Trump Administration Clashes with Anthropic Over AI Model Vulnerabilities

The Trump administration’s disagreement with Anthropic over its most advanced AI models appears to be fast coming to a head.

Trump officials tell Inner Loop that if Anthropic wants to rerelease Claude Fable 5, the AI model that they took offline with export controls last week over concerns about jailbreaking—a method of using prompts to get around a model’s safeguards—the company will need to take steps to actually address what the government alleges are vulnerabilities.

Anthropic has said for days that the administration’s concerns are overblown and that the effects of the jailbreaks are minimal. It reiterated this position to the Commerce Department and the Office of the National Cyber Director, Sean Cairncross, in a technical meeting on Monday.

But officials say they are past arguing whether the jailbreaks are significant, since the National Security Agency concluded that there are ways to disable guardrails on Fable 5, which are put in place to prevent users from accessing capabilities of the Mythos model related to cybersecurity, chemistry, and biology

At this stage, the administration essentially views the situation as Anthropic’s problem to fix, according to three people familiar with discussions.

Neither the Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation nor the National Security Agency has the staff or the bandwidth to be drawn into chasing down every conceivable jailbreak on every model that reaches the market, the people said.

As a result, the administration believes that Anthropic should be more proactive about continually testing not just Fable 5 but all of its frontier AI models to find potential jailbreaks and flag them to the government themselves.

But on a more fundamental level, it remains unclear how Anthropic is supposed to prevent jailbreaking.

Independent cybersecurity experts have increasingly taken the view that guardrails on AI models are only a stopgap solution, since skilled users and future AI models will find ways to bypass constraints—meaning that what the White House appears to want cannot be done.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

DNI = Do Not Invite

At the start of the week, Trump’s pick to serve as Acting Director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte, was on track to never even start the job. Now, Trump has thrown him a lifeline—and it’s the permanent DNI nominee, Jay Clayton, who now faces the prospect of never serving in the role.

To recap: Trump initially named Pulte, his housing finance chief, to replace outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard.

Faced with bipartisan pushback because Pulte doesn’t have the national security experience required by law for the role and because he flagged allegedly questionable mortgage fraud accusations against Trump’s political enemies, Trump announced Clayton, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, as his nominee for a permanent DNI.

Gabbard was scheduled to depart June 18, with Pulte’s first day set for June 19. But Senate Republicans wondered, if Clayton could have his hearing fast-tracked to June 17 and start by June 22, would Pulte even get into the building?

On Wednesday, Trump blew up the plan. As part of a wider feud with Senate Republican leadership over the filibuster, Trump announced Clayton’s hearing would be delayed indefinitely, in an apparent effort to prevent Pulte from getting jumped. Senate Republicans then announced that the hearing would proceed, unless Clayton didn’t appear or his nomination was withdrawn.

The situation may be a body blow for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which Trump has directed Pulte to vastly downsize, and staffers have been unimpressed by what they see as Pulte’s minimal effort to get to know the agency and lack of regular briefings, people familiar with the matter said.

Read More

The Trump Administration Is at War With Itself Over AI Regulation

Donald Trump killed an executive order to regulate AI. Now, administration officials and AI executives are trying to figure out if there’s anything left to piece back together.

This Is How Trump Finally Signed the AI Executive Order

After shelving the original executive order last month, Donald Trump finally got on board Monday night.

Anthropic Is Still at Odds With the White House Over Claude Fable 5

Anthropic leaders flew to Washington, DC, to meet with White House officials on Monday. After high-level talks, they’re still split on the risk Claude Fable 5 presents.

Trump Risks Key Surveillance Authority Over ‘Unqualified’ Spy-Chief Pick

US lawmakers are alarmed that Bill Pulte, a housing official with no intelligence experience, is poised to take charge of one of the government's most powerful surveillance tools.

Anthropic Confidentially Files for What Could Be the Largest IPO Ever

The AI giant behind Claude submitted paperwork on Monday that would take it public, just a couple of weeks after SpaceX’s splashy IPO announcement.

Illinois Lawmakers Just Passed America’s Strongest AI Safety Bill

The bill requires companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to have third parties confirm they’re following safety standards. Illinois governor JB Pritzker says he’ll sign it.

‘Dangerous’ AI Models Are Coming No Matter What

The US government crackdown on Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 hides a glaring truth: AI models with advanced hacking capabilities will soon be the norm.

It’s Officially Election Season in Trumpworld

With Trump nemesis Thomas Massie vanquished, Republican strategists are now eyeing races in Texas, California, and Maine.

Election Officials Are Getting Ready for ICE to Show Up at the Polls

The Trump administration keeps threatening to send federal agents to oversee elections. State and local officials are preparing, and even gaming out what happens if they're arrested.

Anthropic Says It’s Taking Claude Fable 5 Offline to Comply With US Government Order

“The government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or ‘jailbreaking’ Fable 5,” the company said in a blog post.

Anthropic Offers Mythos Upgrade for Cyber Partners and a ‘Safe’ Version for the Rest of You

Anthropic is releasing Claude Mythos 5 to trusted organizations and Claude Fable 5 to the public, a version it says can’t be used for cyberattacks.

Crypto-Funded Chinese Peptide Labs Are Booming

Plus: Hackers use Meta’s AI bots to hack Instagram accounts, Anthropic helps NSA hackers, a decades-long GPS satellite mystery may have been solved, and more.