Anthropic CEO’s Candid Comments Imperil Chances of a Compromise

Who hates Sam Altman more—Elon Musk or Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei? If you guessed Elon Musk, our scoop today about the no-holds-barred memo Amodei sent to his staff on Friday about the Pentagon brouhaha might change your mind. Apart from calling OpenAI’s messaging over the Pentagon issue “mendacious,” Amodei explained the Pentagon’s targeting of Anthropic partly by noting: “We haven’t given dictator-style praise to Trump (while Sam has).” Ouch. No wonder Amodei and Altman didn’t want to hold hands. (I nominate “The Americans” co-star Matthew Rhys to play Amodei in the movie that will inevitably be made of this drama, by the way.)

The memo’s significance isn’t just the hostilities between Altman and Amodei, however. It’s what stating the unvarnished truth—in Amodei’s view—will do to Anthropic’s ability to manage its way out of this mess. Before the memo leaked, there were signs Anthropic was trying to negotiate a compromise with the Pentagon. Amodei told the Morgan Stanley tech conference on Tuesday night that “we’re going to try our very best” to resolve the dispute and that the two sides had more in common than they had differences. Reuters also reported on Tuesday that some Anthropic investors had contacted the Trump administration to try to calm things down. Amodei’s best hope now may be a full-throated apology, at least about the “dictator-style praise” comment. (Check out our TITV special episode on the memo.)