Sharon Weinberger
National security journalist and author of books on DARPA, nuclear sites, and Silicon Valley's role in warfare
Sharon Weinberger (National security journalist and author of books on DARPA, nuclear sites, and Silicon Valley's role in warfare) has appeared as a guest on 1 episode in TMT. Topics they speak about most include DARPA, Anduril Industries, Palantir Technologies.
In their words
Positions and remarks grouped by topic, each with the exact quote and where it was said.
DARPA
Weinberger argues the image of Silicon Valley as anti-military was always largely a myth, since the region grew out of military funding.
“So there's this image that we have of Silicon Valley of like the anti-military. And what I argue is that was always a bit of a myth”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 2:14:09
Weinberger says successful black projects tend to be revealed once they are used, so the canceled failures are the ones the public never hears about.
“a successful classified program, like a successful black project is hard to keep secret forever because you use it”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 19:07
Weinberger argues that science and technology change warfare but rarely solve its underlying problems.
“science and technology can be the answer for a lot of things, but it rarely solves our problems”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 13:53
Anduril Industries
Weinberger believes the economy is in a bubble that includes defense tech companies.
“I think we are in a bubble and the defense tech companies are part of it”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 2:12:14
Weinberger notes that Palmer Luckey is Anduril's founder and public face but not its CEO or president.
“he's a founder of Anduril, but he actually, he's not the CEO. He's not the president. He's basically the public face of it”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 2:10:03
Weinberger argues that defense work is being privatized mainly because venture capital sees large profits in it.
“I think the reason it's being privatized is because Silicon Valley Venture Capital is realizing there is a whole ton of money to be made in defense”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 52:24
Palantir Technologies
Weinberger suggests Palantir's tough-guy messaging to retail investors may have an expiration date that would put the company in peril.
“But I think there could be an expiration date to that. And then the company is in real peril”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:55:05
Weinberger objects to defense company leaders such as Alex Karp weighing in on domestic political controversies.
“I don't think you want the head of a defense company commenting on protests on American college campuses”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:53:10
Weinberger argues that venture capitalists in defense are driven by returns rather than patriotism.
“But I think that's the point that when it comes down to it, venture capital is not here to save America”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:40:39
Nuclear weapons and missile defense
Weinberger argues missile defense systems can be overwhelmed cheaply because defending costs far more than attacking.
“Like the cost of defense is so much more than the cost of offense”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:18:48
Weinberger believes an all-out US–Russia nuclear exchange is less likely now than during the Cold War, with regional nuclear powers the bigger concern.
“the threat of an all out nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia is less now than during the Cold War”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:10:11
Weinberger contrasts nuclear weapons, a well-understood threat to civilization, with AI, for which she has not yet seen a convincing extinction scenario.
“I'm not sure I see yet the scenario for AI killing us all”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:06:22
Microwave weapons
Weinberger says government secrecy about classified microwave weapons research is what breeds conspiracy theories.
“I am obsessed by the classified work in microwave weapons because I think conspiracy theories come when governments keep things hidden”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 48:48
Weinberger says the classified Goodbye program became the declassified Active Denial System.
“We know what goodbye was because goodbye became the goodbye weapon and was declassified. And it's today called the active denial system”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 44:34
Other remarks
Weinberger says Edward Snowden avoided The New York Times because it had held its warrantless surveillance story at the government's request.
“And that was the reason that Edward Snowden decided not to go to the New York Times”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 2:38:00
Anthropic
Weinberger reads the Pentagon–Anthropic dispute as showing the Pentagon's alarm at losing control over key technologies to private companies.
“the Pentagon is very, very freaked out about the fact that they don't have control over technologies that they once had”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 2:05:21
NeXT CIA contract
Weinberger reports that sources told her the CIA contract for NeXT computers saved the company and helped Steve Jobs return to Apple.
“this contract saved the company. It gave him runway. It proved him as an entrepreneur and the operating system”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:47:45
Russian invasion of Ukraine
Weinberger predicts Ukraine will become a major European weapons-making power if it gets through the war.
“it is going to become a defense, like a weapons-making powerhouse of Europe”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:35:22
Unidentified flying objects and government disclosure
Weinberger says the Pentagon is often content to let people believe sightings are UFOs rather than reveal its classified programs.
“They'd rather have people believe it's a UFO or something far fetched than like, oh my God, they saw our actual classified program”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:29:02
United States war with Iran
Weinberger doubts US strikes set Iran's nuclear program back 25 years and expects Iran's leadership to want a weapon after the war.
“I don't know how long it'll be. You'll probably need another national intelligence assessment to come to that conclusion, but it's not, I don't think it's going to be 25 years”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 1:18:08
Havana syndrome
Weinberger says she has long doubted that microwave weapons caused Havana syndrome, while remaining open to evidence.
“I have long been a skeptic that it's microwave weapons. I am open to proof to the contrary”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 50:48
Brain-machine interfaces
Weinberger says the technology in Neuralink descends directly from DARPA's early brain-computer interface work.
“the science and technology that is today in Elon Musk's Neuralink that he is now implanting in people came directly lineage-wise out of that DARPA work”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 35:09
Total Information Awareness
Weinberger reports that John Poindexter told her Palantir did not grow out of Total Information Awareness.
“is it true that Palantir grew out of Total Information Awareness? He's like, it's absolutely not true”
Danny Jones Podcast: #441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon Weinberger (Oct 19, 2026) · Listen from 24:34
Appearances
#441 - DARPA Insider: Steve Jobs CIA Deal, Stargate Argentina & Facebook Weapon | Sharon WeinbergerDanny Jones Podcast · Oct 19, 2026 · 2 h 47 min
Danny Jones talks with journalist Sharon Weinberger about DARPA's strange projects, microwave weapons, nuclear risk, and Silicon Valley's growing role in the defense industry.
Often appears with
- Danny Jones · 1 shared episode