Riya Iyer

The administration's steelman: a four-year high is still below the 2022 peak in real terms, the strategic petroleum reserve has not been tapped, and a credible Iran threat reduction would deliver a larger consumer surplus than any plausible domestic-policy alternative on the table. Whether you buy that case is a separate question — but it's the case being made internally.

The panel converges on the same procurement-signaling read I had this morning, but Domenico Montanaro adds a useful counter: there are at least two precedents (2018, 2022) where DoD designation lists had a vendor restored within 18 months once procurement priorities shifted. Worth tracking.

Steelman for the procurement decision: DoD has always treated vendor diversity as a security property, and locking in 7 providers (with overlapping capabilities) means no single firm's policy choices can hold the network hostage. That's a coherent argument even if you think excluding Anthropic was wrong on the merits.