The Trump White House is over Dario Amodei of Anthropic

The Trump administration has been happier talking to Anthropic recently, according to people familiar with the matter: They no longer have to deal with CEO Dario Amodei because he has been replaced in meetings about the relaunch of the Claude Fable 5 AI model by its co-founder Tom Brown.

« Tom Brown is not a weirdo like Dario and he can actually commit, » said a person with direct knowledge of the calls.

The administration has yet to lift the export controls that took Anthropic’s most powerful models online on June 12 after the National Security Agency confirmed there were ways to disable the guardrails and access the more powerful capabilities of the company’s restricted Mythos model.

But the administration has had repeated conversations with Anthropic in recent days, encouraged by the fact that Brown and Anthropic’s head of public policy, Sarah Heck, were leading the outreach. People say that Amodeus is too difficult to talk to and doesn’t listen to their concerns.

Talks have been at both high-level and working group level, involving technical staff from both sides. Some of the talks have been about trying to figure out what level of proof from Anthropic could ease the administration’s concerns about Fable 5 jailbreaks, the people said.

As Inner Loop noted earlier, part of the challenge for both sides is at the conceptual level. Independent cybersecurity experts are increasingly taking the view that AI model railings are only a temporary measure, as power users and future AI models will find ways around the restrictions.

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the matter. An Anthropic spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The timeline for when Anthropic might roll out Fable 5 again remains uncertain. But what the company needs to do to remove export controls may become clearer in the coming days.

Last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers sent a list of questions about the way forward for Anthropic to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who has taken the lead in addressing the risks of a jailbreak, in part because the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security manages export controls.

Among the questions in the letter was one about the reallocation: « What specific criteria does the Department rely on to determine whether to restore public access to the model by reconsidering this decision? What is the time frame for this decision? »

The letter, signed by Reps. Sam Liccardo, Jay Obernolte, C. Scott Franklin and Ted Lieu, demanded responses by June 26. A Commerce Department spokesman declined to comment on whether the agency would respond by the deadline.

Algae is always greener

At the White House, President Donald Trump has been furiously posting on Truth Social about the negative coverage of the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool, which is surrounded by an algae bloom and a blue seal that appears to have come off the pool floor following the president’s $16.4 million renovation.

After Trump said several people had been arrested for alleged vandalism during the renovation, an administration official declined to clarify what activities around the reflecting pool would be considered a crime. And on Tuesday, the administration started erecting fences around the pool.

The National Guard assigned to the reflecting pool has been instructed since last week to detain anyone who so much as touches the water — let alone the sluice gates — so the U.S. Park Police can arrest them on vandalism charges, two people familiar with the matter said.

The statute cited for what is prohibited is 36 Code of Federal Regulations, Chapter 1, Section 2.1(a)(6), according to an administration official, which prohibits « the possession, destruction, injury, defacement, removal, excavation, or disturbance of a structure or its furnishings or appurtenances, or other cultural or archaeological resources. »

Another law, 36 CFR 7.96, prohibits « bathing, swimming, or wading in any fountain or pool » other than the World War II Memorial’s Rainbow Pool and the fountains of the German-American Friendship Garden, adjacent to the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool.

It is not clear whether putting your hand in the water violates any of these laws. But Inner Loop doesn’t think it’s worth the risk of a felony citation to find out.

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This is an edition of To Hugo Lowell Inner Loop Newsletter. Read previous newsletters here