In a nutshell: There are a few ways to improve your relationship with the White House. It seems one of them is to stop sending your CEO into talks when at least one official considers him a "weirdo."
Anthropic's negotiations with the Trump administration over the sudden Fable 5 and Mythos 5 ban are reportedly improving after CEO Dario Amodei stopped taking part directly.
According to Wired, the company is now being represented in key discussions by co-founder Tom Brown and head of public policy Sarah Heck. Amodei is still the company's CEO, of course, but he appears to have been benched for the talks that matter most.
"Tom Brown is not being a weirdo like Dario and can actually engage," one person familiar with the calls told the publication.
Sources said Amodei had been difficult to talk to and didn't listen to the administration's concerns. It's also claimed that Amodei had a tendency to rant and could struggle to control his emotions.
Anyone who's seen him speak would likely agree that he doesn't come across as eloquent and charismatic, but then plenty of tech CEOs can be described in the same way – just look at Mark Zuckerberg.
Axios previously reported that Anthropic's wider problem was an inability to communicate effectively with the Trump administration, with one source saying the two sides seemed to be speaking "different languages."
The discussions center on whether Anthropic can bring Claude Fable 5 back online after the US government ordered access suspended on June 12.
The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security issued a directive requiring Anthropic to block any foreign national, including those among its own employees, from using Fable 5 and the more restricted Mythos 5.
Anthropic's response was to pull both models offline for everyone while it worked out how to comply.
The company says the directive did not include specific details of the national security concern and allowed only 90 minutes to act, though it understood that the government believed someone had found a way to bypass, or jailbreak, Fable 5's safeguards.
The administration's alarm may also have been exacerbated by an unconfirmed Senate briefing claim involving Mythos 5. According to earlier reporting, Senator Mark Warner said NSA and US Cyber Command chief General Joshua Rudd told him the model had penetrated nearly all of the NSA's classified systems during an authorized red-team exercise in a matter of hours.
Also read: Anthropic's Mythos AI reportedly cracked NSA classified systems in hours, that would explain the ban
Fable 5 had launched only three days before the ban. Anthropic billed it as a Mythos-class model made safe for general use, while Mythos 5 was reserved for a smaller set of cyberdefenders, infrastructure providers, and selected researchers.
Fable 5 used the same underlying model as Mythos 5, but with safety classifiers designed to intercept dangerous requests and redirect them to a less capable system.
Those guardrails are exactly what the White House is now focused on. Recent calls have involved both senior officials and working groups, with technical staff discussing what evidence Anthropic would need to provide to reassure the government about jailbreak risks. The export controls remain in place, and there is still no clear timeline for Fable 5's wider return.
In related news, AI firm Legion LegalTech has launched a lawsuit against the US government for blocking Fable 5, with the San Jose startup arguing that losing access to the model threatens its legal AI platform. Legion says some of its Canadian developers were cut off even after Anthropic restored limited access with nationality-based checks.
White House warms to Anthropic after replacing "weirdo" Dario Amodei in talks
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