In the post, Amodei wrote that "Anyone who has read my past writing should know that I don't regard such bans as a useful measure, but let me state it clearly so that there is no doubt: Anthropic has never advocated for a ban on open-weights models." He added that models without dangerous capabilities are "a public good."
The statement followed a week of pressure in Washington. According to Axios, Anthropic had become the most prominent holdout from a new industry push to defend open-weight AI, after Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Google, OpenAI and dozens of other companies signed a letter urging Washington not to restrict the technology, a push triggered by the debut of Kimi K3, a Chinese open-weight model that rattled Silicon Valley by approaching U.S. frontier performance at a fraction of the cost. TechCrunch reported that the letter, shared first by Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, urged policymakers not to impose broad "premature restrictions" on open-weight AI models, and that Anthropic's rival OpenAI later signed the letter, but Anthropic did not.
Amodei's central objection is geopolitical rather than commercial. He argued that a ban on Chinese open models would not touch the real danger, since, as he put it, "bad actors are unlikely to be legitimate US businesses." He did concede the obvious commercial reading of such a ban, noting it would shield firms like his own from competition, but insisted "that has never been my goal." Rather than prohibition, he proposed focusing on "keeping powerful chips out of authoritarian hands, stopping industrial-scale distillation, and requiring safety testing of all sufficiently capable models, open and closed."
The distillation complaint carries a specific commercial edge. CNBC reported that Anthropic sent a letter to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs last month alleging that China's Alibaba, developer of the Qwen family of models, had carried out "the largest known distillation attack" against it to date. Coverage from TNW put a figure on that claim, noting Anthropic's accusation that Qwen's developers ran a campaign using 25,000 fake accounts for 29 million exchanges. Amodei acknowledged enforcement is difficult, since, in his words, accounts can often only be identified "after substantial distillation has occurred," which is why he wants the problem handled through policy rather than left to individual companies.
On mandatory testing, Amodei went further than a purely domestic proposal, telling readers he backs efforts, including some led by the US, to build an international model safety testing body that other governments, including China's, might eventually join. TechCrunch noted he called this idea "close to a consensus," adding he had "been heartened both that the Trump administratio[n]" and others were moving in that direction. Commentators have flagged an unresolved practical question underneath the proposal: coverage from Tech Startups observed that who decides when an AI model becomes "sufficiently capable" sits at the center of nearly every AI policy discussion, and if that definition gradually expands over time, startups and independent developers could face compliance costs that larger companies are better positioned to absorb.