Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick introduced Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown to G20 ministers in Chapel Hill on Wednesday and, a day earlier, told Axios he now trusts the company. [1] Asked if he trusts CEO Dario Amodei, Lutnick said, "We trust Anthropic." "They've done what we asked. They're back on the right side. So the answer is: Yes." [1] "Right side" here means the company did what they asked. The blacklist fight is not over.
The paper's Aug. 28 ruling was constitutional: the Pentagon could not blacklist Anthropic as a supply-chain risk. That was a court order, not a loyalty test. Axios sells a relationship repair. [1] The D.C. Circuit fight on a separate Pentagon designation remains live. [1] Brown's G20 slot is the executive declaring the company back because it complied. Those are not the same receipt.
Lutnick offered Brown a "little story" for ministers who might not know him. [1] Brown praised President Donald Trump's Truth Social post on data centers. "I really love Trump's post from earlier this week... where he was pointing out that the data centers are just an enormous source of prosperity," he said. "They produce a ton of jobs. They produce taxes. Now the way that we design them, we actually bring on more power to the grid." [1][2] He also highlighted Anthropic's support for the administration's ratepayer pledge. [1] Alignment is the product being shown.
Axios traces the clash to personality differences and to sweeping export controls on Anthropic's most advanced models earlier this year, a fight Brown helped patch by talking with Lutnick and National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross. [1] Brown now takes the more prominent White House role. [1] That is a personnel story. It is not Judge Rita Lin's August holding.
Nvidia chief Jensen Huang told the same stage that every country should treat AI as infrastructure, "just as its water, roads, electricity, the internet." [2] He used his "five-layer cake" — energy, chips, data centers, models, applications — and said countries need not win every layer. [2] Lutnick told CNBC the administration is working on semiconductor tariffs: "if you build here, you don't pay, but if you don't build here, expect to pay." [2] Huang said he had "had no conversations" at the G20 on those duties. [2] Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said hyperscalers had done a "horrendous job" explaining themselves. [2] Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said too many developers "run roughshod" over communities. [2] Lutnick called opposition to data centers "propaganda by our adversaries." [2] The trust line and the tariff tease share a stage. They do not close the docket.
OpenAI's Sam Altman was also on Wednesday's guest list, with Lutnick and White House science adviser Michael Kratsios hosting ministers from China, Brazil, Canada, Germany and the rest of the G20. [2] Zuckerberg and Musk had the Tuesday session. [2] Brown's introduction is the Anthropic receipt. Huang's water-and-roads analogy is the Nvidia receipt. Lutnick's "if you build here" line is the tariff receipt. Three products, one auditorium. The August constitutional ruling remains the paper's position on the blacklist. Wednesday's trust line is the executive's. They can both be true. They are not the same document.
-- DAVID CHEN, Beijing