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BT Ben Thompson Ben Thompson Writes Stratechery, a subscription newsletter analyzing the business strategy behind tech and media companies, and has built a reputation for framing how platfo...

“Once you grok, no pun intended, that we're talking about power dynamics, you get what I was going for with the Anthropic versus DOW article. It wasn't about legalism niceties. It wasn't about mass surveillance. It was about who, at the end of the day, has power. And if Anthropic keeps saying and insisting, perhaps accurately, we are accruing power to an extent that rivals nation states, the nation states are going to have a say in it.”

Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026

“Once you grok, no pun intended, that we're talking about power dynamics, you get what I was going for with the Anthropic versus DOW article. It wasn't about legalism niceties. It wasn't about mass surveillance. It was about who, at the end of the day, has power. And if Anthropic keeps saying and insisting, perhaps accurately, we are accruing power to an extent that rivals nation states, the nation states are going to have a say in it.” — Ben Thompson, Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson

Context

Thompson is closing a segment on power. Just before, he said that Ukraine, relative to the U.S. government or even Starlink, does not have power. He then uses that framing to explain what his article on Anthropic's dispute with DOW was really about: who holds power, not legal technicalities or surveillance.

Listen to the episode → More from Ben Thompson → More Tech Strategy & Big Tech quotes →

Transcript

Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson Around 1:15:11 into the episode
Ben Thompson

to Ukarsh's overall point. We're talking about power.

Andrew Sharp

Yeah.

Ben Thompson

Like, this is the whole thing. Who has power? Ukraine, at the end of the day, relative to the U.S. government or even relative to Starlink, does not have power. Once you grok, no pun intended, that we're talking about power dynamics, you get what I was going for with the Anthropic versus DOW article. It wasn't about legalism niceties. It wasn't about mass surveillance. It was about who, at the end of the day, has power. And if Anthropic keeps saying and insisting, perhaps accurately, we are accruing power to an extent that rivals nation states, the nation states are going to have a say in it.

Andrew Sharp

Absolutely. And if Anthropic's not going to jump or not going to say how high when the government says jump, then the government is going to investigate other options and ensure that its suppliers are not relying on Anthropic. It is going to continue to be an issue, though, because particularly as…

Ben Thompson

This is unbelievable. We're an hour and a half in. I wanted to. No,

Andrew Sharp

no, no. First of all, we had a little interruption about 10 minutes in. So we have an extra five to seven minutes here. The text message that you sent me 30 minutes before recording was you looked at the rundown and you said, why no, you can see everything segment with multiple question marks. So

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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