understand,” and why prototypes and managerial incentives can spread harmful systems. Conversation highlights risks from surveillance, labor fragmentation, and misleading metaphors.