Former President Donald Trump said in a pre-recorded interview with Axios aired on June 19 that he no longer views Anthropic or its CEO Dario Amodei as a national security threat as of mid-June 2026 [1, 2, 3, 4]. Trump added, "Well, not now, but a week ago, maybe," referring to his view on Anthropic being a threat [3].
The change in tone follows export controls imposed by the Commerce Department between June 12 and June 18 that require Anthropic to seek US government approval before allowing foreign nationals access to its advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5 [5, 3, 6, 4]. In response, Anthropic temporarily disabled access to these models for all users from June 18 to June 19 [5, 3, 6].
Senior technical staff from Anthropic met with Trump administration officials between June 19 and June 20 to discuss concerns over foreign access to these AI models [5, 6]. Trump met with Dario Amodei and other tech leaders during the G7 summit in France from June 19 to June 20 [5, 3, 6, 4]. He praised Amodei's response to the export controls, saying, "He responded to us very quickly because you know it's a tremendous liability. People get put in prison immediately for that. You can't play games with that. And he responded very responsibly, I thought" [3].
While Trump did not rule out using emergency powers under the Defense Production Act against Anthropic, he said, "I have the power to use a lot of things, but I am not sure I have to do that" [3].
Anthropic expressed gratitude for ongoing cooperation with the US government. An Anthropic spokesperson said the company is "grateful to the administration for their ongoing partnership in working to get this matter resolved as quickly as possible. We remain committed to working alongside them towards our shared goals of protecting critical infrastructure and making sure the US leads in AI" [5].
