Trump says he no longer views Anthropic as a national security threat after G7 meeting with CEO

This article was published on June 19, 2026 The president's comments come days after the Commerce Department ordered Anthropic to seek US approval before letting foreign nationals use its most powerful AI models Trump told Axios that Anthropic has “behaved very responsibly” and signalled he may ease restrictions on its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models. President Donald Trump said in a pretaped Axios interview that he no longer views Anthropic as a national security threat, marking a sharp reversal from the administration’s aggressive posture toward the AI company over the past three months. Asked whether he considers Anthropic a threat, Trump replied, “Well, not now. But a week ago, maybe.” He added that the company has “behaved very responsibly.” The comments come just days after the Commerce Department issued a directive on June 12 ordering Anthropic to seek US government approval before foreign nationals access its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, the company’s most powerful AI systems. That order followed months of escalating tension between the administration and Anthropic over the company’s refusal to remove certain safety guardrails from its military-facing products. The directive