- Reid Hoffman defended Anthropic after attacks from President Trump’s AI czar, David Sacks, who accused Anthropic of “regulatory capture.” CEO Dario Amodei rebutted claims and aligned with VP JD Vance’s call for beneficial AI. The clash highlights a growing divide over AI regulation and safety in Silicon Valley.
A week after Anthropic found itself attacked by the Trump administration, the company has found a defender in Reid Hoffman. CEO Dario Amodei also published a lengthy statement rebutting “inaccurate claims” about the company’s policy positions, which used Vice President JD Vance’s words against the White House’s chief AI advisor.
TL;DR
- Reid Hoffman defended Anthropic against David Sacks' "regulatory capture" accusations.
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei rebutted claims and aligned with VP JD Vance on beneficial AI.
- The dispute highlights a growing Silicon Valley divide over AI regulation and safety.
Hoffman, a Greylock partner, who he said, has invested in Anthropic, lauded the AI lab as “one of the good guys”, aiming to counter criticisms from White House AI and crypto official David Sacks. Sacks alleged Anthropic employed “a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fearmongering” to promote regulations, a strategy he believes hinders progress and new ventures.
“Anthropic, along with some others (incl Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI) are trying to deploy AI the right way, thoughtfully, safely, and enormously beneficial for society,” Hoffman wrote in a post on X. “Some other labs are making decisions that clearly disregard safety and societal impact (e.g., bots that sometimes go full-fascist) and that’s a choice.”
Sacks retorted, calling Hoffman “the leading funder of lawfare and dirty tricks against President Trump.” Fellow PayPal mafia member Elon Musk, who heads XAI, an AI lab absent from Hoffman’s list, also contributed with a one-word endorsement of Sacks.
Hoffman responded, writing: “Shows you didn’t read the post (not shocked). When you are ready to have a professional conversation about AI’s impact on America, I’m here to chat.”
Subsequently, Amodei released a statement today that was evidently meant to allude to Sacks: “There has been a recent uptick in inaccurate claims about Anthropic’s policy stances. Some are significant enough that they warrant setting the record straight.”
He also tried to place himself on the side of Vance. “I strongly agree with Vice President JD Vance’s recent comments on AI—particularly his point that we need to maximize applications that help people, like breakthroughs in medicine and disease prevention, while minimizing the harmful ones. This position is both wise and what the public overwhelmingly wants.”
Tech tensions over AI policy
Throughout the last twelve months, Anthropic has established itself as a proponent of AI safety and oversight. The firm has backed regulation at the state level, consistently rejecting a federal preemption bill suggested by The Trump administration, which aimed to prevent state-level AI rules for ten years.
Anthropic was the sole major AI lab to endorse California's SB 53, a recently enacted law that governed AI firms within its home state, mandating greater openness from prominent AI labs. Amodei has also previously voiced criticism of the Trump administration's leadership, likening Trump to a “feudal warlord.” More recently, Amodei criticized the Trump administration’s handling advanced AI chip export limitations, advocating for tighter export regulations to China to safeguard U.S. National security.
Sacks has publicly dismissed Anthropic's criticisms, despite his own frequent public jabs at the company. He refuted a Bloomberg report that alleged his commentary prompted federal investigations into the AI firm. In a X post, he wrote: “Nothing could be further from the truth,” pointed out the White House's recent authorization of Anthropic's Claude application for government deployment. Sacks contended, however, that the AI business had intentionally presented itself “as a foe of the Trump administration.”
As the designated AI czar, Sacks has contended that AI regulations, particularly those enacted by states, could lead to a “patchwork” framework that hinders American innovation and jeopardizes the nation's standing in the global AI competition. This viewpoint mirrors a wider movement among tech figures supportive of Trump, who advocate for emphasizing rapid advancement and competitive advantage above regulatory oversight.
“The U.S. Is currently in an AI race, and our chief global competition is China,” Sacks said in an onstage interview at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco this week. “They’re the only other country that has the talent, the resources, and the technology expertise to basically beat us in AI.”
A growing rift in Silicon Valley
The spat between the White House and Anthropic has sparked a wider divide in Silicon Valley.
Last week, Sriram Krishnan, a senior White House policy advisor on AI and co-author of the American AI Action Plan, also offered his perspective. Krishnan shared one of Sacks’ posts on X, asserting that the Effective Altruism (EA) and AI safety advocacy groups had historically aligned with the left and were now upset about diminished influence and trust.
Krishnan criticized members of an “AI safety industrial complex” and alleged that safety organizations are attempting to “sneak in AI laws for the entire country using their influence in one state [California],”, asserting that excessive regulation might yield the sector to China and hinder progress.
Representatives for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment .