Why Did Trump Ease His Anthropic Threat View After G7?

President Donald Trump said Anthropic no longer looks like a national security threat after meeting CEO Dario Amodei at the G7 summit.

Key Points:

Anthropic Restrictions

Trump made the comments in a pretaped interview with Axios, days after the Commerce Department ordered Anthropic to seek U.S. approval before foreign nationals could use its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models.

Asked whether he viewed the company as a threat, Trump said, “Well, not now. But a week ago, maybe.”

He also said Anthropic had “behaved very responsibly,” a notable change after months of tension between the White House and the AI developer over military product guardrails.

The dispute began in Mar. 2026, when the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the company refused to remove safeguards tied to surveillance and autonomous weapons.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick later threatened criminal charges, drawing criticism from technology groups and lobbying from allied governments, including the UK.

Trump met Amodei on Wednesday at the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, after Anthropic technical staff held separate talks with administration officials earlier in the week.

Asked whether he would ease the restrictions, Trump said, “I would, but I’m not sure I have to do that.”

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Amodei Diplomacy

The comments matter because Anthropic confidentially filed for an initial public offering in early June, with Fortune reporting a valuation of about $965 billion.

Federal restrictions had raised uncertainty around the listing, while Trump’s softer language may help calm investors before the offering moves forward.

The policy has not changed yet.

The Pentagon designation remains active, and the Commerce Department has not rescinded its Jun. 12 order, so foreign access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 still depends on formal U.S. approval.

At the G7, Amodei and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis pitched a U.S.-led AI coalition to world leaders, presenting Anthropic as a partner in American technology diplomacy.

That framing appears to have helped the company secure direct access to Trump at a moment when the administration faced pushback from industry and allies. The standoff followed earlier disputes over Anthropic’s refusal to alter safety guardrails for military-facing tools, a position that turned a technical policy fight into a broader test of Washington’s control over frontier AI exports.

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