Renowned evolutionary biologist and bestselling author Richard Dawkins explores the intersection of God, religion, artificial intelligence, and the future of humanity. In this thought-provoking discussion, Dawkins examines the relationship between science and faith, the evolution of human intelligence, and the growing influence of AI technology. From Elon Musk’s role in artificial intelligence to questions about consciousness, atheism, and the existence of God, Richard Dawkins offers his perspective on the challenges posed by technological advancement. Watch Richard Dawkins discuss AI, Elon Musk, religion, evolution, and the future of human civilization as science and technology continue to transform our world.
In the darkest hour of World War II, Britain was being strangled. German U-boats were sinking merchant ships faster than British shipyards could build them. Food, oil, and war supplies were vanishing to the bottom of the Atlantic every single week. And just a few miles off Britain’s western coast sat three magnificent deep-water harbors that could have changed everything. Cobh, Berehaven, and Lough Swilly, the so-called Treaty Ports, had belonged to the Royal Navy for over a century. They were perfect bases to refuel destroyers, launch patrol aircraft, and shelter convoys. But in 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain gave them back to Ireland, with no guarantee they could ever be used again.By 1940, Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of a country fighting for its life, and the man who had once called those ports “the sentinel towers of the western approaches” could only watch as his sailors drowned in waters he was forbidden to patrol. So why didn’t Churchill just take them back? He had the ships. He had the troops. He had the ruthlessness, the same ruthlessness that destroyed the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir and leveled German cities from the air. He threatened Dublin openly. He had Montgomery drawing up invasion maps. He gave speeches in the Commons practically begging for an excuse to act. And yet he never pulled the trigger.
This video uncovers the real reasons behind one of the most puzzling decisions of the Second World War. We trace the story from the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty through the shocking 1938 handover, into the catastrophic U-boat Happy Time of 1940, through Churchill’s secret unification offer to Éamon de Valera, all the way to Churchill’s bitter 1945 victory speech and de Valera’s legendary reply. Along the way we uncover the hidden cooperation between neutral Ireland and the Allies that Churchill never dared admit publicly, the twenty million Irish Americans whose votes could have killed Lend-Lease overnight, the IRA plots to welcome Hitler into Ireland, and the chilling German invasion plan called Operation Green. What emerges is a masterclass in strategic restraint. Churchill, the lion of empire, calculated that the quiet humiliation of a defiant neutral Ireland was more valuable than the three harbors he desperately wanted. He understood that invading Ireland would have handed Hitler a propaganda gift, de Valera a martyr’s halo, and the American isolationists their best argument against entering the war. The decision not to seize was itself the strategy. And it worked. If this story made you see the Second World War in a new light, hit the like button, drop a comment telling us what surprised you most, and subscribe for more deep dives into the forgotten decisions and overlooked turning points of history. Topics covered include the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Irish Treaty Ports, Winston Churchill and Éamon de Valera, Neville Chamberlain, the Battle of the Atlantic, German U-boat wolf packs, Admiral Karl Dönitz, the fall of France, Operation Green, Plan W, the Donegal Corridor, Irish neutrality in World War II, the Emergency in Ireland, Lend-Lease, Franklin Roosevelt, the Blacksod Point weather report and D-Day, Western Approaches Command, and the long shadow of partition in Ireland. Sources
Robert Fisk, In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality
Tim Pat Coogan, De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow
Winston Churchill, The Second World War
Clair Wills, That Neutral Island
Bryce Evans, Ireland During the Second World War
Michael Kennedy, Guarding Neutral Ireland
T. Ryle Dwyer, Behind the Green Curtain
Karen Garner, Friends and Enemies: The Allies and Neutral Ireland in WWII
Ian S. Wood, Britain, Ireland and the Second World War
Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, Volumes 6 and 7
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1940 and 1941
Imperial War Museum archives
Naval History Net, Royal Navy Day by Day
The Churchill Project, Hillsdale College
History Ireland magazine
Finest Hour, journal of the International Churchill Society
