AI's Oppenheimer Moment

• AI is now a private-sector nuclear weapon — held by corps, not govts.
  • Anthropic’s Dario Amodei explicitly likens AI to nukes.
  • Unlike Manhattan Project, no sovereign controls the trigger.
• Torenberg’s “McBombalds” test: what if a private co owned the A-bomb?
  • They offer conditional deployment with kill-switches, not unconditional access.
  • Would Truman accept? Would you?
• Criticizing govt military AI while ignoring private AI power is incoherent.
• Ongoing US conflicts (Iran, Venezuela) make AI access a live national-security question.
• Conclusion: imperfect govt stewardship beats unaccountable private control.
  • “Until then, America is all we have.”

Erik Torenberg (a16z) · 2026-03-16 · Read on a16z.com