Trump’s Potential New AI Executive Order May Take a Swipe at Anthropic

An executive order reportedly being mulled by President Donald Trump could deepen—or, who knows, resolve?—its ongoing conflict with Anthropic. Yesterday I wrote about reports that Trump was working on creating an AI “working group” by executive order. This group would be made up of government officials and members of the tech industry, and one of its roles might be to devise a review process for unreleased AI models. In other words, after promising a light regulatory touch, Trump might be dipping his toe into creating some AI guardrails. I noted that the Times’ sources compared Trump’s potential working group to a similar group in the process of being created in the U.K., and that that group was spurred into existence by the revelations of security vulnerabilities brought about by Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview model. Yesterday afternoon, the AI companies Microsoft, xAI, and Google all signed deals allowing a Biden-created arm of the Commerce Department called the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), to inspect their new models prior to release. Anthropic wasn’t included, but it did sign a similar agreement with CAISI under President Biden in 2024. But new information