Anthropic executives are pledging to work more closely with the White House in a proposal to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as they scramble to resolve security concerns that triggered a crackdown on its powerful “Mythos” and “Fable” AI models, The Post has learned.
The ongoing remediation talks have included a pledge by Anthropic to improve communication with the Trump administration and resolve any security concerns more quickly going forward, a source familiar with the situation said Thursday.
Talks between Anthropic and Trump officials are progressing well, the source added, though an exact timetable for a permanent fix remains unclear.
As of Thursday, Anthropic cofounder Tom Brown, the company’s chief compute officer, and Sarah Heck, its head of public policy, are taking a leading role in negotiations with Trump administration officials, a second source with knowledge of the situation said.
Representatives for Anthropic and the Commerce Department did not immediately return requests for comment.
Anthropic first dispatched several top officials to Washington DC late last week after the Trump administration slapped export controls on “Mythos” and “Fable.”
The crackdown on Anthropic’s models came after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy warned the administration that researchers had found evidence it was possible to bypass their safety guardrails.
Anthropic opted to pull the models entirely, claiming it was the only way to comply with the export controls.
The spat emerged as a key topic at the G7 Summit in France. President Trump said talks with Anthropic were “going fine” but didn’t provide details, while Anthropic boss Dario Amodei urged world leaders to “resist the temptation to splinter” in their approaches to AI regulation.
“Both parties are working quickly to get this resolved,” an Anthropic spokesperson said earlier this week. “This is part of our ongoing commitment to working alongside the administration toward our shared goal of protecting US critical infrastructure and the US lead in cyber defense.”
Ironically, the White House’s crackdown on Anthropic came just days after Amodei publicly argued that the US government should have the authority to shut down frontier AI models if it felt they were too dangerous.
As The Post reported earlier this week, White House officials were irked that Anthropic and Amodei downplayed the safety flaw as a “narrow” problem, despite spending the last few years warning of potential AI catastrophe.
A senior administration official said the White House had received warnings from “nearly half a dozen” companies besides Amazon before it took action.
“Had Anthropic taken it seriously and, rather than dismissing it as isolated, moved to fix or pause access, this never would have happened,” the US official said.
