NEW: Inside the 24-hrs before WH slapped export controls on Anthropic
- Last Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy raised concerns about Fable jailbreak to Trump admin
- Friday AM, Sean Cairncross, Bessent, Susie etc. held WH call to discuss
- Then White House started reaching out to Anthropic to speak with Dario Amodei, who was at a wellness retreat.
- When Amodei was finally available past 1pm, he had three tense phone calls with a combo of ppl including Cairncross, Bessent, Lutnick, Kessler, Will Scharf, Richard Walters, and Walker Barrett.
-Amodei tried to clear up what he assumed was a misunderstanding. He defended the guardrails and distinguished between universal and non-universal jailbreak
- Cairncross and Bessent were unmoved and asked Amodei to take down Fable and work with the admin to fix the vulnerabilities. (A WH official said Amazonās findings were run past the NSA and they felt they had āproof.ā)
- Amodei asked for more time and info, but he made no commitments to pull the model
- Bessent told Amodei directly at one point that he was making a ābad decisionā
- By Friday evening, the Trump admin imposed its export controls.
- āExport controls were a last resort after begging them for hours to work with us,ā senior WH official said.
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