Omnishambles

Omnishambles Live with Aidan Walker

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit omnishamblespod.substack.com [https://omnishamblespod.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

If AI-Enabled Weapons Are So Smart, Why Do They Keep Hitting Schools?

On Feb. 28, a girls’ school in Minab, Iran, was struck three times during school hours. The roof collapsed, killing between 175 and 180 people—most of them girls aged 7 to 12. The U.S. eventually confirmed it had hit the site. This week, Cy takes Virginia (and you) deep inside Project Maven—the Pentagon’s AI-powered targeting system, how it was built, who built it, and why the school was just the tip of a very bloody iceberg. What we cover: * The origin story: Marine intelligence officer Drew Cukor in Afghanistan in 2001, blind on the battlefield with nothing but Microsoft Office and Google Earth, and his two-decade obsession with solving that with technology. * How Palantir—Peter Thiel’s data company, bootstrapped with CIA venture capital—became the backbone of the most expensive targeting system in U.S. military history. And why they nearly didn’t make it. * What a kill chain actually is, why compressing it was always the point, and how layering large language models into Maven took targeting from 20 targets a day to 5,000. * The Millennium Challenge war game of 2002 — a $250 million exercise where a retired Marine general sank the U.S. fleet in 10 minutes. * How Pete Hegseth gutted the civilian harm teams, fired the JAGs, and eliminated the “roadblocks”—the people whose job was to check whether a school was still a school. * And the fundamental question underneath all of it: is any of this actually making us safer, or is the product never really the point? Thanks for listening to Omnishambles! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. Mentioned in this episode: * Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare, by Katrina Manson * AlphaGo (Netflix) * Millennium Challenge 2002 * Operation Spiderweb (Ukraine, 2024) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit omnishamblespod.substack.com [https://omnishamblespod.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

What does the Iranian Lego propaganda really say about the U.S.?

In this episode, Virginia and Cy explore the power of propaganda, the psychology behind war, and the cultural narratives shaping American and Iranian perspectives. They analyze recent propaganda videos, the role of culture in conflict, and the societal impact of patriarchal violence. Subscribe to receive new episodes at omnishamblespod.substack.com! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit omnishamblespod.substack.com [https://omnishamblespod.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Is Silicon Valley manufacturing desk killers?

In 2025, Nate Cavanaugh—a 27-year-old college dropout and tech entrepreneur—was handed control of the U.S. Institute of Peace and told to cut it apart. He had no government experience, no expertise in diplomacy or foreign affairs, and by his own account in a now-viral deposition [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkCz-Sw4kLY], nothing informed his judgment except his judgment. Within days, a man named Mohammad Halimi lost his job [https://www.propublica.org/article/doge-musk-mohammad-halimi-institute-peace-taliban], his name was amplified to 222 million Twitter followers as a Taliban sympathizer, and his family in Afghanistan was abducted and beaten by Taliban security forces. In this first episode of Omnishambles, based on a recent post by Cy on her Substack [https://cybelecanterel.substack.com/p/the-desk-killer-gets-doged], Cy and Virginia ask how this could possibly happen. They trace how institutions produce “desk killers,” drawing on Hannah Arendt, scholar Gitta Sereny’s interviews with Nazi perpetrators, and Dan Gretton’s research on organizational killing. Then they turn to what Silicon Valley has added: not just the conditions for desk killers, but an explicit ideology that celebrates them. Listen now on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0IMRZJhGpsfxjnBO5Oz97x] and Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/omnishambles/id1787176282]. Thanks for listening to Omnishambles! Sign up now to receive our weekly episodes. Sources: * “The Desk Killer Gets DOGEd,” [https://cybelecanterel.substack.com/p/the-desk-killer-gets-doged] Cy Canterel, Abstract Machines * Cavanaugh’s Jan 23, 2026 deposition from the MLA, LHA, and ACLS lawsuit [https://archive.org/details/doge-depos-MLA-ACLS-AHA/](https://archive.org/details/doge-depos-MLA-ACLS-AHA/] * “How DOGE Left Mohammed Halimi’s Life in Tatters” [https://www.propublica.org/article/doge-musk-mohammad-halimi-institute-peace-taliban], ProPublica, Aug 22, 2025 * Hannah Arendt, “Eichmann in Jerusalem” * Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind * Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness * Gitta Sereny [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHXvcNDL93Q&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFwMmATXf1_wlyHtF9moo_5q&index=1], Web of Stories interview, pub. 2017 * Dan Gretton, I You We Them, 2019 * “Marc Andreessen: The World is More Malleable Than You Think [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBVe3M2g_SA&list=PL0lWOR0BOpXIxsMMXptmN4OUWXO7_WK55&index=11]”, David Senra interview, March 15, 2026 * “Meet the 24-Year-Old Trying To Disrupt the Intellectual Property Industry [https://dot.la/meet-the-24-year-old-trying-to-disrupt-the-intellectual-property-industry-2646319922.html]”, dot.LA, Jul 6, 2020 * “Body cam video shows takeover of US Institute of Peace [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_5z9EtsI-I]”, NBC4 Washington, Mar 6, 2026 * The Third Man, dir. Carol Reed, 1949, scene [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSeezsPw550] * Lancet study overview [https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/USAID-cuts-global-impact-14-million-deaths], and “Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext]”, The Lancet, Jul 19, 2025 Thanks for listening to Omnishambles! This post is free so please share it with pals. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit omnishamblespod.substack.com [https://omnishamblespod.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Inside the System as It Falls Apart

Welcome to Omnishambles! Subscribing is free! On this episode, Virginia and Cy discuss why Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney just gave a eulogy for neoliberal capitalism at Davos, and what comes after the fiction falls apart. We discuss: * Why Carney’s Davos speech was the diplomatic equivalent of taking down the communist party slogan from the greengrocer’s wall (Václav Havel would be proud) * The surprisingly dark connection between Horatio Alger, Jeffrey Epstein, and the extractive core of the American Dream * What H-Mart Gate revealed about proximity to power, model minorities, and who gets to be Cassandra * Why we need to stop asking powerful people to change themselves (because they won’t) * Mass transitions, rubber bands, and the moment before the grid snaps * How level three maintenance techs have more power than your congressman (and what that means for resistance) * Direct action vs. endless petitioning: where the real pressure points are in a failing system * Cy’s wild career arc from coding on Andy Warhol’s software to working inside GE as it collapsed to becoming a perfumer because smell can’t be digitized Plus: why hope means accepting that the future is dark (impenetrable, not doomed), the wealth defense industry as target, and what it means to finally stop living by lies. Thanks for listening to Omnishambles! Subscribe for free to receive new weekly posts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit omnishamblespod.substack.com [https://omnishamblespod.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]