White House Crafting AI Rules on the Fly

Nearly a week has passed since the Trump administration issued an export control directive to Anthropic, compelling the prominent AI lab to take its most advanced models offline. Despite days of back-and-forth negotiations, the company and the White House remain stuck on how to restore access to Claude Mythos and Fable 5. The reason for the standoff depends entirely on who is telling the story.

From Anthropic’s perspective, the company did not break any specific procedures or rules set by the administration, according to a person familiar with the matter. The White House, however, accuses Anthropic of acting recklessly, arguing the lab cannot be trusted to safely deploy frontier AI technology.

This entire episode signals that we have entered the Wild West era of American AI regulation. Even with few formal laws governing advanced AI development, companies can still find themselves in hot water with Trump’s White House when they cross unwritten boundaries.

“The problem here is that the White House has been in this extreme anti-regulatory posture, and they’re now faced with the real AI capabilities that people have been predicting for many years,” says a former White House technology official who requested anonymity to protect professional ties. “There should have been preparation and policies to systematically deal with this, managing the benefits and risks, but instead it’s just this slap-dash approach that puts the AI industry in a real quandary.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly blocked efforts to impose guardrails on the AI industry, often arguing that such rules could stifle U. S. innovation and allow rivals like China to pull ahead. Since returning to office, President Trump has signed executive orders that reversed a Biden-era push for a national AI framework and created a federal task force to challenge state laws deemed too burdensome.

Although WIRED and other outlets have publicized the ongoing negotiations between Anthropic and the White House over the past week, the dispute remains shrouded in opacity. At no point has the U. S. government clearly articulated what Anthropic did wrong. The most detailed explanation available is a post on X from White House technology adviser David Sacks, which outlines the general situation.

Ironically, the White House’s actions may have undercut the very innovation it aims to protect. The Trump administration demanded that Anthropic bar all foreign nationals from accessing Mythos and Fable 5, which prevented many of the AI lab’s own employees from using its most cutting-edge models. The company says those models have accelerated its research and development in recent months. Meanwhile, all of Anthropic’s customers,including Apple, Meta, and much of the Fortune 500,remain locked out.

It is possible the White House had legitimate reasons for concern. As my colleagues and I reported Wednesday, U. S. officials grew alarmed earlier this month when they learned Anthropic had shared Mythos with SK Telecom, a South Korean telecom giant they allege has ties to China. Separately, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy raised concerns to U. S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that some guardrails on Claude Fable 5, a safeguarded version of Mythos, could be circumvented.

Even if those worries are valid, that does not mean the White House handled them well. In the first case, Anthropic says it coordinated with the U. S. government on the rollout of Mythos, suggesting officials had an opportunity to raise concerns about SK Telecom ahead of time. Anthropic has also worked with the Korean company for years, and that arrangement never previously triggered national security problems. And when the White House raised its concerns about SK Telecom, Anthropic revoked the model’s access immediately, we reported.