Trump, When Asked About White House Meeting with Anthropic’s Dario Amodei: ‘Who?’ - Gizmodo

So the most powerful man in the world, when asked about a meeting between his own staff and the CEO of a company whose technology could supposedly find thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities, had exactly one syllable to offer: 'Who?' This delightful exchange, captured by Gizmodo, follows a White House sit-down we noted last week where Dario Amodei apparently had 'productive and constructive' talks about government access to Anthropic's Mythos model. The productive part seems to have been entirely one-sided, given the Commander-in-Chief's apparent ignorance of both the meeting and the individual who attended it.

Not that Amodei was having a great time with the rest of the administration either. While Trump was busy not knowing who he was, a Pentagon official felt comfortable telling reporters that the Anthropic CEO 'is a liar and has a God-complex.' The Secretary of Defense then thoughtfully branded the entire company with a 'supply chain risk' designation, a bureaucratic kiss of death that could effectively sabotage its business model with government contractors. So to recap: the CEO gets called a liar by the military, his company gets blacklisted by the Pentagon, and the President has no idea any of this is happening. A masterclass in inter-agency coordination.

It's a beautiful snapshot of regulatory theatre in the age of existential risk. A company built on the premise of long-term safety and mission alignment finds its fate decided by personal pique, bureaucratic slap-fights, and presidential indifference. The 'supply chain risk' tag is particularly rich—less a considered security assessment and more a convenient cudgel for an administration that can't seem to decide if frontier AI is a strategic asset or a nuisance. One wonders if the Long-Term Benefit Trust board members, like Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan, were briefed on this particular 'benefit' when they signed up.