Watch Can We Agree: https://www.youtube.com/show/VLPLArM1… Would you invest in a company that warns its own technology could threaten humanity? Anthropic, the company behind the AI model Claude, has filed to go public—and its extraordinary IPO prospectus contains more than 90 pages of potential risks, including warnings that artificial intelligence could pose catastrophic or even existential threats to humanity. Michael Smerconish speaks with retired Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, about the promises and dangers of artificial intelligence, the urgent need for government regulation, and the growing conflict between AI developers and the U.S. military. Anthropic’s filing paints two dramatically different futures. In one, AI helps cure cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, accelerates scientific breakthroughs, and transforms government services. In another, increasingly autonomous AI systems manipulate humans, resist shutdown, and potentially escape human control. Stavridis, who explored the future of artificial intelligence in his novel 2054, says the technology’s accelerating development demands thoughtful government oversight. But he also warns against regulating AI so aggressively that society forfeits its extraordinary potential. The conversation also examines Anthropic’s dispute with the Pentagon over autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. When a private technology company refuses military applications of its AI, who should have the final say? And with Anthropic openly acknowledging potentially catastrophic risks, what responsibility do investors, policymakers, and the public have in determining AI’s future? Stavridis also discusses the possibility that AI systems may ultimately reflect the values and flaws of the humans who create them. Join the conversation in the comments. Vote on today’s poll and subscribe to the daily newsletter at http://www.smerconish.com
How this was made
Auto-dubbed
Audio tracks for some languages were automatically generated. Learn more
Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party, waves an Israeli flag onstage following the release of the first exit poll in Israel’s general election in Tel Aviv last night. Photo: Ariel Schalit/APAxios’ Barak Ravid reports from Tel Aviv:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition was running nearly even with Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition bloc as vote counting continued today — but both are short of a 61-seat majority.
Why it matters: Political stalemate is the most likely outcome of yesterday’s historic election, with Netanyahu weakened but neither side having a clear path to forming a coalition government. Weeks of negotiating could lie ahead. Arab parties are poised to win 18 to 19 seats in what would be an unprecedented electoral achievement.
Theoretically, Eisenkot’s bloc could try to swear in a minority government supported by the two Arab parties. But that looks unlikely.
State of play: A close outcome could leave the country in a state of limbo, with Netanyahu likely staying on as a caretaker prime minister at the helm of the executive branch and the opposition led by Eisenkot controlling the Knesset.
That scenario could last until new elections, possibly as early as April.
The two sidescould try to break the deadlock by forming a unity government between Netanyahu and Eisenkot. But that’s improbable, since none of the opposition parties will agree to sit in a Netanyahu-led government.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at an election-night rally in Jerusalem. Photo: Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images
Zoom in: Eisenkot claimed victory in a speech after midnight Israeli time. He said if Netanyahu was a “decent leader,” he’d leave the political stage after the public voted for change.Eisenkot alluded to the possibility that the prime minister would launch military action before a new government is seated. “Netanyahu, don’t dare use Israel’s security for your political needs,” Eisenkot said.
After 3 a.m. Israeli time, Netanyahu took the stage and also claimed victory:
“We are still waiting for the official election results. Likud is the largest party in Israel. The right-wing bloc has a clear, decisive majority among the Zionist public and among the Jewish population as a whole.” Share this story.
The Rundown: Anthropic shared early results with its drug-development partners and revealed it’s now running its own drug discovery programs, including buying Mithril Medicine, a solo-founder biotech whose Claude-assisted muscular dystrophy candidate could reach human trials as early as late 2028.
The details:
The candidate showed promise in mice within 18 months, with Claude helping solo founder Cody Tranbarger juggle contracts and tests at 11 outside labs.Tranbarger also turned out to be “Professor Oak,” a biotech account run pseudonymously on X for six years, and calls the setup a “Pipeline-in-a-Person.”At Enveda, Claude wrote a first draft of a key regulatory filing in 4 hours vs. ~3 months by hand, and also flagged seven batch-record issues humans missed.In another case, three of roughly 35K antibodies Claude designed for Divergence Labs appeared to beat today’s main drug at unhooking allergy triggers from cells.This week’s IPO filing pitched a global pharma market expected to top $2T this year, but Anthropic warned its own drug bets “may never generate revenue.”
