One explosive scene from our @POLITICOMag cover story on 85 days that changed White House AI policy :

Dario Amodei offered to tutor Bessent on jailbreaks the day of export controls.

Amodei: “Would it be helpful for you to go into a little detail? I think we need to keep risks in perspective.”

Bessent: “Well, I don't think that's really necessary, Dario…”

Amodei tried again as the company believed the risks remained within the range it had previously described to the gov.

Bessent wasn't persuaded. The admin had believed Anthropic's self certification abt Fable. Now there was a problem.

“It’s not really helping your case when you're saying everything it does was expected,” Bessent told Amodei. 

Amodei: “I think any decision to de-deploy Fable would basically set a precedent that models above a certain level of capability cannot be deployed commercially at all,”

Sean Cairncross cut him off. “Dario, what I need from you is: Anthropic, will you be closing off access to Fable or not?”

Amodei said he could not shut Fable down just an hour

Bessent: That is a bad decision.”

story w/ @cheyennehaslett
edited by @sissenberg