President Donald Trump says he has changed his view of artificial intelligence company Anthropic, telling “The Axios Show” in an interview published Friday that he may have considered the firm a national security threat a week ago — but does not anymore.
The dispute between the Trump administration and Anthropic involved foreign access to the company’s two most advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. After Trump directed Anthropic to block foreign nationals from using those models, the company shut down access to them for all users. Senior technical staff from Anthropic had been scheduled to meet with administration officials earlier this week to work through the issue.
Several key points emerged from the Axios interview:
When asked whether he considered Anthropic or its CEO, Dario Amodei, a threat to national security, Trump replied: “Well, not now, but a week ago, maybe.”
Trump told Axios that Amodei had responded to the administration’s export control directive “very quickly” and “responsibly.”
Trump and other G7 leaders also met with technology executives, including Amodei, during a summit held in France this week.
On the question of whether he might invoke emergency authority under the Defense Production Act against Anthropic, Trump did not rule it out. “I have the power to use a lot of things,” he said of the DPA. “But I’m not sure I have to do that.”
An Anthropic spokesperson responded to Trump’s comments, stating: “We are grateful to the administration for their ongoing partnership in working to get this matter resolved as quickly as possible. We remain committed to working alongside them towards our shared goals of protecting critical infrastructure and making sure the U.S. leads in AI.”
