The Trump administration was very happy to talk to Anthropic recently, according to people familiar with the matter: They no longer have to deal with CEO Dario Amodei, because he has been replaced in meetings about the re-release of the Claude Fable 5 AI model by its founder Tom Brown.
“Tom Brown is not as weird as Dario and he’s very engaging,” said one person familiar with the calls.
Administrators have not lifted export controls that took Anthropic’s most powerful models offline on June 12 after the National Security Agency confirmed there were ways to bypass the guardrails and access the powerful power of the company’s limited Mythos model.
But the administration has had more calls with Anthropic in recent days, encouraged that Brown and Anthropic’s chief public policy officer, Sarah Heck, have been leading the outreach. People say that Amodei was very difficult to talk to and did not listen to their complaints.
The discussions were high-level and at the level of a working group, involving technical staff from both sides. Some of the discussions were about trying to figure out what level of evidence on the Anthropic side would ease management’s concerns about the Fable 5 prison break, the people said.
As Inner Loop has previously noted, part of the challenge for both parties is at the conceptual level. Independent cybersecurity experts have increasingly taken the view that roadblocks to AI models are just a shortcut, as skilled users and future AI models will find ways to bypass the barriers.
A White House spokesman declined to comment on the matter. A spokesperson for Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.
The timeline for Anthropic being able to re-release Fable 5 is uncertain. But what the company needs to do to lift export controls may become clear in the coming days.
Last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers sent a list of questions about the way forward to Anthropic Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who has taken a leading role in addressing the dangers of jailbreaks in part because the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security oversees export controls.
Among the questions in the letter was one about redistribution: “What specific criteria does the Department rely on to determine whether to restore public access to the model by reviewing this decision? What is the time limit for that decision?”
The letter, signed by Reps. Sam Liccardo, Jay Obernolte, C. Scott Franklin, and Ted Lieu, seeks responses by June 26. A spokeswoman for the Commerce Department declined to comment on whether the agency would respond by the deadline.
Algae is Always Greener
At the White House, President Donald Trump has been writing angrily on Truth Social about the poor coverage of the Lincoln Memorial display pool, which has been plagued by algae blooms and flaps of blue sealant that appeared to be coming from the bottom of the pool following the president’s $16.4 million renovation.
After Trump said several people had been arrested on suspicion of vandalism, an administration official declined to specify what activities around the lake would be considered criminal. And on Tuesday, the administration also started installing a fence around the lake.
National Guardsmen assigned to the demonstration pond have been ordered since last week to arrest anyone who touches the water — let alone the sealant flaps — so the US Park Police can arrest them on vandalism-related charges, two people familiar with the matter said.
The law cited in what is prohibited is 36 Code of Federal Regulations, Chapter 1, Section 2.1(a)(6), according to the administration official, which prohibits “managing, destroying, damaging, destroying, removing, excavating, or interfering with a structure or its provision or maintenance, or other cultural or archeological resources.”
Another law, 36 CFR 7.96, prohibits “bathing, swimming or wading in any fountain or pool” except for the Rainbow Pool memorial of World War II, and the fountains of the German-American Friendship Garden, which is adjacent to the pool that displays the Lincoln Memorial.
It is not clear whether contributing to the water violated any of those laws. But the Inner Loop doesn’t think it’s worth the risk of a misdemeanor citation to find out.
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