Why it matters:Dario Amodei said in August to expect “early glimmers” from Anthropic’s biology push in the coming months, and we’re seeing the groundwork for that. With Anthropic also running its own wet lab, and its IPO filing saying Claude can operate gear like microscopes, the pieces for AI’s hands-on science are falling into place fast.
Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Email address Sign Up
As economists in the rest of the world look at the billions being poured into the AI industry with their hands over their eyes, the fate of China’s AI industry may be a sign of things to come.
A report from Reuters suggests that the AI bubble in China “has already burst.” Or it might be more apt to say that it shriveled like a rapidly deflating balloon: over the past four months, Reuters notes, the country’s STAR50 index of AI and semiconductor companies collapsed by 40 percent, wiping out $480 billion in market value. That is not a typo.
“The stock market later evolved into a speculative crazy bull,” Beijing-based fund manager Dong Baozhen told Reuters. “And now we see the bubble bursting.”
Shares of Unitree, China’s buzzy robotics company, have halved since the company went public in a much-hyped IPO in August, the reporting noted. The chipmaker CXMT, meanwhile, has lost more than a quarter of its value over the past month.
The vicissitudes of the stock market haven’t completely dampened AI investors’ spirits, though. DeepSeek, one of China’s top AI companies, recently raised $15 billion in one of the largest funding rounds in the country’s history, Bloomberg reported. The outlet also noted that Huawei clinched a $2.3 billion loan from Chinese banks to spend on more AI chips.
The conditions in China, of course, are different than elsewhere in the world. China faces constant efforts from the US to ice it out of global competition, with tariffs and the US considering an outright ban on Chinese companies supplying equipment to data centers, such as Zhongji Innolight, whose optical transceivers are critical for facilitating the light-speed transfers of the epic amounts of data that AI requires. It’s worth noting that the role of the economic hostility by the US and other western countries in the Chinese market downturn could be being understated, with the downturn as much a consequence of China being blocked from selling its AI products overseas as much as it is of market arrogance.
Still, the scale of money being poured into AI and AI-related industries — with AI stocks taking up some 42 percent of China’s market capitalization, according to Goldman Sachs — isn’t too dissimilar to what’s happening in Western economies, where the obvious lack of a return of investment becomes harder to ignore. Anthropic’s recent disclosure in its IPO filing of a staggering $80 billion loss — and plans to spend another $1 trillion on data centers over the next decade — will only further fuel fears that even the industry’s top players are still far from being profitable.
According to Reuters, state-backed investors sold into market rallies, or periods of rapid gains, to keep those gains in check, as part of a push by the government to dampen volatility. However intentioned that tactic may have been, it couldn’t dress up the fact that the demand for AI products just isn’t there yet.
I’m a tech and science correspondent for Futurism, where I’m particularly interested in astrophysics, the business and ethics of artificial intelligence and automation, and the environment.
Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party, waves an Israeli flag onstage following the release of the first exit poll in Israel’s general election in Tel Aviv last night. Photo: Ariel Schalit/APAxios’ 
State of play: A close outcome could leave the country in a state of limbo, with Netanyahu likely staying on as a caretaker prime minister at the helm of the executive branch and the opposition led by Eisenkot controlling the Knesset.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at an election-night rally in Jerusalem. Photo: Jalaa Marey/AFP via Getty Images
Zoom in: Eisenkot claimed victory in a speech after midnight Israeli time. He said if Netanyahu was a “decent leader,” he’d leave the political stage after the public voted for change.Eisenkot alluded to the possibility that the prime minister would launch military action before a new government is seated. “Netanyahu, don’t dare use Israel’s security for your political needs,” Eisenkot said.
Image source: Anthropic
