TL;DR
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 effectively triggered crisis-level talks between Anthropic and Commerce Department officials last week.
Trump met Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Wednesday at the G7 Summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, an encounter that appears to have shifted the president’s stance. The meeting came after Anthropic senior technical staff held separate discussions with Trump administration officials earlier in the week. Trump told Axios he would consider easing the restrictions, saying, “I would, but I’m not sure I have to do that,” when asked about a potential rollback.
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The dispute traces back to March 2026, when the Pentagon designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the company refused to strip guardrails related to surveillance and autonomous weapons from products used by the US military. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick subsequently sent a letter threatening criminal charges against the company, a move that drew criticism from technology industry groups and prompted allied governments, including the UK, to lobby for exemptions.
The timing of Trump’s conciliatory tone is significant. Anthropic confidentially filed for an initial public offering in early June, with a valuation that Fortune reported at approximately $965 billion. The ongoing federal restrictions had cast uncertainty over the listing, and any signal of de-escalation from the White House could stabilise investor confidence ahead of the offering.
Trump described the situation as creating “tremendous liability” for the administration, an acknowledgment that the crackdown had drawn backlash from both industry and allies. The president also said he would not shut down Anthropic, though he stopped short of committing to a specific timeline for lifting the Commerce Department directive.
The shift does not erase the underlying disagreement. The Pentagon’s supply-chain designation remains in place, and the Commerce Department’s June 12 order has not been formally rescinded. Anthropic has not publicly indicated whether it plans to modify its guardrail policies to satisfy the military’s demands.
What has changed is the political signal from the top: Trump appears willing to negotiate rather than escalate.
Amodei has been working multiple channels to resolve the standoff. At the G7 summit, he and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis jointly pitched a US-led AI coalition to G7 leaders, positioning Anthropic as a cooperative partner in American technology diplomacy rather than a regulatory adversary. The strategy appears to have given Amodei direct access to Trump at a moment when the president was receptive.
Whether the warm words translate into policy remains an open question. The Commerce Department operates with considerable independence on export control matters, and rolling back a formal directive requires bureaucratic steps that a single interview cannot shortcut. For Anthropic, the Axios interview is a political win, but the legal and regulatory constraints remain until the administration acts on them.
