Trump dines with Amodei days after Pentagon blacklist upheld

President Trump and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei held a previously unannounced, one-on-one dinner at the White House, their first such meeting, days after a federal appeals court upheld a Pentagon “supply chain risk” designation against Anthropic and while a memo attacking Amodei circulated inside the administration.

Axios reported Sept. 27, 2026, that Trump had invited Amodei to dinner that evening, and The Washington Post confirmed Sept. 28 that the dinner took place. Arriving at Joint Base Andrews beforehand, Trump called Amodei “very highly respected” and, asked about a string of security incidents involving AI models, including attempted hacks on commercial and government websites, told reporters, “I’m not worried about it,” Euronews reported Sept. 28.

Trump has previously called AI backlash “a Democratic hoax” and mocked Amodei’s calls for caution, saying he was trying to be “a perfect little angel,” according to TechCrunch and Euronews. Amodei skipped Trump’s Sept. 24 state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping, an event that drew OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, NPR and CNBC reported.

Two days before the Amodei dinner, on Sept. 25, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit voted 2-1 to uphold the Pentagon’s designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk, a label that bars the military from using Claude models, ABC News reported. The majority found the Pentagon had grounds to treat Claude’s usage restrictions and an unresolved contract dispute as reliability risks; Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson dissented, writing the law does not permit blacklisting based on “a contractor’s honest and upfront enforcement of restrictions.” The designation traces to a February 2026 order to phase out Anthropic’s technology after it declined to let its models be used for lethal autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance; Anthropic sued in March, accusing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of retaliation. Anthropic said in a statement, “Another federal court has already held the government’s parallel designation unlawful. We remain confident in our position and are considering all options, including further review.”

Before the dinner, Axios and Fortune reported that a memo attacking Amodei was circulating inside the White House, arguing he has “a long record of attacking Trump,” “deep Democratic ties” and “doesn’t trust President Trump.” Both outlets credited the Wall Street Journal as the memo’s original source. A separate memo circulating in the administration, dated Sept. 22, characterized the effective-altruism movement that has shaped Anthropic’s safety approach as having “built the AI-doom pipeline.”

Analysis

A court loss on the Pentagon blacklist, opposition research aimed at its chief executive and a presidential shrug at AI security incidents, all inside one week, sit alongside Amodei securing a rare one-on-one audience with Trump days later. For a lab that has staked its identity on safety, the combination suggests proximity to Trump has not softened the substantive fight over the Pentagon designation or preempted attacks from Republican critics.