Noah Smith

A June 2025 coverage peak gave way to Noah Smith’s sharper argument that AI could become a superweapon requiring state control of force.

Who they are

Noah Smith appears principally as a Noahpinion commentator whose coverage connects AI policy, U.S. technological competitiveness, China, immigration and Silicon Valley’s political disputes. His own analyses supply several of the defining positions in the record, while adjacent stories place those arguments alongside figures and companies including Elon Musk, Google, Anthropic, Trump and ByteDance.

The recent arc

Coverage was relatively steady through 2024 before its recent high point in 2025Q2, driven by the Trump–Musk rupture and Smith’s intervention on the Senate tax bill, which he said threatened energy sources important for AI training. Later 2025 coverage moved toward the politics of talent and public attitudes: Smith argued that H-1B workers help sustain U.S. tech dominance amid conflict between the “Tech Right” and MAGA, and that U.S. fears of AI contrast with more positive attitudes in Asia and Europe.

The newest item marks a more consequential turn from debates over adoption and regulation to state power: Smith backed Pentagon pressure on Anthropic on the grounds that AI may become a superweapon and that nation-states should retain a monopoly on legitimate force. That argument follows his earlier criticism of California’s SB 1047, which he characterized as a damaging regulatory misfire, rather than a blanket anti-regulation posture.

The tension

The central tension is between treating advanced AI as a technology to be constrained through broad safety rules and treating it as strategic capability that democratic states must develop and control amid global competition. Smith pushes against anti-AI sentiment and SB 1047 while emphasizing the dangers of AI as a weapon; China, U.S. chip restrictions, immigration, Anthropic and the Pentagon are the recurring context for that uneasy balance. Musk and the Tech Right add a political layer, as fights over X, H-1B visas and energy policy expose disagreements over who should shape the U.S. technology agenda.

Why it matters

If this trajectory continues, Smith’s coverage will be useful less as a generic AI debate than as a record of the collision between AI governance, national-security authority and economic competitiveness. The unresolved question is whether public distrust and state-centered AI policy can coexist with the investment, energy capacity and skilled immigration that his analyses present as necessary for U.S. technological leadership.

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