Front Burner

For decades we have been hearing about the possibility of AI-driven warfare, and now it’s here.Anthropic's AI platform Claude has been reportedly central to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. It was used during the attack that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which involved strikes on nearly 900 targets dropped within the first 12 hours, including on a girls’ elementary school that killed at least 165 people – mostly students.Today we’re talking about AI military capabilities: how companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are working with the military, and what happens when these companies and governments start building systems that help decide who lives and who dies in a war.Heidy Khlaaf, the Chief AI Scientist at the AI Now Institute and an expert on AI safety within defense and national security, joins the show.

Today on the show, we wanted to bring on Robert Pape. He is a political scientist with the University of Chicago. And we’ve been following his work on his substack “The Escalation Trap” with a lot of interest since the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. Pape is going to argue that the U.S. has walked into an enormous, military escalation trap. He takes a hard look at things like missile supplies, and air defense systems, and models them out. His predictions for the future of this conflict, based on present information, and history aren’t great.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney reaffirmed his support for the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.Carney spoke about the need to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and threatening international peace and security. But Carney also said his government supports the goals of the attack with “regret” and that Israel and the United States acted without engaging the United Nations.Is Canada trying to have it both ways by professing support for international law, while also backing what Canada’s former Liberal foreign affairs minister, Lloyd Axworthy, has called an act of aggression by Israel and the U.S. carried out in defiance of the U.N. charter?Dennis Horak joins Front Burner to navigate those questions. He served as the last head of mission for Canada in Iran. He also served as Canada’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In 1953, the United States helped stage a coup to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, largely a response to the Iranian leader’s nationalization of the oil industry. Twenty-six years later, revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran just months after having deposed the U.S. installed King. Since then, the relationship between these two nations has been defined by sanctions, proxy battles, covert operations, nuclear diplomacy, political assassinations, deep mutual mistrust, and now a war.How did we get here? Our guest is Nader Hashemi, Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian understanding and an associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

This weekend after weeks of threats and tense negotiations, the U.S. and Israel began a war with Iran. The developments have been incredibly consequential, from the assasination of Iran’s Supreme Leader to Iran’s retaliatory attacks on neighbouring Gulf states. To unpack this moment, what led to it, and go through what the future of the Middle East could look like in the aftermath, we are joined by Vali Nasr, Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is also the author of Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History.

As Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand travels with Prime Minister Mark Carney to India, a feature conversation with Anand on the reset of the Canada-India relationship, the U.S. military build-up near Iran, CUSMA negotiations, and Canada’s foreign policy doctrine in a tense geopolitical moment.

This week OpenAI’s head of U.S. and Canada policy and partnerships Chan Park was hauled in front of a meeting with Canada’s AI minister Evan Solomon after it was revealed that Jesse Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account was suspended back in June for describing scenarios involving gun violence, and that a group of people at the company debated telling the RCMP, but didn’t.Van Rootselaar went on to kill eight people in Tumbler Ridge, BC. The meeting has provided us with no new information. No answers about what Van Rootselaar said or wrote to ChatGPT, or what it said back. There are no substantial answers about why OpenAI didn’t alert the police.Solomon and the federal government are saying they expect changes from the company. They are framing regulation as an option, but not an inevitable one.Today Maggie Harrison Dupré speaks with guest host Jason Markusoff. She is a senior staff writer at Futurism where she reports on the rise of AI. They discuss how chatbots can validate, rather than discourage users’ dark or violent ideas and about why regulation isn’t a louder drumbeat.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Over the last week or so the debate over Canada’s immigration policy has come to the forefront.In Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith has promised to put a series of restrictive new immigration policies to a provincial referendum.In Ottawa, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has brought forward a motion that would compel the federal government to review and restrict the services available to asylum seekers.Critics have said both moves scapegoat immigrants.This is all happening at a time when polling shows that popular support for immigration is on the decline.Today's guest is someone who is uniquely positioned to talk about the proposed changes in immigration policy.Jason Kenney is the former United Conservative Party Premier of Alberta.Prior to that, Kenney spent nearly two decades in federal politics, and was a cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative party.He spent years working on the immigration and multiculturalism file and was widely credited for shifting the support of new Canadians from the Liberals to the Conservatives.Note: On the same day this podcast was recorded, Jason Kenney was publicly listed as a lobbyist for a firm that deals with skills-based immigration.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Mass violence broke out on Sunday in Mexico after a military raid killed the most wanted, and feared, cartel boss in the country — a man known as El Mencho.We take a closer look at the aftermath of the operation and ask some questions: who was this kingpin, what is the powerful criminal organization he presided over, and what could happen in his absence?With us today is David Mora in Guadalajara. He’s the senior Mexico analyst at International Crisis Group.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

From two heartbreaking hockey losses to the fiery debate over whether the men’s gold medal curling team was cheating, Milano Cortina 2026 was a dramatic one for Team Canada. The games also brought some headscratching moments like a Norwegian biathlete confessing to infidelity minutes after a race and an investigation into Olympic ski-jumping dubbed ‘penis-gate’. We break down the storylines from the Winter Olympics that dominated our timelines and got us talking with senior contributor at CBC Sports, Shireen Ahmed.

On Thursday, former Prince Andrew was arrested by U.K. police.After years of controversy, scandal and allegations of sexual assault, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was taken into custody on suspicion of misconduct in public office.The arrest is related to his decades-long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and the former prince is alleged to have sent confidential government documents to the convicted sex offender.Today, Andrew Lownie, a historian and the author of Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, joins the show. We get into the details of the arrest, the long-standing ties between the former prince and Epstein and what recently released documents reveal.

Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberals welcomed a third Conservative floor crosser on Wednesday – Edmonton MP Matt Jeneroux. And with three by-elections coming up, two from Liberal strongholds, a Liberal majority is looking like a possibility. So a pretty seismic day on Parliament Hill. CBC’s senior writer Aaron Wherry is here to talk through how this could all play out for the Liberals and for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Looksmaxxers are a community of young men dedicated to the pursuit of maximizing their physical appearance, often at great personal cost. Many are spending thousands of dollars on cosmetic procedures, or even taking blunt objects to their faces, in the hopes of masculinizing their features to become more handsome. Or, as they refer to it: “ascending.” In a world where so many young people — particularly young men — feel as though it’s impossible to get ahead, we’ve got a conversation about this viral community augmenting their bodies in the hopes of doing exactly that. Aidan Walker is a writer and content creator whose work explores all kinds of online subcultures. He joins the show to talk about looksmaxxing, its central characters, connections to the far right, and what the movement reveals about young men right now.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Last week, a 5000 word post on X with the headline “Something big is happening” went viral. It was written by Matt Shumer, the CEO of HyperWrite, an AI writing tool and in it he says he’s recently watched AI go from a helpful tool to something that “does my job better than I do”. And he’s not the only one. The CEO of Anthropic, one of the biggest AI companies today, wrote an essay saying it could replace half of all entry-level white collar jobs in the next one to five years. What’s behind the sudden vibe shift? A good part of it has to do with the abilities of AI agents, which are basically AI models you give a task to perform for you, with the promise of little supervision.Are we on the precipice of something big? Or is it another way to build hype amid fears of a bubble? Will Douglas Heaven, senior AI editor for the MIT Technology Review, joins us to separate reality from hype. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Get lost in someone else’s life. From a mysterious childhood spent on the run, to a courageous escape from domestic violence, each season of Personally invites you to explore the human experience in all its complexity, one story — or season — at a time.In the latest season of Personally: Creation Myth, Helena does not want kids. Her husband believes she’ll change her mind—she has so much love to give, she would be a perfect mother. That will never happen, she tells him. Again. And again. Until one day, he leaves.In the silence, doubt starts rushing in. So she asks her close friends, her mother, her sister, even a perfect stranger—did she make the right decision? What is the purpose of life? Center your pleasure, says one friend. Go for adventure, says another, and isn’t parenthood the biggest adventure of all? Be true to yourself, says a father who regrets his decision. But the voice she needs to hear is her own. More episodes of Creation Myth are available wherever you get your podcasts and here: https://link.mgln.ai/CMxFB

Cuba has been facing rolling blackouts, food shortages, and rationed hospital resources after a month with no oil imports. The energy crisis has also been a major blow to the country’s tourism industry, as major airlines suspended service to the country.The cutoff came after the United States severed the island’s access to Venezuelan oil in January, and then warned any country supplying Cuba it could face retaliation. The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson has been reporting on the region for decades. He joins us to talk about how the Trump administration hopes this could end communist rule in the country.

A horrific mass shooting took place in the small community of Tumbler Ridge, B.C. on Tuesday – one of the deadliest in Canadian history.Nine people are dead, including the suspect, and 27 more were injured. Many of the victims were as young as 12 or 13 years old.CBC senior reporter Caroline Barghout is in Tumbler Ridge covering the ongoing investigation. She joins host Jayme Poisson with the latest on the tragedy, and how a community – and country – is in mourning.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Jonathan Haidt, best-selling author of “The Anxious Generation”, is our guest today. He’s been on a global mission to educate parents, the media, and government officials about the harms that social media companies inflict on children.He believes that the world ran a huge uncontrolled experiment on kids in the 2010s by giving them smartphones and social media accounts. And now, there is clear evidence – often through court case disclosure – that the experiment has harmed children, and that it’s time to call it off.Haidt has been calling on governments to ban social media for those under 16. And they’re listening. Canada is reportedly considering one for kids under 14 right now.Today, we’re going to get into some of Jonathan Haidt’s research, what he thinks a ban can achieve, and more broadly about his core goal: reclaiming childhood.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

The final remaining agreement constraining U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons expired last week.The New START treaty was established by President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in 2010. And since then the treaty has governed much of the global landscape concerning nuclear weapons and non-proliferation. Reporting suggests both sides remain in talks.Yet as the U.S. threatens annexation, attacks nations abroad, and threatens to re-emerge as a colonial power in the Western Hemisphere, some are asking whether nuclear weapons have become a necessity for countries hoping to guarantee their sovereignty. Canada’s former defence chief Wayne Eyre has said we should “keep our options open” on acquiring nuclear weapons.For more on the future of this landmark treaty, and the possibility of a nuclear arms race, we’re joined by George Perkovich. He is the author of a number of books on nuclear weapons and non-proliferation and Senior Fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Last week, Donald Trump’s border Czar Tom Homan announced a drawdown of ICE personnel in Minnesota, following weeks of chaos and two deadly incidents in the state. Homan insisted that ICE was not surrendering, and this departure was instead evidence of ICE’s success in Minnesota. Beginning in December 2025, ICE announced ‘Operation Metro Surge’ — an aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota described as “the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out.” The operation incited weeks of protest, direct action and civil disobedience across the Twin Cities.Today, we take a step back to assess how this operation unfolded, why Minneapolis became the stage for it, and what the unified response across so much of Minnesota says about the state of immigration enforcement in the U.S. today. We’re joined by Robert Worth, a contributing writer with The Atlantic who spent time in Minneapolis last month to report on the protests.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts