Per week after Anthropic discovered itself attacked by the Trump administration, the corporate has discovered a defender in Reid Hoffman. CEO Dario Amodei additionally published a lengthy statement rebutting “inaccurate claims” concerning the firm’s coverage positions, which used Vice President JD Vance’s phrases towards the White Home’s chief AI advisor.
Hoffman, a accomplice at VC agency Greylock, which, he said, has invested in Anthropic, praised the AI lab as “one of many good guys” in an try and push again towards assaults by White Home AI and crypto czar David Sacks. Sacks accused Anthropic of utilizing “a complicated regulatory seize technique based mostly on fearmongering” to advance regulation, an method he says is stifling innovation and startups.
“Anthropic, together with some others (incl Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI) try to deploy AI the suitable means, thoughtfully, safely, and enormously helpful for society,” Hoffman wrote in a post on X. “Another labs are making choices that clearly disregard security and societal influence (e.g., bots that generally go full-fascist) and that’s a alternative.”
Sacks fired again, calling Hoffman “the main funder of lawfare and soiled methods towards President Trump.” Fellow PayPal mafia member Elon Musk, who runs xAI, an AI lab not listed in Hoffman’s put up, additionally chimed in with a one-word endorsement of Sacks.
Hoffman responded, writing: “Reveals you didn’t learn the put up (not shocked). When you find yourself able to have an expert dialog about AI’s influence on America, I’m right here to speak.”
Following that, Amodei at present revealed a press release clearly supposed to reference Sacks: “There was a latest uptick in inaccurate claims about Anthropic’s coverage stances. Some are important sufficient that they warrant setting the report straight.”
He additionally tried to place himself on the side of Vance. “I strongly agree with Vice President JD Vance’s recent comments on AI—notably his level that we have to maximize purposes that assist individuals, like breakthroughs in drugs and illness prevention, whereas minimizing the dangerous ones. This place is each clever and what the general public overwhelmingly wants.”
Tech tensions over AI coverage
Over the previous yr, Anthropic has positioned itself as an advocate of AI security and regulation. The corporate has supported state-level regulation, repeatedly opposing a Trump administration–proposed federal preemption invoice that tried to dam state-level AI regulation for a decade.
Anthropic was additionally the one main AI lab to again California’s SB 53, a just lately handed invoice that regulated AI firms in its dwelling state, requiring extra transparency from main AI labs. Amodei has additionally publicly criticized the Trump administration’s management previously, likening Trump to a “feudal warlord.” Extra just lately, Amodei criticized the Trump administration’s handling of superior AI chip export restrictions, urging stricter export controls to China as a way to shield U.S. nationwide safety.
Regardless of the repeated public jabs at Anthropic from Sacks, the AI czar has pushed again on claims that he’s actively focusing on the corporate. He publicly disputed a Bloomberg report suggesting his criticism fueled federal scrutiny of the AI lab. In a put up on X, he wrote: “Nothing could possibly be farther from the reality,” noting that the White Home just lately permitted Anthropic’s Claude app for presidency use. As a substitute, Sacks argued that the AI firm had intentionally portrayed itself “as a foe of the Trump administration.”
In his official place as AI czar, Sacks has argued that AI regulation, particularly on the state degree, dangers making a “patchwork” system that will stifle U.S. innovation and put the nation susceptible to shedding a worldwide AI arms race. His stance aligns with a broader push amongst pro-Trump tech leaders to prioritize velocity and competitiveness over regulation.
“The U.S. is at the moment in an AI race, and our chief international competitors is China,” Sacks stated in an onstage interview at Salesforce’s Dreamforce convention in San Francisco this week. “They’re the one different nation that has the expertise, the assets, and the expertise experience to mainly beat us in AI.”
A rising rift in Silicon Valley
The spat between the White Home and Anthropic has sparked a wider divide in Silicon Valley.
Sriram Krishnan, a senior White Home coverage advisor on AI and one of many authors of the American AI Motion Plan, additionally weighed in final week. Sharing one in every of Sacks’ posts on X, Krishnan argued that the EA (Efficient Altruism) and AI security foyer had been historically allied with the left and had been offended over misplaced affect and credibility.
Krishnan referred to as out members of an “AI security industrial complicated” and accused security teams of attempting to “sneak in AI legal guidelines for your entire nation utilizing their affect in a single state [California],” warning that overregulation might cede the sector to China and stifle innovation.
Representatives for the White Home didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
