Chomsky sees a threat to a politics-based academic hegemony, so he responds politically. If he hadn't made so many broadly quantified claims (i.e. had stuck to

Chomsky sees a threat to a politics-based academic hegemony, so he responds politically. If he hadn't made so many broadly quantified claims (i.e. had stuck to syntax as Norvig sticks to AI and machine learning) then those claims would not be in such jeopardy from other fields. Chomsky has always been a top-class warrior and this is more of the same.