Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei dines one‑on‑one with President Trump on Sunday night, a move that underscores rising tension over AI policy. The private dinner is the first face‑to‑face meeting between the two and signals a potential shift in the administration’s stance on artificial intelligence.
Anthropic CEO Dines With Trump as AI Tensions Mount
The White House declined to comment on the dinner, and Axios reported that Trump personally invited Amodei after the CEO missed the state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping due to a scheduling conflict. The meeting marks the first sit‑down between the two and signals a thaw in relations between Anthropic and the administration.
Former AI czar David Sacks condemned Anthropic on his All‑In podcast, labeling the firm “corporate schizophrenia.” He questioned how the company can pursue an IPO while its leadership warns that its technology could cause human extinction, asking, “How do you IPO with your own management saying there’s a greater than 10% chance of causing human extinction?”
Sacks also highlighted the contradiction between Anthropic’s warnings about AI‑driven biological threats and its recent launch of a new bio lab in San Francisco. He noted the company’s push for strict regulation while simultaneously racing to build more powerful models, a clash that even Saturday Night Live lampooned.
The dinner arrives two days before Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson host top AI executives at the White House, as Republicans face pressure to regulate the sector ahead of the midterms. A Microsoft‑Gallup poll released last week showed 93% of Chinese respondents expect AI to help their country, versus 36% of Americans.
In February, the Pentagon demanded unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models, prompting a public showdown in which Amodei sought guarantees that the technology would not be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth accused Anthropic of trying to dictate military operations and designated the firm a “Supply‑Chain Risk to National Security,” saying its true aim was to seize veto power over operational decisions.
Hegseth ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic tools, calling the company a “RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY” whose selfishness, he claimed, endangered American lives, troops and national security. He also barred military contractors from doing business with Anthropic and set a six‑month timeline for the Pentagon to transition away from its technology.
The legal fight continued as a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld one of the Pentagon’s supply‑chain risk designations on Friday, ruling 2‑1 for the administration. A federal judge in San Francisco previously struck down the other designation in August, and an Anthropic spokesperson told CNBC the company remains confident and is considering further review.
