Trump dines with Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, after months of high tension

President Donald Trump is to host a private dinner at the White House with Dario Amodei, the Italian-American CEO of Anthropic, reports Axios, adding that the meeting will take place against the backdrop of the ongoing discussions between the AI giant and the administration, as well as growing concerns about AI security and possible measures to mitigate the risks. According to reports, on Tuesday, Trump and the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, are expected to meet with the heads of leading AI companies, at a time when calls for more safeguards and regulations are mounting, amid warnings from experts and industry insiders.

“Well, as you know, we’re meeting with Anthropic on Tuesday. It’ll be an important meeting; what’s more, we’ve got a couple of other things planned for this evening. ‘I’ll actually be having dinner with the head of Anthropic tonight,’ Dario Amodei, Trump announced, speaking briefly to the media upon his return to the White House shortly before 10 pm local time (4 am on Monday in Italia). ‘They’re long days, but it seems I’m managing them, isn’t it? They’re intense days. People ask me, “Really?” And I reply: ‘I’m having dinner at ten tonight’. We travel all over the world and eat out, but that’s fine. So, tonight I’ll be having dinner with Dario, a highly respected figure, as you know, from Anthropic. He’s the head of Anthropic.”

This meeting comes after months of fierce clashes between Anthropic and the Pentagon (and Trump himself) because, at the start of the year, Amodei’s company opposed the use of its Claude models for mass surveillance and the development of autonomous weapons without human control. Subsequently, at the end of August, a Californian judge ruled that Anthropic’s inclusion on the Pentagon’s “blacklist” was unlawful. On 25 September, however – just a few days ago – the Washington DC Court of Appeals ruled in favour of the Department of War and its Secretary, Pete Hegseth, against Anthropic, on the grounds that the company had interfered in a matter that falls within the remit of the President of the United States and the Secretary of the Department of War to decide. In the meantime, Trump has branded Anthropic as a place run ‘by left-wing lunatics’. This dinner now comes as a surprise, but at a time when concerns about AI security are mounting – a topic also touched upon by Xi Jinping and Trump at last week’s summit in Washington.

But Trump remains firm in his views. “I’m not worried about it.” This is how the president dismissed concerns about AI potentially “getting out of control” after reports that OpenAI, Anthropic and some security researchers are investigating tens of thousands of incidents linked to problematic behaviour in state-of-the-art AI models. “It’s just that it’s a huge sector. We’re ahead of China and we’re building facilities worth trillions of dollars. Why should we give it up? If there’s something wrong, they need to sort it out,” the tycoon told Fox News, noting that it is more important for Washington to maintain its technological edge over Beijing.

The words of the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, who has once again urged the United States to take a leading role in regulating the growth of AI, whilst warning that reaching an international agreement on a global regulatory framework could prove ‘more difficult’ than the Cold War-era negotiations on nuclear arms control. Speaking on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’, Gates said that ‘nobody thinks self-regulation is enough. So legislation needs to be passed in Washington’.