OpenAI and Anthropic Hire Trump Officials to Build Washington Ties
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What happened
This year, OpenAI and Anthropic — two leading U.S. companies developing advanced artificial intelligence — hired several former officials from President Donald Trump's administrations into senior roles. Anthropic appointed Chris Liddell, who was deputy White House chief of staff in Trump's first term, to its board of directors in February, and in September hired Sihao Huang, previously a senior policy advisor for AI and emerging technology at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, as head of frontier compute strategy. OpenAI hired Dean Ball, a 2025 OSTP senior policy advisor who helped draft the administration's America's AI Action Plan, as head of strategic futures in July; Thomas Lind, former AI policy lead at the Office of the National Cyber Director, to lead cyber and strategic risk on its national security policy team; and Peter Bowman-Davis, former chief AI officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, for model training and hardware engineering in March. Both companies are also hiring for additional political-engagement roles. Earlier in the year Anthropic's relationship with the administration had been openly antagonistic: in February Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's models, the Pentagon designated the company a supply-chain risk, and a U.S. appeals court upheld that designation in September; Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei later joined a lunch with Trump and other AI executives and dined with Trump in September.
Sourcing check · Fully on the record · 2 articles
2 of 2 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report. Most articles credit CNBC rather than reporting it themselves.
What these terms mean and how they're counted
- On the record · names a source 2 of 2
- On the record means the article cites a source by name for the story's main claim: a person, or an institution speaking officially, such as a company statement or a named agency's spokesperson. The opposite is an unnamed source. The count is how many of the counted articles cite at least one such source; the names are everyone named across them, each once however the articles spell it. Here: Michelle Nie Duncan, Sihao Huang, Chris Liddell, Thomas Lind, Sasha Baker and Dean Ball
- Primary evidence · cites a document or data 0 of 2
- Primary evidence means the article cites a record you could check yourself: a court filing or ruling, a dataset or report, a recording or transcript, an official statement or press release, market data. A quote is not a document. The count is how many articles cite one. Here: None cited.
- Credits another outlet 1 of 2
- The article says the story comes from another outlet's reporting (“first reported by Reuters”). Those articles relay the story; they are not independent confirmation. Here: CNBC
- Unnamed sources 0 of 2
- The main claim is attributed to people who are not identified: “people familiar with the matter”, “officials said”. The count is how many articles do this.
- How it developed
- When the first report landed and whether it named anyone; when the first named source and the first document appeared. Here: First report Oct 9, 13:49 UTC by CNBC, naming its source.
- Not counted 0
- Opinion, analysis and video pieces, and articles too short to assess. Every count above is out of the counted articles. An article republished under a new headline is one article.
This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage leaves out the presidential order that cut Anthropic off from federal agencies. Right-leaning coverage, via Breitbart, reports the February directive and an IPO prospectus in which the company warned it "may experience material revenue losses." Left-leaning coverage at CNBC instead recounts a public spat and a later appeals-court ruling that upheld a Pentagon supply-chain-risk designation, without the order or the filing. Readers of the left-leaning account therefore miss how far that freeze-out had already gone before the new hires landed.
Left-leaning coverage at CNBC says the labs are "poaching" Trump officials. Right-leaning coverage describes the same pattern as "recruiting" former officials. Both sides name the same five people for the same jobs. Only the verb changes.
What, if anything, bars these officials from lobbying the offices they just left?
Bottom line
CNBC lists the same Trump-alumni hires as Breitbart but never mentions the February order pulling Anthropic out of federal agencies.
The receipts — 2 facts one side's coverage lacks
- In February, the president ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's models.
- Government contracts currently account for less than one percent of Anthropic's annual revenue.
The Left View
CNBC frames the moves as the industry "poaching" Trump officials as it "fights for Washington's trust" and "scrambles to strengthen ties," with frontier AI "increasingly viewed as a national security issue" amid growing calls for regulation and cybersecurity incidents caused by rogue AI systems. The report highlights visiting fellow Michelle Nie Duncan's view that companies know the Trump administration "has a lot of levers over their business, from federal procurement and supply-chain designations to export controls and everything in between, and that it's willing to use them," and that they "have learned from the Anthropic episode that it pays to be on the good side of the White House." CNBC notes that Trump has called AI safety concerns a "hoax" and advocated self-regulation while also saying the Justice Department and other law enforcement could "rein" in AI, and that Amodei has looked to "smooth his relationship" with the president. Duncan also argues that, with labs "gearing up for some of the largest IPOs of all time," people see a chance "to be part of something historic," and that "inside the labs is where a lot of leverage currently lies" for officials "serious about shaping the future of AI governance."
The Right View
Breitbart frames the hiring as Anthropic and OpenAI recruiting Trump administration alumni "to Build Relationship with Washington" as frontier AI's national-security status grows. It emphasizes that Anthropic had labeled the Trump administration a business risk in its IPO prospectus, stating it "may experience material revenue losses or business disruptions attributable to these events" after the February federal-use order and the Pentagon's supply-chain designation, even though government contracts accounted for "less than one percent" of its annual revenue. The outlet ties the story to a broader argument, citing investor David Sacks, that when AI executives call for a slowdown they are "not doing so out of altruism, but with the motivation to capture the industry and exclude themselves from antitrust laws," a conflict it says Trump and FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson "recognize." Breitbart presents MAGA's task as forming AI positions that "benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world."
Our Take (balanced)
The left-leaning coverage's strongest argument is that the hires follow a demonstrated use of presidential leverage: Duncan's claim that firms learned it "pays to be on the good side of the White House" is supported by the upheld Pentagon supply-chain designation, the February bar on federal use of Anthropic models, and the companies' simultaneous recruiting for political-engagement roles. The right-leaning coverage's strongest argument is that the outreach is commercial self-protection, not a policy conversion: Anthropic's prospectus treated souring government sentiment as a material risk despite government contracts being "less than one percent" of revenue, and the Sacks-based claim that lab calls for regulation can be a bid to "capture the industry" aligns with the same firms' IPO ambitions. The central unresolved tension is whether these appointments represent alignment with U.S. national-security governance as AI becomes a state concern, or a revolving-door purchase of political insurance and market advantage.
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