Inside the Iran War and the Pentagon's Feud with Anthropic with Under Secretary of War Emil Michael

Episode 263 of All-In was billed as an "emergency" podcast, released on a Thursday night. The guest was Emil Michael, introduced as the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, "working directly for" Pete Hegseth (the transcript renders the name "Hegsa"). The host recalled that they had worked together at Uber, where Michael was described as Travis Kalanick's "right hand man" and "Some might say fixer". The reply pushed back lightly by pointing to having helped raise "$20,000,000,000". Others on the panel offered "operational axe" and "rainmaker" as alternative labels.

Before the main topic, the hosts traded jokes about a week of online mockery directed at Chamath Palihapitiya over retail investor losses and a tax-harvesting comment. They noted that David Sacks was absent because he was "very busy on Capitol Hill", and said his work would be discussed the following week.

The host opened the war discussion with a summary of events. The US and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran on a Saturday, and the recording took place on "day six of operation epic fury". In the host's account, Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed within hours, 40 senior officials were also killed, and the death toll stood at "about a thousand people according to reports." Six US Army reserve soldiers were killed in a drone strike on a base in Kuwait. A US submarine sank an Iranian ship off Sri Lanka, which the host called the first torpedo kill since World War II.

The host called the official reason for the war "a bit of a moving target". Marco Rubio first said Israel was going to attack and the US had no choice but to take part, then walked that back. President Trump said the war was not a regime-change effort. He described its aims as stopping terrorism, the development of ICBMs and nuclear weapons, and he also urged Iranians to "take their country back." The host quoted Hegseth as saying:

this is not a so called regime change war, but the regime sure did change and the world is better off for it.

The host set prediction-market odds against the official line. On Polymarket, the chance of US forces entering Iran was 40% by March and 59% by the end of the year. The chance of the Iranian regime falling was 39% by June 30 and 51% by year-end. The host then asked how long the operation would take, whether US ground troops would be needed, and what success would look like.

The answer described "a weeks, not months kinda operation". Its goal was presented as disarming Iran so that it can no longer supply Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups it backs with weapons and money, in addition to dealing with the nuclear program. That goal explains the strikes on weapons depots. Iran was described as "a prodigious drone maker" with long-range one-way attack drones and many ballistic missiles aimed at countries across the Middle East. On ground troops, the answer was flat and runs directly against the market odds quoted a moment earlier:

there's no scenario where we have some protracted boots on the ground, Afghanistan, Iraq two like scenario.

The host then raised a political objection to Friedberg. Many voters backed Trump for a "peace dividend", the host said, yet "eight countries have been bombed" and two leaders had been deposed, one of whom was killed. The first answer moved the discussion to China. It pointed to what it called probably the biggest meetings of the term, in China in April, and argued that a "grand bargain" with China is likely one of the president's top priorities. On that view, the Maduro operation and the strikes on Iran create "maximal leverage going into those negotiations." Another panelist later credited Friedberg with raising the potential for a grand bargain.

The evidence offered was about oil and supply chains. "90% of the oil that comes out of Iran goes to China", and Maduro's government had a long-standing relationship with China. Damaging those supply chains would give the US a stronger hand. The speaker also said they "would imagine" the president does not intend to pick Iran's leaders or start a multiyear conflict. The deal they described would include market access for American businesses in China, regulatory, economic and trade parity, an understanding on Taiwan, and access to key technologies such as semiconductors. They called it a possible "win win" and "the crowning achievement of this administration, particularly going into the midterms." This was presented as speculation about motive, not as reporting.

A second panelist went further and argued that the war is about neither regime change nor a regional conflict. In this view, removing Maduro and Iran's leadership was "the most important thing that we did in the last three months" because of the leverage it creates with China. The supporting evidence was China's newly published GDP target of 4.5% to 5%, which the speaker described as the lowest in about thirty years. The speaker argued that a country slowing to half its former growth rate, with high youth unemployment, tends to become more chaotic. They concluded that invading Taiwan could look like the right move from China's point of view, because it would create "a sinkhole that occupies your people" and restart production through "a war machine."

The argument then turned to a chart that was not included in the transcript. It said China depends heavily on imported oil, at "about 20% of their economy", and that this oil feeds all of logistics, transportation, aviation and feedstock. The speaker said about a fifth of it comes from Iran and Venezuela, and that "all of that is off the table." Combined with the Russia negotiations led by Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and a third negotiator transcribed as "Josh Greenbond", the speaker estimated the affected share at "about 40% of China's oil." The claimed results were to "redolarize", to cut off illicit oil money and to "hem in China" before the spring talks. Two limits apply. The chart is not available to check, and the speaker gives "about 20%" in one sentence and "that 19%" in the next.

When the host asked how much the war has to do with China, the reply played down the thesis. Speaking with the caveat "I'm not speaking for the administration on this", the respondent called China "a second order benefit". The reply also challenged the eight-conflicts count. Gaza and Russia-Ukraine were "inherited". Venezuela and the drug boats were one operation. The Houthi strikes were a limited response to attacks on US ships and a matter of "freedom of the seas". That left "Iran being the one material conflict outside of Venezuela." On Venezuela, the answer to how long it lasted was: "It was one raid."

The host described a "new approach" with no boots on the ground. The host said the Venezuela operation went better than anyone expected and that Iran had gone very well so far, "We got a long way to go with Iran." Asked what explained this, the answer joked about the "discombobulator" and then gave several reasons. The first was a well-trained military whose officers learned lessons in the global war on terror, which was called a "disaster in so many respects", and are now generals. The second was a contrast with China's military, described as lacking combat experience. The respondent claimed that China's purge of its own commanders removed "the one guy who had experience in Vietnam." Third came technology across space, air, land, sea and cyber.