Six weeks after Axios first reported the White House was drafting an executive order that would let civilian agencies onboard Anthropic models — including Mythos — despite the Pentagon's supply-chain-risk classification, the order has still not been published in the Federal Register. Friday's daily Federal Register table of contents carried 47 items; none was the Anthropic carve-out. [1]

The paper framed the underlying dependency on Friday as the Pentagon's freeze-out colliding with the rest of the executive branch's existing reliance on the model. Wiles and Bessent met Dario Amodei in early April; the Army Times reported on May 1 that the Pentagon is now signing deals with Anthropic rivals while civilian agencies await the carve-out. Two paths inside one administration, with the EO the only instrument that resolves them. [2][3]

What the silence means is the question. Drafting an EO is not difficult; publishing one through OLC review is the bottleneck. The most plausible reading is that Defense lawyers are still contesting whether a civilian-agency carve-out from a DoD supply-chain-risk classification is permissible under the FY24 NDAA's harmonization language. The less generous reading is that the leak itself was the policy — a signal to Anthropic and federal CIOs that procurement should keep moving even while the legal artifact stalls. [4]

This week's watch is the Federal Register Tuesday and Wednesday morning publications, when EOs typically post if signed over the weekend. If the EO does not appear by Friday, the silence becomes the policy. Day 12 of the original commitment that produced this paper's first piece on the dependency is now Day 54.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco