Trump-Ally Memo Names Amodei as Face of AI 'Doomerism'

A memo circulating inside the White House this week casts Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei as the face of AI "doomerism" and places him at the foundation of effective altruism, Axios reports. The document, penned by a Trump political adviser who does not work for the White House, says effective altruism "built the AI-doom pipeline" and prioritizes "foreigners over citizens, shrimp over families, future hypothetical people over the living."

The memo names both Dario and his sister Daniela Amodei, Anthropic's president, as builders of the EA network and casts those family ties as "The Anthropic knot." A source close to the administration told Axios that Amodei "is the embodiment of an ideology and globalist approach to innovation that's counter to the president's America First agenda." A senior White House official was blunter, saying anonymously that "Dario's a little too weird" for Trump.

The attack lands a day after Amodei addressed the UN Security Council by video link and warned that "if managed poorly, I even believe that AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole," pressing for narrow international rules starting with a ban on AI-designed bioweapons, according to CNN. At the same session, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director Michael Kratsios called such governance efforts a "globalist scheme."

Anthropic has already been trying to peel itself away from the EA label. In a 2025 Wired story, Daniela Amodei said of the term, "I don't identify with that terminology." The company is now preparing for what is expected to be a record-setting IPO. It arrives inside a busy stretch for Anthropic's Washington footprint, days after reporting that the White House's Sriram Krishnan is being courted by Google, OpenAI and Anthropic to lead a proposed AI safety body.