This war shows why NZ needs to get smarter about AI and Big Tech
Tuesday, 17 March 2026
Nick Agar is professor or ethics in the School of Law, Politics and Philosophy at Waikato University.
OPINION: We shouldn’t be surprised by AI’s role in the war in Iran. The opening AI skirmishes have involved the targeting of Amazon data centres in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. We should ask what role AI played in the swift elimination of Iran’s senior leadership. Add to that a spat between the Pentagon and leading AI business Anthropic that has led the former to designate the latter a “supply chain risk”.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei objected to his tech being used to direct automated weapons systems and enact mass surveillance of Americans. He becomes the latest tech billionaire to anoint himself saviour of democracy, liberty, capitalism, humanity or whatever.
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I approach this disagreement with mixed feelings. In December I received an unexpected email from a US law firm informing me that a settlement had been reached in Bartz v Anthropic, a class action lawsuit concerning Anthropic’s pirating of books to train its AI, Claude. Apparently US $1.5 billion is up for grabs. Anthropic stole a lot of books! It remains to be seen how much money makes it through US lawyers and publishers to me in New Zealand.
It also means that I shed crocodile’s tears about Anthropic’s complaint that Chinese AI businesses have stolen its data. Why not sue DeepSeek, based in Hangzhou, in Chinese courts?
In increasingly warlike times, New Zealanders should question the habits we have fallen into with Big Tech. Aotearoa’s Parliament is currently considering a social media ban for under-16s. What about protecting us grown-ups too? We can be pretty clueless about how we use digital techs. I unknowingly gave my academic work to an AI business who said thanks by setting me the impossible task of working out which student responses to my work on the ethics of technology are AI-written and which aren’t.
I’m not the only Kiwi clueless about data. One reason to enact a social media ban for children goes beyond the harms they directly suffer. It’s about the chance to come of age in an AI world with a better understanding of the value of our data and what can happen if we gift it to a corporation in exchange for permission to “friend” strangers.
In his clarification of Anthropic’s stance on the military use of its AI, Amodei makes it clear that his objection is mainly to the uncouth language favoured by the White House. He understands that his is a US corporation and that in times of war he and his tech stand with the (US) troops.
Anthropic says it is fighting for the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans. These are supposed to protect them from unwarranted surveillance. What should New Zealanders’ stance be on the US government using AI to spy on Americans? The Fourth Amendment has never protected us. Perhaps it shouldn’t matter so much to us that the US government wants to spy on Americans in ways it has always been free to spy on us.
As US Big Tech increasingly swears allegiance to its state and whatever its war aims are, Aotearoa needs a free debate about where we should stand. That debate is best supported by flourishing independent media, not conducted under the surveillance of California-based Meta.
We hear much about the identity crises of the young. Who are Aotearoa’s young? What do we do if Instagram decides that they are drone-fodder for someone else’s geographically convenient war?