{"id":2307,"date":"2026-06-18T01:39:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T01:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=2307"},"modified":"2026-06-18T01:39:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T01:39:04","slug":"trump-anthropic-feud-mythos-fable-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=2307","title":{"rendered":"Vibe-decoding the White House-Anthropic fight over Fable"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Hello and welcome to <\/em>Regulator, an email for <\/em>Verge subscribers about technology, politics, and what happens when science crashes headlong into self-interest. Not a subscriber? <\/em>Sign up here today<\/em><\/a>! Got the scoop on a petty feud that\u2019s going to somehow fundamentally reshape the entire field of frontier AI development? Send \u2019em over to <\/em>tina.nguyen+tips@theverge.com<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Back when I was covering Donald Trump<\/strong>\u2019s first presidency, it was incredibly common to read three different versions of the same story. His administration had split into several factions, all of which had different interests, and all of which hated <\/em>each other. There was the Reince Priebus<\/strong> traditional GOP faction, the Manhattan society-based Jared Kushner<\/strong> faction, the proto-populist Steve Bannon<\/strong> faction, the deep state John Kelly<\/strong> faction, the conspiracy-MAGA Mike Lindell<\/strong> faction, and so forth. Over time, you could get a sense of which camp was leaking which narratives to the media, either to undermine their rivals or to save their own reputations. In fact, for several decades, media manipulation was a common survival tactic in Trumpworld, which often ran on factionalism and fierce competition for Trump\u2019s approval. As The Associated Press<\/em> reported on November 26th, 2016<\/a>, in an article about his pre-presidency business management style, \u201cAides also often float suggestions to him through the media, knowing that Trump is a voracious watcher of cable TV and might be persuaded by what he sees and hears.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This tendency toward back-biting and cross-purposes once again gives us a little insight into the White House, this time explaining some of the omnishambles around the Trump admin\u2019s Friday night decision to impose licensing restrictions on Anthropic\u2019s advanced Fable model. Even after several days of statements, reports, and negotiations, it\u2019s still unclear what actually happened behind the scenes, and it\u2019s even less clear who\u2019s responsible for what could have been a massive cybersecurity disaster.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To summarize for the uninitiated: On Friday evening, the White House placed an export control restriction on Anthropic\u2019s Mythos 5 and Fable 5, its most recently released models, preventing foreign governments and nationals from using those two products. It essentially forced Anthropic to completely shut off access to both of those models, throwing their user base into chaos, the company\u2019s future into doubt, and the overall prospects of frontier AI into a gray zone. Could the government simply just tell AI companies to stop operating? Over the weekend, several conflicting narratives emerged, though a few points remained consistent: The White House\u2019s allies claim that within days of launch, several tech executives, including Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy<\/strong>, reached out with concerns that Fable and Mythos could be jailbroken, posing an imminent threat to national cybersecurity. The two sides spoke on Friday, though the nature and duration of their calls vary, depending on the account: The Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s account claimed<\/a> that Anthropic was given 90 minutes to take down its models, while a White House official told Politico<\/em><\/a> that they had begged Anthropic \u201cfor hours.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And from there, the details become even foggier, at least from the POV of the White House. One party tells The<\/em> New York Times<\/em><\/a> that Amazon had found a way to \u201cjailbreak\u201d the safety guardrails preventing users from using Fable for cyberattacks. A second party countered to the Times<\/em> that one could achieve the same results with OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT 5.5. Semafor<\/em> reported<\/a> that it may<\/em> have been due to a China-linked group accessing Mythos, though no actual jailbreak had been confirmed. And Axios\u2019 sources indicated<\/a> the admin simply did not like Anthropic\u2019s woke vibe. \u201cAnthropic has not done a great job at trying to speak to the administration and appreciate the ideological differences,\u201d one source familiar with the administration\u2019s thinking told Axios<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s like they just speak in different languages.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Verge<\/em> senior AI reporter Hayden Field<\/strong> has a more thorough report here<\/a> on the view from Anthropic\u2019s world and the AI safety community, which argues that the fears around the jailbreaks are overblown. But inside Washington, the overwhelming consensus I\u2019m hearing is that even if they\u2019re ultimately right, Anthropic and Dario Amodei<\/strong> have created their own political nightmare by opposing the Trump administration \u2014 and not in a morally superior #resistance way. \u201cThey don\u2019t bend the knee and Dario is stubborn and says what he thinks even when it\u2019s dumb and they have a (justified or not) holier than thou vibe,\u201d one AI policy advocate noted to me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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One of the most interesting themes emerging in Regulator<\/em>\u2019s run is how often the hard logic and irrefutable facts inherent to science and technology run headlong into the vibes-based venality of politics. And in the absence of any federal regulatory law, AI regulation is <\/em>fully reliant on the vibes of whatever statement someone\u2019s convinced Donald Trump to post on Truth Social or executive order he\u2019s been talked into signing. Unfortunately, as former White House AI adviser Dean Ball<\/strong> pointed out on his Substack on Tuesday, this is the reality that frontier AI companies must operate under. As he writes<\/a> in a blistering post:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What the law says does not matter. What Administration officials argue on one day does not matter. Anthropic is a political enemy of this Administration, in part because they have explicitly chosen to make themselves one. It is simply na\u00efve to think that your company can operate under such circumstances without an extreme degree of regulatory caution. And given this context, Anthropic\u2019s actions are viewed by many within Washington as not simply unwise, but actively antagonistic.<\/em><\/p>\n

And it is not just about Anthropic and political grudge matches with the Trump Administration. Everyone at the frontier should understand that in practice, you do need an explicit green light from the government now.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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That mantra certainly applies to all companies operating under the Trump administration, particularly to companies working on emerging technologies. But for some reason, while its competitors have quickly adapted, Anthropic\u2019s vibes have been more visibly out of sync with those of the administration \u2014 and, tellingly, there are no factions in the administration rushing to defend Anthropic. Which has got to raise some <\/em>sort of question.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Shot<\/em>: Two weeks ago, before the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs face off in the NBA finals, Sesame Street<\/em>\u2019s Elmo betrays his hometown<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Chaser<\/em>: The Knicks win in five, but the fan base hasn\u2019t forgotten.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Screenshot via @kirawontmiss\/X.<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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