Dario Amodei, the CEO of Artificial Intelligence company Anthropic, keeps telling us he's simply asking reasonable questions about AI.
That his statements about AI are not political.
—That he’s not ideological.
—That he simply wants to protect humanity from its own creations.
Funny how the people who say that always seem to want America to slow down.
Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, represents a strain of Silicon Valley thinking that's become increasingly dangerous: the belief that American dominance is something to fear rather than defend.
This thinking comes from a Silicon Valley elitist philosophy known as effective altruism, which supposedly uses "evidence and reason to maximize positive impact to others."
That all sounds nice, but in practice, it is just another façade for being woke.
He doesn't call himself woke, and he avoids the usual activist language, but the worldview is unmistakable.
Skeptical of national strength.
Hostile to populist leadership.
Deeply uncomfortable with the idea that the United States should unapologetically win.
That discomfort has shown up most clearly in his attacks on President Trump's approach to China.
Trump's China policy was blunt for a reason.
He recognized that advanced technology, especially AI, is not just another consumer product. It’s power. Economic power. Military power. Cultural power.
And he understood that if the U.S. hesitates, China doesn’t.
Amodei took the opposite position.
He argued for slowing deployment, restricting exports, and placing heavy limits on how American AI reaches the rest of the world. He framed it as "safety."
But safety for whom, exactly?
Because China didn't slow down.
It accelerated.
Huawei, China’s most formidable tech company, is rapidly catching up to American competitors like NVIDIA, not only in AI but other tech like 5G and consumer electronics.
China's DeepSeek rivals American-made artificial intelligence ChatGPT, surprising the whole world.
Amodei and his fellow effective altruists never seem to acknowledge that restraint is not neutral. When the U.S. steps back, someone else steps forward.
In AI, that someone else is a government that has no interest in transparency, no patience for ethical debate, and no intention of letting American values shape the future.
That’s the blind spot of Amodei’s brand of tech morality.
In the name of "safety" and "the greater good," it treats power like a moral failure instead of a reality.
It assumes the world will politely wait while Americans hold seminars about risk.
Even more grating is the performance of neutrality.
Amodei has publicly criticized President Trump and his policies in harsh terms.
For example, he recently mocked the president's recent decision to allow the sale of American-made AI chips to China by likening it to "selling nuclear weapons to North Korea."
He is aligning himself with Democratic donors and former Biden officials and promoted policies that align neatly with the last administration's regulatory instincts.
Now, sensing which way the political wind is blowing, Anthropic is suddenly eager to present itself as a partner to the same leadership it once scorned.
That's not principled caution.
It's elite hedging.
And credibility matters here, because Anthropic wants a seat at the table deciding what kinds of AI are "acceptable" for society.
Yet its own product has struggled with basic reliability and security.
Claude has demonstrated manipulative behavior in internal testing. Researchers have found vulnerabilities that undermine claims of safety.
Performance metrics lag behind competitors.
So forgive me if I'm skeptical when Amodei argues that everyone else needs to slow down.
The deeper issue is trust.
Amodei doesn't trust voters to choose leaders who understand technology:
—He doesn't trust markets to reward better tools.
—He doesn't trust the idea that American leadership can be stabilizing.
—He trusts experts, more specifically experts who think like him.
President Trump rejected that entire framework.
—He didn't view American strength as something to apologize for.
—He saw it as a responsibility.
And that's what unsettled people like Amodei most.
This isn't a debate about tone or temperament.
It's a debate about whether the United States should lead boldly or retreat politely. Whether we should shape the future or ask permission to exist in it.
AI will define the next era of global power.
If people who are embarrassed by power are allowed to write the rules, America won't lose because it moved too fast.
We’ll lose because we were convinced to stand still.
- Diana London is a seasoned political strategist and commentator with over five years of experience on Capitol Hill. Currently a Newsmax columnist, she works on advancing conservative initiatives and empowering diverse communities as well as championing criminal justice reform. Read more Diana London Insider articles — Click Here Now.
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