Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson · 2026-06-19 · 31 min
On today’s show Ben and Andrew begin with a hydration break take as the World Cup continues before turning to the latest on Anthropic’s export control saga, what the Trump administration may not understand about AI cybersecurity, and what Anthropic still doesn’t understand about dealing with the government. From there: Fables differentiation, the dangers of ringfencing frontier AI within U.S. borders, and how open source Chinese AI may affect the marketplace. From there: Why Ben gives Fox the benefit of the doubt after its Roku purchase this week, whether Siri AI will nuke ChatGPT’s market, Noam Shazeer joins OpenAI, what e-commerce will and won’t be automated, and whether autonomous driving can scale on ICE vehicles.
(Preview) A Summer Break Mailbag: Memory Mania, Vibe Coding, Mafia PR, Caffeine Intake, Garages, and How to Fix Soccer60 / 100(Preview) Five Questions on WWDC 2026, Fable 5 And Its Guardrails, What Anthropic Has in Common With Apple(Preview) SpaceX Hype and the Elon Bargain, Nvidia and the Neoclouds, Q&A on Dropbox, Google, Ferrari Luce Backlash(Preview) Inference in the Agentic Future, xAI Is Two Companies in One, Q&A on Elon’s Lawsuit, Intel, Apple(Preview) AWS History and Trainium’s AI Future, OpenAI Makes a Deal With Microsoft, Meta and the Future of Wearable Devices