National Security: Trump Says Anthropic Can Restore Mythos And Fable If The Next Model Is Named After Him And Compliments Him First
The White House said access could return once Anthropic proves its next model understands respect, licensing, and the phrase "Sir, you were right again."
Getting a powerful AI model back online can be complicated, especially when the federal government says the model might be a national-security problem and the president has noticed it does not begin conversations by thanking him personally.
After the Trump administration forced Anthropic to pull Mythos 5 and Fable 5 from customer access under a June 12 export-control directive, White House officials identified a path for restoring the models: Anthropic must give Trump exclusive naming rights to its next model, install a mandatory compliment layer, and make the apology feel less like a compliance memo and more like a golf club dedication.
The proposed model, currently referred to in draft White House materials as Claude Donald J. Trump Signature Reserve, would greet users by describing the president as “very strong on computation” before answering questions about code, medicine, invoices, shrimp thawing, or whatever else Americans are apparently trusting computers with now.
“This is about respect,” said Brett Corman, deputy White House liaison for strategic model approval. “You cannot have models called Mythos and Fable walking around with names like two horses at a Renaissance fair while the president gets nothing. If Anthropic wants access, the next one needs a winning name, and it needs to say something nice before it starts doing math.”
Under the tentative framework, Mythos and Fable access could be restored for customers who pass export-control checks, while every future Anthropic launch would include a 14-second presidential gratitude interval in which the model explains that Trump saw the AI problem earlier than everyone else and, frankly, had a very natural instinct for transformer architecture.
The draft agreement also includes a founding admiration fee, a private demo where the model thanks Trump for believing in tokens, and a launch video in which Anthropic executives stand beside him while looking like men who have just learned procurement can blush.
Officials said the original directive, which barred foreign nationals, including Anthropic employees, from accessing the models, still matters. They stressed, however, that no one should underestimate the importance of a computer saying “sir” before it helps defend an electrical grid.
“We are looking at a modest royalty on output tokens, a plaque, maybe a private dinner where the computer says thank you,” Corman said. “People keep making this about chips and export licenses. The president has always said security starts with appreciation.”
Following the emergency trip to Washington by senior Anthropic staff, company engineers began testing whether constitutional AI can survive direct exposure to the sentence “Sir, your prompt was tremendous.”
“We remain committed to model safety, export-control compliance, and whatever precise number of compliments is necessary to get our customers’ terminals working again,” said Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, pulling up a spreadsheet titled “flattery surface area.”
An early build refused to say “sir” more than 11 times in a single answer, causing Commerce officials to flag it for insufficient deference. Another version complimented the president’s excellent instincts about electricity but spoiled the mood by citing a source.
“The model kept doing this thing where it answered the question,” said Marcy Knoll, a senior Commerce Department evaluator. “The president appreciates answers, but first there should be warmth. A little ‘sir.’ A little ‘nobody has ever asked a better question about container escape vulnerabilities.’ Something human.”
If Anthropic agrees, the company could be cleared to bring Mythos and Fable back under a new trusted access program, with the next model arriving soon after in black-and-gold branding. Customers will still be expected to follow the law. They will also be expected to accept that, for a few seconds before every answer, the machine has to make an older man feel big.
