CEO of blacklisted Anthropic is going to the White House

By Hadas Gold, Alayna Treene, CNN

(CNN) — Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is visiting the White House on Friday for a high-stakes meeting with the president’s top adviser, while his AI company battles the Trump administration in court for blacklisting its Claude AI model.

Amodei will meet with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, two sources familiar with the meeting told CNN. Axios first reported on the meeting. Anthropic declined to comment.

The meeting is taking place as the US government is trying to balance its hardline approach to Anthropic with the national security implications of turning its back on the company’s breakthrough technology – including its Mythos tool that can identify cybersecurity threats but also present a roadmap for hackers to attack companies or the government.

Until recently, Anthropic’s Claude was the only AI model available in the Pentagon’s classified network. But President Donald Trump recently announced the administration would sever ties with the company after Anthropic refused to back down on terms that would allow the military to use Claude for “all lawful purposes,” including autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.

After a breakdown in talks over Claude’s use, the Pentagon went on to declare Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” a label only used in the past for companies associated with foreign adversaries. It would effectively blacklist Anthropic from the government.

Anthropic sued the Trump administration in response, and a federal judge in California last month blocked the government’s effort to “punish” Anthropic, saying federal agencies outside of the Department of Defense cannot use the supply chain risk designation to sever ties with the company. The government has appealed that ruling.

But two weeks later, the administration scored a victory at the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which said in a separate case brought by Anthropic that it won’t bar DOD from cutting ties with the company while that legal challenge plays out.

Intervening at this stage in the litigation, the appeals court said in its unanimous decision, “would force the United States military to prolong its dealings with an unwanted vendor of critical AI services in the middle of a significant ongoing military conflict.”

The Pentagon has said it wants unfettered access to Claude for “all lawful purposes,” because it needs complete freedom to use those tools, especially in wartime. Anthropic has argued that it wants to work with the military, but that AI models are just not yet reliable enough to be used in autonomous weapons, and that US law has not caught up to be able to protect Americans around AI’s use in mass surveillance.

Meanwhile, Anthropic announced a forthcoming powerful AI model called Mythos, that it and experts have warned could be a “watershed” moment for cybersecurity, allowing select groups to get early access to assess their cybersecurity risk.

The Office of Management and Budget has already told agencies it is preparing to give them access to Mythos to prepare, Bloomberg reported. Axios reported the White House is also in discussion to gain access to Mythos. Anthropic declined to comment on whether the Trump administration was working to test Mythos.

“The White House continues to proactively engage across government and industry to protect the United States and Americans. This includes working with frontier AI labs to ensure their models help secure critical software vulnerabilities,” a White House official told CNN. “Any new technology that would potentially be used or deployed by the federal government requires a technical period of evaluation for fidelity and security. The collective effort of all involved will ultimately benefit industry, and our country, as a whole.”

CNN’s Devan Cole contributed reporting.

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This story was updated with additional content.