Anthropic Pushes US States to Adopt Stricter AI Regulations
Anthropic, which previously backed transparency laws in California and New York, now argues they are outdated and is urging states to impose tougher requirements, including third-party audits. Critics accuse the company of regulatory capture.
New Push After First Wave of Laws
Anthropic, the AI company valued at nearly $1 trillion, is now advocating for even stricter state-level regulations after supporting the first frontier AI safety laws in the US last year. In an interview with WIRED, Cesar Fernandez, Anthropic’s head of US state and local government relations, said that transparency-focused bills from 2025 are no longer sufficient as AI capabilities advance rapidly.
The company has endorsed a range of measures: transparency requirements in California and New York, an Illinois law mandating third-party safety audits, and most recently a Massachusetts policy that empowers the state attorney general to seek injunctions against non-compliant AI labs.
Regulatory Capture Accusations
Some Silicon Valley figures, including former White House AI czar David Sacks, have accused Anthropic of pursuing a "regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering" to burden smaller startups and secure its own market position.
Fernandez denies this, noting that the supported bills apply only to "large AI model developers" — companies with over $500 million in annual revenue and hundreds of millions spent on AI development. He argues that startups are unlikely to meet these thresholds.
Federal Role and Other Controversies
Anthropic believes the power to block unsafe AI model deployments should rest with the federal government, not states. This stance follows the Trump administration's directive that led Anthropic to restrict access to its two most powerful models for foreign nationals.
Last month, Anthropic sent a letter to the US government accusing Chinese tech giant Alibaba of a distillation attack — systematically extracting information from Anthropic’s models. Some researchers dismiss this as another regulatory capture attempt aimed at banning open-weight Chinese models.
Discrepancy in Priorities
While Anthropic has mounted a concerted state-level push around existential AI risks, it has not devoted similar effort to addressing public concerns like job displacement or local impacts of data centers. Fernandez says the company is "eager to engage" on those issues, but so far no coordinated campaign has emerged.
