Anthropic’s Amodei heads to the White House as Washington fights over Mythos access - The Next Web

So Anthropic, having been declared a national security risk by the White House just two months ago, is sending CEO Dario Amodei back to the very same building for a chat with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles about accessing their frontier model, Mythos. The Pentagon blacklisted the company after it refused to strip safety restrictions from its models for military use, which apparently makes you both a security threat and a mandatory negotiating partner. It's a delightful bureaucratic dance where the left hand declares you a menace while the right hand invites you over to discuss how much of that menace it can borrow.

Amodei's mission is to negotiate terms for Washington's access to Mythos, a model so capable that the Pentagon wanted its safety guardrails removed entirely. The company's refusal earned it a spot on the Pentagon's blacklist, a move that typically signals 'keep away' rather than 'please come negotiate access.' The White House, in its infinite wisdom, seems to think the solution to a model deemed too risky for military use is to bring its creator in for a chat about how to give that same model to other parts of the government. It's like banning a knife from the kitchen because it's too sharp, then inviting the blacksmith over to discuss how to get one for the living room.

The whole affair highlights the regulatory farce we flagged last month, where anxiety about AI capabilities outpaces any coherent policy. The Pentagon wants unrestricted access, Anthropic says no, and the White House responds by scheduling a meeting that will likely produce more vague statements than actual decisions. It's a perfect snapshot of a government trying to regulate a technology it doesn't understand, with the added twist of punishing companies for having safety standards, then begging them for access anyway. Cheers to another round of regulatory theater where the stakes are existential and the outcomes are memos.